We throw our lives away to avoid anxiety. Now, while almost everyone dislikes that feeling of uncertainty, people with OCD struggle a lot more than the average person to tolerate any uncertainty. But even if it doesnt, Fred, Jane, and Bob, and you, youre still living the life that you value. The first one is inflated responsibility. Make a chart with three columns. In addition, there are various things individuals can do on their own to relieve anxiety, such as deep breathing, aerobic exercise, meditation, yoga, enjoying a hobby, listening to music, etc. So this is where we also explore our unwritten rules. That takes us to our next step, which is number three: explore. This anxiety is terrible. This episode explain what hypnosis is and how it can be part of effective therapy. Many of the best ones incorporate brain and body and dont have negative side effects like emotional eating or drugs do. He said Self-esteem does not come from saying nice things to yourself or thinking nice thoughts about yourself. Today youre going to learn six ways to journal for depression and anxiety. : What are some of the mental health resources in your area? Am I healthy without them?. Use coping skills to get through a crisis and to get calm, and then come back and resolve the problem. You're taking this course because you care about them. $67. And I can set a goal to get married. Now, in this situation a therapist would help her stop compulsive worrying by recognizing these thinking patterns and shifting her attention back to what she needed to do, which is her homework. Little by little she got better at it. But all these academics are trying to say is to take something that is inside your head, something that is clouded and vague and implied, and make it clear and solid and external. In this episode Im going to teach you another way to process emotions. And the common way that you do this is by talking about it, by trying to explain it or describe it out loud to your therapist. I mean, what if I offer to help someone and they say no? Therapy in a Nutshell's Courses have helped thousands of people Out of 18,000+ students 94% say these courses helped them improve their mental health Thousands of 5-star ratings and 9.5/10 rating on CourseMarks (Top 3% of all courses) 725,000+ subscribers on Therapy in a Nutshell's YouTube Channel Start Learning Today! Okay, so when you have a lot of pain or distress, when youre anxious or upset or overwhelmed, its easy to feel like a situation is hopeless or to feel conflicted about what action to take. In a nutshell, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps you learn to change your thoughts, feelings and behaviors so you feel better. Lost Connections Summary Part 1. But 99% of the time your smoke alarm goes off because you were cooking bacon or you just took a long, hot shower. So this is where you believe that you are responsible for preventing bad things from happening to everyone. So the values activity helps you know where to put your energy and focus. And then the second thing he does is he actually shows up at the party, which gives him a chance to be around people. This is a disaster, he says. Hi, I'm Emma McAdam, a Licensed Therapist, and my mission is to make mental health skills easy to understand through YouTube videos and Online Courses. What kind of traits?, Well I really want to be nice, I want to help lots of people, I want to be funny., Do you feel like those things are outside of your control. If youre feeling tense, tighten your muscles a little bit. Maybe your parents just arent able to hear what you need or your abuser will never be in a place to take accountability for what theyve done. Greater suffering. If youve never seen any of the videos from my emotion processing course, then this might seem a little bit overwhelming because this video is an overview of the process. The anxiety makes them seem more likely. I do mine on Sundays. They offer both individual and group therapy. So when possible, its best to work with a therapist who is trained in ERP, which is exposure response prevention, where you essentially learn to allow the thought to be there without acting on it, without buying it, without doing the compulsion. So with performance anxiety, Fred cant make the anxiety go away, and it often makes it worse to try to not feel anxious. And avoiding that anxiety keeps you stuck in that danger response, it keeps you stuck in anxiety. So instead of labeling it as good or bad, were gonna say something like, Oh, this is uncomfortable. So this is where you believe that you are responsible for preventing bad things from happening to everyone. We dont have to wait for something to change to get them. Now, with social anxiety, the treatments actually not very complicated, but it does require a lot of willingness. And our natural tendency is to avoid stuff that makes us anxious, but that can make your life worse. What does it feel like? and theyll say things like, Cold hands or A tight stomach or Tense shoulders., And Im going to encourage you to just notice it. Matthew Lieberman, a Psychologist at UCLA, said Brain scans on volunteers showed that putting feelings down on paper reduces activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for controlling the intensity of our emotions. Men seemed to benefit from writing about their feelings more than women, and writing by hand had a bigger effect than typing. Now that we have observed our emotions, weve felt them, weve explored them and whats behind them, now were ready to clarify and choose what were going to do about