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Reddit mentions of Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)
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I felt the same way about hunger/cravings for a long time, and I had anxiety about passing up food.
I used meditation to learn how to deal with it. Specifically, I did a workbook called Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life, which helps you accept and manage your emotions, and a month of guided meditation with the Headspace app.
Best of luck!
You don't need to apologize. I guess the best way to describe it is that you and your thoughts are separate. This is something that's initially hard to wrap your head around because we think "I had a thought, that means there must be some truth to it"
This really isn't the case. However there are some thoughts that "hook us" positive ones, negative ones and we "buy" them. I.E. "I'm a failure"
CBT works at basically accepting those thoughts as thoughts as well as emotions, and body sensations. The good and the bad, when we do this there really isn't "good and bad" anymore, there is just different states of being. To be able to have really negative thoughts and not judge them but to see them as "Oh look at that, I'm having negative thoughts" takes lots and lots of work.
I mean it, I've been working at it for a few months almost every day. If you're interested in getting started the book I am reading is get out of your mind and into your life
Another thing I like about it is the strong emphasis on non-talk therapy. I am pretty against Freudian psycho analysis and talk therapy for the most part. Talking about things can definitely help, but if you're anxious or depressed I find it easier to just go "fuck I'm having the feeling that I'm useless and a failure" as opposed to "I'm sad because my mother beat me" and then you go down that rabbit hole and ruminate forever.
The difference between acknowledging something as "I'm having the memory of abuse" and "I'm abused" are two completely different things, you begin to see your mind as an external event.
There are traps though, accepting everything is difficult, because it means accepting pain and anger and sadness, but really how can you know what elation and joy feel like if you don't feel the others.
Wouldn't you want to experience life in it's fullness as opposed to just parts of it?
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Also, I realized the book that I suggested is more about ACT therapy which is useful as well.
You're welcome. My dad's a G.P. and he got copies of these for every one in my family. They are amazing.
Other good ones to look at are:
And for a refreshingly new approach:
Here are a few workbooks that can help:
cbt for depression
dbt skills
act workbook
These are all solid workbooks to help build your coping skills even when you do not feel like it. Treating Depression can be like cleaning the dishes. Even if you do not feel like doing it, it gets better once you do one at the time. Otherwise it just piles and piles.
I was admitted into a partial hospitalization program about a month ago and what they taught me was useful. They used a lot of stuff from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Help? Yes. Silver bullet? No.
Try the book Get Out Of Your Head and Into Your Life, which is based around Acceptance Commitment Therapy. While ACT was not based on Stoicism, it came from a body of psychological research that independently showed real-world viability for many Stoic principles and values.
The basic idea is that there's pain, and then there's suffering. Suffering comes from focusing on your pain, rather than acknowledging it and moving on. It goes into why the brain focuses on pain so much and what do do about it. Then it goes into a brilliant bit about the fact that much of suffering comes from the brain's view of circumstances, but not from the circumstances themselves. There's a horribly cringy example of this around chapter 6 or so that I won't ruin for you, but it's the best demonstration I've ever seen of Epictetus' "Men do not fear thing, but rather the view they take of them".
Again- it's not a silver bullet. It's a tool. I hope it works for you.
A good summation of how I deal with things like that is:
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. That said, I've been through a lot of therapy so I know a lot of techniques I can use to make that change occur. I've been working through a self help work book for one of my classes that I think is particularly helpful. The best I can do is suggest the book to you. It's written for the layman, but is based on a third wave cognitive behavioral therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Here it is on amazon for like 13 dollars.
Edit: Oh, you can even look at the first few pages on amazon by clicking on the picture of the cover. So you can see if you're interested. Damn, I love amazon.
I have been battling this for a long damn time. It ruins you. I have been on vacations to some of the greatest places in the world, and spend the whole time in my head not enjoying a second. I just started therapy and the doc recommend this book. Give it a go if you have the time. I am making some progress with it
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1572244259/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502458765&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=get+out+of+your+mind+and+into+your+life
Have you heard of "trauma bonds"? It's a crazy thing. My therapist suggested a couple strategies for processing the aftermath, I'd be happy to share if you're interested.
