Small Acts of Self-Love

Small Acts of Self-Love #4: Careful Not to "Should Yourself"

I want to thank my therapist for giving me the idea for this one.

We all have things we want in life, the things we want to accomplish in both the daily and the long term. These goals may be big or small, but whatever the case may be we don't always achieve them. One way in which we sabotage ourselves is the statements that involve "should" (i.e. I should have mailed those shoes out the other day but I forgot). Should-ing yourself can make you feel a lot of guilt, shame, and despair for things you "should have done" or the things you "should do". It's a dangerous cycle between feeling obligated to do something, not being able to do it, and then feelings like garbage because you didn't do it.

This weeks challenge is to pay attention to the times that you use should and perhaps begin to change the language you use. Instead if "I should do XYZ" you can say, "I can do XYZ" which both encourages yourself and allows for the possibility that you may not be able to do it then and there. Be careful not to should yourself while not should-ing yourself (i.e. I should not use should).

I've been reading a little bit of a book- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies recently and some of you've been writing Jamie reminded me of it (or vice versa!). Other elements of what I see as wisdom pop up like paying attention or recognising when we play the black and white game (Watts) in the book. I'm enjoying recognising ideas that I've heard before from other people...

And so hence- I thought I'd add here a list of 'thinking errors' that we fall into. In quotinig part of the book and not all of it, I hope people will not take what i write as clearly right or wrong but just a set of ideas... I hope some find some interest and can enjoy it in any case!

"... Questions that you might ask yourself in order to identify your thinking errors include: • Am I jumping to the worst possible conclusion? (Catastrophising) • Am I thinking in extreme – all-or-nothing – terms? (Black-and-white thinking) • Am I using words like ‘always’ and ‘never’ to draw generalised conclusions from a specific event? (Overgeneralising) • Am I predicting the future instead of waiting to see what happens? (Fortune-telling) • Am I jumping to conclusions about what other people are thinking of me? (Mind-reading) • Am I focusing on the negative and overlooking the positive? (Mental filtering) • Am I discounting positive information or twisting a positive into a negative? (Disqualifying the positive) • Am I globally putting myself down as a failure, worthless or useless? (Labelling) • Am I listening too much to my negative gut feelings instead of looking at the objective facts? (Emotional reasoning) • Am I taking an event or someone’s behaviour too personally or blaming myself and overlooking other factors? (Personalising) • Am I using words like ‘should’, ‘must’, ‘ought’ and ‘have to’ in order to make rigid rules about myself, the world or other people? (Demanding) • Am I telling myself that something is too difficult or unbearable or that ‘I can’t stand it’ when actually it’s hard to bear but it is bearable and worth tolerating? (Having a low frustration tolerance"

Have a nice day/night,