The Coping Kete

Tag Archives: Thought Balancing

No. 88: Delaying My Response

March 16, 2012 11:19 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…when I find I have something to say to someone, rather than rushing to express myself straight away, I will remind myself that I might feel differently later. I will resolve to turn my attentions to something else and see how I feel about it later on or the next day. I will then move onto completing my tasks for the day.

When I return to think about the situation and assess how I feel, I will start off by thinking about what might have been happening for the other person at the time and how that might have influenced their behaviour. I will think about whether the way I thought about it at the time, still seems accurate or whether there might be another way of looking at things. I will think about whether I need to do or say anything now or at another time and what I could do or say, taking their perspective into account as well my own.

Once I have become comfortable delaying everyday responses, I will add this strategy to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of dealing with distressing moments.

Posted in: Expression & Support, Mindful Distraction, Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

No 87: Being My Own Loving Parent

March 8, 2012 22:03 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…I will practicing being my own unconditionally loving parent. When I find myself falling into self-critic mode, I will say comforting things to myself. I will encourage myself on. I will have compassion for what I am going through. I will praise my strengths and remember my victories. I will attend to my self-care needs and make sure I am alright. I might imagine my ideal kind of loving parent in advance so that I am prepared with the kinds of things I might say to myself if I get distressed.

This week, I take care of myself the way I want to be taken care of by others.

Once I am comfortable saying caring and encouraging things to myself in everyday moments, I will add this strategy to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of soothing distress. When I encounter stress or distress I will think about how I would want my ideal loving parent to respond to me and I will respond to myself that way.

Posted in: Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , ,

No. 85: Looking for Encouragement

February 24, 2012 20:46 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…I will help myself get through my problems by letting someone know what I am feeling and seeking encouragement.

I will use whatever means is appropriate to me in the moment, whether I need to take a private moment to make a phone call to someone I trust or talk to someone I am with.

For example, if I am worried about something that is happening in a meeting or social situation, I might need to excuse myself to give a friend a call or ask to talk to someone I trust there privately or maybe I will be comfortable talking to whoever happens to be there. I’ll let them know the situation I am in, what I am worried about/how I am affected and what I need encouragement with.

And then I will let them encourage me. If it is a personal matter and I am talking to someone who finds giving encouragement difficult or uncomfortable, I might try something like asking them to help me remember what strengths I have to help me get through. It might sound cheesy when it’s put in those terms, but I can say it any way I want.

This week, I actively look for encouragement when I need it. Sometimes it is hard to believe in ourselves when the going gets tough – at these times, we can look to the people around us for reminders. Then, later, I can refer to the memories of their encouragement to get me through when they are not around.

It is okay to feel what I feel and to look for support when I need it. This week, I will not make myself stand alone.

If I am out of practice with seeking encouragement and support, I will start out by seeking encouragement for small things that I find easy to talk about, during times of low stress. This will allow me to get used to it, before I am in a bad way and find it hard to do. Once I can seek out other people without a large amount of anxiety, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of coping during times of distress.

Posted in: Expression & Support ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , ,

No. 83: Riding the Wave

February 10, 2012 10:28 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…When I notice shifts in the way I feel, I will stop, take a deep breath and acknowledge that even though they are distressing and unpleasant, I can survive them. I will say to myself “I am riding the wave of emotions” and I will keep breathing.

If I can, I will name what I am feeling and thinking to myself. And I will keep breathing.

It is okay to feel what I feel. Feelings always fluctuate and change, it’s impossible to experience one feeling non-stop, so I can also trust that what I feel in this moment will change. Feelings come and go, rise and fall, like waves as my attention shifts throughout the day.

As I stop and breathe in, I will breathe into an awareness of the feelings and when I breathe out, I will pretend to exhale the feelings with the air – as if I am releasing them. As I am doing this I will remind myself, “I am going to get through this, I am riding the wave of my emotions.”

By riding the wave instead of running from the tide, I will get through this. 

There is an excellent video resource for this well-known mindfulness technique on the DBT Self-Help Website.  If I find it hard to do mindfulness by myself at first, this website has excellent videos that you can practice with until you are familiar enough with the exercise to do it independently.

Once I am familiar with mindfully thinking about my emotions in this way, I will add Riding The Wave to my Personal Coping Kete to help me get through moments of distress.

Posted in: Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

No. 81: Remembering Their Positives

January 26, 2012 20:07 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…I will practice balancing my reactions to other people, however valid they may be, by listing to myself at least two good things that they have done or said in the past, before I respond to them.

By making sure I acknowledge the positive intentions or past actions of people, I can help balance the way I feel about their less pleasant actions.

Making myself aware of these balancing factors won’t necessarily make my other thoughts go away – they could actually be realistic! But it will make sure that they exist as part of a more complete picture of the situation. Sometimes, the things we don’t like, are a bit more bearable when we can see the good that exists around them. This week, when I notice negative reactions to the people around me, I will practice thinking of two positive things to balance it.

It can sometimes help to think of things by sitting down with a pen and paper. The positives don’t have to be significant things to ‘count’ either, it could be something like ‘they always offer me a cup of coffee when they’re making one.’

This week, I am practicing taking account of all of the information to get a balanced view of the people around me and be better prepared to respond well.

Once I am familiar with reminding myself of people’s positives, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a self-soothing and distraction strategy for times when I find myself irritated, annoyed or upset with something a friend, colleague or family member has done or said.  If it turns out that, after trying this for a while, I notice the positive things really do not seem to balance the negative things about being around a person, I will seek support to figure out what I can do about it and turn to a different kind of coping strategy that will help me get through my feelings of hurt.