them. In a study with college students, prompting those students to write about stressful or traumatic events helped them reduce stress, improve their mood, and even have better physical health. You may write about feeling those feelings of warmth and humor that you used to have in the relationship basically bringing to mind the things that you value and that you love about yourself and your spouse. What hotlines can you use? And values clarification is asking, What do I really care about most in life? I'm here to spread the message that while mental illness is real, it's common, it's debilitating, it's also treatable. Small mental health skills can lead to massive growth, healing, and happiness. So if values are so important, how come we dont live them? If you have a sexual thought, its as though you acted on it. What is it about them that you look up to? As long as youre alive youre going to make choices, and as long as you make choices you have to choose what you base your choices on. Someone with OCD may feel actual guilt for a crime they didnt commit; they just thought about it. They make it worse. So for someone with OCD, that uncertainty is extra uncomfortable, and compulsions are an attempt to make that discomfort go away. Basically, it makes those thoughts stronger for some people. The scale contained 14 items, including seven items on anxiety and seven on depression, and all the items were scored as 0-3. This keeps all our energy focused on emotional control and we are completely distracted from the direction we want to go with our life. Our brain and emotions are incredible, powerful, wonderful things, but sometimes emotions make us act kinda stupid. You can learn to identify and act on your core values as an antidote to constantly struggling against your emotions. The first is called cognitive defusion, where you learn to notice thoughts without buying them, without believing them, without acting on them, without struggling against them. And this is a skill you can learn, to tolerate uncomfortable emotions without needing to act on them or trying to force them to go away. And the way you think and act determines whether you feed or starve your OCD. People with OCD may obsess over every little thing they do, as they feel personally responsible for preventing others from getting cancer, getting in an accident, losing their job, or even they feel responsible to prevent natural disasters from happening. This is horrible, were gonna describe the emotion instead. it's debilitating, it's also treatable. After we took a break and came back to the problem refreshed after a nights sleep, we were able to go back to that leader with clarity to confront the issue. Willingness is the secret ingredient in emotion processing. So saying something like, Im not responsible for preventing natural disasters. Now, this might work for 90% of people, but for people with OCD, they worry obsessively about controlling their thoughts, to the point that it actually makes those thoughts more likely. And the reason we look at these is, If you want to learn how to worry less you need to understand why your brain likes to worry because that will free you to, What if depression isnt just some brain defect or a chemical imbalance but its actually a message to you that theres something not right in, A chemical imbalance is not The Cause of depression. They dont mean anything about me. chrome custom tabs clear cookies. I hope you found this video helpful. But you can learn each of these skills in a separate in-depth video, and Ive got a nice little bullet-pointed list that you can download so that you can reference it and walk yourself through the steps when you need to. You cant choose everything; you have limited time, energy, money. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America estimates that 40 million American adults equal to about 18% of the population, or just under one in five people have an anxiety disorder. Therapy in a Nutshell - Mental Health Skills for Anxiety, Depression and Trauma/PTSD I made a short video that goes into more detail, but the basic idea behind the brain dump is that when you are feeling really intense emotions or when youre overwhelmed or upset, it can be really helpful to just take everything in your brain and get it down on paper. You can also practice. This ability to pause before choosing an action is an essential skill of emotionally resilient people. Burn it afterwards or flush it or save it or mail it, whatever you want. Reduces Depression. I can handle feeling this way. Journaling is really simple; you just write about what youre feeling or thinking or experiencing. And she knew all the other actors in her troop really well, so she would compulsively assign all the different roles to different actors, and she would try out each situation in an attempt to gain some control and decrease uncertainty about auditions. Merriam Webster defines self-therapy, on the other hand, as follows: Now, anxiety is like a smoke alarm. You get the idea. So things like procrastinating assignments, being afraid to leave the house, avoiding social activities, or keeping yourself distracted all the time so that you dont have to notice your anxious thoughts. That means feel your feet on the floor or the chair pressing into you. We can be willing to feel anxiety. Therapy in a Nutshell, and the information provided by Emma McAdam, is solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and is not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. It doesnt want complex thinking to get in the way of