Edited to add: There are plenty of resources online that might be helpful. Try them all and find what works with you and your routine. My therapist had me write down a list of all the awful things my Nex had done to me, and I keep the list folded up in my wallet. Anytime I feel overwhelmed by longing for him, I'm supposed to get this list out and read it (aloud to myself, if possible). Coupling those traumatic bond feelings with the reality of what he'd done to me, over time, distances me from having the automatic response of "giving in" to those trauma bonded feelings. Essentially, it's a technique to retrain your brain to not believe every fleeting thought or emotion that it wants to dredge up and force on you. You don't resist the trauma bond feelings--that's impossible, thought suppression doesn't work and might end up reinforcing the thoughts and feelings you're trying to suppress--you let them happen, and you compel yourself to think about how wrong those automatic thoughts are by reading this list of facts that oppose the involuntary feelings and emotions.
If you'd like to learn more, there's a whole lot of stuff like this in ACT. This ACT workbook has been a helpful part of my therapy experience post-Nex.
I'm currently reading a book called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
I'm only partly through the book, but a lot of the things you discuss here are in the book. The therapy is apparently focused on a new development in cognitive science called Relational Frame Theory (RFT). It's fascinating stuff. It even explains why we, as humans, have developed language while other animals such as chimpanzees cannot, and why our ability to develop language can lead to anxiety disorders.
This one and this one are the two that were recommended to me by my therapist.
CBT is more widely practiced as an approach and seems to be getting some really great results for lots of people. I've been to a whole bunch of different therapists - as well as a two week outpatient program, and the approach has bee CBT based. It really works on having you challenge your thoughts and developing new patterns for thinking and behaviors.
My most recent therapist had decided that at that point it would be helpful for me to have a new approach - that I was very good at the introspective stuff, but now was sort of getting stuck in my head analyzing things... but not really engaging in my life in the way I wanted. And she started working on me with ACT. She had me working on the following: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525984006&sr=8-1&keywords=act++therapy+workbook. There is probably value in both these approaches, but I think it will be easier for you to find someone with good experience/results/training on the CBT end and this is really helpful for a lot of people - including me!
This book is one of my go tos for recommending to clients. A lot of traditional CBT approaches involve cognitive restructuring, which, in a nutshell, means trying to wrestle your irrational thoughts into rational ones. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy basically says that your brain is designed to generate crazy nonsense and fighting it isn't generally going to work. You need to learn to allow the crazy nonsense to be there without responding to it or letting it drive your choices.
One of my favourite analogies is that we all have some relative or friend who has...unusual beliefs that we know not to engage with them about (ex: my former building manager believed in the healing power of crystals, and that lizard people were secretly in charge). You know there's no point in arguing because 1) you're not going to change their mind and 2) you're going to waste a bunch of time and make yourself unnecessarily frustrated and 3) you've got better things to be doing.
For people interested in ACT, here's a relatively short (but hopefully comprehensive) explanation about what this exercise shows and how it relates to anxiety disorders.
As stated in this particular exercise you have to try your best to not think of a yellow jeep. You can think of anything else, let your thoughts wander as much as you'd want, but do not think of a yellow jeep. I'd highly recommend that everyone takes a few minutes to try this, since what I'm going to say makes more sense when you know what it's like.
When you do this you end up "fighting" yourself in trying to not think of the yellow jeep. There is of course the thought of the jeep, but you also get thoughts such as "I should not think of the yellow jeep". These are problematic as well because when you get thoughts like those you also find yourself thinking about the jeep. You have to reference it after all if you want to say that you cannot think of it. For many people it also happens that they manage to think of something else but then get nagging thoughts at the back of their minds that they shouldn't think of something, also pulling their minds toward the jeep.
In the case of a yellow jeep it's just the yellow jeep, a object which doesn't create a strong reaction for the majority of people. So it's a interesting exercise, but one that doesn't have a big impact otherwise. However if you replace the jeep with anxiety things become different, since thoughts of anxiety for people with anxiety disorder are often accompanied by both a mental and physical reactions. So when this happens not with thoughts of a jeep but with anxious thoughts (for example "I'm going to die") it can become a loop where the more you get anxious thoughts the more you're trying to make them go away and the more you get as a result.
What ACT tries to do different there is not to remove the anxiety, because that doesn't work well as the exercise shows. But instead it tries to help you to welcome the thoughts, give them space to say what they want to say without you pushing them away, and then to let go of both the thoughts and the advice they gave. There is still the initial anxiety this way, but because it doesn't escalate to take over all your thoughts you can keep doing what you want to do, without letting your life be controlled by the anxiety.
