I’ve previously written (e.g., here and here) about how people generally understand that
their Thoughts/feelings impact their Behaviour
But often fail to recognize how
their Behaviour impacts their Thoughts/feelings
In my experience, even very smart people need a lot of guidance to understand how these concepts relate to their own problems and happiness.
Here’s an example I frequently [...]
This post is a long one because it contains instructions for one of the most important Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) skills. You might want to print it – If you click on the blog post title you will find buttons for printing or emailing at the bottom of that page.
How to Use Disputing Questions to [...]
I’ve previously written about how people make mistakes in predicting how happy something will make them (The rate of divorces is a good example of this mis-prediction). Or to put it another way, people make errors in estimating the impact of their specific behaviors on their thoughts and feelings.
When you’re contemplating a behavior change [...]
Planning to do at least one thing each day you’ll look forward is an important part of treatment for depression, or for anyone who wants to be happier.
On most days your looked forward to activities aren’t likely to be “treat” type activities – more along the lines of la dolce vita (the sweet life) activities.
Happiness [...]
When people start Cognitive Behavioural Therapy treatment for depression, low self esteem, or stress, they often start to feel better within the first few sessions. (It’s been widely shown in research studies that many people experience rapid improvement in their problems and feelings when they start CBT).
While people are experiencing this general improvement they usually [...]
I write a lot on this blog about balanced thinking skills.
The following is one easy experiment to try.
Step 1:
Think about something that causes you worry/anxiety. Pick a specific worry (e.g. how a particular other person might be thinking about you, or something specific you’re worried will go wrong). Pick something that you ruminate about [...]
A couple of weeks ago, I watched an interesting Fora.tv talk by Psychologist Dr Matt Walker (a Professor at University of California, Berkley).
Most of the talk was about how sleep affects learning and memory. This is well established stuff that gets taught in undergraduate psychology classes. Basically, adequate sleep before learning is necessary to get [...]
Something EXTREMELY important (and reasonably simple) you can do to improve your psychological health and coping abilities is to improve your ability to correctly identify your negative emotions.
Identifying what specific emotions you’re feeling is a psychological skill that people often don’t learn how to do very well in the normal course of growing up.
For [...]
A couple of months ago I wrote about Julie Powell – the real Julie from the Julie & Julia movie (you can read my earlier post here). Julie’s year long cooking project, and the blog she wrote about her project, is such a cool example of how quirky, creative (very broadly defined) personal “projects” or [...]
This is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) activity that might be useful for people to do as a self help activity.
It’s usually used as part of depression treatment but is potentially useful for anyone who wants to better understand their moods.
The activity involves doing ratings once an hour (which can be inconvenient but will [...]
Most people understand that their thoughts and emotions influence their behavior.
Thoughts/Feelings -> Behavior
For example,
Jane believes “I have to be perfect for people to like and accept me” (thought), feels anxiety, shame and loneliness, and therefore strives to do everything perfectly (behavior).
Jane develops a problem with perfectionism.
1) She feels very anxious when she can’t [...]
This is a tip for when it seems like things keep going wrong.
Try thinking of 3 or 4 things that went right in the last 24 hours.
When people feel unhappy or stressed these emotions tend to lead to thinking biases – we pay extra attention to negative events and overlook positive events.
When we pay extra [...]
Do you have secret (or not so secret) fears about yourself? Things you fear might be true about you? Or things you fear other people might think about you?
Common secret fears include:
I’m out of control
I’m weak
I’m defective
I’m needy
I’m fundamentally different from other people
I’ve failed a lot/made a lot of mistakes
I’m powerless
I’m vulnerable
I’m trapped/stuck
I’m unlovable
I’m ugly
I’m [...]
This post is for people who read or subscribe to my blog who might not have read all of the rest of my website (the blog is only part of the overall site – it’s the relatively informal part).
The links below are likely to be extremely useful for understanding and overcoming specific types of psychological [...]
This is a follow-up post to yesterday’s post about attaining life dreams.
What if you don’t know what you want? You don’t know what surface goals would help you achieve your deep goals?
A good place to start is with what you know you like and extrapolate. For example, if you have a particular skill and have [...]
