Process - Physician - Fraser Health Authority

THINKING REALISTICALLYStep 4: Practice realistic thinking, continuedWhen you find yourself in these situations, deliberatelyrehearse your fair and realistic thinking. Don’t assumethat it will happen on its own. You will have to tellyourself how to look at the situation, just as you mightgive advice or encouragement to a friend. Talk back tothe depressive thinking. Don’t allow depressive thinkingto happen without replying to it. Every time youtalk back, you make the depressive thinking weaker andthe realistic thinking stronger. But it takes time beforerealistic thoughts have more influence over you thandepressive ones.You will probably find that, for the first while, therealistic thinking sounds false to you. For example:you’ve been thinking in a perfectionistic way aboutyour work, telling yourself that “my work has to be100% or else it’s worthless,” but you are given verylittle time to complete each task, so you often feellike a failure. You realize that this is unrealistic thinkingand come up with the fair and realistic thought that“achieving 80% is acceptable in this job, given thetime I have; that’s all anyone else accomplishes.” Atfirst, this realistic thought will seem false, as thoughyou are just fooling yourself. Only with time andrepetition does realistic thinking – the truth – beginto feel true to you. Eventually you will come toaccept realistic thoughts.SELF-CARE DEPRESSION PROGRAM38 ANTIDEPRESSANT SKILLS WORKBOOK