A 30-day challenge of any kind

ADDITIONAL SYMPTOMS Loss of confidence and self-esteem. Unreasonable feelings of self-reproach or excessive and inappropriate guilt. Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide, or any suicidal behavior. Complaints or evidence of diminished ability to think or concentrate, such as indecisiveness or vacillation. Change in psychomotor activity, with agitation or retardation (either subjective or objective). Sleep disturbance of any type. Change in appetite (decrease or increase) with corresponding weight change). Well, that is exactly what you should be wondering, because that is what we need to fill into the B section: our thoughts about the situation. In my example, this friend was someone that has some pretty serious health issues and I thought the bastard was trying to die on me. Let's pull back the curtain a little bit. A = Activating event, B = Beliefs, and C = emotional Consequence. If my friend let me know that we need to talk in a vacuum without any other influences, it would not be a bad thing in and of itself. Unfortunately, that's not how things work and instead, my jerk of a noggin had to interpret the event through the lens of my beliefs about the situation. Since I think that he is calling to tell me that he's dying, I'm sure as hell going to feel pretty crappy. Take a second to look through the cognitive distortions that I defined a little earlier. Can you see any of them that seem similar to my beliefs in this situation? I'm definitely engaging in a little bit of fortune telling. Calories 120 160 Calories from fat 10 10

Percentage daily value Total fat (1. Saturated fat (0 gram) 0 0 Trans fat (0 gram) Polyunsaturated fat (0. Monounsaturated fat (0. Cholesterol (0 milligram) 0 0 Sodium (110 milligrams) 5 8 The severity of a depression (mild, moderate, severe) is then determined by the total number of symptoms, with a special focus on the number of core symptoms. In addition, some exclusion criteria must be taken into account, such as whether there are also episodes of abnormally heightened mood, a brain disease exists, or the person recently consumed any drugs. Finally, how often the depressive episodes occur is observed, as well as how long they usually last. When the diagnostician has all this information, he can use it to make a diagnosis. Or he may come to the conclusion that the analyzed person does not meet the criteria for any psychiatric diagnosis. Behavioral therapists also like to use psychological tests in their diagnostics. Unfortunately, the entertainment value of those is usually far below the tests of other therapy schools. One of the things you will probably never encounter in a CBT office is the famous Rorschach test. Here, your task would have been to say what you see within this strange thing in the next picture. What is it? I don't know what he is going to tell me, but that's not stopping me from emotionally reacting with stress and anxiety. I'm probably doing a little bit of catastrophizing too, since he's really been in pretty good health lately.

Do the same thing for your Bs. See if you can identify some of those maladaptive thought patterns. I bet you can. I encourage you to write them down as well next to what you wrote in the B section. The next step in using a thought log like this is to challenge your negative thinking patterns. Pretend like you're a lawyer and your brain is on the stand. You get to ask it questions and hopefully reveal that it is guilty of sabotaging your sanity. How are you sure that he wants to tell you that he's dying? Potassium (95 milligrams) 3 8 Total Carbohydrate (27 grams) 9 11 Dietary fiber (3 grams) 13 13 Sugar (6 grams) Protein (3 grams) Vitamin A 10 15 Vitamin C 25 25 Calcium 0 15 Vitamin D 10 25 Thiamin 25 30 The joke answer: an ink blot probably won't earn you much laughter from your diagnostician. The disadvantage of this test is obvious: the correct answers can be found all over the Internet.

With those, even a psychopathic serial killer can disguise himself as the boring average guy. The last picture, by the way, is most commonly seen as being an animal hide on the ground. But don't worry if for you it's a groundhog lying on its back, having mutilated arms and a dragon head coming out of its butt. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. While this test in Germany and many other countries is used only rarely, it seems that it is still a big thing in Japan [24]. Another beautiful diagnostic which you unfortunately hardly ever see in a CBT office, is the Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Test. Here, you look at single cartoons of people in a conflict situation. The speech bubble of one character is already filled in - finding the text for the other person now is the task. Has he ever wanted to talk about other important things? Did you have something that you are working on together that might have hit a snag? Once you develop a few good alternatives to your unhelpful belief, try them on for size. Scratch out your original B and instead put in an alternative. In my case, I can replace, I think he's dying, with, He screwed up on our project and we are back to the drawing board. Does that change anything? Sure it does. Now my C is boiling rage and anger instead of anxiety. Not that much better. Let's try another. Riboflavin 25 35 Niacin 25 25

Vitamin B 6 25 25 Folic Acid 50 50 Vitamin B 12 25 35 Calories 2,000 2,500 Total Fat Less than 65 grams 80 grams Fat Less than 20 grams 25 grams Cholesterol Less than 300 milligrams 300 milligrams Sodium Less than 2,400 milligrams 2,400 milligrams One of the cartoons, for example, shows a couple in front of their car. The man is searching his trouser pockets, while the woman is harshly complaining to him about apparently having lost the keys. What do you want him to answer? Maybe a defensive I'm so sorry! By means of a very complicated scoring procedure, the frustration tolerance of a person is determined. The original set of pictures dates back to the 50s, what makes some situations look a bit outdated. One situation, for example, is about a man in a public telephone box, who gets into trouble because of the telephone exchange making a mistake. If you now want to try out the test yourself, then here's a conflict situation from our times. What do you want the other person to answer? Now let's have a brief look at the tests that you are more likely to see in CBT offices. Maybe he wanted my advice about a new girl that he is seeing, because he knows that my game is hella tight. That actually makes my C transform into positive things like happiness and pride.