Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Question the thought
Picture somebody you love saying this exact thought about themselves. What would you say back, and why is none of that available to you?
Most of us are far kinder outward than inward, and the kind version is usually the more accurate one as well as the warmer one. Say your answer to them out loud, or write it down, then read it back as though it were addressed to you. It will feel borrowed the first few times. Borrowed is fine.
Qur’an and Sunnah
why did believing men and women not think well of their own people (Quran 24:12). Thinking well of someone is treated there as a duty and as a choice, and you count as one of your own people.
لَّوۡلَآ إِذۡ سَمِعۡتُمُوهُ ظَنَّ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنَٰتُ بِأَنفُسِهِمۡ خَيۡرࣰ ا وَقَالُواْ هَٰذَآ إِفۡكࣱ مُّبِينࣱ
When you heard the lie, why did believing men and women not think well of their own people and declare, ‘This is obviously a lie’
Qur’an 24:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised trial with 131 people diagnosed with generalised anxiety or depression, training in generating more benign readings of ambiguous situations reduced worry and rumination compared with a control training. That was a structured programme rather than one question asked in a hard moment, so it does not test this exercise directly. It does support the idea that a habit of interpretation can move, and that moving it makes a difference.
Colette R. Hirsch; Charlotte Krahé; Jessica Whyte; Sofia Loizou; Livia Bridge; Sam Norton (2018). Interpretation training to target repetitive negative thinking in generalized anxiety disorder and depression.. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The gentler reading is already in you, it is just currently pointed at other people.
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.
Imagine yourself some years from now, well past this, and let that version of you say something to you about today. Write down whatever arrives.
At the end of a stretch of thinking like this, ask yourself plainly what you believe about yourself now, and how that differs from an hour ago.