Tag: anxiety

Popular Psychology, Taking Control of Your LIfe

Making Peace With The Worst Case Scenario

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment on Making Peace With The Worst Case Scenario

istock-peaceFear is a powerful emotion that keeps many of us from living life fully. It holds many of us hostage, too afraid to leave relationships, to start new careers or simply to try something new. Many people stay stagnant in life because they are afraid that if they reach for something different than what what they have, and fail, then they will lose more than they already have.

Maybe you are in a relationship that is emotionally abusive and you want to leave, but are afraid that by leaving you will be lonely and alone forever, so instead you stay in this relationship that is killing you emotionally.

That fear of what may happen can be so real and intense, that it keeps you from ever reaching out and seeking something that could be much more fulfilling and fruitful.

Because fear can rob us of precious time and experiences, it’s important that we learn how to control it the best we can and one way of doing that is by making peace with the worst case scenario. By making peace with the worst case scenario, it’s possible to take much of the fear out of fear itself.

Going back to our example, let’s say that the worst case scenario is being alone. When you make peace with the worst case scenario, you take some of the bite out of that fear. So what if you are alone forever, that will give you plenty of time do whatever you want to do, to get to know who you are without the complexities of another person molding you into the person they want you to be. It gives you plenty of time to become a self-actualized person, to give back to the community, the world, to become a philanthropist, a leader, or whatever you want to be because you don’t have to answer to anyone. And, when given the opportunity, loneliness can give way to solitude (please see my post Loneliness versus Solitude for more information).

The thing is, the likelihood of never dating again after the break up is extremely low and most of the time, our fears are largely irrational or over exaggerated .

How many times have you feared something, and once you actually experienced that fearful thing, it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be and you felt much better afterwards? Maybe you grew from the experienced in one way or the other. Making peace with the worst case scenario can help us realize that without having to go through the actual fearful situation.

On top of that, making peace with the worse case scenario can help bring clarity to a situation.

Just today I got an email from a student during the final minutes of school saying she was having dreams about killing herself and hasn’t been able to sleep. She ended her email “Please Help”. Immediately I responded to her email asking her where was she, and for her to come see me. I immediately contacted the class she was supposed to be in only to find out she hadn’t made it to class and had possibly left campus. It was the end of the school day and I wasn’t sure what else to do. This student has a history of suicide attempts and while she didn’t explicitly say she was thinking about killing herself in the email, the worst case scenario would be that she ended up committing suicide.

Looking at the worst case scenario in this way forces clarity. It made me ask myself, if that tragedy were to happen, can I say that I have done everything I was supposed to do in order to save this student. Did I do due diligence? Did I do the best I could to locate that student and make sure she was safe despite the fact classes were now over? Would I at least have some comfort in saying that I did everything I could have possibly done to save this child?

While processing this case with a coworker, I realized I hadn’t done all I could have done in the worst case scenario. I immediately went back and tried to contact both of her parents to no avail, then I called the sheriffs office and asked them to do a well-being check on her at home. It was only then that I felt I had done everything I could have reasonably have done, in the worst case scenario.

When you look at it this way, when you make peace with the worst case scenario, it is more likely that you have done everything in your power to prevent it, so that if it does come to pass, you can at least have solace in knowing that.

Fear doesn’t have to hold us hostage, it can actually free us if we learn how to embrace it and make it work for us, not against us.

Taking Control of Your LIfe

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Brief Primer Part 3: Ignoring Negative Thoughts

by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Brief Primer Part 3: Ignoring Negative Thoughts

As we discussed in part 2 of this series, according to cognitive behavioral therapy, our thoughts control our behaviors and thus control our feelings, but sometimes it is very difficult to control our thoughts for a number of reasons.

On average, we have about 50,000 thoughts a day! Some of them, despite our best efforts, are bound to be negative thoughts that make us angry, fearful, anxious, sad, pessimistic, etc.

Ideally we would analyze, confront and dispute each of those negative thoughts to see if they are even rational, and then use cognitive restructuring (changing the way you perceive a situation), to turn those thoughts into less harmful and even productive ones.

