The self destructive thoughts

The self destructive thoughts

I have often mentioned, that one of the symptoms of depression is to down yourself, but does everyone really know what kinds of thoughts are meant?
One of my goals is to raise awareness for depression, to do that, I believe it is important to explain and show as many aspects as possible about depression, so people can understand how serious this subject is.

Self destrictive thoughts can have a wide span of topics to belittle ourselves on. The thoughts mostly adress the topic that we are most insecure or most sensitive about.

Self destructive thoughts that adress our talents can vary, but they will definetly be focused on downing ourselves. For example if you are good at singing, your mind could be telling you, that you are just telling yourself you are good to make yourself feel better, but in truth you are not good at singing. Or if you sing in a choir, your mind could focus on comparing yourself to others, for example: „Yeah, you might be good, but you will never be as good as Person A in the choir, so just give it up.“

These kinds of thoughts can also adress our looks, making us feel insecure and uncomfortable with ourselves. Finding the little things that might have been slightly irritating, but things you generally were okay with. It will target those areas and blow them up, for example if you feel slightly unsatisfied with your nose, your thoughts might cause you to focus your gaze at the noses of other people and compare them constantly. Or, it will take an aspect that you do not like, for example the size and blow it out of proportion, telling yourself it is either way bigger than you imagine, or if you think your nose is too small, your thoughts would proably focus on telling yourself your nose is tiny.

Self destructive thoughts can also focus on your educational path or career choice. Then these thoughts will focus on your grades and make sure you feel you are not good enough. In this case, it can also be similar to how the thoughts are with talents, telling yourself there is someone you will never catch up to and therefore can just give up.
If it’s about your career choice, the thoughts will focus on telling you, you will never be able to achieve that dream, no matter how hard you try, why even bother?

These kinds of thoughts can also be about your work, telling yourself you are doing a horrible job and can forget ever getting a raise, at best you can try desperately to keep your job.

The huge problem with self destructive thoughts is, that it is hard to protect yourself from your own thoughts, if you don’t know how to defend yourself or how to invalidate them.
Another problem is, that these thoughts can affect any age group.

People who have self confidence will be less affected by self destructive thoughts, because they can stop those thoughts the moment they arise. They remind themselves who they are, what they can do and that they are indeed enough just the way they are.

What can a person with no self confidence do, who is hurt more by these kinds of thoughts? In fact the same thing a self confident person does. I have written before, that you yourself will have to work hard to overcome depression, that means you will have to force yourself to constantly remind yourself that you are enough! You might no longer believe in what you can do and maybe even think you are not a good person, useless or just not worth the effort.

But, you are not alone, I can’t stress this enough. The person who helped me the most to overcome my depression was my mother! I went to her when I no longer knew who I was, what my hobbies were, what I am good at, what my personality is like. I questioned everything about me, all I saw was the shell (my physical body) and I didn’t even like what I saw in the mirror, it got so bad that I stopped looking in the mirror. I despised myself.
She answered all of those questions for me and no, at the beginning that did not magically fix me. I denied it all and said I was no longer capable of being that person, that I had been too verbally cruel to friends and not nice enough anymore to be who I once was. She reminded me that everyone makes mistakes, everyone has a period of time in their life when they behave in a way they regret or do not feel proud of.

BUT, only we can change our future, we decide every day who we want to be. How we want to act, how we want to treat the people in our surroundings. We can redeem ourselves, by changing our ways. We do have the right to return to who we used to be before the depression!!!

We just need to be brave enough to try to find ourselves again, either on our own, or with the help of a loved one (It can be family, friends, it really doesn’t matter how they are related to you).

What might help you, is writing it down, or maybe even have a loved one write it down.
(Adressing the topic in which you are facing those self destructive thoughts)
If you are at the point of not remembering yourself, then have them write down who you were, how you were, how you treated others, what you enjoyed, what you hated. Find yourself again and get to know yourself again. Noone expects you to just accept the old you again. Depending on how long you have been suffering from depression it can be very hard to accept yourself as a good person again.

That is why you should allow yourself to get to know yourself again, you have that right.

I wish you all patience with yourself, endurance and strength!!!
Take care everyone!