charlieHungerford
Well-known member
signs05 said:I have started seeing a CBT therapist who helps me with my 'thought diaries' and analyzing my core beliefs etc, and its going really well. One of the biggest things to remember when doing CBT is that it can take some time to see a real change. Before, I used to change a thought, and then when it came back, I would think "okay its back, changing thoughts can't be done", when in actuality its pretty obvious you cant change a thought youve had everyday for 5-10 years in 5 minutes or even a day, it takes alot of practice.
We shall overcome.
Totally agree, can't fault any of that! In my opinion for how I suffer and I am sure many can relate, beliefs is everything, the way I think, the way I see situations, the way I think of myself, what I believe is dangerous, what I believe is hurtful, etc, etc. If I have beliefs that I am in danger of getting hurt I will get anxious, my mind's way of protecting me from getting hurt by saying avoid this situation. If I perceive something as dangerous to me getting hurt I am not going to just let myself get hurt and do nothing to escape this.
Some people think that anxiety is irrational in social situations but its not, the fact it is 'social' related shows its not some randomness anxiety, this anxiety is so rational and real, anxiety is based on beliefs of how you perceive a situation, like I have said previously in this post, if you are frightened and feel so hurt by some sort of negative feedback about you, it can hurt far more than a physical blow. So high anxiety about that is understandable.
Self consciousness is also totally rational if you have negative beliefs or irrational beliefs about the part of you that you are self conscious of. i.e. if you believe if someone sees a part of you that you are self conscious about - whether its appearance, personality, how you sound, intelligence, etc, etc - you will believe you are going to be judged negatively, may be ridiculed, deem unworthy, inadequate, etc, etc and if that hurts you being judged like that, then you will be self conscious, self consciousness serves as a purpose to protect yourself, makes you hide these things, don't let people see them because you believe if people do see these things you will be hurt.
But these are beliefs that can be changed, beliefs is only the way you see something which may have developed from a certain experience and you have seen more and more examples since then that makes you believe it is so true and then you just get caught up thinking that way and you never challenge the beliefs.
But like you say signs, I totally agree with you, you can change beliefs easily and quickly if you know how to do it. But of course the reason it may take long is because you have to identify what beliefs need changing, its taken me over 2 years to understand what beliefs I needed changing. I am not saying I am an expert on this by any means, I am just working on changing my beliefs on the best way I feel I can, your methods with a CBT therapist will probably be better than mine.
I feel that you really need to challenge existing beliefs, understand why you believe those things, how they developed, etc to see what they are based on - i.e. if they are based on bad experience by school teenagers being immature and horrible, you have to start to question how credible is that experience to base beliefs on, how fair is that to believe everyone thinks like that immature teenager. I also look at my beliefs in respect of other people - take myself out of the situation. i.e. my nose - believing people are thinking I am a freak and unworthy and not good enough - looking at how others see others with big noses, looking at how I see people with big noses, etc - to see a fair way to see this.
But I think the most powerful part is to see evidence of how your beliefs are wrong. Of course in order to change the way you see a situation as non dangerous, you need to change beliefs, but in order to change beliefs you need to believe the new way you see something is real and true and understand the old way is wrong.
I just think some people are looking at this the opposite way - i.e. beliefs are real, anxiety is unreal - work on accepting anxiety and learn to deal with it. Is that what littlemissmuffet says? I really think this is impossible because you cannot make anxiety non scary, I have gone along that line of thinking a long time ago and it doesn't work. The only way in my opinion this is correct is if your anxiety is irrational and is random - i.e. you have anxiety for no reason and just comes for no reason. In that case you have to try and work on learning to cope with it. But trying to belittle anxiety and learn to live with it so that its not an issue when it is triggered by beliefs is just not right in my opinion, but I must say that if you can learn how to cope with anxiety and perform with it then that is pretty amazing, but that anxiety is real and there to protect you, I don't see how its possible for you to be extremely anxious about something but to then counteract the anxiety to make it non problematic.
I am really glad your CBT work is going well signs, I am certain you will achieve what you are aiming for, you are a very motivated and committed to what you are doing and seem to be very focused and know what you need to do! Keep up the good work!