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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Question the thought
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.
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.
النور
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.
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.
The gentler reading is already in you, it is just currently pointed at other people.
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.