Train your brain to change your mind

It's bad to experience negative emotion is the attitude. CLIENT: If I do, I'll lose control. THERAPIST: What are the advantages of not sticking out in a crowd? CLIENT: People won't notice me. They won't see that I don't fit in. THERAPIST: How would you fill in this blank? If I even try to make plans with other people, then ___________? CLIENT: They'll turn me down because I have nothing to offer them. How Can 1 + 1 = 0? When Stephanie and Steven got together, they were excited and hopeful about their relationship. Over time they shared their dreams and began talking about the future. It certainly looked as though they were a committed couple. Caught up in the excitement of being with a positive, appreciative woman who shared his values, Steven pursued the relationship. Everyone who saw them got the impression that he was committed to his relationship with Stephanie. But at the point where the newness of the relationship began to fade, Steven realized something was wrong. As he later said to Stephanie when he walked out, something was missing. The excitement he initially experienced with Stephanie faded, and he found his predicament impossible to discuss with her. While he continued to act as if everything was fine, in his private moments he felt otherwise: All these take an invisible toll on our minds and bodies. This pressure is stress.

It is a mismatch of demands with resources available to you,' says psychiatrist Dr Niti Sapru. Gynaecologist Dr Ranjana Dhanu has another definition: `Stress is when you disturb the mental balance in a negative way'. HOW LARA DUTTA CONQUERED THE UNIVERSE I was under tremendous pressure. Sushmita had won six years before and there had been no winner since. The articleant was extremely competitive. Everybody goes there with the same amount of pressure. Looking back, I think the way I performed in Cyprus is exactly the way that I am. We become reluctant to try anything new for fear we won't do it well enough. Or we suffer from chronic stress, because we're always placing such high demands upon ourselves. Or we're continually disappointed or dissatisfied, because we don't live up to our own high expectations. Impostor syndrome results when although you are skilled at what you're doing, you get hooked by thoughts that you're not competent: that you can't do it properly; Naturally, if you buy into these thoughts, it will shake your confidence. Yet another sure-fire way to undermine confidence is to replay and dwell on all our past failures. This readily leads to reason-giving: `It's always gone badly in the past, there's no point trying again'; At this point, you may be wondering, `Okay, but what then? After I've unhooked myself, what do I do? Imagine listening to your favourite music with your ears full of cotton wool. Evaluation of conditional assumptions through questioning or other methods often creates greater cognitive dissonance than does evaluation of the rule or attitude. It is easier for LENNY to recognize the distortion and/or dysfunctionality in the assumption If I please other people, they won't hurt me than the related rule (I should please others all the time) or attitude (It's bad to displease others).

Having identified an intermediate or core belief, you need to figure out whether it's worth spending time on. You usually work on beliefs linked with an issue a client has put on the agenda or with an obstacle to reaching a goal. Here are some questions to ask yourself: What is the belief? Does it lead to significant emotional distress or significant maladaptive behavior? Does the client believe it strongly and broadly? Does it significantly interfere with achieving his/her goals and aspirations or engaging in valued action? When clients strongly endorse more than one negative belief about an issue or obstacle, you usually focus on the one that is associated with the greatest degree of negative emotion or dysfunctional behavior. He was confused, anxious, and felt backed into a corner. He didn't experience a closeness with Stephanie, in spite of all their talk. He wondered what to say and what to do. He was uncertain about whether he really loved her. Most disturbing of all, he wondered if he was incapable of love and loyalty. Meanwhile, encouraged by all the intimate words they had exchanged, Stephanie was carried away by the idea of the relationship. Although Steven now talked more, over time he actually had less to say about himself or about his feelings for her. Stephanie was so focused on the future that she became blind to things right in front of her, the nonverbal cues that something was wrong: The increasing lack of sustained eye contact between them The disappearance of small gestures of affection I took each day as it came. I never sat down and thought, Oh God, I've got to win it, I've got to do it.

I could have driven myself crazy but I took each moment as it came. As soon as I decided to do that, things started to happen almost instantly. Suddenly, people woke up and noticed Miss India's clothes. Or that Miss India could speak well. So when you quietly get on with what you have to do and not stress about the task at hand, your work speaks for itself. The pressure increased after winning the articleant. I was living alone in New York. I wasn't allowed to have any family living with me. Or watching your favourite movie wearing dark sunglasses. Or eating your favourite food while your tongue is still half-numb from a visit to the dentist. Or having a back massage while you're wearing a thick woollen jacket. This is how we experience the world when we're all caught up in our thoughts. Remember the `hands as thoughts' exercise from article 5? When your hands were covering your eyes (fusion), you were missing out on the world around you. But as you moved your hands away from your eyes (defusion), the world around you came into focus: you could see so much more clearly and `take it all in'. If we want to get the most out of life, we need to be fully present: aware, attentive and engaged in what is happening. This involves a mindfulness skill called `engagement': connecting with the world through noticing what we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. The `hands as thoughts' exercise demonstrates how defusion and engagement are related. DECIDING WHEN TO MODIFY A DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEF At the beginning of treatment, you work on automatic thoughts whose theme is indicative of a dysfunctional core belief.

You begin to work directly on modifying the negative core belief as early in treatment as possible. Once clients change these beliefs (or decrease the intensity of these beliefs), they're able to interpret their experiences in a more objective, functional way. They begin to view situations more realistically, feel better, and act more adaptively. But you may need to wait until the middle of treatment to do this with some clients, especially those with beliefs that are long-standing, rigid, and overgeneralized. In this latter case, you'll teach clients the techniques of identifying, evaluating, and adaptively responding to automatic thoughts before using the same tools for dysfunctional beliefs. Note that you may unwittingly try to evaluate a core belief early in treatment because it has been expressed as an automatic thought. Such evaluation may have little effect. Having identified an important dysfunctional belief, you can ask yourself these questions to figure out whether to work on the belief at the time: The loss of the intimate tone of voice he had used when they first met His forgetfulness about small promises The disappearance of the playfulness that had been an important part of their early relationship By the time they went on their last vacation together, Steven already had long lost interest in her--he just hadn't told her yet. Wanting It to Work Isn't Enough Despite their desire to be close, both Steven and Stephanie lacked the early life experiences and communication skills that would have enabled them to build a lasting relationship. Steven was disengaged, and Stephanie was anxious. Each one lacked the ability to be self-aware and self-revealing. Adequate early relationships depend on an interactive communication process that conveys mutual recognition and understanding. It's about being seen and being known--being played with and feeling that your perceptions and emotions are observed and understood. I would dine with presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state, and I had no idea whether to call them Your Excellency or Your Grace or Your Highness. I learnt these things on the go.