6 helpful ways to battle depressing thoughts

Your racing, gloomy thoughts at night can dial back your speed during the day. A good night's sleep makes your mind work hand in glove with your body and is to busy working women what mjölnir is to Thor to succeed. But before you choose from our diverse list of tips to tackle depressing night thoughts, you need to be cognizant of various causes that can trigger them.

You're dissatisfied about something or life in general: These depressing thoughts can creep up from a sense of dissatisfaction with your life or an area of your life. The dissatisfaction can be rooted in recent or past traumas and/or childhood/life experiences. It's easy to get incised into someone who isn't able to live in the present contently and can't help but have depressive thoughts at night by default. "Dissatisfaction could result from unfulfilled expectations, strained relationships, or unrealized dreams. Racing thoughts can create a feedback loop, strengthening each other and intensifying the feeling of sadness. The absence of a solution can make it challenging to fall asleep," says Sophie Cress, LMFT and certified Gottman therapist.

You're highly anxious/stressed about something: Various mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, can make you picture worst-case scenarios and rewind them in your head. While having an anxiety disorder can catapult you from one depressing thought to another, it can also be the general magnified anxiety you're experiencing about something. Maybe you're concerned about your health or someone else's, you had a tiff at your job, you're facing setbacks in achieving business goals or something else. These issues can heighten stress, leading to a train of depressive thoughts. 

You tend to obsess over things, people or the future: Anticipating future events, not being able to let go of things that happened in the past, ruminating on a mistake, fixating on a person and relationship/connection and behaviour patterns of the same ilk point toward your obsessive nature. This can lead to stifling depressing thoughts at night. "The repetitive nature of obsessions and compulsions can create a cycle where gloomy thoughts are persistent, leaving individuals feeling overwhelmed or trapped in their thought patterns. It can be more during nighttime because of fewer distractions," says Cress. 

Certain personality traits and tendencies, such as perfectionism and neuroticism, can cause you to overthink excessively. "Such traits can cause an increased sensitivity to perceived threats or disappointments, leading to obsessive thinking, particularly during the night," says Cress.  

So, if you can't put out your thoughts and your mind is racing miles per second after turning out the lights, here are some strategies to consider.

1. Try a conscious stream of journaling: Recording your thoughts without any filters can soothe your mind. When you drain your thoughts out through a pen in a journal, you pull in the reins on your thoughts, and the only thing that gets saddled with them is the piece of paper. This also helps somatically, as it takes away the emotional pain. 

2. Take meditation breaks during these thoughts: If meditating before bedtime doesn't work, try practicing meditation in between these thoughts. Five-minute gaps after thinking these thoughts can gradually change the neural pathways in your brain by reinforcing new mindset patterns and scrapping the old ones. You can increase the gap time slowly. 

3. Schedule another depressive thoughts time: Distracting yourself with different thoughts or positive thoughts can definitely work for some, and sometimes, but not all the time, especially when your thoughts fight back. Instead, set another time hours before your bedtime to let the thoughts come and go as they please. You can also verbalize to squish emotions out of the body. 

4. Ask yourself these constructive questions: While letting your depressive thoughts run riot isn't constructive, they usually call for you to take a bead on why it's happening through these questions- What is making me worried currently? What can I do about it in the coming days or right now? How can I stop dreading the future, past or present? What can I do pragmatically to make my situation better? What negative things/traits do I need to work on? Can I let it be if I've already taken action/worked on it?

5. Think/write about how far you've come in your journey: You might be prone to scrounging yourself over things that could go wrong or have gone wrong. When this happens, write down how this situation could also go right. Think of all the times when things worked out in your favour. If there are ways to correct the course of a present or past situation, do it. If not, try practicing letting it go and forgiving yourself. 

6. Practice looking at situations from a balanced perspective: If you're either "it's all rainbows and sunshine" or "it's never ever glitter and gold," then both mindsets can slingshot you into the world of depressive thoughts at night. With a toxic positive mindset, reality hits hard and shakes you up when it does. With a toxic negative mindset, you get wired to be a defeatist. It's a great trait to be positive, but it's also crucial to always plant your feet firmly on the ground. 

Georgina Sturmer, counsellor, MBACP, suggests reducing social media browsing before bedtime, doing some stretching exercises to physically relax, reciting affirmations, and visualizing to create a calm internal sensory experience. 

So when it feels like you lack control in life or in a situation, the stress is actually intense, you're feeling insecure, or you're enduring painful and nerve-racking circumstances, then it can play havoc with anyone's sleep. But these thoughts can offer you a chance to go within and work on your mental and emotional self authentically.