newuser wrote:i am like susan, and looks like more stress that way. i tend to think why did this happen, it shouldn't have happened if xyz. Stress is my enemy. How does cognitive therapy help with the stress?
What would cognitive therapy say to do when someone says something to upset you, you say something to upset them, they say something back to upset you, you say something back, continues until you get depressed.
CBT is useful in a number of ways. Most importantly it enables us to love ourselves – through repeated self-affirmations, we can wipe any negative programming we may have about ourselves and ‘re-write the script’ so to speak. After years of practice, I finally love myself and care for myself – the depression is still there but I look at it differently now.
It’s also useful for changing the way we perceive events in our environment so that we can deal with things in a more healthy fashion. For example, you go down to the local supermarket, and the shop-keeper is not only rude, but short-changes you. To a depressed person, that can be perceived negatively ‘they did that to me because I am $#%^’. However, there are a number of other ways to look at the incident. It could have been that that person had just found out their Father has cancer and is sad as a result and not really paying attention to the job. It could have been that they as a person have an unfriendly manner to everyone, and made a simple mistake. There are numerous alternative explanations as to why that might have happened, but with depression we tend to personalise and assume any negativity is a direct attack on us. CBT helps us depersonalise negativity so we aren’t bearing a burden every time something awful happens.
It’s a very powerful tool and with long and hard practice, slowly but surely you will start to see your entire perception of the world change. These days, if someone does wrong by me, rather than assume it’s just further evidence I as an individual am crap, I examine every other possible explanation for their behaviour and choose the explanation that best helps my self-esteem…. I refuse to play the victim and see bad behaviour as a reflection of the other persons’ weaknesses, rather than my own.
Now back to you. Are you still crying every day? Have you seen a Doctor about meds yet or do you think you’ll be able to tough it out without medication? I don’t know where you are in the world but I’m assuming it’s overseas (I am in Australia). If I don’t respond to you later it’s because I’m in bed after staying up far too late for too many nights running lol.
Big cuddles,
Emma <3
. Thanks for your responses. I am also going to go see my psychologist today and tell him what happened. I am reluctant to tell my psychiatrist b/c I don't want to increase my meds.
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