I'm still at it with the fear facing and despite the challenges and the resistance, i'm still able to get through it and well boy do I resist it! Empowering myself before hand and replacing my thoughts really save me when it comes to that and now i'm working on acknowledging my own accomplishments and all my attempts even if they don't turn out the way I want them too, by doing that I will change the belief that I need to be perfect and that mistakes are bad to a belief that trying and attempting no matter how it turns out is an accomplishment.
What i'm becoming more aware of as I continue to plug away is that it really is about how you perceive things...about the acknowledgement and value you place on things and not about the things themselves. I've noticed that if I don't acknowledge my accomplishments then when I do succeed in the task it can leave me feeling empty but when I do acknowledge them then I feel good although right now i'm slightly feeling accomplished and not fully feeling it because its still pretty new and it was the same way when I first started to eat or first started any skill and so thats ok. Sometimes even when I do acknowledge my accomplishment I feel empty or even negative and then in that situation I have to pull out my notepad and write through the thought and usually the thought goes like this "So what, big deal, anybody can do that" and then I have to remind myself that it doesn't have to be really big or something that other people cannot do in order for me to deserve to feel accomplished.....By the way THH you asked for an example of a memory type reaction well here is a great one...this is what my family would say to me that is coming back to the surface but in this situation.
I've been practicing the thought replacement on a daily basis consistently since the program said for us to work on our limitations and I'm really starting to see the benefits here. When some of my anticipatory thoughts come up, i'm starting to identify them right away as just a story, It seems to me like through this its easier for me to see reality as it is and to discount the thought and also to see when i'm making situations bigger than they really are or placing value on the importance of how people respond to me as well. I'm not where I want to be yet but I finally feel like i'm truely getting there.
I am finding it challenging to integrate all the main things within the program as there are alot of great things here but I know I will.
By the way there was this video that was really powerful that I saw awhile ago and forgot about and just yesterday a friend shared it on facebook and I want to share it with you to. We talk about facing limitations and facing fears but how often do we ever see anybody do it? This video is so powerful because you actually do get to see it and you also get to see the responses from other people. Check it out and let me know what you think!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1T9-I3wx8I
THH
So if we could add another part in the Program For Causing Anxiety and Depression it would go like this;
See the bad weather and let your imagination go wild with how bad its going to get...imagine the temperature dropping lower than it has ever had before and see it as if the world is going into another ice age and what if you froze in the shower and thousands of years later they found you in your birthday suit....how embarassing!!!!
On your trip to the dentist don't forget to anticipate a horrible outcome! Your gums have finally turned to jelly and all your teeth will have to be removed and replaced candy corns! Maybe then you could apply for a new job....a human pez dispenser!
Oh and make sure you think of every bad thing that could possibly happen and come up with a very unrealistic way of handling it you know because you do want to set yourself up for failure, depression and more anxiety! So when that Comet is coming towards your house you make sure you're holding an umbrella with my little pony on it!
Thank you! It was a big moment as that thinking has been so detrimental and now it seems like i've found a layer deeper than that underneath which is very good, i've moved pasted where I was now. This has been an enourmous victory for me!
By the way what is your way of feeling your anxiety and letting it dilute?
Oh and i'm glad those examples were helpful and that you are feeling good. Which is alot different from when I was happy that you realized you were depressed
ForeverYoung
I'm glad you found it funny too....that scene was just really scary! Stuff like that normally will scare the crap out of me and then I scare myself by imagining me being like that or seeing someone I know like that and it feels so real and yet its not and is very very very unlikely that this would happen but when I get stuck in that way of thinking, I really cannot see the diffrence but I saw it and immediately I thought of the humor stuff and did it and it helped me to break free of that downward spiral instead of chasing it down like I normally would.
I know the feeling and I think I had the same reaction with Mrs Doubtfire....I think because we are so sensitive, we imagine exactly what it would feel like if we were in that situation. I do that alot and it can make funny things scary but it also has the opportunity to have the opposite effect and make us feel empowered and loved when the character in the movie receives that.
Oh and great job for identifying the thoughts and good try for replacing them and before I respond to what I think and what I would add, I first have to ask you how does your responses make you feel to those negative statements? I mean does your replacement thought make you feel better? does it make you feel at least a tiny bit better?
As for the facing of the limitations, I suggest against taking on your driving and elevator stuff right now. I believe things happen for a reason and the fact that the whether conditions are not good for you to face this limitation is a good indicator to me that it is not time for you to do it yet. Facing the worst ones off the bat could in fact be setting yourself up for failure. If I faced my worst fear right now (doing an improv show), I would probabbly crap my pants and it would be way too overwhelming for me to even get up to do it and thus I wouldn't do it and likely i'd be beating myself up telling myself that i'm not good enough and that I'll never get better and it would make it harder to try again.
You have 2 other smaller ones that would be better to try to tackle....and by limitation that is really just anything that causes anxiety, it doesn't have to be things that you have avoided doing....anything that produces anxiety is a limitation. The video is a great example! and the cleaning and organizing is another although the video would likely be easier. You know you can get through watching the video because you have before and yet it does cause anxiety so it works well. When you do get to that point in the movie where you get anxious, then just pause the video, grab your notepad and just write down anything that comes to your mind and then from what you've written, pick out the negative thoughts and then try to replace them. Post them on here and then we can help you out and through this, you may come to find that you don't feel so much like you're falling behind or are unsatisfied with your efforts (That being said, I still want to go through the negative thoughts that you have posted right now, after you respond the question I had posed).
Mike