HOW DO YOU IDENTIFY ALTERNATIVE BEHAVIOURS?[MENTAL HEALTH]ARTICLE1

Article 1

When you are depressed it can be very difficult to see the wood for the trees. You simply cannot see any alternatives . Although the self-monitoring stages and functional analysis should help, it can still seem hard to decide what to do. Being depressed tends to slow your thinking down and make you feel helpless . However, there are a number of useful questions you can ask yourself to help with this.

*Think of all the possible alternative approaches to this- anything at all.

You can write all of the ideas down, no matter how unlikely they seem at first . Later you can choose which behaviours might work well and pick the most likely one.

• Have I had similar situations in the past when I was not depressed ?Did I deal with this in a more helpful way? What did I do ?

These are great questions to ask yourself You can use them to remember a time when you faced a similar situations . You can then compare and contrast how you responded.

• If I knew someone else with a problem like this, what would I recommend they should do?

Standing outside of yourself like this can help you to be more objective. What would you say to a friend in this situation?

I will complete in article 2 soon.