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No. 79: Using the Pause to Explore

January 12, 2012 14:38 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

… I will practice using the pause points from strategy No. 78 to reflect on what my automatic tendency is at the moment and brainstorm alternative responses. This week is about building and tapping into my awareness of the many response options that are really available to me from moment to moment.

When I notice shifts in my thoughts or mood, I will pause myself to breathe as I did with strategy 78 and then ask myself two questions:

  1. What is my instinctive response in this moment? i.e. Right now I want to…(argue, scream, run away, hide, drink, hurt myself)
  2. What are the available alternatives? i.e. Think of a kind of expression, support, distraction, engagement/problem-solving or self-soothing.

This week, I am going to become aware of the unhelpful responses I want to change and the kinds of alternatives I could possibly learn. As I do this, I will be strengthening the habit of pausing as a first response to distressing emotion as well as learning the practice of considering a wide range of strategies. Often it is the sense that we do not have many or any options available to us that causes distress. So this week, I will be practicing the art of expanding my perception of the options available to me.

It will probably help to use a notebook to record my reflections in, because after some time I will be able to look back on what my consistent instinctive responses have been, get a really good picture of what it is that I am working to change and expand my perspective of how many options are available to me in each moment.

If I am finding it difficult to think of alternative response options on my own, I will practice referring to The Coping Kete or my own Personal Coping Kete to reflect on different options.

If ever I find my self-talk becoming critical about my way of being in the world, I will be able to soothe myself by reminding myself of how I am evolving myself and feel satisfied that I am taking positive steps in my life.

Once I am used to pausing to explore my thoughts, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as something to do during moments of distress.

 

Posted in: Engagement, Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

No. 76: Remembering Boundaries

December 22, 2011 12:03 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…I will practice putting boundaries between other people’s responses and myself. So often, I can find myself upset or anxious about the way in which other people like my family and friends respond to me. It is so easy to believe that negative reactions or unwanted responses from others are a result of something about me, some flaw or failing or lack of worth. This can lead me down a spiral of negative thoughts, unpleasant physical responses and distressing emotion.

This week, when other people respond negatively to me, I will practice saying to myself “That response is about them, not about me. We all have our own sets of issues and idiosyncrasies. Right now in this moment, I am also responding to my own set of issues and unique preferences.”

I will then mindfully move my attention to something else. I will try to observe how thinking this way affects my perception of things.

This week I will practice acknowledging that we each have a different make-up and we do not need to like the same things or have the same attitudes and values. When someone responds to me in an unwanted way, I will remind myself of this insight. This way, I will not feel the need to take on too much responsibility for the way things work out or the responses other people give me.

This week, I am here living my life, having my responses and I am allowing other people to be here living their lives, having their responses to it. 

Once I am comfortable thinking this way, I will add ‘remembering the boundaries between us’ to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of soothing the sting out of distressing interpersonal situations.

To extend this exercise, if I need to, I might think through some of the other, non-personalised reasons that the person responded the way they did, as is described in strategy No. 65.

Posted in: Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

No. 73: Using Opposites

December 1, 2011 13:51 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

…I will practice coping by looking at the situation from the opposite viewpoint. Reversing my perspective in this way can take me down different and new trains of thought that could lead me to feel differently about things.

When I notice slight shifts in my mood, I will pause myself to reflect on what I am thinking in the moment. Then I will ask myself “What if the opposite were true?”

For example, if I notice I start feeling slightly hopeless or pessimistic, I will try to look at the situation from the opposite hopeful perspective. Instead of thinking “this is hopeless” I will ask myself “what if it was actually hopeful?“ How would I see the situation then?

This week is about challenging the assumptions that underlie my thoughts and feelings. This week I open up to the possibility of other ways of experiencing my reality. 

Once I am comfortable doing this with slight shifts in mood, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of coping with distress.

Posted in: Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

No. 72: Moving Away From Fixing Things

November 24, 2011 13:23 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

When I encounter problems in my daily life, I will practice reminding myself that “I do not need to fix the problem before me – I simply need to get through it.”

I can get through it by putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to breathe. As long as I am continuing to breathe, I am surviving it.

This way, instead of problems seeming like insurmountable challenges that I have to somehow solve (pressure!), they will seem more like challenges to cope with (less pressure).

When I talk about my problems with friends or family, I will also practice letting them know that I do not expect them to be able to ‘fix’ my problems. This can help them to feel more relaxed about supporting me through the difficulties.

Once I am comfortable with reminding myself I do not need to fix all of my problems, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of soothing distress and helping myself seek support when I need it.

Posted in: Expression & Support, Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

No. 70: Being Specific

November 10, 2011 10:45 ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing…

I will practice keeping my self-talk specific to help moderate my responses to things. Often I find my internal dialogue includes words like ‘always’, ‘everything’ and ‘never’ that generalise what I am experiencing in the moment out to all situations. This amplifies the emotions I experience as a result and makes things seem more significant than they really are.

This week, I will practice observing my self-talk during the day and using the most specific language I can find. So when I catch myself thinking things like ‘I always screw things up’ or ‘they never notice me’, I will turn it around in my head to be more like ‘I made a mistake just then’ or ‘they didn’t notice me just then’.

Rather than then allow myself to go down the path of remembering other times this has happened or might happen, I will focus my mind onto other specific things about this current situation. This might involve simply listing to myself the specific elements in play in the moment – from the temperature, to the environment, to the people around me, to my own reactions to these things – or it might involve listing the ways in which this situation is different from past similar situations. As my mind wanders onto other thoughts, I will remind myself that I can only know what is here now and bring my mind back to the task of observing and describing my current situation to myself.

Here I am in this moment, which I can only ever experience once.  

Once I am comfortable with noticing my self-talk and using specific language, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for soothing distressing or intense emotions.

Posted in: Mindful Distraction, Self-Soothing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,