Posts Tagged With: cognitive behavioral therapy

Day 3970: Why do I feel so stupid?

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Ann Koplow

On the 3970th day of this daily blog, why do I feel so stupid?

Lots of reasons, including

The email on my phone stopped updating with new messages on Sunday.
When I searched for solutions to the problem online, there was a recommendation for me to delete the cache and I couldn’t do the steps suggested on my phone.
I don’t know what or where the cache is in that context.
I tried to make a Genius Bar appointment at my local Apple Store and couldn’t do that either, despite trying several times.
When I was on a chat with an Apple support person this morning and started updating my phone, he wrote “I hope you created a backup before you did that” and I had to reply “Ooops. No. Am I in trouble?”
Technology issues like this make me feel so stupid that I feel the urge to explain to the support person why I am not as stupid as I seem.
Another Apple support person just asked me to sign into my email provider’s website on my phone and I had to tell him (1) I don’t know how to do that, (2) I don’t think I remember my password, and (3) I’m writing a blog post about how stupid I feel about all this.
He just wrote “No need to beat yourself up” so he is obviously smarter than I am.

Actually, he helped me fix the problem really easily and now I no longer feel as stupid as I did five minutes ago.

But why do I feel so stupid if I encounter problems with technology when I know that I’m not alone in that?

Why do I feel so stupid if I have proven to myself and others many times that I am not stupid at all?

Why do I feel so stupid if I constantly tell people in therapy that labels like “stupid” are toxic and just wrong?

Why do I feel so stupid and annoyed if I’m talking in a meeting and somebody interrupts me?

Why do I feel so stupid when I can’t think of a better segue to start sharing my images for today?

Why do I feel so stupid when I have trouble making trivial decisions, like which list of daily holidays to share with people?

Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “why do I feel so stupid?”

I also find this:

Richard Feynman felt stupid, too!

Thanks to all who help me feel better no matter how stupid I feel, including YOU!

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: Apple support, cats, cognitive behavioral therapy, November 15 2023, Richard Feynman, technology insecurity, The Daily Bitch Calendar, The Dunning Kruger Effect, The Infographics Show, tin ceiling, Twitter | 9 Comments

Day 3263: What should I watch?

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Ann Koplow

Last night, I asked hundreds of people on Twitter, who have never met me, what I should watch.

Several people suggested that I watch other musical documentaries and other productions related to the Beatles. The suggestions included some of my favorite movies including A Hard Day’s Night, Help, This is Spinal Tap, and Stop Making Sense.

I loved this suggestion about what I should watch …

… and I loved this suggestion, too.

Today’s images include other things I’ve been watching.

Here’s “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon.

I watch for expressions of gratitude, including these for YOU.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: "Watching the Wheels", cats, cognitive behavioral therapy, December National Days, John Lennon, music documentaries, The Beatles: Get Back, The Daily Bitch Calendar, Twitter, what to watch, Yogi Tea | 17 Comments

Day 3259: What’s a story you tell about yourself?

Posted on December 3, 2021 by Ann Koplow

Yesterday, between two therapy groups where people tell stories about themselves, I asked this question on Twitter:

Some people on Twitter pointed out that there were many ways to answer that question — is the story the truth or a lie? Is it a story you tell to yourself or to others? My story about the questions I ask is this: there is no right or wrong way to answer any of them. I deliberately made the question ambiguous, so people could answer as they chose.

Personally, I’ve been thinking a lot about the old, habitual stories we tell about ourselves and how those affect us. Many people tell negative, limiting, and outmoded stories about themselves. For example, I tell a story about myself making a mistake that might markedly harm myself and others, even though that has rarely happened in my life. This fear-filled story can make me hesitant to act and can cause me to agonize over something I might have done or will do “wrong.”

I can also get confused by the conflicting stories others tell. For example, which story should I believe: “Look before you leap!” or “He who hesitates is lost!”

What’s a story that today’s images tell?

Now I’m thinking about (1) stories that use strong language, (2) stories people tell to bartenders and (3) the unforgettable stories that movies tell us.

Also, the story I’m telling about the potato latkes Michael made yesterday …

… is that they are the best I’ve ever had.

This is what I find on YouTube when I search for “what’s a story you tell about yourself?”

I really appreciate the stories Dr. Tracey Marks is telling in that video.

What’s a story you tell about yourself?

Every story I tell here ends with gratitude for YOU.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism, Psychotherapy | Tags: 6 Negative Stories You Tell About Yourself and How to Change Them, cognitive behavioral therapy, coping and healing groups, December National Days, Dr. Tracey Marks, Narrative Therapy, potato latkes, The Daily Bitch Calendar, Twitter questions, Yogi Tea | 11 Comments

Day 3044: Your thoughts

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Ann Koplow

Your thoughts, I’m thinking, go everywhere. Your thoughts go into the future, sometimes with anxiety and fear. They go into the past, sometimes with regret. Your thoughts go all around the world.

Your thoughts, for whatever reason, have trouble staying in the here and now.

Your thoughts can keep you awake when you are trying to sleep.

