Keep your thoughts and your thinking real!

This week I am going to look at the impact that stressful, anxious and or worrying thoughts can have on us phsycial and mentally.

When we are feeling stressed, it may be because of one very stressful event or there may be several more other stressors involved, if you are feeling that your stresses are having a negative affect on your well-being it is time to look at how you can help yourself manage them and you may need to look for extra supports to help you manage them.

"As a general rule, stress only becomes toxic when we are exposed to persistent bouts of acute or chronic stress." (Dr. Harry Barry, 2010 p 38)

One of the ways to deal with the stressors is to break down the different stressors and manage each one separately; although all the stressors will  be connected at some level, one source of stress having an impact on another e.g. if there is financial difficulty, it may be affecting your lifestyle, you may be worrying about how you are managing to make ends meet; this may be causing stress within relationships and therefore having a de-motivating affect on how someone feels on a general day to day basis. 

It may be easier to look at the stresses you feel that are easier to manage first - small steps; it may take more time to tackle some of the bigger ones and you may need more supports in place to do this, but it's good to prioritise.  One of the ways to tackle these stresses is to understand what are the kind of things that are causing you stress right now, what I like to refer to as the "stress pot".  Would it help to make a list?  When you have figured out what is causing your stress, we then have to look at the way we are thinking about it, are we stuck in a place where we are continously worrying and overly anxious about something, being stuck with these worrying and anxious thoughts is not going to help us in how we manage the stress, it only makes it worse.  So it is important to address how you are thinking and if it is realistic?

The Negative Stress Cycle is a key plan for dealing with any stressor.  We can start off with the stress pot, there can be several items in the stress pot, these have an affect on our thinking, these thoughts have an affect on our feelings, and these thoughts and feelings in turn have an affect on behaviours.  All in all this pattern will only add to the stress, to the point that we only feel more stressed out so it is really important to know whether our thoughts are actually being helpful  to us - they may not be.  Here is a diagram of what I refer to as the Negative Stress Cycle:

In order to address your thinking one of the things to be aware of is how distorted thoughts can work against us; when we are feeling low in ourselves we tend to think more negatively and that is where the distortions can run riot.  Have a look at the list below and see if you can identify any of these thinking patterns:

Distorted thoughts that are not helpful:

• All-or-nothing thinking:  you think in black and white, good or bad with no middle ground. 
• Awfulising - catastrophising:  you tend to blow things out of proportion, over-estimating what might happen 
• Personalising:  you make tend to take too much responsbility for things that happen and readily blame yourself for anything always feeling it's "your fault". 
• Negative Focus:  you tend to forget your achievements, and always look at the negative - you tend to focus on a weakness rather than a strenght 
• Jumping to conclusions:  you believe you know what's going to happen next without any solid evidence, mind-reading, trying to predict the future are all ways of jumping to conclusions. 
• Living by fixed rules:   you are ruled by the word "should", you may have unrealistic expectations which will lead to unecessary feelings of guilt and disappointments. (T. Powell, 2000 p 76)

Challenge the Distorted Thoughts:  This is the next step, to break the negative cycle we have to start challenging the negative thinking patterns as well as looking for supports to manage the stress load.  Here are a few ways that you can do this:

• Look at the evidence:       What is the evidence to support your thinking?
• Alternative views:             Are there any other ways of looking at this situation?
• Impact of your thoughts:  Is the way I am thinking helping me, or making me feel worse?
• Thoughts:                          Are my thoughts distorted in anyway?
• Action:                              What action can I take that would be useful, finding supports that would help.
• What is the worse possible outcome:  How bad can it be?  Know your strenghts and abilities.(T. Powell, 2000 p 19)

Remember to learn to talk to yourself in a more positive way, if you have coped with stressful events in the past look at what might have helped you manage.  Try to remember your strengths and abilities, talk in a reassuring way to yourself, acknowledging things may be difficult right now but holding on to the hope that things will get better.   Healthy communication, addressing your needs and looking for support when necessary can all help to make stressful events more manageable.  Next Blog I will look at worry and how to address it.

References:  Flagging Stress by Dr. Harry Barry 2010 Liberties Press
                    Mental Health Handbook by Trevor Powell 2000 Speechmark Publishing Ltd.,