Thats great foreveryoung and yeah that sounds like one of your limitations, you have uncovered one now. I remember you saying that you couldn't recognize one but you just found one, awesome! Its also one of mine as well as I've cleaned one of my rooms and its amazing how it has reduced my anxiety. I know I had alot of anxiety while in my room but I didn't know how much of it came from having a messy room, I think my mind was trying to distract me with other things that bothered me instead of me really looking at the messiness and instead of cleaning it up. Why didn't I clean it up? Well like you ForeverYoung, I was really afraid that if I tried then I'd get really overwhelmed and it would bring on the scary thoughts and the feelings. I had to do some thought replacement on paper first in order to get myself to do it as I knew that if I just tried to ignore the thoughts and feelings, I would again go through that same cycle of anxiety body symptoms and scary thoughts. In all reality, it really isn't the cleaning that causes it, it is the focus and the perception that causes it...its what we say to ourselves that causes it and in this case I was seeing everything I had to do all at once and getting overwhelmed. Well of course anybody would get overwhelmed if they realize they had to do 100 things and imagine doing them all at once, even if you had all the food you have to eat in your entire lifetime in front of you right now that would get overwhelming too.
So one thing at a time, one step at a time, one object at a time, one activity at a time, one dish at a time, one morsel of food at a time, one word at a time, one moment at a time. And we can even make it fun by adding music and do one song at a time
. And we can see that we don't have to get this done all today and we can also see that we are in charge of how much we do and for how long and we can take breaks whenever we want and we can also focus on how great we'll feel after we are done and also what benefits of having a clean room or house will have towards us.
I'm still working on my projects and i'm finding that the more positive pictures and quotes I get, the more I can be positive and switch to positive thinking when i'm starting to feel negative...it seems like another way to overcome depression and anxiety as opposed to thought replacement and the relaxation cd. I'll post more pictures sometime after I get my office room cleaned up
By the way we start lesson 8 tomorrow.
Mike