Your thoughts can be unhelpful cognitive distortions, like personalization, catastrophizing, mind-reading, and blaming.

Your thoughts can be busy, serene, hopeless, hopeful, rigid, flexible, judgmental, open, quick, slow, mean, loving, painful, and reassuring.

Your thoughts affect your feelings and your behaviors.

Whatever your thoughts are, more thoughts are coming.

What are your thoughts about today’s images?

When I search YouTube for “your thoughts,” this is what I find:

Feel free to express your thoughts in a comment, below.

As always, at the end of every blog post, my thoughts turn to gratitude for everything, including YOU.

Categories: life during the pandemic, personal growth, photojournalism, Psychotherapy | Tags: AboutKidsHealth, “You are not your thoughts”, cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive distortions, the serenity prayer, the South Shore of Boston, what are cats thinking?, Whole Foods Market, Yogi Tea | 17 Comments

Day 3021: Word choices

Posted on April 9, 2021 by Ann Koplow

This week in therapy, I’ve been suggesting that people replace the words “my fault” (or “my bad”) with

my choice,
my decision, or
my responsibility.

My choice, decision, and responsibility as a therapist is to use less shaming and more adult words. Our blaming and judgmental thoughts (also called cognitive distortions) ignore the complexity of situations, keeping us stuck in negative feelings rather than moving towards actions and solutions.

What do you think of the word choices in today’s images?

My husband, Michael, whose word choices (and food choices) I always appreciate, recently relieved my anxiety about resuming a more “normal” life in the near future with these words: “It’s going to be like when you return to work after a long vacation. On the first day back, it’ll soon seem like you were never away.”

Here‘s The Life-Changing Power of Words, a TED talk by Kristin Rivas:

I hope you choose to listen to her words and I look forward to your word choices in the comments section below.

At the end of each post, my word choices are all about gratitude.

Categories: life during the pandemic, personal growth, photojournalism, Psychotherapy | Tags: change, cognitive behavioral therapy, gratitude, hypnotherapy, Kristin Rivas, pot roast and potatoes, South Shore of Boston, The Daily Bitch Calendar, thoughts | 21 Comments

Day 2745: First guess, best guess

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Ann Koplow

What’s your first guess about why today’s post is titled “First guess, best guess”? Let’s find out if it’s the best guess.

Since the first day I met my best friend/husband Michael, he’s been saying, “First guess, best guess.”

One of my other best friends wrote to me the other day, when I felt insecure about how I had run a board meeting: “I’m not sure 2nd guessing is helpful.”

Is it your first guess, best guess that both those pieces of advice — “First guess, best guess” and “I’m not sure 2nd guessing is helpful” — mean the same thing?

I love guessing and I don’t stop with my first guess. If I DID stop with my first guess, our ailing and adorable cat Oscar would not be alive today. Also, Michael’s first guess was that the Social Security office had his correct birthday on file and they did NOT. My next guess about filing our taxes is that we’ll have to do that by mail, which is not exactly a catastrophe (although my first guess — when the IRS rejected our e-filing this weekend because Michael’s birthday on the form did not match Social Security’s record — was that it WAS a catastrophe).

Catastrophizing is a common cognitive distortion (which we talk about in my Coping and Healing groups) where our first guess is that a catastrophe is imminent, even though it isn’t.

Since catastrophizing is a first guess, not best guess, I’m now guessing that “first guess, best guess” is not always best.

However, my first guess about Michael, when I first met him on okCupid, was that he was a wonderful person I wanted in my life. I’ve had similar first guess, best guesses about other people, including the other best friend I quoted above.

My best guess about guesses, here and now, is that it’s best to trust our intuition AND also be open to new evidence that comes along.

What’s your first guess, best guess about what’s next in this blog post?

If you guessed photos, your first guess was the best!

In today’s Daily Bitch Calendar, auto-correct’s first guess was not the best guess.

This is the first song I heard by The Guess Who, which I think is their best:

My first guess was that the title of that song was “She’s Come Undone” but my best guess is that it is “Undun.”

My first guess, best guess is that there will be great comments about today’s post.

First guess, best guess, constant guess is to express gratitude every day.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: "Undun", bureaucracies, Catastrophizing, Cod dish, cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive distortions, guesses, intuition, The Daily Bitch Calendar, The Guess Who, the South Shore of Boston | 29 Comments

Day 2603: Metaphors

Posted on February 16, 2020 by Ann Koplow

As an English literature major and a clinician practicing narrative therapy, I often notice metaphors, including thinly veiled ones:

If you read carefully that comic strip by Levni Yilmaz, you’ll also discover cognitive distortions including shoulds, emotional reasoning, labeling, and blaming.

Do you see any metaphors in my other captured images from yesterday?

I wonder if it’s a metaphor that on this Presidents’ Day weekend my phone and my laptop are not communicating and are refusing to share images with each other. Maybe it’s a metaphor that I’m working harder to create these posts, starting on my phone and then completing my daily blog on my laptop.

Nevertheless, it’s easy enough to share this metaphor-filled song, performed by The Temptations and UB40:

I look forward to any metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech in your comments, below.

