The first rule is to be where you are the second is to focus on what’s real, the third rue is Doing is change, the fourth rule is Do something every day and the fifth rule that we’re looking at here is Be Creative.

 Rule 5 Be Creative in your Self Help

The world is an infinitely creative place and you an infinitely creative person. You may not think this but you are unique. Your brain is a profoundly complex computer that can do more sophisticated things than any electronic computer could begin to do. If you use it well and expect it to surprise you with creative ways to make self help relevant in your life it will oblige you. Expect help from your brain and you will get it. 

If you found this video useful you may want to check out Mood Control which is a structured CBT coaching course.

The text from the film is here in case you prefer to read it.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : You are a wide person

You are as I conceive of it a wide person with a lot of interests, opportunities, potential, creative a person. I know you may not think that you’re creative. You may not think that you’re wide with a wide span and a wide viewpoint but you are.

But that might not be your experience because when you struggle with a psychological problem or you’re kind of blocked in relationships, work and other kind of things what happens is that our focus narrows down.

So, the world, which is actually a wide and varied place can start to look dull. If you think about it, how can anyone say the world is boring?  I mean, the world is just full of all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. It’s only boring if we don’t allow this weird and wonderful stuff in to our lives and if we don’t think about it anymore. Sure if you get up, go to the shops, come home, watch the television, go to bed that sounds a bit tedious but it doesn’t have to be that way.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS: challenge yourself

Find ways to challenge yourself a little bit creatively. A great way I find of doing that is to write a diary. Society, culture and the world and responsibilities we have push us to be a little bit more focused on work and family and getting people to do the things they need to do and it all kind of narrows a little bit. But there’s a tremendous benefit to be gained from expanding out a little bit and a diary is a great way to do that.

 ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS: try this exercise

So, keep a diary and write down your fantasy. Not only what happened but what it meant to you and the emotions that you felt. Imagine how other  people felt. Allow your brain to do what it does best. Your brain is a massively complex computer that makes connections between things. Your brain can make all sorts of weird and wonderful connections and that’s called creativity. Allow your brain a flight of fancy and write down what it says.

 ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS: conclusion

So, be creative in your self help. Keep a diary, write stuff down, anything at all. Writing stuff down is the important thing. I think you’ll find that a helpful strategy.

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]]> http://drpurves.com/seven-rules-of-active-self-help-for-depression-and-anxiety-and-stress-rule-five/feed/ 0 http://drpurves.com/my-final-message/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-final-message http://drpurves.com/my-final-message/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 06:33:22 +0000 David Purves http://drpurves.com/?p=3989 Time is running out to claim your free audio book when you join Mood Control.

Please watch this short film and then join Mood Control

We are all aware of personal space. If someone stands too close to you it is uncomfortable, we may not be quite sure why…it just does. In the film below, as an example of personal space violations, I tell the story of some experiments where men are positioned too close to other men in the bathroom. The effects can be dramatic, odd and even disturbing.

Watch this film and learn more. But be warned it is over 18 minutes long. Some things defy a simply or superficial description and sometimes important things take a bit longer to explain. So please stick with it to the end I am sure you will find it useful.

CBT Therapy: Personal Psychological Space

In this video I am not so much interested in talking about physical space but rather psychological space. Psychological space is a concept that is barely even recognised in science. I first developed an understanding of it when I fully understood the power of self sabotage.

Everyone wants to do well in their life. No one is motivated to perform poorly …and yet many of us do perform below are reasonable expectations of ourselves. The reason for this can seem puzzling, let’s face it, it seems to defy logic! But then I understood the power of the ‘personal membrane,’ this is what I call your unique personal psychological space.

CBT Therapy: The Personal Membrane

Your personal membrane is maintained by your existing negative beliefs about yourself. These were probably developed somewhere in your childhood when your cognitive system was less sophisticated and your understanding of the world less well developed. Nevertheless, once created it started to influence all of your decisions.

I tell the story of Tom whose personal membrane developed when he was about 10 and led to a nervous breakdown when he was 40. I describe how it influenced him and ultimately how it almost ruined his life.

CBT Therapy: Tom recovered from the depths of despair

Tom came to see me when he had his nervous breakdown for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) but he only had six face to face sessions. He also used and worked through The Mood Control System. Tom overcame the destructive force of his personal membrane and in fact he changed it out of all recognition. He got his life back, he kept his job and actually started to enjoy it again and he felt normal for the first time is several years. He did great!

Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness week is coming to a close. This week of activities to raise awareness of mental health issues spurred me to tell Tom’s story (even though it is longish for a video) but really the moral of this story is:

Your personal membrane will have an influence over you no matter where you are
in your life unless you make an effort to change it.

I’m a CBT therapist and I had to make an effort to change mine and Tom definitely had to change his, if he wanted to have a satisfactory life. I did it, Tom did it and you can do it also. You just have to start to make the effort.

CBT Therapy: Free Audio Book

I have created a 53 minute audio book entitled The Active Self Help Way Out Of Depression. When you sign up for The Mood Control System before 20th May you will also receive this audio book free. The link for the download will come to with you the welcome email.

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 Self Care

Looking after yourself is not a sin and it is not being selfish nor is it making yourself more important than the people you love and care about. Self care is simply taking what you need so you can continue to function to the benefit of everyone in your world.

This video film talks about three important self care issues that are always coming to the fore in therapy sessions.

1. It seems that a lot of people think that being tough is the same as being efficient and effective. I don’t think it is.  Being efficient and effective is a flexible approach that takes into account the actuality of the world and your own context. Being tough is just being tough even if is may not be the right approach. I call being tough, irrespective of what is happening, to an Oak Tree Solution.

2. Being tough is often hard, a simpler way of doing things may be to recognise you have value and as such you deserve as much care and attention as anyone else in your world. That is just a fact. Failing to recognise or acknowledge this fact is just burying your head in the sand. You can do it but you get sand in your hair.

3. People do not value what is so freely given. If you give without concern for yourself then people will come to expect it and will not value it. They will assume you don’t value your time so they won’t either. This is the sting in the tail of giving without self care. It is often motivated by love and concern but creates resentment and distress.

Value yourself and know that you matter. Give of yourself because you want to not because you have to, that makes your giving a conscious choice not an automatic habit that is hardly acknowledged.

Hi I am Dr David Purves and welcome to this podcast that will start you off on the first step of the Active Self Help for depression, anxiety and stress treatment. You can listen to the podcast or read the text below.

Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: Your brain and depression

While researching brain function and its links to depression I discovered that the brains of longer term depressed people tend to be more active in certain brain regions that those non depressed people. This is an important discovery when looking at self help for depression because these areas seem to be linked to emotionality; the experience of emotion.

This inward focus goes through numerous imagined scenarios what reinforce your depressed state: imagined scenarios of failure, loss, worthlessness and the impossibility of change.

Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: Your brain cannot be inactive

It is quite clear from research that there is no such thing as inactivity for the brain. In fact, while your brain is wandering or when you might think of it as being idle, it is actually busier than if you are doing something. This even has a technical name.

When you are depressed it removes or turns down the variety, interest and engagement with your life and the world in which you live.

A recent user of CBT therapy Blues Begone said that before using the program it was like he was a painter who only had the colour blue to use. After Blues Begone it was like he once again had a whole palette of colours.

Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: Idle times are dangerous

The brain is always active and even more active while supposedly idle. It‘s the idle times that are often the dangerous ones in depression and anxiety. Because these are the times when your default mode of depression engages the power of your brain to make your inner world become a reality. Let me repeat that. WHEN THE DEFAULT MODE OF YOUR BRAIN MAKES THE INNER WORLD YOU CREATE BECOME A REALITY.

You see, when your brain is supposedly idle it is actually engaged:

• in rehearsing the future
• imagining conversations with people
• reorganising past events and memories
• having in flights of fancy
• thinking about sex
• gently scanning the environment for things that are relevant to you
• working out escape routes
• and doing lots and lots of other seemingly random and meaningless tasks.

Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: What your brain is saying

When you are depressed or anxious this means that you have loaded a general operating instruction into your brain that says something like this:

I am worthless, I am afraid, I am a failure, I am vulnerable, I cannot cope, I feel at risk. I must protect myself.

These general operating instructions serve to direct the supposedly inactive brain to search your memories for things that are compatible with how you feel.

Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: You get more of what you focus on

The brain creates imagined future scenarios that show you in vulnerable and difficult situations. Your brain basically gives you more of what the general operating instruction directs it to give you.

Fundamentally you get more of what you direct your brain to focus on. Direct your brain to focus on depression and you will become more depressed.

Direct your brain to look for threat in the environment and like clockwork lots of opportunities to feel frightened will appear.

