Cognitive Interventions for Depression & Anxiety Treatment | Depression quickstart guide

This episode was pre-recorded as part of an on-demand continuing education webinar. CEUs are still available for this submission by all CEUs. Register for all CEUs. Communication Counselor's Toolkit. Hello everyone, welcome to today's presentation. 100+ Practical Tools to Beat Depression Today We're going to talk about

cognitive

interventions

, starting by defining

cognitive

interventions

and then examining activities to address perceptual attributions and cognitive locus of control distortions. The ABCs we need to look at, optimism and cognitive restructuring and how to help clients with affirmations, time management and goal setting, so on Tuesday we talked about emotional interventions and it's really about looking at the emotions that keep people from feel the happiest they are and making people feel depressed or stressed or whatever and helping them address those feelings also creates happiness and we talked about how important it is to not just eliminate the bad, but add the positive so it doesn't seem someone who's just a little bit flat when you use cognitive interventions to help people change the way they think about things, when I do this to clients, I ask them, you know, if you look at something like a glass of water, Is it half full or is it full?

It's half empty and you know everyone just rolls their eyes, because everyone has heard that when you look outside in the morning it's partly sunny or partly cloudy, you know the kind of things you imagine and the way You see the day has a great influence on your mood. We also want to see how customers are encouraged to ask questions. It's important to me to have a rich and meaningful life because sometimes things happen and that's what it is. It's not an ideal situation, but just because it's gone doesn't mean you have a rich and meaningful life.

Changes at work are something that can happen and that we cannot really wish for, but if we have to work, change is like that. It allows us to keep clients away with a rich and meaningful life, so we really want them to look at the impact of everything they think instead of catastrophizing another question that clients might ask what is the yang of this yin and the yang is the optimistic energetic positive You know, the bright sunny side of the yen, which is wet, dark, cold and blah, so you want the two to balance each other, like when you take a bath, you want hot and cold water, too hot, you can't cool down too much, you don't want to.

Enter, so you need to have a little bit of both, so if something bad happens, encourage customers to use the dialectic of using a different term and let them know what the good things are. What can I get out of this? I can see it as a lesson. You know, sometimes I can find positives in it, for example with job changes, people end up going to a job they want more when a relationship ends, maybe they have some lessons from the relationship, but they also learn more. about themselves and how they can make me stronger, what can I learn from this?

This is another thing that clients may wonder, because sometimes things suck, you know, but this learning opportunity was put in their way and instead of seeing unpleasant things as obstacles, barriers or roadblocks, they were encouraged to look at them as learning opportunities that they can learn for themselves, they can learn about other people; they can learn what not to do again; There are a lot of things that can be learned well, so the first thing I want to address is how to help clients recognize the impact of their thoughts on their mood and some clients accept that right away, while other clients really struggle with it.

So I'm curious to know what kinds of things you do to help your clients understand the impact of the way they perceive things. One of the things I usually do is put this picture on the board and we talk about situations and you know I'll do it. I start somewhere, usually not with thoughts, so I start with feelings, if you feel bad, how does that affect your thoughts, your ability to concentrate, are you positive or negative, do you see that the glass is half empty or half empty? full, how? Does it affect you when you feel sad, how does it affect your physiology, do you feel pain, maintain tension, do you feel exhausted, exhausted, tired when you are sad, how does it affect your behavior?

What else do you do? I know that when I get sad and often depressed it's like having a lever to make me go to the gym and I just don't feel like cleaning as much and the things that I normally like to do just aren't there to tell. . I continue like this to get along, so continue with each thing and then I'll look at the behavior, because many times people don't think about the behavior, and I say let's fall asleep, for example, right? Have you done many things that made you burn the candle? You both end up working 16 hours a day without much sleep, how does that affect your thoughts, your ability to focus on the way you perceive things, how it affects your feelings, how you perceive things or your emotions?

Are you happy, are you stressed, or you know, if I do too many 16-20 hour days, I'm just in a fog and I don't feel much of anything, I'm just a zombie, so I don't feel numb and how? It affects your physiology if you don't get enough sleep, so you think about when you are sick or in pain or when your physiology is healthy, you know how it affects your feelings and thoughts and finally we come to thoughts. I usually keep one. lastly and say you know what we are going to talk about how your thoughts affect things, two people can look at the same situation and Cassandra gives a good suggestion to give examples of positive and negative situations, and you know things that you consider positive or negative, but in this you can encourage your clients to know that you look at the positives and negatives, so they can get different perspectives and ask them how it affects their feelings.

