Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 5:21 am
Hey guys it's been awhile eh? I've recently been discharged after admitting myself to a hospital (center for mental health and addictions) for a few diffrent reasons and I've been working very very hard on the CBT mainly with the help of 2 books I have and I didn't realize the importance of one of the suggested activities but now i'm noticing big changes in my mood after starting to utilize them...bigger than what i've noticed from doing the CBT from the last 5 years!!!
First of all I'd like to mention that it is very important to really understand the cognitive distortions...if you can understand which thoughts fit into which distortion you can be better equiped to expose the lies in them and thus make yourself feel better. One particular distortion I've found to work amazingly is the Label distortion (or in the program they call it overgeneralization but you could say it's a sub category because you can have overgeneralized thoughts that aren't labels). Working on this has been taking away my fear of judgement (not completely but it improves each time i work on a label), fear of mistakes, fear of having anxiety and fear of getting to sleep too late. It is definately worth checking out!
Labels are what keep us from trying, after all what is the point of putting the limited ammount of energy we have on feeling better if we've condemned ourselves by saying we are bad? The label tells us that no matter what we do we are doomed to feel this way or be a certain way forever, it is like a death sentence. On top of that these LABELS DO NOT EXSIST. They don't exsist because we aren't static beings, we all have the ability to change and grow at any moment and it is impossible to be stupid or dumb or worthless 100% of the time.
Instead of explaining how to do this I would like a few volunteers to help show how this works. What I need you to do is give me a label you are constantly struggling with and define it for me. You can do this here in this thread in order to help multiple people all at once but if you absolutely feel too afraid then PM me. What i will do is question it to the point that it doesn't make sense and thus has less of a hold.
Mike
Mike aka Ninjafrodo
First of all I'd like to mention that it is very important to really understand the cognitive distortions...if you can understand which thoughts fit into which distortion you can be better equiped to expose the lies in them and thus make yourself feel better. One particular distortion I've found to work amazingly is the Label distortion (or in the program they call it overgeneralization but you could say it's a sub category because you can have overgeneralized thoughts that aren't labels). Working on this has been taking away my fear of judgement (not completely but it improves each time i work on a label), fear of mistakes, fear of having anxiety and fear of getting to sleep too late. It is definately worth checking out!
Labels are what keep us from trying, after all what is the point of putting the limited ammount of energy we have on feeling better if we've condemned ourselves by saying we are bad? The label tells us that no matter what we do we are doomed to feel this way or be a certain way forever, it is like a death sentence. On top of that these LABELS DO NOT EXSIST. They don't exsist because we aren't static beings, we all have the ability to change and grow at any moment and it is impossible to be stupid or dumb or worthless 100% of the time.
Instead of explaining how to do this I would like a few volunteers to help show how this works. What I need you to do is give me a label you are constantly struggling with and define it for me. You can do this here in this thread in order to help multiple people all at once but if you absolutely feel too afraid then PM me. What i will do is question it to the point that it doesn't make sense and thus has less of a hold.
Mike
Mike aka Ninjafrodo