• calm
• satisfaction
• purpose
• wellbeing and good health

and it will deliver these thoughts, planning’s and imaginings just as automatically.

Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: Automatic nature

One major problem when attacking depression and anxiety is the automatic nature of the processes that make you feel down and fearful.

Brain research shows quite explicitly that you cannot allow your brain to simply ‘do its own thing’ if you want to have any control over how you feel. The good news is that every little bit of effort in changing the general operating instruction is a step in the right direction from one of depression to one of good mood.

Now. I know you understand what I have been saying; but it may not seem true to you. It may not seem like it makes sense that your brain may not be your friend. In fact your brain seems to me to be neutral in things. It serves your needs and desires; whatever they are. It is just as effective in giving you a bad time as a good time.

Ultimately your brain is a highly sophisticated computing device. I firmly believe and the research evidence leaves me in no doubt whatsoever, that putting some effort into affecting what your brain thinks about takes you a vast distance in your journey to good mood.

Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress: Exercise

Now this is a short exercise from the Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress System that you can perform as often as you are able that will start to change the General Operating Instruction. By allowing you to see its inherent flaw…it is wrong.

The first N of Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress is NEEDING TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. You need to know where you are before you can move forward. IT is staggeringly profound. Really taking the time to recognise where you are, is the most powerful first step you can make in your journey to good mood. So let us start there.

Now you may already know this, because it is generally often written about,  but my guess is that you probably don’t really accept it. It may be the case for other people but I really am ‘no good’  that kind of thing.

So as part of this Active Self Help for Depression exercise I want you to establish for yourself that your thinking is overly negative or not. No sitting on the fence on this one.

Here is the task:

1. Simply write down on a piece of paper the most negative thing you think about yourself as a person.

Okay, It has to be something about you as a person… not that you have the wrong colour hair or something that changes easily and often. Or you don’t like your job.

Now, was there a time in your life, when you felt better or even good about yourself? You had normal or good mood. You were not depressed or anxious. This most negative thought was not so powerful or so true? Again I imagine there was a time like this.

Now ask yourself this question:

1. How can something about me change? How can a fundamental characteristic about me sometimes feel less of a problem and sometimes feel more of a problem. You simply don’t change that fast. Could it be that now this thought is being overly focused on; while previously it was less focused on?

If you can see that what you believe about yourself has changed over the years. Then we have the basis for accepting that some of what you think about yourself may actually be wrong or certainly overly negative. Because sometimes it is strong and sometimes not so strong: a fundamental about you ought to be relatively constant and not really change. Maybe then; this most negative thought is  simply the result of where your brain puts your attention in idle moments.

This is a first step in recognising where you are. If you can accept that your thinking is overly negative then that is a big step forward because it shows you what to do next…work to change it.

And that is the subject of a subsequent Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and Stress broadcast

Please try the exercise but more importantly think about the implications of it.  What might it mean to recognise that you may actually be wrong about yourself?

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. If you’ve found this useful please explore the rest of the Active Self Help for Depression, Anxiety and System.

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The first rule is to be where you are the second is to focus on what’s real, the third rue is Doing is change and the fourth rule that we’re going to focus on here is Do something every day.

Rule 4. Do something every day

You have your problems and your ambitions every day. Therefore any program of personal change, whether to remove depression and anxiety or, to get the career and relationship you want has also to be pursued every day. Less commitment to your own change than a small amount of daily effort is selling out to failure.

If you found this video useful you may want to check out Mood Control which is a structured CBT coaching course.

The text from the film is here in case you prefer to read it.

Your day consists of a vast quantity of thoughts, emotions, behaviours and activities which means a vast expenditure of energy. Through the day you breath in oxygen and you expend thoughts behaviours etc. Many of thoughts, behaviours and emotions are habitual. We are great creatures of habit and habits are kinds of short cuts. Some habits are good some are not so good but a habit is a tool that we can harness.