You know, if you look at a situation like the end of the world, how will it affect your feelings, your behavior, and your physiology? If you look at a situation as unfortunate but as a learning opportunity, and you know that maybe it just means that one will pass. Close it and another door is going to open, you know, no matter how you look, you know how it affects your feelings, behavior and physiology when you're waiting for a test from the doctor that you know we've all had, where we're going. do a biopsy or something like that and the doctors want yeah, I'll get back to you in about a week and you're like, oh wow, a week.

I can't wait a week, so we want to help customers think about you, how do you know how? During that time, everyone can get excited and stressed thinking about what ifs and what-ifs the catastrophic fact of you being on the Internet hits home. or you feel like the sky is going to fall or they can look at whatever, I caught it early and there's a good chance for intervention, yada, so to encourage clients to really look, think about their thoughts and how they affect them. Another thing they can do is observe their perceptions, because life is 10% reality and 90% what you make of it, so encourage clients. to realize that their past experiences have created their schemas and that most clients are schemas in the world, so explain to them that schemas are basically their shorthand way of interpreting situations as I was, I have been in similar situations before What should you expect, for example: a dog that barks at the fence now charges if you have been bitten by a dog or if you know that you have been scared by a dog, you benefit if a dog against you approaches the fence and bark, I was probably going to back off and not be very happy about it, on the other hand, I grew up around dogs, big dogs, small dogs, happy dogs, you know, angry dogs, if a dog comes near me, charges, I see it like a cute little one. dog doing his job to defend his territory and I say, oh good boy, you know, two different people saw the exact same situation very differently, 10% of the reality is that the dog attacked and was probably defending his territory.

Now I looked at it as a positive, you know he's going to stop at his limit line. I'll stop at mine, but someone else can see it because he can keep flying. It is another, which is 10% reality. Some people love to fly. To others. They are indifferent to flying and some people are afraid of it, you get on the same plane, so what's the difference? A lot of them are plans for people and if they've been on a bumpy flight before and they ran into a lot of turbulence and they were scared. Or they've just heard a lot about airplanes crashing and say, "If God had wanted me to be 30,000 feet in the air, He would have given me wings and an air mask with different perceptions about the situation, another one every day." The thing is that angry faces if you grew up in a home, people were often dissatisfied and unhappy if you saw an angry face or if a child grew up and internalized the situation, you knew that angry faces were taken personally.

Now you know, if they see angry faces, they can still take it personally and say, what did I do to make that person angry? Or you know what's going on here, so we want to help people realize that even things like a person walking past them and making a malicious face affects their mood, but it all depends on their perception, that person put a bad face, that's the reality of 10%, 90% is what you do, it was the person thinking about something else, they I just left a bad meeting, they didn't know when they turned the corner, we don't know, so the Schemas help us interpret it, but sometimes it makes us interpret it in a way that you know we are not happy with. or stressful, squeaky floorboards and you know, I'm not going to go, there's a lot of detail because we've gone over all three, but for the people that you were, do you know in a situation where they were the victim of a robbery, or No? you know child abuse, if they hear the floorboards creaking it may remind them of a time that was much less pleasant and it may stress them out, others may hear the floorboards creaking and think, that's a nice old house, so it's their perception that They have everyone's perceptions. are accurate based on your prior learning, we can look at you now before you learned when you were six years old and you heard that the floorboards were in bad shape, you know it's worth stressing about now that you're 26 years old and you live in your own apartment and in a safe place when you hear the floorboards creak, yeah, it triggers the memories, what you know, we're not going to dismiss because now you're safe, because then people can start reprogramming their automatic minds to help them realize that now You are safe. . coin and if the coin lands heads, they have to be very optimistic, they have to tilt the rainbow and you know everything that happens.

I want them to look at it through an optimistic lens and realize if they become negative or sulk, what they need to realize and find the one, find a happy one, and if it ends in tails, they can be their own and do it. whatever that means, and then we can process with them in the session. You know you felt different Those optimistic days, one thing I like to do is have clients do this for about a month where they flip the coin because they have a 50/50 chance of having to be optimistic, but if they're forced to be optimistic 12 or 15 days a month guess what starts to become a habit, and I mean, I'm not saying we're going to turn you into someone who wears rose colored glasses all the time, but often if you look at the positive and start to see the positive, then you are going to see the positive, at least a little more than before a group activity that people can do.

