How To Control That Stinkin’ Thinkin’

“Anxiety and depression are driven by negative thinking patterns.Your thoughts make you who you are today. What kind of a person are you today?”~ Dr.Daniel Amen

Do you ever feel like you are falling into a bottomless dark hole, a hole filled with nothing but hopelessness? Your thoughts are negative, and your “stinkin’ thinkin'” has you feeling down? This is depression.

Depression is real.

Depression is unpredictable. It can come upon us with no warning and for no apparent reason.

Depression is a thief. It robs people of energy, peace, and joy.

Depression zaps the zest to enjoy life and it kills the desire to live.

Don’t feel bad about yourself if you struggle with depression. It is more common than you may realize. History is full of many respected people who have suffered from it, including C.S.Lewis and Charles Spurgeon. Instead of letting it weigh you down, educate yourself on how you may be able to help conquer this beast.

Often depression is a result of a chemical imbalance in your brain. Sometimes, however, your feelings of heaviness are rooted in your thinking patterns.

I’ll confess that I am a pessimist by nature. My first response is usually negative and full of fear and/or anxiety.

Assuming you are not fighting clinical depression but, like me, you struggle with adverse thinking, how can you learn to change your thinking?

Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen’s “ANT Therapy” has helped me understand my negative thinking patterns.

Dr. Amen says that if you can “kill the ANTs” (Automatic Negative Thoughts) in your head and replace them with healing rational thoughts, you can change your way of thinking.

He continues to say the following:

“If you could look into the thoughts of people who are depressed, you would find one dispiriting thought following another. When they look at the past, there is regret. When they look at the future there is anxiety and pessimism. In the present moment, something is most often unsatisfactory. The lens through which they see themselves, others, and the world has a dim grayness to it. They are suffering from Automatic Negative Thoughts, or ANTs. ANTs are cynical, gloomy, and complaining thoughts that just seem to keep coming all by themselves.”

Your thoughts are very powerful. Most of your negative thoughts are automatic. You can, however, train your thoughts to be positive. Dr. Amen claims that when you can learn to identify your automatic negative thoughts, you begin to take away the power they have over you.

Dr. Amen lists nine different ways that your thoughts lie to make situations seem worse than they really are. He says, “think of these nine ways as types of ANTs (automatic negative thoughts).”

1. “Always” thinking: thinking in words like always, never, no one, every one, every time, everything.
2. Focusing on the negative: only seeing the bad in a situation.
3. Fortune telling: predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation.
4. Mind reading: believing that you know what another person is thinking, even though they haven’t told you.
5. Thinking with your feelings: believing negative feelings without ever questioning them.
6. Guilt beatings: thinking in words like “should, must, ought or have to.”
7. Labeling: attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else.
8. Personalization: innocuous events are taken to have personal meaning.
9. Blame: blaming someone else for your own problems.

Here’s how Dr. Amen recommends you combat these automatic negative thoughts:

“Whenever you notice an ANT entering your mind, train yourself to recognize it and write it down. When you write down automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and talk back to them, you begin to take away their power and gain control over your mood.”

Kill the ANTs by feeding your emotional anteater.

If you struggle with negative thinking, or what’s sometimes called “stinking thinking,” I encourage you to check out Dr. Amen’s website and educate yourself on his theory of killing the ANTS.

Never forget, however, that you are a child of God’s and although He uses man’s wisdom to help you, the real source of your aide comes from His strength and power within you.

May the Holy Spirit give you an awareness of any negative thought patterns you have. And most importantly, may you always remember that you have a mind of Christ, a gift from God to His beloved children.

I’ll leave you with Dr.Amen’s quote again and challenge you to ask yourself: “Your thoughts make you who you are. . . What kind of a person are you today?”

“…But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.”~1 Corinthians 2:16