Tag Archives: cognitive behaviour therapy

More Than Words.

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sunshineThis past weekend I partook in my new Saturday morning yoga ritual at the lovely little yoga studio just down the street from my house. Now I wouldn’t call myself an avid yogi because, to be honest, I often find yoga a little too low key and breathy for my personal preference – I tend to be a mover, a goer, and a doer – which likely means that participating in the slow and steady from time to time is exactly what would be best for me. I digress. Anyway, I have been getting myself to said yoga class quite regularly and have been learning to appreciate and enjoy it more and more.

This past week, though, something pretty profound happened for me. It happened while we were doing this odd little repetitious thumb up, thumb down exercise with our arms straight out to our sides. It sounds quite simple, but man it sure doesn’t take long for said exercise to start a no-kidding-around burn in the upper arms. And I know it wasn’t just me because just as said burning started to kick in, our cheerful and bubbly little yogi guru called out an important reminder for us to breathe. That helped somewhat – as remembering to breathe usually does. But soon thereafter the burning returned. Luckily, our little yogi had a second set of instructions: she told us to start thinking about turning our pain into power. That also worked quite well for a few moments – and even better than just breathing alone. THEN she told us to actually speak the words aloud: I AM POWERFUL. And. Holy. Cow. What happened after that literally blew me away. As soon as I said those words out loud and with the gusto and determination necessary to push through the burning pain power that was starting to feel unbearable, said burning all of a sudden practically stopped, and I became invigorated with a huge surge of thumb turning vigour. In that moment, because of the words I had spoken aloud, my mind and thus my body were literally convinced that I could and would be able to make it to the end. And I did.

The moral of the story: Breathing when we are distressed, in pain, or uncomfortable? Really good. Turning our negative thoughts into constructive ones? Perspective changing and extremely helpful. Actually speaking aloud affirmative words of truth and empowerment? Totally transforming.

This Too Shall Pass.

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A small but very important multipurpose tool from my toolbox which I find extraordinarily useful to use with my clients, as well as with myself, is remembering to keep our Emotional Reasoning in check.

Emotional Reasoning is a cognitive distortion that many of us employ quite regularly – sometimes without even knowing it. It’s the inaccurate belief that how we feel is how things really are, without question. If I feel stupid, I must be stupid. If I feel angry, I must be crazy and out of control. If I feel like I never do anything right, I must be a loser. If I don’t feel like getting exercise, it must not be a good time to do it and I better put it off.

We assume these unhelpful emotions are a sign of the way things are, and we draw unchallenged conclusions based on how we’re feeling in the moment: “I feel it, therefore it must be true!”

The truth is: it’s not really true – at least not totally true all of the time. Often there is more of an objective reality outside of our feelings. Sometimes we can just feel a certain way and that’s it. Just a feeling. And it too shall pass.

Shoulding All Over Ouselves.

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It might not be immediately obvious, but we are all guilty of shoulding on ourselves and others… some of us more so than we might want to admit.

There are 3 types of shoulds that most of us regularly employ that really aren’t doing us much good.

Should #1 – Shoulding on the Self:
“I SHOULD do well at everything and be approved of, liked, and admired by everyone or else I am no good and do not deserve to be happy.” This demand on the self results in anxiety, depression, and often allowing others to take advantage of us – none of which feel very good.

Should #2 – Shoulding on Others:
“Other people SHOULD treat me with kindness and fairness or else they are no good, rotten people who deserve misery and punishment.” This demand on others leads to resentment, isolation, hostility, and violence.

Should #3 – Shoulding on Life
“Life SHOULD be fair, easy, painless, and free of difficulties or else it’s terrible, I won’t stand it, and it’s hardly worth living.” This demand is associated with hopelessness, procrastination, and unhealthy or destructive coping methods.

We need to start giving these shoulds a run for their money. They need to be challenged because they don’t deserve to have the final say. They might persist, but we don’t need to agree with them – we can confront them head on with questions like: “What makes this should a load of…?” “Where are the flaws in this should?” “Who says it should be this way?” and “How do I know this should is being difficult, unreasonable, and just plain not nice?”

Shoulds often sneakily creep up in our thoughts more often than we might think: “I should do this,” or “they should do that” etc… They are nasty little buggers.

Take some time over this next week to catch yourself shoulding on yourself, and then see if you can change that should to a simple “I would prefer” or “it would be nice if”… Give it a try and see what you notice.

Practically Perfect in… Some Way.

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As difficult as it may be to wrap our minds around, most situations, circumstance, and experiences we encounter in life are pretty much neutral in nature, and cease only to be based on the meaning, value, and perspective with which we chose to interpret them. Now I’m sure we’ve all had some well meaning person tell us to just look on the bright side and as most of know, this is not usually so helpful – especially when we’re right smack in the middle of an emotional upheaval.

Sometimes in life things suck. And that’s okay. The goal is not to avoid ever feeling sad, bad, mad, disappointed, or upset. Feeling feelings, even the ‘negative’ ones are part of being human. The goal is though to not let those feelings take over and become our M.O. all day, everyday. In my research on happiness, I came across a different way of interpreting the less-than-ideal – after, of course, we’ve taken a moment to stomp our feet and maybe boo hoo for a moment or two… or twenty. The strategy I’m talking about here is after having a little time to feel miserable, we take step back and ask ourselves: “What is perfect about this problem?” in other words, “despite the frustration, difficulty, and inconvenience of this situation, what am I going to choose to get out of it?” Now, my goal is not to placate, underestimate, or downplay some of the very difficult challenges that many of us face, but I am saying we can often find a way to use at least a part of our troubles to our advantage… and believe-you-me some situations definitely require more of a creative effort than others.