When things don't go your way

[bump]

@The_wind_of_my_soul

I really like this approach. I understand sometimes that my expectations are out of whack, but sometimes I’m not sure how to adjust my expectations without lowering them. I mean, sometimes you legitimately need to lower your expectations, but you don’t want to lower them so much that you don’t have any standards. Anyways, I like this because it kind of re-frames the thing: rather than nixing certain things from your list of expectations, you ask yourself what’s important, and then only include what’s truly important in your list of standards/expectations.

Truth be told, what I described to you is my take on about 6 months of cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT) that I underwent after I was diagnosed with acute depression after a really, really stressful stretch at work, and when my wife miscarried our first child.

CBT is all about being mindful and aware in the moment about what you’re thinking, and learning how to mentally pause, analyze and evaluate the thoughts you’re having, and how to replace them with healthier thoughts. So it sort of naturally centers around how you’re perceiving the world, yourself and the relationship between them, and also on things like expectations, priorities and boundaries.

[Meursault]

It’s an under-appreciated reality that feelings create thoughts.

[Spice_Weasel]

I’ve started employing a little trick, I can’t claim it’s scientifically backed or anything, but I find it oddly comforting.

Whenever I find myself stressed about something - anything - I ask myself, ''What if none of this actually matters?"

I take it to absurd extremes

-What is this person’s opinion doesn’t really matter?
-What if the success of my marriage doesn’t really matter?
-What if whether I die right now doesn’t really matter?

Not in a negative, fatalistic sense, but in an attempt to be open-minded and curious. I find just being open to the possibility that the thing I’m stressed about is irrelevant and not worth worrying about kind of diffuses the tension for me.

bump, I love CBT, it’s a lifesaver.

I’m also a huge fan of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which combines mindfulness with cognitive restructuring (it’s arguable my little technique is ACT-oriented - it’s defusion.) (So, maybe it’s scientifically backed after all.)

Another defusion technique I use when my thoughts get really upsetting is pretending those thoughts are being sung by a chorus of muppets. Naturally I use the singing vegetables. I totally made that one up also. They encourage you to make up your own techniques.

[Velocity]

I make a constant ongoing list of things that *have *gone my way, to keep me from getting too prickly when things don’t go my way. So for instance, I’ve narrowly avoided car accidents in the past few weeks, and avoided several work quality-control errors that could have put my job in jeopardy. That helps offsets the fact that my car taillight went out, that I was charged $38 for a lousy product on an online purchase and that that lousy product ended up partially ruining my clothing-dryer machine.

[kayaker]

@Velocity

ended up partially ruining my clothing-dryer machine.

You come from the future, obviously, but what year?