Dr. Daniel Amen (Change Your Brain, Change Your Life) suggests
a big first step toward managing anxiety and depression is to kill the ANTs—Automatic
Negative Thoughts. I like his easy-to-remember acronym for how distorted thinking can tank our sense of
well-being.
Why try, it won’t
do any good.
Nothing ever
goes right.
I’m not good
enough.
With some practice, you can reframe your thinking,
which absolutely will change your attitude and bring you closer to joy. Pick just one ANT that crawls around
in your brain, and reframe it—rehearse it—make gratitude your new automatic
thought, e.g.
This is just a snippet of one simple-but-powerful change
you can make to bring your life in control. Dr. Amen has some great Youtube
& TED talks if you want to hear more.
He makes brain functioning related to our moods understandable. Here are some links to a few of Dr. Amen’s talks:
·
A nine minute talk about four ways to reduce
stress & anxiety https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0IRRrNFi0c
·
A one-hour talk on more comprehensive solutions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLKj1puoWCg&t=1022s