Now, if you’re not feeling good about things or things are how you want them to be you can bet your bottom dollar that all of your habits that are not useful to you but are built in to the system.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : how a habit is created

A habit is created by repetition. If you do something often enough it becomes a habit. You don’t even have to think about it you just get on and do it. You get up in the morning and have a cup of tea or coffee – that’s a habit. You don’t even have to think it’s completely automatic.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : creating new habits

Suppose we created a new habit that was helpful instead of our old habit that was not helpful. Habits can be all sorts of things. A habit could be spending five minutes a day doing something constructive. It could be doing something creative. It could be memorising  a passage of text that you can then repeat to remind yourself of your achievements. It can be talking to someone or looking up instead of looking down when you’re walking along. A habit can be anything that’s useful.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : EXERCISE

1. Examine your day and figure out one habit that you have, just something little that’s not really useful.
2. Now think about what you would have to do to reverse this habit.
3. What would the beneficial habit be to reverse the negative habit?
4. Then do this every day. You only need to spend a few minutes a day on this.

You only need to make a fractional change to prove to yourself that you can make changes and that opens the door to all kinds of possibilities.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : try this habit

You need to create for yourself a habit that’s useful. If you don’t have one try this:

1. Get a step counter – a pedometer and stick it on your belt.
2. Spend a couple of days figuring out how many steps you do and then create the habit of doing 500 more steps a day.
3. Do them on the spot or some other way.

500 steps a day is a great habit. You can even do it when you’re watching television. It’s something positive that you’re doing. It’s something different and that is a tremendous step forward.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : conclusion

So create a habit that’s useful and practise it. It takes the same amount of effort to practise a bad habit as it does a good habit. One of them gets you somewhere you don’t want to go whereas the other gets you somewhere you do want to go!

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The first rule is to be where you are. the second is to focus on what’s real, the third rule that we’re looking at here is Doing is change

 Rule 3. Doing is change

In the end it is action that matters. Changing your beliefs about yourself opens the way to actions designed to move you forward; that allow you to gain the life you want. But you have to take action to make it happen. A brilliant idea not realised remains only an illusion. Do something now to take that first step forward.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT

You could sit in a chair thinking all these tremendously profound thoughts but unless you do something about it – other than it being an interesting exercise for yourself it’s pointless. You have to do something different. If you keep doing the same thing you’ll keep getting the same outcome so you need to do something different.

So you’re avoiding novelty and you’re becoming less active, taking less exercise and you also smile less. You avoid things that potentially make you anxious and these behaviours actually make things worse.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : QUESTION YOUR COPING STRATEGY

I’ve seen hundreds of clients and helped hundreds of people with the problems that they have and every person who walks through my door has been making the problem that they struggle with a bit worse with the strategy they use to try to cope with it.

So basically you tend to make things worse by the coping strategy that you’re using. So if you feel unsafe, you feel anxious then you’re not doing stuff; you’re doing less. You’re making things worse because you’re not giving yourself the opportunity to challenge yourself.

If you’re suffering from low mood or stress or you’re just not feeling very good about things you’re doing less then that’s making the problem worse.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : REVERSE THE TREND

So to reverse this trend you need to do things that you may not want to do but that are beneficial. So for instance if you think back a year or some time period before this problem became apparent and you made a short list of what you did then and what you do now. Is there are difference? Are you doing less?

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : EXERCISES

Exercise One
So make a list of things you used to do and make a list of things you do now. Compare those two lists and if you’re doing less reverse it. Go to the party. Go to the concert. Go to the pub. Talk to people.

Exercise Two
If you smile you feel lighter but your brain also recognises what you do and interprets it. So if you smile your brain will say, well I must be happier than I thought I was and you’ll feel a bit lighter.

So I want you to smile for one minute five times a day and you’re likely to feel a bit brighter.

This is an interesting exercise that really works and doesn’t cost a thing.

ACTIVE SELF HELP FOR DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, AND STRESS : CONCLUSION

So behaviour is change. Don’t let the problem you’re struggling with keep pushing you down the hill. Stop and go back the other way and you will start to see some changes in your life.

Related Articles

Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress

• Rule 1
• Rule 2

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Japan traditionally suffered twice the suicide rate of the USA. However, talking about depression in Japan had always been a very different matter from talking about it in Western countries. In our language, the word for depression is interchangeable with dips in landscape, economy or mood. But in Japanese the word for depression (utsubyo) was used only to describe major depressive disorders and/or mania. Indeed it was seldom heard outside psychiatric circles.

Moreover there had always been a keep it to yourself (KITY) social norm in Japan where there was merit in not burdening others with your problems. And for both cultural and religious reasons people with mental health problems like depression were likely to suffer stigmatization, in addition, to the burden of their psychological problem.