Remember I talked about the beach ball, like beach balls because they're fun and you can throw them and no one feels like they're necessarily in the right place; 20 things on that beach ball that could be annoying or scary, and throwing the beach ball at a group member, they should at least have an optimistic or non-threatening way of looking at whatever item they see when they look at the ball, so like I said, the dog, I offered two different ways of looking at it, go to the doctor, it can be scary, go to court, it can be scary, you know, there are a lot of things that can be intimidating, but which way can you look at it?

When you go on first dates, it can be really intimidating for people, so if you see that there's something good, you know what's an optimistic way of looking at it, you know that you have a chance to meet a new person, if you really don't like them, never. I have to see them again, but you're going to have a good meal yada-yada-yada, so try to find the roses in the situation and keep it classy at all times and some people may have the exact same scenario and that's okay, You know? they get the same thing, we can talk about another example of a first date or something like that and as we go along, if you have other suggestions, other things you can do to help clients identify one of these things, share, you have to learn new tools. so attributions, we were just talking about perceptions, attributions are how you perceive things and where you think it will happen if you want it to, what you attribute to internal attributions versusExternal is basically the same as locus of control, you control your own.

Fate or everything just happens to you and some of us think in retrospect, I haven't heard the concept in 40 years; we have to think if it's an internal locus of control it means you can control things and if it's really internal it's someone who is trying to control everything if it's really external it's someone who feels like their destiny and destiny are completely written and it doesn't matter what Whatever they do, it will just happen to them, so you better sit down and read both, and you know I first asked customers which one is better and they have both sides and then we talk. about how both ends of the spectrum are extremely stressed because if you think you can control everything, you're wrong if you think you can control absolutely nothing, you know what's probably not accurate, and we talked about the decisions they make today that they had control They had control over whether they got out of bed, whether they went to work, whether they came to the group, etc., so I want to encourage people to come to the center so they can start to realize what they do and I have no control over it. because it helps relieve a lot of stress and

anxiety

for many people around the world or for specific purposes.

These are statements about where it comes from, whether it means globally that all people or me as a person fill in the blank and specifically it means that it relates to a specific situation. You know you can say the weather in Tennessee is terrible. It's oppressively hot. It's not true if you know it would be a global statement. It was oppressively hot in Tennessee, which makes it more specific when people don't do well at something you work on in school, rather than saying "I'm stupid or dumb." This is a global statement. I am NOT good at math, this is a more specific statement so we don't want people to generalize too much and I encourage you to stick to specific statements we can throw and whether it is stable or variable.

You know, some things are stable. I know I'll always be five foot four, that's how it will be, but I won't always weigh the same. That is variable. I always will be. You know, a good reader, I probably don't see math going away, you know it does and going down if I've been using it. I'm pretty good at them, if I use them it's not that much, so we want to encourage people if there are any. It is something about themselves or the situation that is controllable, that is specific, and that is changeable. I want them to feel empowered to take control of it.

If it's something that's out of your control and you know it's stable like your height or below the person, then you have to look at it from that perspective and instead try to change that. person, you have to change your feelings about it if we make attributions and perceptions, the dialectic happens frequently above, there is almost always positive and negative or good and bad in everything, so if customers really care about that bad negative way, be which is positive. that balances it out if it's a rainy day you know it's pouring rain the downside is I'm going to have a bad hair day the downside is the traffic will probably be crazy because people can't drive in the rain it seems backwards below I don't have to wash my car this week I don't have to water my garden this week so I try to look back, you know, depending on where you go, or it can heat it up, so you know those who are in favor of a good launch, but they encourage people to work and balance themselves, so that if they start to feel negative instead of going down the rabbit hole, they can bring themselves back to a middle line, maybe they won't be happy about it. , but they don't feel like the world is collapsing on them, so the principles that we can have people apply to statements I think I can control my own destiny, so internal versus external locus of control, how much of your destiny? you control everything; some of that you know we can talk about this global or specific control you know everything is under your control or certain parts are under your control and some of the things that are under your control you can change them and generally we start to look at things . who are responsible I blame other people for making me so happy internally and externally that one is a very external locus of control it's your fault I'm unhappy and my goal is to make people realize that someone else did something that caused an emotion unpleasant in you. have the ability to improve the next moment;

You have the choice to stay stuck and struggle with the emotion or improve in the next moment. Is it global or specific? I blame all the other people for making me unhappy. All my unhappiness is due to other people. You probably don't know what we probably did. things that made us unhappy so encourage people to look specifically at this situation when your colleague at work throws you under the bus that made you unhappy it's what you completely know understand it's a specific situation if people think You know everyone does them. unhappy, it will be difficult to get good social support if I fail at something, it means I am stupid.