Thanks to all who helped me create this “Metaphors” post, including YOU!

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism, Psychotherapy | Tags: "The Way You Do the Things You Do", cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive distortions, Levni Yilmaz, Narrative Therapy, Presidents' Day, Tales of Mere Existence, the Temptations, UB40, USA politics 2020 | 15 Comments

Day 2572: My readers

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Ann Koplow

Yesterday, one of my readers (my bass-playing dentist Dr. Del Castillo) sent me this “for your blog”:

Speaking of mugging, another one of my readers (my long-time friend Deb) sent me this wedding gift, which arrived yesterday:

What do my readers understand about my other photos for today?

Those last two photos are for my readers who like dogs.

I believe it would help my readers to change this very unhelpful thought …

… to these thoughts instead:

Another one of my readers sent me this, hoping it would help people:

I hope my readers will enjoy what I’m listening to, right now.

I don’t know what I would do without my readers, including YOU.

Categories: group therapy, personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: Aaron Copland, An Outdoor Overture, cognitive behavioral therapy, community, coping and healing groups, Dr. Luis Del Castillo, Hypnotherapy Relaxation and Stress Relief VIdeo, mugs, puns, The Daily Bitch Calendar | 26 Comments

Day 2545: Shocks to the system

Posted on December 20, 2019 by Ann Koplow

Every day, there are shocks to the system, as you can see in my Friday Fotos:

Some shocks to the system are nicer than others.

Any change from routine can be a shock to the system. Starting tomorrow, I’m off for a vacation that will include several shocks to the system, like

Hanukkah,
Christmas,
seeing my 21-year old son Aaron in a tuxedo,
my fiancé Michael wearing his first suit ever, and
Michael and I getting married a week from today!

Here‘s “Shock to the System” by Yes.

It’s not a shock to my system that one member of the soon-to-be-married couple loves Yes and the other one decidedly does not. Differences may be a shock to the system but they make life much more interesting.

For regular readers of this blog, my ending with gratitude cannot possibly be a shock to the system.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism, therapy | Tags: "Shock to the System", Christmas, cognitive behavioral therapy, Hannukah, hospital gift shop, Janina Fisher, Michael's pasta, RuPaul, working with trauma, Yes | 23 Comments

Day 2544: Emotional Reasoning

Posted on December 19, 2019 by Ann Koplow

Emotional Reasoning is one of the cognitive distortions in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Emotional Reasoning is defined here as follows:

Emotional Reasoning.
We take our emotions as evidence for the truth. Examples: “I feel inadequate, so there must be something wrong with me.” “I feel overwhelmed and hopeless, therefore the situation must be impossible to change or improve.” (Note that the latter can contribute to procrastination.) While suppressing or judging feelings can be unhelpful, it’s important to recognize the difference between feelings and facts.

My definition of “Emotional Reasoning” does NOT include examples of the negative aspect of that, as in “I do NOT feel that way, therefore it’s not true.” I’m reasoning that I could have written that definition with this example: “I do not feel adequate, so there must be something wrong with me.”

All this came to my emotional mind this morning when I read this news headline:

President Trump: “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached”

To me, it doesn’t really feel like

Trump is President,
I’m getting married a week from tomorrow, or
the human race is going to survive.

That is all emotional reasoning. I know that two of those statements are true, no matter what I’m feeling. And I have many emotions about the third statement, so who knows if it’s true?

Do you see emotional reasoning in any of my photos from yesterday?

Yesterday at work, somebody said that this photo of Harley (taken by my soon-to-be-husband Michael) …

fullsizeoutput_3f8c

… felt like a photo that Ellen DeGeneres might want to include on her show. That seemed like emotional reasoning to me, but I submitted it anyway.

“Do You Hear What I Hear” feels like a Christmas song, but that’s not how it was written .

Here’s a portion of the story I heard on the radio yesterday:

While artfully couched in the iconography of the Christian nativity, the songwriters were making a political statement: a plea for peace, and a reminder of the ravages of war.

The song opens with the night wind speaking to a lamb, long a literary symbol of peace. Soon we hear the line, “A star, a star, dancing in the sky//With a tail as big as a kite.”

“The star was meant to be a bomb,” said Gabrielle Regney.

Later we hear the lyrics “A child, a child, shivers in the cold,” which Regney said is a reference to the “real children” who inspired the song.

And the line, “Let us bring him silver and gold” was a reference to “poor children,” said Regney — a reminder of the human cost of war.

But no matter how you interpret the song, Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne left no mistake about the central message at the climax of the song.

“The biggest part for them was the ‘pray for peace’ line,” said Regney. “That line, ‘pray for peace,’ was very big for both of them.”

Do you hear what I hear in this emotional rendition of that song?

Feel free to share emotional reasoning in a comment, below.

There are reasons why I end every post with the emotion of gratitude.

fullsizeoutput_3f8e

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism, Thanksgiving, therapy | Tags: "Do You Hear What I Hear?", Angel City Chorale, Bing Crosby, cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive distortions, December 2019, Ellen Degeneres, Gloria Shayne, Noel Regney, President Trump | 18 Comments