If You Feel Single and Sad, Here's How to Get Over It

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Jay was feeling depressed about life in general. In particular, he was feeling discouraged about not having a girlfriend. His best friend had recently gotten married, and Jay said that the wedding made him depressed.

“I’m the only one who didn’t have a date for the wedding. I must be a loser.”

Jay thought his social situation and the wedding in particular were making him depressed.

Jay decided to talk with a therapist, who turned out to be a practitioner of cognitive therapy. The therapist asked Jay to recount what he was thinking whenever he wanted to ask a girl out.

Jay sighed. “Every time I want to ask a girl out, I think to myself, She is never going to want to go out with me. If she says yes, it is only out of pity.”

Happiness depends on us

Jay was in a no-win situation. If the girl actually consented to going out with him, he then thought, “She won’t like me when she gets to know me. I’m such a loser.” He was paralyzed in every social situation by his negative thoughts. Jay’s depressing thoughts ultimately made him…depressed.

We tend to think that what is out there makes me feel good or bad. We think that situations affect our moods and our reactions. In fact, as Father Emmerich Vogt, O.P., founder of the

And—even more radical—how we feel often depends on how we think.

At the core of cognitive therapy is the assumption that our thoughts and our feelings are significantly intertwined. We may believe we are thinking or behaving rationally, but in fact, many times we do not! (This is certainly consistent with the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin.)

How to transform negative thoughts

Cognitive therapy teaches that, at times, we think and behave irrationally, and therefore must monitor our thoughts and our belief systems in order to have a healthy emotional life. Just being aware of the connection between thoughts and feelings in many cases helps people turn their lives around!

In 1967 Dr. Aaron Beck, the primary founder of cognitive therapy, published the results of a five-year research project explaining that cognitive therapy can help with depression and other problems.

Many research studies have since shown that cognitive therapy is effective in treating many different types of depression and in fact, is often as effective or superior to other types of therapy (including medication).

Cognitive therapists observed a curious dynamic in depressed clients: the clients felt depressed, hopeless, etc., but when the therapist asked them what they were thinking, they often said things like, “I am going to fail” or “I am always overwhelmed” or “I can’t handle this because I am so incompetent.”

These clients were feeling depressed, not because of their current life situations, but specifically because of the way they labeled these situations: “I always fail in situations like this” or “People always let me down” or “I’m never going to find someone to love.” In other words, their thoughts were depressing them, not their actual situation!

Try this to overcome bad moods

Try this sometime when you find yourself experiencing a suddenly overwhelming bad mood, or sadness. Ask yourself: What was I just thinking?

Perhaps you were just beginning a new class and you looked at the reading list and said to yourself, “I’ll never be able to keep up with this class! It’s just too much work!” You then felt a huge weight upon your shoulders, a feeling of despondency and helplessness.

That last cupcake ruined me!

Or, you meet a pretty girl at work and you want to talk to her, maybe ask her out for coffee, but you think to yourself, “There’s no way I can just go introduce myself. She is going to think I am an idiot.” You then feel uncomfortable and sad, discouraged.

Or, you blow the diet you’re on with a large slice of cake. You say to yourself, “It’s no use. I’ll never lose any weight” and you give up.

A cognitive behavioral therapist would have you take note of such thoughts, possibly jot them down for a week, and then would slowly try to unpack the belief system or core beliefs that underlie these negative thoughts. The core beliefs might be something like “I am inadequate,” “I am unlovable” or “I never succeed at anything.”

We need to think differently

Jay’s therapist listed the negative thoughts that Jay told him would pop into his head, unbidden. He asked Jay if these statements were true. “Is it really true that you are unloveable and inadequate?” he asked.

Jay’s therapist pointed out all the successful things that Jay had done, and how he was a good friend to many: you graduated cum laude from your university, you have a good job, you are a responsible and faithful friend, and you’re a good Catholic!

Jay finally realized that his negative core beliefs were not true. Now, he needed to stop the automatic thoughts from rushing in whenever he was under stress.

Here's what you need to do

We need to recognize when self-defeating thoughts automatically rush in and take over, high-jacking our moods and our lives.

Is your mind an empty house?

The key is to recognize the discouraging thoughts as well as the situations that trigger them and replace them with more accurate and supportive thoughts. Like an uninvited obnoxious guest, we need to get rid of those self-defeating thoughts. Hire yourself a new bouncer: a big 250-pound lineman who will kick those thoughts out before they cause trouble.

But as Jesus told us in the parable of the unclean spirit, you don’t want to leave your house (or your mind) empty. “When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ Finding it clean and put in order, the unclean spirit will then go and bring back seven other spirits more wicked than itself” to move in and dwell there! (Luke 11: 24-26).

Recognize the self-defeating thoughts and the bad schemas and replace them with the way God sees you, with His plan for your life.

In therapy and in prayer, seek to know the mind of Christ (CCC, 2046) and to experience God’s infinite and unconditional love for you—because you are a beloved child of God.

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