Nurse Audrey's Stress Relief

Your Stress Relief Minute

Research shows that much of our stress is due to our struggle with unwanted thoughts. Perception of a situation or event with its subsequent thoughts is what causes a great deal of stress. It is not the situation itself, but rather how we are processing it through our thinking.

The process works like this: you interpret events with a series of thoughts that flow through your mind. This is called internal dialogue. These thoughts keep spinning in our minds. One thought leads to another and soon we find ourselves totally worked up. We then become prone to misinterpreting events in an irrational way without finding a satisfactory solution.

We all have tapes—either positive or negative—that play in our minds. While the positive ones are welcome, the negative ones are distorted, being an accumulation of beliefs and attitudes that have been formed from the past. These irrational thoughts and beliefs can lead to self-defeating and unhealthy stress.

It is certain that you will not be able to get a handle on your stress until you first deal with your distortional thoughts.

Cognitive-behavioral Therapy

The bad news is that everyone, at one time or another, is prone to distortional thinking.
The good news is that we all can change the distortional thought process.
In 1961, psychologist Albert Ellis published A Guide to Rational Living, which was the foundation for what we now call cognitive therapy.

Psychiatrist Dr. David Beck found his depressed patients experienced streams of negative thoughts that seemed to pop up spontaneously. He then discovered that these thoughts fell into three categories: negative ideas about themselves, the world, and the future.
Does this ring a bell?

Rational thinking plays a large part in helping people gain control over their negative thought patterns.

Distortional Thinking
Our thoughts create our mood. Dr. David Burns, a proponent of cognitive therapy, says that cognition is the process of beliefs, perceptions, and mental attitudes that gives interpretation to events. He then identifies ten types of distortional thought patterns, two of which we will cover today.

All-or-nothing thinking
Do you know someone whose thinking is just black or white, with no grey areas? They cannot be convinced that there may be two sides to a story. This type of person is probably a perfectionist who heaps stress on himself and on others because he lives in a world of illusion. This kind of person is guaranteed to be a loser in whatever he does.
A healthy thinker investigates options, knowing that no circumstance or person is perfect.

Overgeneralization
This type of individual lumps all experience into the thought that if one thing goes wrong, nothing will ever go right for him. This can become a never-ending cycle of defeat.
We need to realize that stress begets stress.
I encourage you to note your thought patterns for the next two weeks, keeping a note of them.

In the next newsletter, we will look at more distortional thought patterns. Hopefully, this information will help you adopt new, healthier thought habits.

To lighten your day:
I have no luck. I once went to the Grand Canyon and it was closed!
I’m the kind of guy who gets paper cuts from get-well cards!

Till next time… “Nurse Audrey” signing off!

Questions/Comments: audrey@possibilitiesnetwork.com
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