Whenever I look at the news, I encounter people telling me why I should be afraid.
Should I be afraid of that?
These days, I am more afraid than usual because of the political situation in the U.S. and because I can hear and feel my brand new mechanical heart valve working when I’m trying to sleep.
Should I be afraid of those things?
I don’t know if Ishould be afraid of anything. As I tell people in therapy, shoulds are unhelpful cognitive distortions and shoulds about emotions can be particularly toxic. When I’m having any emotion, including fear, I try to let the emotion move through me, rather than judging it with shoulds.
I guess I’m recommending that we feel fear without being afraid of it.
I should also say that most things I’ve been afraid of in the past have simply not come true. If they have come true, fear has neither helped me nor prevented me from facing them.
Should I be afraid that I have not adequately addressed today’s topic of Why I Should be Afraid?
Should we be afraid of any of my photos from yesterday?
Earlier this year, two days before I tried out for the TV show The Voice, I wrote a post titled “Comparisons.” Because comparisons are a cognitive distortion that can lead to envy, dissatisfaction, low esteem, disappointment, and misery, I hesitate to compare today’s post with the one I wrote before.
Since I’ve been back at work after my two-month medical leave, several people I’ve seen in therapy sessions have presented as unhappy due to comparisons with other people. Indeed, yesterday I circled “comparisons” on the list of cognitive distortions displayed on the wall of my office, because that particular cognitive distortion seems incomparably toxic.
Here’s a definition of the cognitive distortion of comparisons:
Comparisons.
We compare ourselves to others, with ourselves coming out short. For example, “I’m not as smart (or good, competent, good-looking, lovable, etc.) as that other person.” Or, we compare ourselves to how we think we should be, or how we’ve been before. We might think that comparisons help motivate us, but they usually make us feel worse.
I don’t want to compare myself to other people, but I’m wondering whether others ever make the kinds of comparisons I’ve been making lately. These comparisons have included:
comparisons to people who are healthier,
comparisons to other blogs with higher readership,
Today’s title reminds me of two common cognitive distortions: black-and-white thinking and labeling. Yes, we humans — winners and losers all — tend to see things in all-or-nothing terms and we also assign judgmental labels to people, especially ourselves.
We are all winners and losers at some points, aren’t we? Actually, a more winning perspective might be that “winners” and “losers” are subjective terms that don’t really help. If I call myself a winner or a loser today, does that change who I am? Don’t those all-or-nothing labels just cause me to temporarily win or lose confidence, putting myself on a self-esteem roller coaster? What would we lose if we stopped calling ourselves losers or winners and just radically accepted ourselves exactly where we are? Personally, I think we would win a lot.
Considering my thoughts on winners and losers, am I a winner or a loser to now ask which of my photos from yesterday are winners or losers?
I shall not lose the opportunity to win you over by sharing the impulses behind those photos:
The foods listed on the white board win the prize for having high amounts of Vitamin K.
I’ll need to win a greater understanding of how to control Vitamin-K-rich foods in my diet, or I might lose my health.
Hygga is a Danish word meaning “cozy,” a new-to-me concept which I find very winning.
My cat Oscar can be very hygga.
I am trying to win calmness and lose stress about my upcoming heart surgery and my only child going overseas for college by playing online solitaire.
My boyfriend Michael cooked a winning meal last night.
Is this piece of music a winner or a loser, according to you?
If you leave a comment, I’m a winner!
I’d be some kind of loser if I didn’t express thanks to all who helped me create this post and to you — of course! — for winning my heart by visiting here, today.
Last week, I got my yearly review at work, which could have been a source of subjective stress.
Instead, my subjective opinion is that it was an excellent review, which reduced my stress.
My supervisor objectively stressed my need to reduce my subjective stress, as follows:
Goal for next year: Decrease subjective stress level. Keep mindful of her strengths and accomplishments and resource limitations while managing the intense level of requests so she can continue to provide excellent patient care with less stress to herself.
I subjectively want to stress this, here and now:
I subjectively think that “decrease subjective stress level” is an important subject for my supervisor to bring up.
The hospital where I work can be very stressful, subjectively and objectively.
I constantly explore the subject of stress reduction in group and individual therapy.
Like many health care professionals, I am better at helping others decrease stress than my own subjective self (which has been the subject of many articles in the health care field).
How is your subjective stress level? What increases it? How might you decrease it?
I’ve been thinking about the subject of stress a lot lately. My subjective opinion is that my stress level is higher than usual because my son is leaving home to attend Edinburgh University this month and I’m having open heart surgery soon afterwards. Both these sources of stress of have been the subject of many recent blog posts here.
Subjectively, it occurs to me that both those stressful events are objectively stressful. That is, most people would agree they would cause stress to anybody. “Subjective stress” is the stress I might add to that stress by worrying about subjects I can’t control (like whether my son will receive his student visa in time before his scheduled flight on Saturday), or by subjecting myself to fortune telling, catastrophizing, blaming,comparisons, all-or-nothing thinking, personalizing, mind reading, and all the other cognitive distortions common to human subjects (which have been the subject of many of my previous blog posts).
I’d like to stress that I often decrease my subjective stress level by taking subjective pictures of my surroundings and sharing them here, like so:
Did any of those subjective photos increase your subjective stress level? Decrease it?
