panther's lair

well, that is in the process of changing- so i suppose i'd best put the rest of the twisted thinking up here. oh yeah, and should you just happen upon this page, the crap i am writing about is from the stuff i am reading from the feeling good handbook. i supplement what the book says with my own thoughts and reactions or examples from my own life. wild, i hate research, and yet here i am using references in my diary.

4. discounting the positive- i am a queen about telling myself that the good things don't count (or don't count as much as the bad things do). if i do a good job- i usually think that anybody else would have done it the same or better so i need not pat myself on the back for it. or i tell myself that it was a fluke, an accident. but boy howdy, if i don't do something well it is all my fault. after losing my job this year, after getting really good student evals, i tended to discount them, saying that obviously i wasn't that good or i would still have a job. in reality, my ability and my job loss appear to be unrelated. my good evals should be taken seriously by me. i earned them right (even as i write this, my brain is busy trying to explain to me why i didn't really earn anything...damn argumentative brain).

5. jumping to conclusions- you interpret things negatively even when there are no facts to support your conclusions. this one is a two-parter. the first includes mind reading, which apparently i think i am an expert at (as often as i try to do it). mind reading is when you conclude that someone is reacting negatively towards me. anytime my sweet one is upset, i conclude that i have done something to make her angry. anytime my boss doesn't stop what he is doing to chat for a minute, i assume he is angry (he could just be very very busy, or distracted, or angry about something that has nothing to do with me). i do this mind reading crap all the time. pretty much any time someone near me seems upset, i dwell over what i might have done. hopefully, usually i have done nothing and have nothing to do with their mood. the other part of this is fortune-telling. i am skilled at this as well. this is when you make predictions about how badly things will turn out. i'll never feel better, i'll never have a good job with benefits, i will struggle with money forever. hmmm, overgeneralization seems to lead to fortune-telling in this case.

6. magnification- this is where you basically exaggerate the importance of your problems, and minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. i am all over that man...sometimes i am so skilled at this that i have only a handfull of very trivial positive qualities, but i am just a huge mess of negativity. well, that is what i am trying to change with all this effort. an example of this is how lately i go around thinking about how i accomplish nothing right now. i am jobless and incomeless. and that is what i apparentely choose to dwell on. yeah, i sit around doing nothing all the time, at least- nothing worth any value right. but what the hell do i call this. i tend to discount the work on am doing on my pea right now. my brain has been twisted, wrung out, stomped on, spat at, punched, gouged, frozen, burnt...i don't know. all i know is that it doesn't function quite like i would want. so i have been putting a great deal of effort into making myself a complete person again. i am trying to fix myself so that when i do start working again (which will be at the end of september- so i am jobless at this moment, but i have one starting soonish). but anywho, when i do start working again, i want to be able to really focus on my teaching and do a good job. i also want to be a good wife, a good mother, a good cat mom, a good friend, daughter and sister too. but i can't be any of that until i can be a good person to myself as well. so one thing i am working hard at right now is to give myself credit for all the good work i am doing- to stop letting myself say that i don't contribute at all. i also tend to keep up with the dishes, i try to tend to more housework and such right now since i have more free time than my spouse. i finally wrote some much needed thank you notes. i am doing things- and i need to stop trivializing what i do.

7. emotional reasoning- where you assume that your negative emotions actually reflect reality. i feel guilty therefore i must be a horrible person. i feel hopeless, therefore my life is hopeless. in a way, negative emotions do reflect reality though- the self-fulfilling prophecy and all. if i feel hopeless, i will act hopeless, and will therefore be more hopeless. but all it takes to really start to change is to realize that even when i feel hopeless, that doesn't mean i am doomed. when i feel guilty, that isn't a real indication that i am a rotten person.

8. should statements. when you tell yourself that you should or should not have done something- and i do this all the time. i should have worked harder, i ought to go to this, i shouldn't have gone there, i shouldn't eat that cake...geez man- no wonder i am always feeling guilty about something. it seems that sometimes, no matter what i actually do, i tell myself i should have done the opposite. i also use should statements for others- that idiot should already have his money out and ready to pay- well, that brings up anger. so no wonder i feel guilty and angry- i always should have done something else or someone else should have done something.

9. labeling- rather than say i made a mistake- i say i am a loser. what good does calling myself a loser do? does it make me fix the behavior? obviously not- in fact, it makes me feel guilty for not doing better, which makes me feel depressed or anxious, which can lead to a state of panicked inaction- so i do even less. when a friend or student tells me of something they did, i rarely think they are a loser- i usually think that they were in a difficult situation and did the best they could. i don't usually give myself the same. no, i am an idiot, a loser, stupid, fat, worthless, ugly, lazy, blah blah blah. i have been working pretty hard at stopping myself when i hear one of my lovely pet names for myself being thought. i am trying to stop this.

10. personalization and blame- when you hold yourself responsible for something that was out of your control. my losing my job. i blame myself all the time for that. yet- the reality of the situation should show me that i had nothing to really do with that decision- it was a money thing (near as i can tell...maybe i did screw up somehow, but i don't think so...at least, i don't know how i did if i did...). people who stay in abusive relationships do that all the time- if only i had cleaned the house better he wouldn't beat me...like it is your fault when someone punches you in the face. ridiculous. so i need to work on not always blaming myself for everything...

wow, lots of types of twisted thinking aren't there. no wonder i have such a hard time feeling good...they are overwhelming too- i feel like i have too many types of twisted thinking to fix at once. this makes me nervous, and makes me want to just give up. so...to battle against that, i am trying to stop a couple types at a time. they are all such habits to me that i need to just start breaking them away, little by little. so i am working on the labeling one right now, that is a big focus for me. i am trying to work on jumping to conclusions and all-or-nothing thinking as well. honestly, i try to work on all of them, when i notice them. but the problem is that i often don't realize i am even doing them- so i am on the lookout for a few specific types and when i happen to catch myself doing any of them i try to reverse that thinking. hopefully this will work some.

one thing that i have to keep coming back to for myself is that i keep trying to convince myself that those might not be twisted thinking at all. isn't it possible that i am a horrible person? isn't it possible that i really never will succeed? isn't it possible that those are forms of realistic thinking?

that thin line between pessimism and optimism, the one that represents reality- that is what i strive for. i don't want to walk around thinking the world is all roses and chocolate...that isn't the case at all. there is a lot of trouble out there, and i think it doesn't hurt to be aware of it. however, there comes a point where you are not realistic at all, but are just pessimistic. and that gets you no where. if you look at the world with a more optimistic view, then better things will happen to you (and you will make better things happen for you). i am also not trying to never feel sad or angry again- i just want to feel those emotions when they are warranted, but be able to release them when i don't need them. most of my life, they have been a constant to some degree. i don't want them to be around all the time anymore.