Don't believe everything you think.
In the beginning it made sense to believe my thoughts. My thoughts, I argued, were me and why would I lie to myself. Out of the billions of people in the world, the one person I should be able to trust is me.
In the beginning my thoughts were there to cheer me on when I didn't have the confidence to stand in front of my class to give an oral report. My thoughts were there to help me find my loveable parts. They were there to support my intuition as a grew into motherhood.
But slowly, those words of support and praise melted into a thick sticky pot of doubt and belittlement. I knew that I shouldn't trust the thoughts that contained words like "always" and "never", I could quickly see through the lies of these statements. I knew that I wasn't "always a failure" or that I "never got anything right", but when those voices started personalizing their insults they were much easier to accept.
When I started to compare my life and my house and my family to those around me, it was easy to think that they all lived in a fairytale, especially with the advent of social media. People would post pictures of their perfect family in their perfect house or on their perfect vacations. I didn't just envy the things they had, I started to think that they knew the recipe for the magic potion that kept everything in order. Instead of trying to learn from what they were doing, not realizing that most people only post pictures or leave status updates when everything is peachy, I quit trying.
After I gave up, the voices settled in and really had a hay day. They turned my feelings into facts. They made it easier to blame others for what was happening around me. They filled my mind with "should's, must's and ought's".
At one of my first counseling sessions my therapist gave me a workbook that probably did more to help turn around my funk than any other thing I have tried since. The things I do now are supportive and help me maintain a happy mood, but without the workbook none of the supportive measures would have done a thing.
It starts out with a "Daily Thought Record" in which you monitor your feelings throughout the day. When you feel bad or unpleasant you describe the Event surrounding those feelings. For me, the first time I used the DTR, I came upstairs from working a particularly challenging shift at work (thank you Super Storm Sandy) and discovered that our house was a mess. In the interest of "keeping it real" and because I love you, here are a couple pics I took the morning after that blasted day.
(seeing them again...I do feel a little justified in my emotions, but I'm also grateful that something as silly as a messy house doesn't have the same power to drag me down as it used to)
The next section asks you to describe the emotions surrounding the event or the Impact of the Event. I felt frustrated and sad because now I had to either clean it up myself or I would have to sit on my kids until they did it. Talking them through every step, refereeing arguments, keeping them motivated, knowing that I could clean it up by myself in about an hour or two, but asking 8 little hands to clean up their own mess meant a whole day ordeal that would most likely end in tears (theirs and mine).
It then asks you to Rate the Intensity of the emotion on a scale of 1-10. I was at a 7. Probably not my worst day, I wasn't ready to wake everyone up at that very moment and insist that they pick up their things before they could go back to bed (something that though I have been tempted to do on several occasions, I have had the wherewithal to resist) but I wasn't ready to let the emotions roll off my back either.
Next you are asked to analyze your thoughts. Within your Initial Responses, describe the automatic thoughts or self-talk. Then rate how believable it is from 1-10. My initial response was, "I am the only one who ever cleans. If my family really loved me they would clean up after themselves and I wouldn't have to sit on them until they did. I must not be teaching them correctly." Luckily, even at this stage I knew that my thoughts were nowhere close to the truth.
Here comes the fun part. There are several different ways in which we lie to ourselves on a daily basis that contribute to depression or a feeling of low self-esteem. They are called thought distortions.
During this experience the thought distortions that I was experiencing were Assuming (I assumed I knew the motivations of the people who created the mess), Fairytale Fantasy (I believed that everyone else lived in perfectly maintained castles that were constantly and immaculately clean), Overgeneralizing (even though I knew better, the "never" and "always" beasties crept up on me), Dwelling on the Negative (instead of coming up from my shift and recognizing that a messy house meant that my family LIVED in my house and were busy making memories instead of being little maids, I decided to focus on the negative), Catastrophizing (it was a messy house, I wasn't a failure and neither were they), Personalizing (instead of allowing others to take the "blame" for the mess, I blamed my parenting) and Blaming (I blamed my family for my bad mood). Phew...that is a whole lot of crazy talk if you take a step back from it. But these were the battles that were raging in my mind EVERY day.
After you take a step back and categorize you thoughts, it is now time to create a Reasonable Response. "Change the distortions to more reasonable thoughts. Rate how much you believe each from 1-10". A much more reasonable response to a messy house is, "When properly motivated and supervised my children are fabulous cleaners. They show me that they love me not only in the little acts of service that they do for me, but also with their gratitude, smiles and hugs. I do my best to teach them, lovingly, how to care for themselves, their things and others.". This reaction is much more accurate and believable. I rated it a 9.
Finally you analyze the Results. "Based upon your Thought Analysis, rerate how much you believe your initial responses. Then rerate the intensity of your emotions". My initial response was a distortion of the facts.
After you have analyzed your thoughts and dissected them to this level it is much easier to have a handle on the emotions associated with your thoughts. That doesn't mean that I don't still get upset by a messy room or when things don't go according to plan, it just means that when I do get upset I don't spiral into a pit of despair. I don't believe everything that I think.
I was so grateful to realize that not everything that I think is fact. There are some "facts" running around in there that I would love to be true, but these hurtful distorted thoughts no longer (or at least most of the time) don't have power over me.
And because I'm not really ready to let the whole world in on my imperfections, this is what it looked like after I got a few hours off of work and really kicked it into high gear. (The kiddo's were a great help, and the tears were kept to a minimum)
ps...I will try to find out more about the workbook my therapist gave me. She just gave me copies that she made from her book. I think they are excerpts from a book called, "The Self-Esteem Workbook", but on the info that I have it doesn't indicate an author (and I would love to give credit to those involved in this work of perfection). So I will look into it and get back to you :)
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