positivity

[marshmallowfluff]

I'm looking for ways to make me positive. I told someone a while ago that anything i came up with i'd email it to her, because she's in pretty much the same position as me at the mo.

I already have para's reasons for living on my bedroom wall, and have emailed them to the girl, but i can't think or anything else.

so, when things are going wrong how do you make it positive? what do you do to create positive thoughts? how can i make me think positively rather than negatively. I'm wanting to recover here and get my life back on track and right now i'm doing a pretty good job at that. I'm terrified of crashing, so i *need* things to be positive to help prevent that so, what can i do?

[katja]

I think I've already posted this in another post....
Ill just look up my file of worksheets I got from therapy........................................................................................................................................................
ok I'm gonna post as much info as I have on this.
firstly, I learnt how to recognise types of negative thinking;
all or nothing thinking
"hes an idiot" "im hopeless, I'll never learn to drive. Im a complete faliure" you may condemn yourself completely as a person on the basis of a single event
awfulising
over exadurate the importance of events and how unpleasant they will be, if you have a setback you see it as a never ending pattern of defeat.
personalising
you take responsibility and blame for everything unpleasant even if it has nothing to do with you.
negative focus
you ignore the positive aspects of a situation. you focus on your weaknesess and forget your strengths
jumping to conclusions
you are likely to predict that negative things will happen
living by fixed rules
you have unrealistic expectations regularly using the words "should" "ought" "musnt" and "cant" this leads to unecessary guilt and dissapointment.

That was useful to me, because when I started thinking things like 'ill never get into university' I could just read that and know that I was just being silly and negative. sometimes the things you think can seem so realistic you forget that your being negative.

Then I had to make a thought record, which is like a chart and everytime you think something negative like "im so fat and stupid"
you write it down
write what situation you were in that made you think it
evidence that supports the negative thought
evidence that does not support it
and then an alternative more balanced thought

If you do it for a while it really starts to work I promise, even if you dont do it for every negative thought sometimes your brain works so fast its good to slow it down and see where its coming from.

I hope that helps!
xxx

[marshmallowfluff]

thanks so much katja thats really helpful

[Seeshellz]

Hey that's the same thought record my therapist gave me!

And it does help!