Hi everyone hopes you are doing well

Today we will shed light on another negative emotion that we can relate to in some phase of our life. Are you prone to being affected by what others, in your mind, think of you as a person, but you would love to learn otherwise?.

Well, let me tell you that YES it is possible.

For that, we first need to understand this emotion. Let me introduce you to the shadowy word SHAME!

What is Shame?

Shame is a deeply felt, painful experience that is socially driven. It’s a feeling in which we believe that we are perceived by others as being unworthy of their respect. This is possible because due to the actions we have personally or as a group taken. Or shame is also a feeling in which we hold ourselves accountable for any internal code we have broken and we judge ourselves or become too critical and hard on ourselves. This is sometimes called internal shame. 

It’s a natural progression to move from depression to shame. Because it’s linked with an irrational belief that I can be measured, rated, or judged by others. 

We are social creatures and we all want and like to be part of a group that accepts us. Therefore we don’t want anyone to find out something unpleasant about us or a situation related to us. 

Let’s find out 

few causes of shame:

1. If you have been brought up in a socially deprived area, criminal family history, or domestic or family violence. 

2. You may be ashamed of your body. Ashamed what others will think about your appearance.

3. You may find yourself in debt, bad financial standing, ashamed of your financial decisions. And hiding from your partner, family, friends, etc.

4. You might be a victim of social media trolling or shaming.

5. You may be a victim of sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape, domestic abuse, or violence.

6. You may be a couple with infertility issues. 

7. You may be struggling with loneliness. And not found your partner and ashamed what others will think that why I am not married. 

8. You may be struggling with mental health problems like OCD, depression. Bipolar etc.

9. You may be suffering from social anxiety. What others will think if I mess up the presentation etc.

10. You may be struggling with a hidden addiction to alcohol, drugs, etc.

These were just a few of the experiences people are ashamed of. Please write to us and share if you are brave enough to let out what you are ashamed of? As in the next article, we will explore how we can manage our emotions of shame. Till then stay strong. 

Hi everyone, how are my strong and resilient followers doing? Hope you are doing well. And if you are not, it’s okay. It’s completely fine. And if no one has said it to you, you should know that I am super proud of you. I am, genuinely!

Can you believe that we are finally entering the last month of 2020? This month has been super crazy no? We all have experienced the news of death, to the news of the birth of a newborn baby. To the news of separation to the news of corona weddings, to the news of people starting their own business to the news of how belongings of people were damaged in the rain. To the people of all age groups enjoying the rain to experiencing the damaged roads in the city. We all had different struggles but this year was all about taking good with bad. It was all about learning how to balance.

In previous articles, we discussed emotions, understood what is self-healing to understanding different types of negative emotions. We dived deep into anxiety and its types, to panic attacks, phobias and its type to cognitive distortions to depression and learning about CBT and how to apply it. You have come so far! Did you take a moment to appreciate yourself? Did you pause for a moment and gave credit to yourself how far you have come? If not so please do it right now! As we will not proceed.

Here are the following sentences you have to say to yourself ATLEAST three times before we discuss other negative emotions.

1. I am healing

2. I will let go of all the ill feelings

3. I will rise

4. I am enough

5. I choose myself

6. I believe in myself

7. I will not give up on myself

9. I am consistent in developing healthy habits 

10. Self-discipline is self-love

SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

This is your first step towards self-love. Make a habit to say these words to yourself every time you get up. Okay?

Lots of love and prayers for you, keep swimming as in the next article we will touch on a little heavy and difficult negative emotion. And what is that? For that, you need to read the next article.

Hi, how is your mental health? I hope you tried the CBT activity. During that activity did you realize that most of the problems we face in our life are due to the negative set of believes we hold about ourselves?

Well, Cognitive-behavioral therapy does aim to change our thought patterns, our conscious and unconscious beliefs, and, ultimately, our behavior, to help us face difficulties and achieve our goals.

But today let’s discover what kind of negative beliefs you hold about yourself and how you can apply the ABC method to resolve those beliefs. In other words, they are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns called “cognitive distortions”.

Keep a paper and pen while you read these so it helps you identify your irrational thought patterns about yourself. 

15 main cognitive distortions

1. Filtering

It is a thinking pattern in which a person ignores all the positive things in their life and focuses only on the negative things.  

2. Polarized Thinking /Black-and-White Thinking

When a person thinks in two extremes.

For example, if you don’t perform perfectly in some area, of your life then you may see yourself as a complete failure instead of simply identifying that you maybe unskilled or immature in one area.

3. Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is when you take one incident or point drawing a conclusion based on that one incident. 

