DocMisty

You couldn’t figure out long division in school, so to this day, you say with a joking smile, “I’m bad at math,!”  “I’m don’t make friends easily,” you think after being ignored when you tried to introduce yourself at a company party.  “I’m a bad mother,” thinks a women when her child throws a tantrum on the grocery store floor.  “I can’t keep a job,” says the teenager after being fired from his first job.

How about, “This child was easy to potty train, so all my children will be easy to potty train.”  Hah!  There is an obvious flaw in taking an isolated case and applying it to everything else.

These are overgeneralizations, and they are a very self-destructive thought pattern.  Every failure or frustration multiplies and contaminates not only today, but your entire future.

Even worse, many people have these thoughts constantly running in the background like a nagging commentator mentioning their every flaw.  Which leads into another great way to combat distorted thinking.

If the list making was not your thing, you can try the clicker method.  Get a cheap golf clicker at a sports store which can also be called a counter or tally machine.  Basically, you push a button, and the display number increases by one.  They are used to count golf strokes, or people coming into an event, etc.

Carry it in your pocket, and each time you have a distorted thought, click away.  At the end of the day, write the number down.  The cool thing is, the numbers should go up for a little while, because you are learning to recognize them, and letting fewer and fewer slip by unnoticed.  Then, the simple act of counting the thoughts will cause them to level off and finally decrease. 

Seriously, say you had a nervous twitch that caused your arm to jerk up and hit the back of your head.  You’d been doing it for so long, you really didn’t notice the arm jerking, just that you had constant headaches.  After taking multiple medications and explaining to a counselor the tragedies of your youth, you still don’t feel better.  Finally, someone explains what to watch for, and you start counting how many times your arm is twitching.  Some slip by, because this is a long engrained habit.  But eventually, you notice each one.  And who, once they notice their own arm hitting them in the head, is going to let that continue?  The act of recognizing and counting will decrease the number of distorted thoughts.  What a great concept.

So, now you are up to two coginitive distortions:  All-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization. 

And two techniques:  Writing down the thoughts, identifying and responding, and the clicker count.

Try one today.

DocMisty

P.S.  For reference, see the wikipedia article or the book:

 

“I never do anything right.”  “Everyone is always talking about me behind my back.”  “Every time my kids scream, I lose my temper.”

Using words like ‘never’, ‘always’, and ‘every’ are examples of all-or-nothing thinking, one of ten so-called ’cognitive distortions’ used in a well-studied treatment for depression – Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT).

It’s a mouthful, but CBT is essentially a technique based on first changing your thought patterns and habits, which will then change your mood and your behavior.

Depression is a touchy subject, particularly among women.  It is many times more common than thought, and very under treated.  Really, who wants to admit being either crazy with a ‘mental’ illness, or even worse, they can’t keep up with the super achieving schedule they’ve set for their life?

In medical school, that whole side of it is ignored, and depression is treated as simply another illness with damaging effects on a patient’s life, the most severe being death, in the form of suicide.  Of course, like much of modern health, the typical answer comes in the form of pills, and therapy is given a perfunctory nod.  Doctors all know the modern patient is just too busy to lay on a couch and talk about repressed memories of childhood, so just give them a pill, they’re good at taking those.

Cognitive behavior therapy is an effective alternative and can be used alone or in conjunction with medications.

I ran into an apathetic-type of depression during pregnancy, and occasionally, as my husband kindly notes, during ‘that time of the month.’  It’s always fun to hear others ask, “Why can’t you just think positive?” or “How can you be depressed?  Look at how great your life is?”  It isn’t like the same questions aren’t running through my own mind.

Then I found a great book (which is how I learn most of my odd hobbies) called Feeling Good by David Burns.  It’s packed with great info, techniques, and exercises, that teach you exactly how you can combat depression.  In fact, a series of studies was done following a group of 80 patients, randomly assigned to either read or not read the book Feeling Good within four weeks.  They weren’t even asked to do any exercises in the book, just to read it and do what they felt like doing. 

At the end of four weeks, 70 percent of the reading group had dropped their depression scores from a 20 average to a 10, which no longer qualifies as ‘depressed.’  Three months later, 75% no longer qualified as depressed, and a three-year follow-up showed 72% as no longer depressed.  These results are as effective as the most often prescribed anti-depressants and even the standard 12-week session with a trained cognitive behavior therapist.  Plus, there is a much lower drop-out rate and a very small relapse rate.  Ok, for you thrifty moms out there – this is all from reading an $8 book in a month’s time!  That’s cheaper than your co-pay!

(Your library should have the book, or click through to Amazon from here , to support this site)

So, if you’re too busy to read the book, you can get it in little snippets from me.  The first step is to learn to recognize the ten cognitive distortions, or ways your thoughts are ‘messed up’.

So, pick a time you felt a bit ‘down’ recently, and write down what was running through your mind.  Since you only know one cognitive distortion so far, it’ll have to be a phrase with the words ‘never’, ‘always’, or ‘every’ in them.  Really, get a piece of paper right now (or a Word document for the techies) and write a thought down.  Next to it, write ‘all-or-nothing’.  And finally, in a few words write why that is not true, or is distorted thinking.

Thinking:  “I never do anything right.”

Cognitive Distortion:  All-or-nothing

Response:  I wrote a pretty good post on docmisty.com.  I helped a friend make name tags for vacation bible school on the computer. I fed my kids french toast for dinner AND used whole wheat bread! etc. etc.

Now it’s your turn – enjoy!

DocMisty

www.turtlebalm.com