We talked about the one on the last album that encourages people to see failure as an opportunity, there is something positive in it and to look at what they failed at and remember that now they are back with other things in their lives that happened without this intervention cognitive ns if someone knows what you told them initially and they're really struggling and they're in a lot of pain, we don't want to invalidate that by going, isn't that that bad, or have you failed at that? but you're so good at all those other things that you've heard it from other people and it's just not valid, so there's a time and a place for cognitive interventions, but it's important to help people get out of the situation to try to analyze it more. objectively. and finally I'm depressed, that's a very global statement and for a lot of people it feels kind of stable, they feel like they're always depressed.

Therefore, we want to help you identify which parts of this situation are modifiable. You know your mood, you feel very depressed right now, what can you do to improve in the next moment? It could be something biological, it could be something medical, it could be a situation, and part of that can be changed. , and some of that can be stable and encouraging them to feel empowered to start taking risks and progress is what I want to do with attributions and locus of control, let them see it from a different perspective, so that they see it from a different point of view. in a positive and empowering way and encourage them to motivate themselves to change things that may have such cognitive distortions and I hate this word.

I usually call them unhelpful thoughts when I work with clients because cognitive distortions sound very pathological, but that's what the research calls them, or the literature, so we'll stick with that, we'll look at it, and there's a lot of it. I got to the highlight: Arbitrary inference means making assumptions without all the facts. I'll ask clients if they've done something like this or present scenarios like John comes home from work and smells perfume and it's not his wife's perfume and she gets angry. In what way could it be an arbitrary inference? Can you ignore the facts?

You know, Mom, she missed the fact that he went to the mall to buy her a birthday present and walked by the perfume place and caught a glimpse of one of the people standing there and your spritz, you. I know it's possible or maybe a colleague came forward and gave him a hug because he got a promotion knowing that we don't necessarily know where the perfume comes from. So we talked about the other one after going over the one I talked about. assumptions and I didn't have all the facts and then I learned that you know if you had all the facts it wasn't worth getting upset about another one that often comes up is when someone doesn't return a call text or come late home or for a appointment or a quote.

People can start making all kinds of assumptions and don't really know what's going on in that other person's life, a selective abstraction just to see what you want to do or don't want to see and it all comes back to perception if you want to see the good in people and you know how they say love is blind? Many times people are in love, especially the first six months of the honeymoon, all they see is the good and all you hear is the good and that is selective abstraction: they don't see the little quirks that they start to notice six months later, and the flip side of this is seeing what you don't want to see if you want to see someone as unpleasant and unfaithful and all those things that you can focus on, or if you see an employee and for some reason you want to see them as a bad employee or a colleague who you don't want to get promoted above you, then you just focus on all their mistakes and miss out on the good things. they do, selective abstraction is again an example of the polarization we need to help people get back to the middle ground over genres of generalization.

To compare things about a situation with similar situations, that's what I mean, the dog walking along the fence. use the example because many people fear dogs to know that you identify with them, but the dog that chased you when you were six years old and riding a bicycle is not the same dog; Now you know that they are on the fence and encourage them to admit that, in general, you know that dogs can be a little afraid, that they have a right to feel that way, but also to admit that, for example, every dog ​​is an individual, just like that each person is an individual, we don't want to say that all the people you know who have blonde hair match this person because there are many people who have blonde hair who don't match whoever.

Whatever the person is, I'm willing to bet money on it. , exaggeration and exaggeration to blow something out of proportion if someone notices that you have, you know, this little itchy mole on your arm and suddenly you've made up your mind. They have melanoma and they are going to die. You know it's something like that. You know it's blown out of proportion before we even know what it is. It is a dermatitis of the same nature in relationships if someone calls his partner and her partner does not answer the phone. Oh wow, does that mean that person cheated on you or left you?

