Positive Psychology, Blessings and Gratitude

 

positive psyhologyHave you ever felt anxious and noticed yourself being extra vigilant, looking for any signs that something bad may be lurking nearby, on the lookout for all the things you might need to worry about?

 

This may seem like a good way to protect yourself from the things you’re anxious about, but it usually backfires. Since there is never any end to the list of “what ifs?” you can find to worry about, if you’re constantly looking out for things that could go wrong, you’ll usually find them, and this keeps you in a state of worry and anxiety.

 

Or have you ever been depressed, and found yourself focused on all of the negative things in your life, trying to figure out how they happened and how to
solve them? Again, this sounds like a good way to fix what’s wrong in your life, but it often ends up making things worse. You keep finding more and more things to regret, more disappointments, more ways you don’t measure up to other people, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the negatives that keep adding up. Read the rest of this entry »

 

How to Deal With Your Emotions

 
emotionsIn some earlier posts on emotions we learned that ways in which we often try to deal with emotions—such as trying to problem solve, control, or avoid them—tend to be counterproductive. We also looked at a number of more helpful ways we can deal with our emotions such as validation and acceptance.

 

In his book, The Worry Cure, Robert Leahy provides a flow chart that summarizes the various ways we can deal with our emotions and the results are tend to follow. The chart highlights undesired results that tend to arise when we try to avoid our emotions in various ways, or when we invalidate our emotions by telling ourselves that they are wrong.

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Stop Stress and Anxiety

 
stop stressOne of the most common concerns that leads people to seek counselling and therapy is feeling overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, and not knowing how to get any relief.
 

What often happens is we let our stress or anxiety build and build all day without doing anything about it, trying to ignore it, and just hoping it will go away. Then, when we finally can’t take it anymore and start feeling overwhelmed, we’re desperate to find a way to manage all of this stress and anxiety and get some relief, but at that point, it can be so hard to get any relief.

 

The more we allow stress and anxiety to accumulate, the more difficult they become to address. That’s why one of the keys to managing stress and anxiety is to find ways to not let them build up so much in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

 

What Is Acceptance?

 
mbsr acceptanceAcceptance can be a difficult notion to grasp. If you are suffering or in pain, the idea that you should practice acceptance can seem counterintuitive. So what do we mean by acceptance, and how is it beneficial?
 
In therapy, when we talk about acceptance, we are referring to acceptance of things such as:

 
  • external events outside our control
  • spontaneous emotions, thoughts and memories
  • uncertainty
  • pain or physical sensations

    • Read the rest of this entry »

     

    How to Validate Your Emotions

     
    emotionsIn previous posts we‘ve seen that many of the ways we try to deal with unpleasant emotions—such as trying to problem solve, control, or avoid them—don’t work. In fact, they tend to make our unpleasant emotions even stronger.
     
    So what can we do when we’re experiencing difficult or painful emotions? Since emotions arise spontaneously and outside of our control we really have no choice but to practice acceptance of our emotions, be they pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

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    Suppressing and Avoiding Emotions

     
    emotionsIn previous posts we looked at what happens when we try to problem solve or control our emotions, neither of which tend to work. When we’ve giving up on trying to problem solve or control our emotions, our next step is often to try to suppress our emotions, or ignore them completely.
     
    But this doesn’t work either. Maybe we can avoid our emotions for a while, but they keep coming back. Just like a child craving attention, our emotions won’t go away until we deal with them, and each time we try to ignore them, they come back louder and more intrusive.

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    You Can’t Control Your Emotions

     
    emotionsIn a previous post we looked at what happens when we try to problem solve our emotions. It tends not to be very effective. So when problem solving our emotions fails, we often try to force ourselves to feel a certain way. We fight our emotions and try to control them to make ourselves feel the way we want to feel.
     
    But fighting our emotions only makes them stronger. Next time you’re feeling anxious, try to force yourself to calm down and tell yourself you shouldn’t be so scared and see if that helps. It will likely just lead you to feel more anxious, and experience additional unpleasant emotions such as anger and frustration as well.

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    How Not To Deal With Emotions

     
    Emotions can be a great source of richness in our lives. However, when faced with overpowering negative emotions like sadness, guilt, fear and anger, our lives can seem overwhelming.
     
    Most of us have never learned to deal with our emotions. Instead, as Sheri Van Dijk notes in The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Using DBT to Regain Control Of Your Emotions and Your Life:
     

    Generally, if you’re experiencing an uncomfortable emotion, you don’t want it to stick around. That’s because it’s uncomfortable, of course. Ironically, this desire to get rid of unpleasant emotions can cause you to behave in ways that cause the emotion to stick around or even to become more intense.

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