You may have strong unpleasant feelings such as fear sadness or anger. However you may not want to burden other people with how you’re feeling or you may feel unsafe expressing them. Research suggests that being open about how you feel can be a helpful way of coping with the difficulties you’re facing.
You will have the chance talk at a more in-depth way with your therapist. You can get in touch with us today at IC Therapies.
Dealing with negative thoughts
When coping with any long term condition like diabetes or cancer you may face very unpleasant experiences due to possible major changes in your way of life and perhaps uncertainty about the future. When you think about your condition some of your thoughts may help you cope better, whereas others may be unhelpful and lead to more distress. Once you’ve faced your negative emotions and shared them with trusted friends and family and your therapist you can start to explore the thoughts behind them in therapy. Some examples of thoughts that might make is more difficult to cope are:
‘I can’t cope’
‘There’s no point in doing anything’
‘I can never be happy again’
Such negative thoughts can lead you to underestimate your coping abilities and may lead you not to try using the rest of your abilities. You may also overestimate your problems if you act as if the negative automatic thoughts are entirely true. We call these thoughts ‘automatic thoughts’ because they seem to come from nowhere and they can be unrealistically pessimistic.
The negative automatic thoughts may be difficult to spot initially however this is something your therapist can help you to do more regularly. You can learn to identify and modify your negative automatic thoughts. You can learn to separate realistic negative thoughts from extreme unhelpful negative thoughts. You can keep a diary of when you get these thoughts, what may be triggering them, and how you feel and what you do when you get them. Many people find that just by learning to catch the thoughts helps them to gain more control over them.
Remember, a diagnosis should only be made by a mental health professional as mental health difficulties will impact everyone differently. Common mental health difficulties include anxiety and depression.
Common symptoms of anxiety
- Feeling like you can’t stop worrying, or that bad things will happen if you stop worrying
- Having a sense of looming danger, panic or doom
- Feeling tense, nervous or unable to relax
- Being unable to enjoy leisure time, such as time off work, holidays or hanging out with friends
- Struggling to concentrate
- Difficulty sleeping
Anxiety can also cause physical symptoms, like shallow or rapid breathing, a fast, thumping or irregular heartbeat, trembling or muscle tension.
Common symptoms of depression
- Feelings of worthlessness or guilt – fixating on past failures or self-blaming
- Feelings of sadness, tearfulness, emptiness or hopelessness
- Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things
- Frequent or recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal thoughts, or suicide attempts
- Struggling with motivation or having no energy to do what you used to enjoy doing
Like with anxiety, there are also physical symptoms, like fatigue, tiredness, restlessness and unexplained aches and pains.
Would like to get help understanding more about negative automatic thoughts and how to identify and modify or challenge them? Then please get in touch with IC Therapies using the contact form on our website https://www.ictherapies.co.uk/contact/