It couldn't necessarily mean that he was in the bathroom and he didn't want to answer the phone while they were peeing and yeah, I usually use examples like that to help people realize that you know sometimes there are very legitimate reasons for not answering the phone, or a text message or whatever, and thinking it's all or nothing, this person always does or never remembers our anniversaries or never remembers my birthday or whatever, but the extreme words in their vocabulary can be helpful, so if you're doing individual counseling it's important that you see clients on current stressors and if they're talking while we're in sessions, if I hear a cognitive distortion, I'll call a time out and you know I let them finish their sentence and then I say, let's take a time out and what I heard you say was boring.

I wonder if that fits into one of these categories of cognitive distortions. You can also write it down at night if they're willing to journal and then they go back and look at their journal and try to identify examples of cognitive distortions. and sometimes you can ask them to keep a journal, maybe they've been journaling for two months so they have a lot of material to work with, then they can go back and see if they can identify unhelpful thoughts that they have or cognitive distortions. In the group we want to encourage clients to define and identify these cognitive distortions and identify interventions, such arbitrary distractions, you know, I talked about John smelling another woman's perfume, after his wife went crazy, is that okay? ?

So, in these particular situations. What kinds of things can you do to get more useful thinking? Then I can put a flipped board across the room and drop it out and each group will give one or two examples of how to add this particular unhelpful thought, and then I'll hear from you what that means and the kinds of things you can do to correct it, and I'll let it go to those stations and for every example they gave of that unhelpful thinking, you have to specifically identify what the person can do. to help you, so to speak, and it's usually with arbitrary inference to get more facts with selective abstraction;

It's stepping back and looking at the positive and the negative, looking at both sides of the situation with more than a generalization, it's recognizing the past if it is your present, an impact and really looking objectively at this current situation for facts that support your thoughts that you know. . that all the dogs are going to attack me, for example, what are the facts for that and let them use challenging questions, expand and exaggerate, let them back up and talk again about the facts of the situation, what exactly is going on, what exactly do you know. sure versus what you feel because thoughts based on feelings you know thoughts based on feelings are often inaccurate thoughts based on facts are much more accurate and like I said for a polarized thought, which is all or nothing and look for exceptions when you say Well, you should always put your dirty underwear in the middle of the bathroom, and try to findexceptions to when they picked up their dirty underwear, or you will never be able to remember our anniversary again, try to find exceptions because people usually don't always or never do things, there are exceptions in play and encourage people to take care of themselves people make some mistakes we don't always or never do something.

Sometimes your clients can create an emergency card and with mobile now they can put it on their mobile device if they want, but I encourage clients to carry it with them, I have all the data, I see the whole situation, I use it. I moderate words like sometimes from time to time or don't I take care not to spend too much attention and energy on something that doesn't really matter? a few days or weeks and I have considered possible explanations, except that it is about me; These are the five main questions, there are many other questions that can be asked, but I want to be brief and generally when people answer these questions they find that they can reduce them, so these unhelpful thoughts emergency map cognitive distortions, which you want.

Calling it out can be helpful for clients to gain perspective when they are in their emotions. I want to help you return to the place of wise thinking so that the ABC that we all do with our clients has the consequences that bother you or that you become happy, who knows that B are the automatic and often unrealized beliefs. I want each person to share something whether you do it in a group or individually, let the person share something that makes them happy or proud, and apply the ABCs. I know many times with something negative, but I try to do it. also look at some positive things you know, throw it on loop to trigger an event, you come home and see 15 cars in your driveway, consequently you become happy, the bully, automatic beliefs as soon as those cars see what you are like, I bet they plan a surprise party for me there are people waiting there and we're going to eat cake you know those are automatic beliefs that can happen and other beliefs would be like oh it's so touching how much they care about me yada yada but have they look and they recognize how events, those A's trigger emotional reactions or C's, and it can be happy, angry, sad, joyful, scared, whatever you know, we have those reactions and often they are supported by these beliefs that just appear and they shoot quickly before.

We realize what's going on if they're driving. Share with you. My husband used to be a police officer and I told him in no uncertain terms that if he ever stopped me he would pay hell, so it was about 11:30 one night I had worked a double shift and was coming home from work and lo and behold I was They stopped and I'm not a night person anyway, so I got out of the car and I was in a bad mood and because I hadn't been doing anything, I was just sitting at a light and as soon as the light turned green, their lights went off.