Traditionally the major pharmaceutical companies had bypassed Japan when marketing anti depressants because there was not a disorder of depression recognized in Japan to treat and therefore no market for antidepressants. Until that is a new phrase was coined that linked the traditional Japanese notion of Ki and low mood. Kokoro no kaze (your soul has a cold)

Clinical depression treatments: Your soul has a cold

The effect of this clever combination of traditional word and understanding coupled with the new way to talking about something that was an unspoken problem for Japanese society started slowly but with gathering pace to change the status of depression. Depression became defined as a ‘real’ problem. And real problems have real solutions!

So far so good. The problem I have with this story is not that depression in Japan was under reported and under treated, I think that is self evident.  And clearly the changing force needed to bring this problem into awareness against a strong and established cultural norm was very substantial. All of that I believe was to the common good. No, the problem I have with this overall approach is that in Japan depression has been characterized as an entirely biological problem that is therefore can only be solved by the use of antidepressant drugs.

Clinical depression treatments:  How the Japanese viewed low mood

To put the problem into an historical context the traditional way of thinking about suffering in Japan may shed some light on why depression was never considered a disease. ‘Melancholia, sensitivity, fragility were not considered to be negative experiences for Japanese hence they were not considered to be problems in need to a solution. They were not considered bad in and of themselves.

Clinical depression treatments: The medical model of depression

In contrast the medical model of depression categorizes suffering as pathological and a problem that requires an intervention. Normally this is a pill. It is the case that the treatment of diseases in more easily understood and funded by health insurance companies and national health agencies and of course the classification of something as a disease helps remove some of the potential for stigmatization. But it also creates a market for the solution where previously none existed. Some critics of this approach have argued that it leads to the pathologisation of normal emotion; the tipping point where moods become medical problems and as such it turns normal human experiences into commodities to be managed.

Eli Lilly had decided in the late 1980s against selling Prozac into Japan as there was virtually no demand for antidepressant meds. Even though throughout the western world Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI’s were becoming a virtual cultural phenomena – the antidepressant era!

In 1999, Meiji Seika Kaisha a Japanese company began selling the SSR Depromel. Meiji was among the first users of the phrase kokoro no kaze.

The following year, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) the maker of the antidepressant Paxil joined Meiji by entering the Japanese market.  At this point people did not realize they were suffering from a disease and so GSK put substantial effort into the re-education of the normal Japanese doctor. GSK created a simply message: ”Depression is a disease that anyone can get. It can be cured by medicine. Early detection is important.”

In the early 2000s GSK sent 1,350 Paxil-promoting representatives to visit doctors on average of twice a week. With additional campaigns to teach GPs and their patients about the symptoms of depression: ”head feels heavy, cannot sleep, stiff shoulders, backache, tired and lazy, no appetite, not intrigued, feel depressed.”

Clinical depression treatments: Recognition of depression is useful

I have to acknowledge that recognition of depression is better than not recognising it. Depression is a problem that causes untold misery. Even today in Japan data suggest that 6.6% of Japanese have depression.

To promote depression as a solely biological problem is to tell an incomplete story. As a psychologist I am not a dispassionate observer of the capture of  depression by the medical establishment. I treat depression every working day and most of the time my clients never use antidepressant meds. Therefore my experience of clinical depression treatments shows me that depression is more than adequately treated by psychological therapy and probably best by CBT Therapy.  Nevertheless most psychological therapies are likely to have value as depression treatments.

I cannot blame the pharmaceutical companies for doing what they do which is to sell pharmaceuticals. And I know it is a common meme to bash the multi national drug companies. I can see they do a lot of good in many areas. If you have malaria you should take an anti malarial medication. But if you have a psychological problem that is better treated by a psychological therapy than a drug treatment then I have an issue with the bias in the message. That’s all.

The moral question is this: are we only consumers or human beings who can also consume? To assert and promote that depression is only a biological problem without also stating that it is a psychological problem is obviously good business for pharmaceutical companies but it is ultimately misleading and I think in the end immoral. If there are better depression treatments even though they cannot be packaged and sold by pharmaceutical companies they have an obligation to inform the public because that is a morally good act. I don’t observe this happening right now. How have we sleep walked to this place in the world where the pursuit of commercial advantage and money takes precedence over honesty, integrity and the common good?

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The first rule is to be where you are. The second is to focus on what’s real.

Rule 2. Focus on what is Real

A human thinking is often faulty, with cognitive distortions, and negative beliefs about the self causing a lot of problems. You need to challenge faulty negative and damaging thoughts to arrive at an accurate set of beliefs about yourself and your abilities.

Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress : Focus on what is real

Some of our thought processes are actually faulty. Most of the time this doesn’t matter too much because we have enough accurate thought processes that offset the fault processes.

Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress : What are faulty thought processes?

Well there are a whole load that are mapped out in CBT:

1)I feel bad therefore it is bad (This is emotional reasoning.)
2) If it’s not perfect it’s ruined (This is all or nothing thinking. Perfectionism.)
3) You either like me or you hate me – I give people one chance. If they blow it then I’m done with them (This is black and white thinking.)
4) She doesn’t like me (This is mind reading thinking)
These are examples of cognitive short cuts or faulty thinking.

Your brain uses a tremendous amount of energy to do the massive amount it does and it’s really prone to taking short cuts. If it’s done something once and it worked then it’s likely to do it again.

Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress : Conditioning

It follows the rules of conditioning. If you do something once you’re more likely to do it again. So if you say, ‘She hates me, I know she does,’ and you feel an emotion such as anger or irritation or resentment that emotion has reinforced that faulty thinking strategy.

So, the next time you say, ‘She hates me, I know she does. I don’t want to talk to her. I’m not even going to talk to her.’ You’ve anchored it again on that faulty thinking but the fact is you don’t know that she hates you.

You phone a friend to cancel an appointment maybe. The friend sounds off. You put the phone down. She sounds angry with me. Why is she angry with me? I couldn’t do anything about it. She’s going to have to have to say sorry to me for being angry.

Your friend was angry, that’s what you know. You don’t know why she was angry. Now you’ve acted on that faulty thinking, that mind reading and you’ve created a strategy, ‘Well I’m not going to phone her until she phones me.’ Three months later you haven’t got a friend.

Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress : Check negative emotions

The alternative is always to check out negative beliefs or negative emotions. This is just a fundamental rule of CBT but really it needs to be a fundamental rule of life.

If you believe you know something. If you think you know something that you don’t actually know. If you jump to a conclusion that’s not really backed up by the facts but perhaps it’s generally a bad feeling. If you’re actually motivated to do something that’s above and beyond what you’d usually be expected to do then you know by virtue of these feelings that your brain has taken a short cut.

Well short cuts are fine as long as it gets you to where you want to go. But if it gets you to low mood, stress, phobias, OCD, then you know your brain has taken you there and one of the processes it’s done that by is short cuts which are wrong.

If you take the wrong short cut you end up in the wrong place. Of course you do.

Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress : Exercise to unravel a short cut

The way to unravel a short cut is this:

1) Take a piece of paper, when something happens to you write down the first thing that pops in to your head. This is called an automatic negative thought.
Eg. Phoned friend to cancel appointment. I think she’s angry with me. I think she hates me. I think she thinks I’m a bad friend. Write all these thoughts down.

2) What’s the emotion that these thoughts generate?
Eg. anger. I’m angry with her. Why should she think that I’m a bad friend.

3) What was the action?
Eg. I didn’t phone her back.

4) Draw another column next to it called Alternatives.

5) Write an alternative thought.
Eg. She’s angry and I don’t know why.

6) What would be an alternative emotion to anger?
Eg. I don’t know why she’s angry. Perhaps she’s got another problem that I could help her with. Then we might have compassion, empathy.

7) Think of an alternative action.
Eg. Call her and say, When I called you earlier you sounded angry what was going on? My cat died and I think the vet didn’t deal with it very well and I’m angry. Shall I come over? Yes, come on over

So being real is learning to spot false negative thinking. Generalised thinking, black and white thinking, all or nothing thinking, crystal gazing, mind reading thinking.

So try this exercise to start with. You’ll find some other useful resources on the Mood Control You Tube channel.

About the Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress System

DrPurves.com is the Home of Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety. It’s a free resource that offers the beginning steps of the Active Self Help System of anxiety and depression treatment and anxiety therapy or for the elimination of toxic stress. The truth is people can help themselves out of clinical depression or clinical anxiety without any additional therapeutic help from a professional. This is what Active Self Help is all about.

It is a proven system; it really works and as you progress through it you gain increasing mastery over your own psychological well being.

The Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress System uses the knowledge, tools and resources of CBT therapy but translates this scientific and clinical goldmine into material you can access via your computer and use at home to overcome depression, anxiety and stress.

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Active Self Help for Depression and Anxiety, and Stress

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