4. Jumping to Conclusions

Jumping to conclusions refers to the tendency to be sure of something without any evidence at all.

5. Catastrophizing / Magnifying or

Minimizing

This refers to expecting that the worst will happen or has happened, based on an incident. For example, you may make a small mistake at work and be convinced that you’ll lose your job.

As in, minimizing the importance of positive things.

6. Personalization

A person with this distortion will feel that he or she has an exaggerated role in the bad things that happen around them. They believe that they attract bad things.  

7. Control Fallacies

This distortion involves assuming that every mistake another person makes is because of something they did. This is something most desi moms do if a child does something they don’t approve of or like, they assume that it’s because of their upbringing. 

8. Fallacy of Fairness

We are often concerned about fairness, but this concern can be taken to extremes. As we all know, life is not always fair. The person who goes through life looking for fairness in all their experiences will end up resentful and unhappy.

9. Blaming

When you do not take responsibility for the way you feel or act. But blaming others for making us feel or act a certain way. 

10. “Shoulds”

“Shoulds” refer to the rules we made for ourselves and others. For example that this is how I should or should have behaved. Or this is how he/she should or should have behaved. When others break our rules, we are upset. When we break our own rules, we feel guilty. 

11. Emotional Reasoning

This distortion involves thinking that if we feel a certain way, it must be true. This cognitive distortion boils down to:

“I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

Our emotions are not always indicative of the objective truth, but it can be difficult to look past how we feel.

12. Fallacy of Change

The fallacy of change lies in expecting other people to change as it suits us. This ties into the feeling that our happiness depends on other people, and their unwillingness or inability to change, even if we demand it, keeps us from being happy.

13. Global Labeling / Mislabeling

This cognitive distortion is an extreme form of generalizing, in which we generalize one or two instances or qualities into a global judgment. For example, if we fail at a specific task, we may conclude that we are a total failure in not only that area but all areas.

14. Always Being Right

We may believe that being right is more important than the feelings of others, being able to admit when we’ve made a mistake, or being fair and objective.

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

This distortion involves expecting that any sacrifice or self-denial will pay off. We may consider this karma, and expect that karma will always immediately reward us for our good deeds. This results in feelings of bitterness when we do not receive our reward (Grohol, 2016).

Was it eye opening? At least it was for me. By knowing my core beliefs about myself I was able to add new thinking patterns and slowly able to let go of irrational beliefs about myself. I hope you apply CBT technique on your cognitive distortions and understand yourself better. Till then take care. 

Hi, hope all of you all are doing well and taking care of your mental health. We have covered lot of topics so far. Let’s have a brief recap on it. Well so far we have understood mental health and emotional healing, we discussed what are emotions and different types of emotions. Later we touched upon what is anxiety and types of anxieties and what are phobias and types of phobias. I also hope that you have managed to do the small assignments that were given for yourself reflection and awareness. Now it’s time to dive into the process of identifying the problem on a deeper level.

As promised that I will discuss ways of healing. And one of the most effective ways of healing is to apply the CBT technique in your life. 

So what is?

 What is the CBT technique?

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychological treatment. It helps us identify our problem by breaking it down into three steps which enables us to identify our

Thoughts

Actions 

And feelings

It is based on two simple concepts that our thoughts influence our emotions and our emotions influence behavior. So what we think affects what we feel and do in life. Also what happens to us in life doesn’t matter but how we choose to interpret it.

Albert Ellis is the great psychotherapist who came up with the ABC model.

The ABC model

A Stands for ‘activating event’. That event can be external, either present or future, or even an internal one. It refers to an event that triggers a chain of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. 

For example, I love a man and his family finally sent theproposal to my house and they are coming to meet me. What will happen? What if they reject me? I would feel like a failure if they do.

B stands for “belief”. The beliefs or the demands we hold about ourselves or others hold about us. These can be rational or irrational.

What will my parents think and feel they reject me? They must like me. I must not be rejected. 

C stands for consequences. It is an all-inclusive term that can include emotional and physical experiences and especially the behavioral responses that result from A and B.

Difficulty in sleeping, fatigue, the tension in muscles. 

I hope that you have developed some basic understanding of the CBT technique. How about you apply this technique? It is an important exercise towards self-healing. I am attaching a link of a worksheet that will help you to apply this technique in your daily life. If you are mother it’s a request to do this exercise with your children. 

 In the next article, we will explore CBT differently. We will discover the types of unhealthy beliefs we hold about ourselves which automatically reflects in our actions. Till then take care and don’t forget to apply CBT technique.