Blaming yourself

Of course you need to criticize yourself sometimes-if we weren't able to think about ourselves critically at least some of the time, we'd never improve. Negative underlying beliefs make us blame ourselves too much. The trick is to be honest, not overly-critical. Look at every situation carefully. Praise yourself when you deserve it, and give yourself constructive criticism when you need it. Don't insult yourself; the best way is to think about how you can do better next time and look forward to your chance to improve. Your reason is your most powerful tool; use it to examine every belief you have. See what matches up with the facts.

For example, suppose you do badly on a math test. You normally do well at math, but this time you had to take the test the morning after you had stayed up all night watching TV. After you get your score back, you could say to yourself, “I must be an idiot and I'm no good at math.” But if you think carefully, you'll realize that you did well before so the cause must be something else. Instead, you can think to yourself, “I just need to make sure to get a good night's sleep next time,” and then you can be confident that you'll do better on your next math test.

Not blaming yourself too much can help protect you against depression. Instead, if you find something about the situation that you can change (like how much sleep you get), you can get control of the situation and prevent some “down” feelings that add to depression.