With 50,000 thoughts a day going through our minds, it’s not plausible to expect to be able to sit down and use the ABC’s of thoughts, feelings and behaviors on each and every one of those thoughts, we can save that for some of the bigger, more damaging ones that keep us from experiencing life fully.

So what do we do with the other dozen, hundred or even  thousands of negative thoughts?

We can chose to ignore them! Yes, it’s that simple! We can chose to ignore them, pay less attention to them, dismiss them and not allow them to take over our thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

We can learn to realize that thoughts are just thoughts, nothing more.

A thought by itself is harmless until we give it power (either good or bad). The same is true with feelings. We can have a feeling enter us, acknowledge that feeling, but don’t dwell on it, and in a very short amount of time that feeling is likely to leave us.

It’s only when we ponder, over analyze and start assigning that feeling/thought meaning that we start to give it ammunition to do harm or motivation to do good.

Let’s take for an example that one day at a coffee shop writing in your blog you start thinking, “I should have been a writer. I just wasted my entire life slaving away instead of following my passion.”

If you dwell on that thought and let it torment you, you will feel like a loser and are likely to start feeling sad. Or, you can recognize that it’s just a thought and dismiss it.

This doesn’t mean that writing isn’t something you should be doing and maybe pursuing more, it just means that in this moment you are choosing not to pay attention to that thought, especially since you recognize that it’s likely to make you feel bad.

It’s not a cop out. It doesn’t mean that later on you can’t go back and apply the ABC’s of thoughts, feelings and behaviors to it, it just means that in that present moment you are choosing to dismiss it and use that mental energy more constructively.

If we paid attention to all the negative thoughts we had, we would be worn out, worthless and depressed.

It’s very important not to dwell on thoughts that have happened in the past or will may happen in the future.

It’s important to be present and dismiss those negative thoughts that come flying in about the past (even if it was ten minutes ago) or about the future.

The beautiful thing is, you’ll learn that once you start dismissing and ignoring those negative thoughts, more peaceful thoughts are likely to fill their space and you’re more likely to feel at peace with yourself and your world.

Popular Psychology

Clearing The Air: Mental Illness In Relation to Smoking

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment on Clearing The Air: Mental Illness In Relation to Smoking

The other day I was at a sports bar people watching, something I commonly do, when an attractive waitress caught my attention. I watched as she went outside on her break and then did the most disgusting and disfiguring thing, she put a cigarette between her lips and lit it.

I was shocked as I watched her inhale and then exhale a white puff of smoke. She had to be aware of the astounding amount of health issues related to smoking from cancer to cardiovascular disease, and she was smoking by herself so there weren’t any apparent social benefits, so how could someone so young and beautiful be putting that carcinogenic smoke into her body?

I immediately started thinking that she had to be self-medicating for one reason or another and that got me to thinking, is that why so many people are still smoking, can they all be self-medicating with nicotine and if so, from what?

The first obvious answer to me was stress. A lot of people smoke because they are stressed out and use nicotine to help calm their nerves. A study I read said that approximately 30% of people who smoke do so because they are depressed. For these people, nicotine actually helps them feel better, if only temporarily. These people instead of learning how to deal with their depression through counseling and appropriate anti-depressants if needed, have learned to depend on nicotine. Evidence of this came from U.S. clinical trials for Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant. During the trial to see how effective Wellbutrin was on depression, a fair number of participants who smoked suddenly stopped smoking. With drug companies being as clever as they are, Wellbuturin was soon not only sold as an anti-depressant, but was repackaged and renamed as Zyban and sold as a treatment to help people quit smoking.

Also, in an article called “Smoking in relation to anxiety and depression: Evidence from a large population survey: The HUNT study” published in European Psychiatry, it was shown that anxiety and depression were the two most common complaints in people who smoke, with anxiety being the highest complaint, followed by anxiety and depression combined and then depression by itself.

People with mental health issues, even if they are underlying, are twice as likely to smoke as the rest of the population. So it is possible that the people around you who smoke, your spouse, your friend, your family member, (or even you if you smoke) may actually be self-medicating for an untreated and undiagnosed issue that needs to be attended to. With proper treatment, they may lose the desire to smoke altogether. Encourage them to talk to their doctor, health care provider or other mental health provider about how their mood factors in with their urges to smoke.