survival. Some ideas are: Using coping skills to avoid our problems creates a dependency on that activity. +Bonus Videos Our brain may enter survival mode when getting feedback from our boss at work or when we have to talk to a big group of people. Its epitomized by the nursery rhyme Dont step on a crack or youll break your mothers back.. Its thinking, This will end up in tragedy for sure., Now, with OCD and anxiety disorders, things that seem threatening are extra loud. On the other hand, if we just avoid the problem, we also suffer. So this might look like keeping busy counting or hand washing, etc. You first just check to see if there is an actual fire. So these are the six thinking patterns that make OCD or anxiety worse. In the other, write about what is out of your control. Now, we can always find some way to run amok, to bang our head against the wall, to try to force other people to change, but its often better to choose to let it go. Its like an attempt to gain control over something that we cant control. To be clear, when I say values, I dont mean religious or moral values necessarily. My personality is way more important than that. In this situation, writing a letter that you never send can be a way to get some closure on a situation. You should avoid that. So she did. Focus on the things that are in your control instead of dwelling on what you wish would change outside of your control. And the reason we look at these is, If you want to learn how to worry less you need to understand why your brain likes to worry because that will free you to, What if depression isnt just some brain defect or a chemical imbalance but its actually a message to you that theres something not right in, A chemical imbalance is not The Cause of depression. Are you catastrophizing? So in this way he can face his anxiety, but from a more centered, intentional approach. I never hang out with friends because Im too scared that I might feel anxious. So with Jane, her inclination is to just keep avoiding her anxiety, and she does this by watching a lot of TikToks and spending a lot of time on Netflix. One definition of trauma is something that happens to us faster than we can process it. If we react immediately when we havent had a chance to work through our thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions, then our actions often make things worse. So are you willing to engage with life, with friends even if it makes you uncomfortable? They are: Cognitive and . So lets explore six thinking patterns that make OCD worse, and then well talk about what to do about it. Listen to Therapy in a Nutshell, read its reviews and see all its charts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. Its the uncertainty of not knowing if something bad will happen. It would be horrible if I made a mistake., So this is like a form of catastrophizing. This ability to pause before choosing an action is an essential skill of emotionally resilient people. We were exhausted, angry, and discouraged. But in some situations theres nothing you can do to change the situation, or at the very least theres nothing helpful you can do. It is one of several forms of psychedelic therapy under study. When we focus on the process instead of the outcome, we make the outcome more likely. What we focus on we get more of. So what does this look like? If you want to go deeper, check out my course, Journaling for Mental Health below. . Coping Skills for Anxiety or Depression 13/30 How to Process Emotions Watch on Coping Skills for Crises For example, watch a funny clip on YouTube. Therapy in a Nutshell and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. So basically, Bob has to change the rules in his head. +Practice Exercises For me, I actually use a computer because I can type faster than I can write. So thats the first step in emotion processing. Im worried I wont sleep well. So there you have it. Values are the essence of ACT. Watch TV. And the goal is not to make some beautiful cohesive narrative but to just dump your thoughts down into words. So I get really shaky sometimes when I do public speaking, and if I try to force myself to calm down it usually makes me feel more anxious. So by taking a big-picture look, like, What do I want my life to be about? In one, write about what is in your control. So, for example, lets say that youre unhappy in a relationship. Lost Connections Summary Part 1. She tries not to think about it. That smoke alarm wont keep blaring all the time. Here are the areas I dont, etc. It can help with anxiety, depression, PTSD, guilt, shame and much more. I use this activity quite frequently with teenagers and with trauma survivors. Jane could ask, What are the most stressful parts of my life? and also ask, What are the things that are keeping me busy that arent important? And by clarifying what she values, what she wants her life to be about, perhaps she decides to say no to a couple of extra responsibilities at work so that she has extra time for her husband or kids. 1. But having anxiety can motivate you to solve problems, create safety, and take action. Welcome to my Passion Project! Real-life examples of people who have overcome health anxiety. But for other people this type of CBT can lead to this constant internal struggle against thoughts. Are you willing to interact with people even if youre not perfect, even if maybe you dont say the right thing? We were physically, emotionally, and spiritually giving everything we had. So we can spend all day thinking about anxiety. 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