They turned on, I thought: what's happening? and my husband was working that night, so I get out of the car and the guy shines his flash, you know, focuses it on me so I can't see anything. I'm like, okay, you know, this is it and I look back and say, what are you doing? I started to get a little nervous and said, um, Chuck, that's you, back there, and I heard this little voice coming from behind, no one, it's not Chuck, oops, sorry, the triggering event of getting pulled over triggered my irritation. , but it was like that.

No, my husband and I automatically thought he was playing a joke on me and that led me down a really bad path. Fortunately, the guy who stopped me was one of his former apprentices and you know I knew him for three years. but he let me spin for a while before you noticed, he let me know what was going on and that I had an expired tag, but I still feel bad to this day for calling him an idiot anyway, but when nasty things happen , you already know. They fire you, they arrest you and give you a fine.

You want to encourage them to follow the ABCs with the DS in the E's. Determine if your beliefs and consequences are rational and constructive. You know that sometimes getting angry about something is rational and constructive, okay then? What are you gonna do about it? You are evaluating whether the situation is worth the energy of your continued reaction, so evaluate what you are going to do next to improve in the next moment. I encourage clients to share silly stories if they want to call what I just told you a silly story about how sometimes something happens. You know, if you want to make arbitrary inferences, that's what I used.

Things happen and our beliefs are not necessarily accurate. Who says people can feel miserable because they think they are feeling and thinking? the way they should be, remember we talked about this with the Bill of Rights of guilt, well we're talking about this again from a slightly different point of view when children are about to go through phase Y and, a Sometimes, as parents, we get very frustrated. and finally we thought because I said so, that's how it is, I don't know why, it just is what it is and kids sometimes stop thinking and say it's okay, it is what it is.

You're not supposed to ask why there's no logical explanation, it's just teaching them not to think, so I encourage clients to brainstorm a list of what they should do and apply the following questions. ; For example, I must keep the house clean at all times so that people don't look down on me who says well that's something my mother taught me what my alternative belief is if anyone you know if I look at that and say you know I agree with that then hold on to it by all means that's That's your prerogative, but if you look at it, no, you know what?

That might be too extreme. What is an alternative belief that is a little more moderate? A clean house is not the top priority and must be balanced with other life demands. Alright. could work, so going over that should list and help clients figure out what they really believe, you know, what they thought, not what their mother said they should think, or their pastor or the kid on the street, what they thought. Optimism and cognitive. Reframed optimism is a way to change the perception of a situation, so have clients describe the day you know and you know some of us will describe it, depending on how their day was and their mood, they will probably describe the day in one way or another and it is important.

To process how this feeling affects the person you know after they describe the day, you can paraphrase and say wow, it sounds like it was a really exhausting and frustrating day or whatever, but that was the next step. I ask other people in the group after hearing about John. Today, how do you feel? Some people will say, I'm relieved I didn't have such a bad day, but other people will say, Oh my God! I can relate. I feel exhausted now from listening to all that. Why is this important? because I want people to see how their perceptions and how they manifest not only impact them but also the other people around them.

Someone describes an absolutely incredible day where they were dizzy and things were going well and they got emotional many times if someone Describes that kind of day. Other people feel more energized and say, "Wow, that was amazing. Come on, let's go as a team so our optimism can be contagious. Our pessimism can also be contagious and I want people to recognize that because it's contagious to their loved ones." ". family and who they live with and who they work with, so if they want to be around happier, more optimistic people, what they could do is contagious. Worry and regret are two byproducts of pessimism that drain people's energy.

Worry is energy trapped in the Future regret energy is tied up in the past and it's just stuck there so you can't use it instead of having all your energy to use in the now and none of it has a functional purpose. You regret it. You do something about it, but if you keep feeding it and you've regretted something for 20 years, is it still good for you to regret it? So again we can do it. For this we can make stations with the flipcharts. You can use the beach ball which can be fun, you can do Jenga where each block has the word worry or the word regret and someone takes it out and if they worry then they have to say something that worries them and an optimistic response.

