Your thoughts about a situation will have a huge impact on how you feel about the situation.

Let’s say you are invited to a party and you think, That party will stink because all the popular people will be there and no one likes me so I shouldn’t even go.

Or, you could think, Sounds like a really fun party, loaded with people I want to get to know, which could be awesome.

How you think about things affects your feelings and your behaviors. Yes! If you are reading the YSS books, you are quite familiar with this cycle:

Managing your thoughts can have a profound (meaning large and deep) impact on how you feel.

In fact, the thoughts for someone who is feeling depressed tend to blame the self for when things go wrong, I did poorly on that test because I am stupid, or Robin didn’t text me today because she hates me. Yet, people who tend toward depressive feelings also tend to have thoughts that attribute (meaning assign or give) successes to outside influences, such as, I did well on that test because the teacher made it easy, or Robin invited me only because she invited everyone. Can you see how the person who feels depressed sets herself up never to feel good about herself? She thinks: Everything bad is about me, everything good that happens is because of something else, like luck.

This is a really negative pattern and one of the reasons feelings of depression can turn into a clinical depression and be difficult to overcome. However, feeling depressed and a diagnosis of clinical depression can be treated! Find out how in the next post!