For a great day - Feel Good

According to cognitive theory, when we perceive an event using a negative filter (cognitive distortion), the emotion we experience is anxiety or depression, When this happens, we feel helpless and want to avoid the situation, as a result of which we may end up making inappropriate choices. And when we do this over a prolonged period, most of the filters we use become negative and we experience what are called "negative automatic thoughts”. In other words, we don’t even do it consciously any more. It happens pretty much on its own. When we get into a fight with the auto-rickshaw or cab driver in the morning, a negative automatic thought flashes through our mind to the effect that "today's going to be a lousy day". This heightens our anxiety and we set ourselves up to have a bad day and actually end up having one. Since all of us do have a fair number of negative experiences in the course of our lives, we do experience different types of negative automatic thoughts on a regular basis, but we build our own coping strategies, with which we can dismiss these and substitute them with more positive ones. However, if these thoughts cross a certain threshold or if we are experiencing a depression, we lose the capacity to do so. And this is where CBT can come to the rescue.