gypsylee
11-02-2016, 10:32 PM
Hello fellow anxious people :)
I just remembered something I thought was worth sharing with y'all. I've started reading this book based on something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I was talking about it in the thread someone posted yesterday about books.
I'm also a huge fan of Claire Weekes and a common denominator in a lot of this self-help stuff (including Mindfulness techniques) is the idea of separating oneself from one's thoughts. The human mind (the ego) loves to think it's the boss of everything and it will do almost anything to try and stay in control.
Anyway, so last night I woke up at 2am and didn't go back to sleep straight away. Sure enough I found myself lying there brooding about certain people in my life. Funny how the mind works and before you know it you're feeling all angry/depressed/anxious. I've talked to my psychiatrist about this and he said it's like some small incident can cause us to start playing "videos" in our head of all the things that person has done and soon we're all worked up and ready to kill the person. But the reality is, that person hasn't even done anything new and you're the one lying there suffering at 3am not them!
I managed to catch myself doing this and remembered what the psych said about the videos. In the book I've been reading he talks about "defusing" thoughts so you let them come but don't get emotionally involved in them. He gives some suggestions on how to do this and one of them is to change the voice in your head (which might be a parent telling you you're not good enough) to a funny voice or to even sing it. So I combined that idea with the video analogy and I imagined the videos sped up with Benny Hill music playing in the background! This particular person has caused me so many dramas with his outrageous behaviour, so I think of him as a bit of a clown, and the Benny Hill music was perfect hahaha. I fell asleep after that whereas maybe I would've ended up all depressed and frustrated if I hadn't "intervened". Another of my favourite sayings is "not my circus, not my monkeys". That and the Benny Hill videos are a very good way of looking at this man's behaviour!
So next time you find yourself thinking about someone or something that upsets you, try adding some funny background music. Anything that "defuses" thoughts of emotion is a good thing for anxious types!
I just remembered something I thought was worth sharing with y'all. I've started reading this book based on something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I was talking about it in the thread someone posted yesterday about books.
I'm also a huge fan of Claire Weekes and a common denominator in a lot of this self-help stuff (including Mindfulness techniques) is the idea of separating oneself from one's thoughts. The human mind (the ego) loves to think it's the boss of everything and it will do almost anything to try and stay in control.
Anyway, so last night I woke up at 2am and didn't go back to sleep straight away. Sure enough I found myself lying there brooding about certain people in my life. Funny how the mind works and before you know it you're feeling all angry/depressed/anxious. I've talked to my psychiatrist about this and he said it's like some small incident can cause us to start playing "videos" in our head of all the things that person has done and soon we're all worked up and ready to kill the person. But the reality is, that person hasn't even done anything new and you're the one lying there suffering at 3am not them!
I managed to catch myself doing this and remembered what the psych said about the videos. In the book I've been reading he talks about "defusing" thoughts so you let them come but don't get emotionally involved in them. He gives some suggestions on how to do this and one of them is to change the voice in your head (which might be a parent telling you you're not good enough) to a funny voice or to even sing it. So I combined that idea with the video analogy and I imagined the videos sped up with Benny Hill music playing in the background! This particular person has caused me so many dramas with his outrageous behaviour, so I think of him as a bit of a clown, and the Benny Hill music was perfect hahaha. I fell asleep after that whereas maybe I would've ended up all depressed and frustrated if I hadn't "intervened". Another of my favourite sayings is "not my circus, not my monkeys". That and the Benny Hill videos are a very good way of looking at this man's behaviour!
So next time you find yourself thinking about someone or something that upsets you, try adding some funny background music. Anything that "defuses" thoughts of emotion is a good thing for anxious types!