My Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Journey - Week 3

This was a challenging week to say the least. People close to me were experiencing emotional pain and I felt the negativity in the air. It was difficult not to absorb it. I was able to at times, but for the most part I was unable to succesfully challenge my negative thoughts which of course led to negative emotions.

Sometimes there are going to be situations where negative emotions are natural, but I’m trying to remember the idea of:

• My business
• Their business
• God’s (the Universe's) business
  
  

Much of what I was upset about really fell into the category of “Their business”, but it was hard to separate myself from it because people that I cared about were in emotional pain.

It seems like it’s a matter of compartmentalization, which as an Empath is a foreign concept since I generally just feel everything from everywhere and everyone lol

So, I’m trying to keep in mind the overall goal of this CBT process:

“It is not the situation that causes the emotional distress.
It is the individual’s interpretation of that event which causes the emotional distress.”

This week I worked on setting goals by using SMART goals

Smart Goals are:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time Limited

It is harder to achieve goals if they are too generalized.
For instance, “I would like to stop having negative thoughts” is too broad of a goal, it can’t be measured specifically, and it is somewhat unrealistic.

Here’s an example of the same idea using SMART goals:
“I would like to learn how to challenge my negative thinking so that I do not always jump to conclusions. Instead of worrying about things all day, I would like to allocate 20 minutes a day writing down all my worries and try to manage them. I would like to achieve this by the end of the month.”

The next step was to create a list of situations that cause me to feel anxiety or low mood (triggers).
Then I used SMART goals to create a list of what I feel needs to change in order to feel better.
These goals included things that I hope to achieve as well as things that I want to change.

The final step was to make a list of what could possibly prevent me from being able to achieve my goals.

Common Obstacles include:

• Avoiding tasks due to a fear of not completing them perfectly
• Feeling unmotivated
• Feeling disappointed when improvement isn’t immediate
• Being busy and not creating time to work on the goals

Then I made a list of ideas to ensure that I don’t let my obstacles prevent me from achieving my goals.

Thank you for your support and I continue to hope that my journey can help others in some way.