Living with depressive thinking is like living in a haunted house. It’s spooky. It is not 100% under your control; but there are techniques you can learn to help control the depressive thinking.
To the degree that we have control over our thinking (and it is somewhere between 1% and 99%), we need to ask ourselves whether we are going to use that control to think logically.
Cognitive therapy for depression is not about thinking positively, it is about thinking realistically.
Negative thinking does not feel like a game to the depressed person. It can be overwhelming and deadly serious. But if we make it into a game, we can get some distance and objectivity to start thinking differently about negative thoughts.
You are going to travel through different rooms of a haunted house. Each room will have a scenario and a negative thought. The negative thought is phrased in such a way as to embody one of the types of cognitive distortions worked on in cognitive therapy. You choose what type of cognitive distortion it is. Then on the next page, you will write a reframed thought statement that is more logical. If you succeed, then the room changes from a haunted room to a brightly painted room. And if you succeed in all the rooms, the whole house changes from a haunted house to warm, cozy house.