Introducing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (Introducing...) (18 page)

Beware – sometimes people use work or other activities as a way of hiding from or avoiding their emotions. This can mean it takes longer to recover.

3. Exercise

This could well be the last thing you feel like doing. However, there’s good evidence that physical exercise is important for managing low mood and stress. Even just a brisk walk round the block or in a local park may improve your mood just a little and will probably have a more positive effect than simply sitting and focusing on your problems. SO … the exercise is … EXERCISE! Get moving! Go on, force yourself to do anything physically active – just for 5 minutes. Do it!

4. Allow yourself to feel sad

This may sound strange, but many people spend a lot of time fighting normal, natural reactions to what has happened to them. Losses and disappointments can bring grief. Feeling and expressing grief and sadness is neither weak nor pointless. It may even be the only way we can truly heal and move on. Everyone experiences and expresses emotions differently. No way is either right or wrong. However, when we struggle and fight against feeling painful emotions, usually we only make them worse.

Think of what you might do if you were trapped in quicksand. Your first instinct would be to struggle desperately to escape. But that’s just the opposite of what you should do. The more you flail around, the faster the sand will suck you down. Your best bet is to stop struggling, lie flat and slowly inch forward. It’s the same with painful emotions. Stop struggling and try to just tolerate the pain. Stay with it. Don’t fight the feelings – they’ll get stronger and try to drag you down. Remind yourself that what you are feeling is normal, natural and understandable. Most importantly, remind yourself that, with time, you will heal and the feelings will pass. That does not mean that your loss will ever be either forgotten or even totally eradicated, but just that your feelings will become less intense and less painful over time. Some things will always hurt, but they will gradually have less effect on your ability to function – even if, while you are going through it, that time seems impossible to imagine, or a really long way off.

When you feel sad, just allow yourself to feel that way. Remember:

• You are feeling this way for a reason
  
• This is just how you feel right now
  
• There will be good days and bad days
  
• Feelings change and even grief comes and goes in intensity
  
• Make the most of the good days and on the bad days be good to yourself
  
• Do things that soothe and comfort you and be gentle with yourself
  
• Treat yourself the way you’d treat a close friend or a child who was in pain
  
• You will heal faster if show yourself kindness
  
• Don’t scold yourself or tell yourself ‘you should be over it by now’
  
• Be your own best friend.
  

Finally, and most important of all:

• Do what is right for you.
  

It’s utterly useless demanding that you ‘pull yourself together’. If it were that simple, you’d have done it ages ago – and we wouldn’t be writing this book!

Ideas of how to be gentle to yourself

Take a warm bath. Have a massage. Eat comfort food (bananas and chocolate can help – but don’t overdo it!). Make time to talk to a friend. Watch a favourite film. Go for a walk in the countryside. Buy a new outfit.

See how many other ideas you can come up with which we haven’t mentioned.

We aren’t suggesting for a moment that any of these things will take your emotional pain away completely. However, they may help to relax you a little. Indulge yourself just enough to give yourself space to overcome the numbness and start to feel again.

5. Watch out for distorted thinking

At the beginning of this chapter we warned how
some
negative thoughts at difficult times in our lives are inevitable, and may actually be accurate. But that doesn’t mean they
all
are. We can still have distortions and misinterpretations in our thinking at times like this. Notice the things that are going through your mind. How accurate are the assumptions you are making and the things you are saying to yourself right now? How helpful are they to you?

Case study – Jenny

Jenny is going through a divorce, having found out her husband has had a series of affairs. He has finally left her for a younger woman he met at work. Naturally she is very angry, sad and distressed. Many thoughts go through her mind. Some of these thoughts, such as ‘he doesn’t love me anymore’, ‘he finds her more attractive than me’ or ‘he wants to be with her more than with me’ may well be true. Of course they’ll hurt terribly. However, these thoughts are accompanied by many others which are less true and just deepen distress unnecessarily. Examples are given in the table below.

See if you can find some logical counter-arguments to these examples of distortions in Jenny’s thinking. Write them in the right hand column above. We’ve given some suggestions in the table below, and of course there can be a whole lot more.

Though the thoughts in the left hand column may
feel
as true as Jenny’s initial thoughts (‘he doesn’t love me anymore’, ‘he finds her more attractive than me,’ and ‘he wants to be with her more than with me’) an outsider can see how they are distortions of reality.

Look at the examples of thought distortions that are listed in
Chapter 6
. Do any of these apply to you in your current situation? Would it be helpful to use some of the thought balancing techniques suggested in
Chapter 6
? Or try drawing up your own table like Jenny’s above. Either way, see if you can identify any distorted thoughts you’ve been having, and work on balancing them or providing logical counter-arguments.

However awful or painful your situation is, it may be that not all your very negative thoughts or predictions are completely true. Work on catching yourself if you are trying to predict the future or jumping to conclusions based on your current situation. Don’t give yourself more pain by telling yourself that you can never move on or get over this.

Have you ever noticed how in a city it can be very hard, if not impossible, to see the stars in the night sky? This is because the light pollution generated by buildings, streetlights and cars prevents us from seeing the light of those stars. The wonderful thing is that the stars are still there. We just can’t see them. As soon as the lights are turned off or we go out into the countryside we see the stars again. It is a little like this with good things in our lives when we are in pain. We can’t see any positives. However, it is so important to remind ourselves that they are still there somewhere. When our situation changes and the painful feelings dim even just a little, then the positives start emerging and become clearer again. None of this is about denying or avoiding the negatives. They are all too real. It is about recognizing that nothing is ever either pure black or white.

6. Cut down on self-criticism

Telling yourself that you are weak because you are ‘not coping’ is not likely to be helpful right now. Check out the story of the poisoned parrot in
Chapter 6
. Recognize this? Be a friend to yourself. You can be firm and encourage yourself to move forward – but at the right pace and in a supportive, kindly way. You will find that this is much more effective than beating yourself up for reacting in a very normal way, which you would probably understand and forgive very easily in others.

7. Lean on others

We all need support in difficult times. It can be very hard to admit that we need help, or are not coping as well as we’d like. It can make us feel that we are weak or useless, and that people whose opinion we value think less of us. However, very often when we make the first move to ask for support, we can be pleasantly surprised. Usually people are pleased to be asked to help. We all like to be needed or feel useful and sometimes helping someone else can make us feel better about things in our own lives. Give those around you a chance. Reach out and ask for help – even in small, practical ways. You’ll probably be surprised with the results. Be wise in your choices – select people you think will be supportive, and let them know what you need. If you can be brave enough to communicate your feelings and needs, the chances are those needs will be met. If help isn’t forthcoming, try to let go of any anger about this – you have enough to deal with right now.

8. Write it down

There is evidence that writing about negative events can help people to feel more positive, and can even reduce the number of physical ailments they experience in the months after a difficult life event.