Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Question the thought
Take the thought that is upsetting you and ask: what is another way to read this?
The event is fixed; the meaning is not. A second reading often fits the facts and hurts less.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Perhaps you dislike a thing and it is good for you (Qur'an 2:216). What feels only bad may hold a good you cannot yet see.
كُتِبَ عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡقِتَالُ وَهُوَ كُرۡهࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تَكۡرَهُواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تُحِبُّواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ شَرࣱّ لَّكُمۡۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعۡلَمُ وَأَنتُمۡ لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not.’
Qur’an 2:216read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Reframing a situation, rather than suppressing the feeling, is linked to better mood and steadier relationships. The story you tell about an event shapes what it does to you.
Gross, J. J.; John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology doi
Cognitive reappraisal, reframing a situation, is linked to better mood, relationships and wellbeing than bottling feelings up.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Reappraising a situation changes the emotion it produces, more lastingly than bottling it up.
Where this sits: Emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal (CBT).
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Notice the standard you are holding yourself to, then ask whether you would hold anybody else to it. If what you blame yourself for happened when you were a child, ask honestly whether a child could have carried that.
Some thoughts you could defend all day, and debating whether they are true only gives them more of your time. Try a different question: is this thought kind to me, and does it take me anywhere I want to go?
A belief about yourself comes with a feeling somewhere in the body, an emotion, and a set of things you then do or avoid. Argue only with the words and the rest of it carries on exactly as before.