I had written and was ready to publish a whole post offering up various ideas and suggestions but decided to nix that, given that I quickly headed into the weeds, and water that was over my head. I started to wonder if “negative thoughts” gave license to tackle the topic of depression and decided this was a bridge too far, outside the bounds of a reasonable and responsible treatment of a topic with which I am not that familiar.
So, I will treat this prompt from the perspective of someone who understands “negative thoughts” to be of a more garden variety that looks like anger and frustration– with oneself or with the state of affairs in this country or the world.
Explore these thoughts, recognize an overreaction when you see one, take a walk or run, exercise, help someone, work them out on paper or in a blog post, talk them through with a friend or a therapist. Or make a rational attempt to work through an issue with the person who may have caused the negativity in the first place.
You could just ignore these thoughts, because we all have a bad day every now and then, and given the current state of world affairs, we’re allowed to be a bit sour or angry on occasion.
But an unrelenting cloud of negativity is never a good thing, so it helps to have trusted friends, support, someone who can offer a healthy perspective and some light to counter the darkness, along with the recognition that a constructive response helps lighten the load and disappear the sometimes self-imposed frown.
And now I realize I’m touching on depression, anyway.
3 Cents' 