Rephrasing and Passing the Hat Another thing people can do is write down their worries and regrets on little pieces of paper and we put them in a hat and mix them up and pass it around and everyone pulls one out when it comes to them. Understand it, it may or may not be yours, it probably isn't, and identify a possible optimistic reframing. We don't know exactly what's going on with that other person, but hearing some possible optimistic rephrasing sometimes gives people something to analyze and it's like, you know what, I never thought of it that way and avoids putting everyone on the spot by saying, you know , what are you worried about, you know, we just throw it out there and find or I've found these groups where people often share similar concerns so that social support develops in the group as well.

Affirmations are positive statements that encourage you to feel empowered and optimistic, so encourage people to use the words I am, I can, and I will or I choose what I can take. space my past is not a reflection of my future I am smart enough to make my own decisions I am in control of how I react to others I choose or I choose peace and there are many others that you can find but affirmations are really amazing tools and If you're really old, you might remember Stuart's old Molly, you know. I remember Stuart's smile from Saturday Night Live where he looked in the mirror and said, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and my God, people like me, well, those are statements, if clients don't believe them, then they don't matter.

It makes no sense to say them, so they need to find affirmations that they believe in, which brings me to my next activities, the affirmation journal, having them write an affirmation. themselves that they believe every day many times if they start the day with their affirmations like I can get through this day or I will be more positive, it is a good way to start the day, ask them to do affirmation research online, find lists of affirmations that you can read it and say yes, I think one, yes, I like that one too. I give them ideas because sometimes clients say: I have no idea what to say right now.

The affirmation envelope passes one or my favorite. Have everyone give you small slips of paper. I don't have to make index cards because that costs small strips of paper and passing them around or you can have them on a sheet of paper, but I prefer strips because it allows for more anonymity. Each person in the group writes an affirmation on a strip of paper about everyone else in the group and you put each person's affirmation statements on the envelope, so we have Sally Jane and John. Well, Jane and John will write statements of affirmation about Sally.

You're amazing, you can do anything you set your mind to and they'll put it in Sally's envelope of affirmations so Sally gets this envelope of affirmations that other people have written about her and she takes them home and she can see and hear more about what she says. People believe they can do and that strengthens them and recognizes their impact. in them you can also start each group with a positive affirmation login, so that when people come in and sign up for the group, they have to add an affirmation after that, like for example, it was a hard day but I made it Or I'm grateful for that. yada-yada encourage them to punctuate the day with something positive.

Time management is one of the most elusive and devastating coping skills because when we don't manage our time well we stress ourselves out and we stress out other people. to bad evaluations, friends who get angry with you or just don't take care of something important like you, you missed a doctor's appointment or you are late to pick up your child from daycare and that becomes expensive, let me tell you how bad time management to your In life, this is the first thing I want people to think about and some people I understand don't and other people really see it, so we start talking about, you know, moments where They have committed too much or have not been able to get things done or We have been late, how does poor time management affect your relationships?

Most people have a time-conscious person in their life and a flexible person in their life, so you want to talk about how that relates. My daughter, for example, is a time-conscious person, she is like Johnny. -on the spot, if you tell her that we are going to leave at 7:30, she is ready at 7:20, if you tell my son that we are going to leave at 7:30, if you have not told him, it is It's probably 7:45 or eight before you walk out the door and you know, try to work on that in terms of what that communicates about your respect for the family and how it will affect you when you have to work, when you have to do it.

When you go to a job you can't just be 30 minutes late, so we want people to start thinking about this because this affects their sense of power and help when people are distressed because they have too many things to do and not enough time. causes them to feeldepressed, angry, resentful, frustrated or if they have to cancel the guilt and those are a lot of unpleasant emotions that could have been avoided with good time management, so having clients learn about their time management styles is one of the first steps to help them. I describe different time management styles and group people accordingly, so I'll include that in my book.

I have different excerpts that describe each time management style and I have people go to different places in the room based on the time management style they most identify with to encourage them to recognize that you know everyone has their own style and then ask them that, once they are in their groups, they are given a description of the characteristics of that style as type A for example and that group that has been identified as type A people ask them to think of solutions for some of the problems of type A. activity we do is called eliminate delegate combine simplify and prioritize I need to find an acronym we make a list for someone weekly - quotas, you know, and it's usually a long list and then we go through and eliminate the things you know there will be no major consequences if this doesn't It's done this week, you know what?