Subjectively, I believe this number from Stephen Sondheim’s Company is a good example of subjective stress making an objectively stressful situation (a wedding) more stressful:
You leaving a subjective comment on any subject might reduce my subjective stress level. Shall we find out?
Objective thanks to all who helped me create this subjective post and to you — of course! — for subjecting yourself to my blog, today.
Whenever I facilitate a therapy group, I write all the themes I notice up on the board. Because the discussion is always so rich, the themes I don’t miss will cover the entire board, from top to bottom and side to side. Then, I ask the group, “What’s missing?”
Yesterday, when I asked that question, one of the group members did not hesitate to respond: “Love.” I didn’t miss the opportunity to add “love” to the themes I’d already written on the board.
What’s missing from that photo? Dozens of other themes we discussed yesterday in that therapy group.
What’s missing from this post? Perhaps my other photos from yesterday?
What’s missing from those photos? Captions?
What’s missing for me is an explanation of this photo:
That was an assignment I gave somebody (and myself) yesterday: Whenever you imagine that people are angry at you, visualize that angry face changing into a neutral face. What’s missing for many people is the ability to reality-test their fears that other people are having negative reactions to them.
For me, it’s this: Since I’ll be missing six weeks of work when I go out on medical leave starting September 17, I have not missed opportunities to discuss with my patients how missing people can affect them.
What else is missing from this post?
Gratitude, of course, to all those who helped me create this what’s-missing post and to you, especially, for not being among the missing, today.
It’s weird. When I look at the weird photos I took yesterday, I have weirdly little to say about them.
Did I take those weird photos because
they looked weird?
I felt weird?
I think weird?
I like weird?
It’s weird that I’m writing about these weird photos without showing them to you. Maybe I’m doing those weird cognitive distortions of mind reading and fortune telling, thinking you might not find my photos weird, at all.
Weird or not, here are my photos from yesterday, in weirdly non-chronological order.
It’s weird how weirdness is in the weird mind of the weird beholder.. I have this weird feeling that if I ask people to choose the weirdest photo here, I’ll see weirdly different choices.
Is it weird that I’m including a definition of weird at this weird point in this weird post?
weird
wird/
adjective
1.suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.
“the weird crying of a seal”
synonyms: uncanny, eerie, unnatural, supernatural, unearthly, otherworldly, ghostly, mysterious, strange, abnormal, unusual
noun SCOTTISH archaic
1. a person’s destiny.
1.induce a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone.
It’s weird to me that
the definition quotes “the weird crying of a seal,” since that is neither supernatural nor uncanny and
the word SCOTTISH is there, since my son is moving to Scotland for University.
What’s weird to you?
I have this weird idea that the comedian Louis C.K. uses the word “weird” a lot. Here‘s the first weird thing that came up in weird YouTube when I typed “Louis CK weird”:
It’s weird that I watched only the first few seconds of that video before posting it here.
Weirdly, my son and I are driving a weird 90.9 miles on Saturday immediately after his appearance in the weird musical “Anything Goes” to see Louis C.K.
I am weirdly looking forward to that as well as any weird comments I might get on this post.
Wouldn’t it be weird if I didn’t thank all those who helped me create this weird post and you — of course! — for reading it?
Yesterday, I met with an old friend for a two-hour reunion. I am abnormally normal when it comes to reunions — I never miss one, if possible.
During our two hours together, an abnormally normal number of things happened, including this: my friend (who has known me since we were both 17 years old) called me “abnormally normal.”
What does abnormally normal mean to you?
Are any of these photos abnormally normal?
Is it abnormally normal that this is my favorite song?
I hope I get some abnormally normal comments on this post, which I shall now end in an abnormally normal way:
Since I try to be a helpful psychotherapist, I help people identify automatic and unhelpful thoughts, also known as cognitive distortions. If you think it would be helpful to see a list of those unhelpful thoughts, I can help — click this helpful link.
Because unhelpful thoughts — including catastrophizing, personalizing, blaming, mind-reading, shoulds, and labeling — feel like “the truth,” it’s helpful to identify and challenge them. I try to help people do that with cognitive distortion “antidotes” (which I’ve helpfully listed here).
However, no matter what the unhelpful thought, there’s an all-purpose, one-size-fits-all way to help yourself challenge it: the helpful title of today’s helpful post.
So, if you notice yourself feeling worse because of a thought you’ve just had, please help yourself by asking this question:
Is that a helpful thought?
If the answer to that helpful question is “no,” then help yourself by dismissing that thought, however you can.
Here’s a short list of unhelpful thoughts I’ve encountered recently:
I don’t know what I’m doing.
Other people don’t know what they’re doing.
Nobody cares about me.
This is going to kill me.
I am not worthy of love.
People don’t like me.
I am clumsy.
Life will never get better.
Is that a helpful list?
Is that a helpful photo? Yesterday,in therapy, when somebody had the unhelpful thought “It’s all my fault,” I helped them replace that unhelpful thought with the more helpful thought of “I tried.”
Are any of these helpful thoughts?
Is it helpful that WordPress just published this post before I was ready?
It’s not all sweetness and understanding. Sometimes you have to kick ass with some helpful music.
Is it a helpful thought to thank everybody who helped me create today’s post? Is it a helpful thought to appreciate you for reading it? I think “YES!”
