2 Worksheets to Help Combat Depression
Individuals who experience depression often deal with difficult emotions and engage in unhelpful thought patterns that worsen their depression. One of those responses that is widely recognized is excessive guilt.
Excessive guilt is one of the distinctive symptoms of depression, as it is often exaggerated and experienced out of context (Pulcu, Zahn, & Elliott, 2013).
Typically, individuals with major depressive disorder feel guilty for their emotions and are often upset at themselves for being affected by depression, as they feel they are worthless for being in a depressive state.
One of the most common types of guilt experienced by individuals who have depression is called omnipotent responsibility guilt, which is defined as “taking responsibility for events which may be out of one’s control and feeling guilty about their consequences” (Pulcu et al., 2013, p. 312).
Often, individuals with depression take responsibility for situations they have little or no control over, causing them to feel a sense of overwhelming guilt, even when they had nothing to do with the outcome.
Understanding what parts of a situation you can control or influence is an essential part of seeking treatment for depression. The Control–Influence–Accept Model (Thompson & Thompson, 2008) originated as a means to help people be more productive at work.
However, the basic principles of the model aim to identify pieces of a situation that you can control or influence, as well as aspects of a situation you may have to adapt to or accept.
If these sound like issues you are struggling with, feel free to consult the following worksheets:
1. Control–Influence–Accept Model
This is a good activity for individuals with depression to help break down situations. The model allows better visualization of different aspects of a situation and what specifically can be controlled, instead of worrying about all the possible outcomes.
2. Guilt and Shame: Emotions That Drive Depression
Guilt and shame are two emotions that drive your emotions when depression manifests. This exercise will help you identify guilt and shame that drives your depression and provides suggestions for channeling those emotions to facilitate more positive thinking patterns.
Handouts for CBT Sessions
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most widely recognized therapeutic approaches to treating a variety of mental health conditions, specifically depression and anxiety.
CBT operates on the principle that emotional reactions and behaviors are influenced by cognitions (Westbrook, Kennerley, & Kirk, 2011).
Our behavior is governed by these cognitions, meaning that someone with anxiety might display more anxious behavior or engage in negative thinking patterns.
When an individual is affected by depression, they can experience cognitive distortions that are negatively biased errors in thinking. When individuals experience automatic thoughts, they are typically consistent with their core beliefs about aspects of themselves, others, and the world (Rnic, Dozois, & Martin, 2016).
Therefore, individuals who are experiencing depressive thoughts or symptomatology tend to have negatively charged core beliefs, which activate negative automatic thoughts. The cycle of negative thinking causes the symptoms of depression to continue and consolidate negative thoughts as part of an individual’s emotional response.
Our worksheet on Unhelpful Thinking Patterns categorizes the unhelpful thinking patterns that are present when someone is experiencing depression. It also provides strategies for individuals to reconstruct their thinking and identify the negative thinking patterns they might engage in.
Because of negative thinking patterns or cognitions, individuals often develop negative beliefs about everyday situations. This may cause them to change their behavior.
This worksheet on Behavioral Experiments to Test Beliefs encourages you to challenge your negative thoughts or beliefs. You are assisted to develop a hypothesis from your beliefs and test whether your negative core beliefs actually come true.
It is a useful worksheet if you are trying to confront negative beliefs about a specific situation, such as going out in social situations, or struggling to leave home. Having a concrete situation will allow you to better challenge the negative thinking patterns you might experience.
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