Are you combining things? What can you delegate to other people you know? If you have children at home. What can they do in terms of helping you ease your burden of cleaning and housework or cooking or whatever? What things can you combine? you have to make phone calls you know maybe you have to call your mom every week and what can you combine that with maybe you can call her while driving to work what things can you combine to save time what things can you simplify? You know I love to cook and I love making dinner every night, but sometimes it just doesn't happen, so there are times when we have takeout on more than one day in a row.

I am excited? No, but you know. I have one priority and that is the last one. Prioritize what things absolutely have to be done. You know, I have to prepare for class and I have to make sure everything is prepared so you know if something else is getting in the way or if I have to do it. spend more time on that, maybe I can't cook tonight, so the kids can celebrate and eat pizza for the second night in a row, but I encourage people to check their list and we do it with one or two people in a group and then I have each person individually make their own time management list.

Goal setting should have a purpose and people should be motivated to do it, so I encourage people to practice by using a decision balancing exercise and I have illustrated it here. I ask you to identify the benefits of staying the same. Let's talk about someone who wants to start exercising. You know she wants to get in shape. Alright? That's great, great goal, what are the benefits of not getting in shape? You know, more time because the gym takes less time because the gym you know can be painful and make them think it's okay, those are the benefits of staying the same, what are the drawbacks of changing and some of them will overlap with the benefits of saying the same thing and some of them.

Don't we want to try to eliminate them? So if you're worried about time, how can you fit into your current schedule to get fit? Maybe you could bike to work. You know, right now I love going to the gym, but I have so much to do in the garden that I usually spend the mornings. I get out around 5 o'clock and I'm moving mulch and sharpening and mowing the grass and doing all those other things that you know burn a lot. of power is bench press, no, but I'm working out, so you know I stay in shape, but not like I normally would and then you want to see the drawbacks to change, you know, the pain, I don't care about the pain.

So that's not a big drawback for me, but I encourage people to try to figure out how to minimize these things because we don't want it to be rewarding to stay the same and we don't want it to be punishing to change and then have them. Identify the benefits of the change, what are all the reasons why you want to do this. Very good, and what are the disadvantages of staying the same. You know, if you decide you're not going to get in shape, what are the downsides to that? You know maybe. your blood pressure goes up, you don't live as long, I don't know, but we want to emphasize the positive aspects of the change and minimize the negatives, so how do people say when they set their goal the change I want to make and be specific? including goals that are positive, like wanting to increase your reading or improve your ability to act or do more of something rather than negative goals like stopping overeating or avoiding drinking or whatever.

I want to know what they are going to do. Instead, ask them to identify by saying that my main reasons for making this change are what the possible consequences of action or inaction are, that is, that decision-balancing exercise, which motivations for the change are most compelling, not all of them. they have the same weight, you know there can be many. There are many reasons why I don't want to go to the gym, but the biggest one that holds me back is time, like okay, how can I work around that? The first steps I plan and chain to take and change are and I will do this when where and how are some things that could interfere with my plan.

It's really important to look at anything that could stop progress. How will I continue with the plan despite these particular problems or setbacks? Other people could help me change in the following ways so you know maybe. Your neighbor could pick up the kids from school so you can go to the gym right after work. You know who knows and I'll know my plan is working when and if they answer all of these questions, then they'll have a pretty good goal. in front of them so that the way people think and perceive situations has a big impact on how they feel.

Helping people accept the dialectic of both sides, good and evil, can help them feel more positive and empowered, just as adding happy emotions is imperative. It is imperative to add happy thoughts. We have to have some optimism in our life. Practicing optimism and addressing unhelpful thoughts. People can reduce their overall stress. Sleep better because you are not as stressed. Get more energy because you sleep better and not. so stressed and feel less hopeless, helpless and depressed, so we really want to help people analyze their thoughts and some other suggestions that you all threw out to help clients think about positive things is to ask them the question about the magic wand if it had magic. wand and I could wave it and make this problem go away or you know something positive would happen, what would it be?

Cassandra had another good suggestion to replace the word should with wish or hope and that is similar to if it were Rogers or BEC. Can. I don't remember, I'm sorry, but one of those very smart people said that instead of saying she should say, "I choose to do it or I will do it," because that gives you more power. Is there any question? Okay, everyone, thanks for being here. Have an absolutely amazing weekend. I'll see. Tuesday we're going to talk about ooh physical interventions. I like those sleep nutrition exercises. Tai Chi massages as massages. acupressure. acupuncture.

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