Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

Here’s a neat little trick I learned back when I was doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for depression. CBT is a type of therapy that works on “inappropriate thinking,” I.E., it is based on the theory that mood disorders can be caused by, or at least worsened by, inappropriate emotional responses to events. Or, in other words, when you are depressed, you are getting upset when you probably shouldn’t be. It’s pretty cool and it’s easy to learn, but it takes a bit of practice.

What You Need

1. A pen
2. Some paper

How it Works

This trick will take 10-15 minutes.

CBT works by training the brain to begin to respond “appropriately” to external events. Basically, you are teaching yourself to be happier by learning how your emotions work. Cool, huh?

First, think of something that is really bothering you, or a recent event that is making you upset. When you think of something, write it down on one line. Keep it simple, like “my boss yelled at me today.”

Then, under the first statement, write down the first 2 or 3 emotions that come to mind when you think about the situation or event. Do this quickly. Write down the first emotions that come to mind, and try to describe the specific emotion. So, if your boss yelled at you, you could write “angry” or “sad,” but avoid general words like “upset.”

Once you have written down how you feel, then rate each feeling from 1 to 10, with “1″ meaning you don’t feel that emotion very strongly, and “10″ meaning that the emotion is so strong that it is affecting your life. So, if you went home, sat down, and fumed for 4 hours after your boss yelled at you, you’d probably want to put a “10″ next to “angry.”

Ok, now here’s the tricky part. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Try to see the situation you have described from a different perspective. For example, maybe you know that your boss was very upset because she missed an important deadline and her boss spent all morning yelling at her.

The idea here is not to find excuses for the other person’s behavior, but to find reasons that might explain why they acted the way they did. Once you have one or two likely reasons for the other person’s behavior, write them down.

Now comes the fun part. Read over the second statement, and then go back to your original emotions, and give them a new score. So, for example, if you knew that your boss got in a lot of trouble and she was probably only venting when she yelled at you, maybe you wouldn’t be so angry about what she did and you’d put a “4″ next to “angry.” The trick here is not to forget about your emotions. Your boss did yell at you, and you have every right to be angry at her. However, by understanding her side of things, you can control some of your anger.

Once you have added new scores to your emotions, write down a new phrase describing how you feel about the situation now that you have seen the other person’s side. For example, you could write “My boss yelled at me, but she got in a lot of trouble this morning because she missed a deadline. I should talk to her when I go back into work tomorrow, and see if there is anything I can do to help her.”

After you have written the last statement, re-read it and write down what emotions feel when you read your words. I think you will find that there will still be some of the old emotions left, for example, you might still be angry, but I’ll bet you a donut that you will also feel one or two positive emotions as well.

That’s all there is to it!

Example

Here’s a little story about something that happened to me recently that helps to illustrate how well the 10 minute therapy works.

I was supposed to meet a friend of mine for coffee. She was not very familiar with my neighbourhood, so I gave her directions to the nearest branch of a large Seattle-based coffee shop. She said that the directions were cool, and we agreed to meet at 3:00.

At 3:00, I went down to the coffee shop. She hadn’t arrived, so I grabbed a table and waited. At 3:15, she still hadn’t shown up, so I waited some more. And waited, and waited. Finally, at 3:40, I gave up and went home.

On my way home I was a bit annoyed because I thought my friend had stood me up. However, I reminded myself that something could have happened, and that my feelings of annoyance might not be the appropriate response.

When I got home there was a message from my friend. She said that she was at the coffee shop, and where was I? I called her back, and I found out that she had gone to another branch of the same Seattle-based coffee shop. We both laughed about it, and I drove down to meet her and we had our coffees.

I was able to control my emotional response in this situation because I reminded myself of two things: 1) my friend is not the type of person who would stand someone up without calling them, and 2) there are 4 Starbucks in my neighbourhood, and my friend went to the only one she knew about. By keeping these things in mind, my initial response of annoyance quickly changed to laughter at the crazy mix-up.

Anyway, give this trick a try. I hope that it works for you. If you have any questions, or you want to share your experiences, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line.

Anxiety Depression Health Life Mental Health Relationships

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 7:26 am and is filed under Health, Life, Mental Health, Relationships. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your site.

del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Ask Google Netscape StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo!

These posts may be related:

Interview with Dr. Eric Maisel, Author of “Ten Zen Seconds” »

Therapy Series Part 1: Choosing a Therapist »

Therapy Series Part 2: Your First Therapy Appointment »

How to Live with Seasonal Affective Disorder »