Of course this takes time and practice. ACT is not a miracle cure where you put in virtually no effort and get big results. But for me it has produced better results than anything else I have tried so far, and there is enough information on it now that it's possible to do even without a therapist (however I would recommend finding one whom is capable of doing ACT, as it can make a lot of things much easier).
If this sounds good then I can definitely recommend Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life as it is the best ACT book I have read so far. Also look up work from Jon Kabat-Zinn as he has done a lot to bring mindfulness to western psychology (his Google talk on mindfulness is a good first look at mindfulness without diving into theory right away).
Edit, reworded some stuff to make more sense.
> Better late than never, eh?
Careful, you're starting to sound like an optimist. ;)
Also, I dk about the whole book. I would recommend a different one that covers similar ideas more with an predominantly practical rather than narrative approach. I thought the values exercise was topnotch, though.
I can relate to this topic so badly. I can't tell what works for everybody, but I can share what worked for me and what I wished I did way earlier in my life.
Many of these answers suggest that you just go out to public places. I disagree. It may be a cultural thing, as I live in a very introverted culture, but in my experience, this does very little if your mindset is not right. I believe in the mindfulness approach to conquering your thoughts, which in very few words is by not fighting bad thoughts, but accepting them, knowing that you are not your thoughts. Some great books on this subject is Get Out Of Your Mind and Into Your Life and The Happiness Trap. If you like these books, find a psychologist who works with ACT. It gave me so much to see one myself and get his perspective on things.
Now I am going to make some assumptions. If these are wrong, I am sorry, but I hope that you can at least get something out of it.
I would guess that you feel that people wont be able to relate to you or won't find you interesting. Maybe you also suffer from perfectionism and judge yourself really hard. These were the things holding me back. And still are sometimes. Whatever it is, you're probably not sharing yourself with others. People don't know what you're about and that makes it hard to talk to and relate to you.
There's always an uncertainty whenever you open your mouth and express something that isn't neutral. Everything is open to judgement. You have to be completely okay with that. You're probably not right now. Do people like each other and socialize because they are in complete agreement and they think of each other as perfect? No. On the contrary, you become interesting when you have your unique features, good and bad. Unless your bad traits are really dominant, but for most persons they're not. First and foremost, you have to have positive expectations that people will want to hear what you have to say and act like believe it. If you try to stay neutral until you're sure that people like what you have to say, you're going to come of as weird.
I could write a lot more, but I don't want to go of a rant if this is completely unrelatable to you. Please tell me if this is helpful :)
are you doing anything like therapy? working through workbooks that deal with the issues like the SMARTRecovery materials, https://www.smartrecovery.org/smart-recovery-toolbox/
trying urge surfing when temptation strikes? https://portlandpsychotherapyclinic.com/2011/11/riding-wave-using-mindfulness-help-cope-urges/
doing mindfulness and acceptance work? https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Learning meditation so you can feeling a feeling of temptation and not act on it?
Beta blockers help people go through with flooding, but ultimately they are self-defeating. The point of flooding is for people to experience the very high levels of fear they feel in the presence of the feared stimulus, but realize they can handle both the fear and the feared stimulus. Using beta blockers takes the fear out of the equation, which helps them handle the feared stimulus but not the fear. When the person then encounters the feared stimulus while not on the beta blocker, when the fear resurfaces (through, say, spontaneous recovery), the person reverts to their previous phobic avoidance of the feared stimulus.
There are a couple of nice books out now on following ACT by yourself. The Happiness Trap is one such self-help book, and if you like it, there are some nice free resources, like worksheets you can use, available at that website. Additionally, Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life is a self-help workbook-type thing written by Steven Hayes, the psychologist who developed ACT. Both of those resources are great, IMO.
You could try out this book (Get out of your mind and into your life): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1572244259/ref=pd_aw_sims_8?pi=SL500_SY115&simLd=1
There are a bunch of similar books on amazon - The "workbooks" are basically what you would be doing in cognitive behavioral therapy without the therapist.
I found this to be useful for me at some point. It's partially CBT-ish, but also just has some practical suggestions & plans.
I also recommend checking out acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). It's a little less "logic" based than CBT, so it might work better for some people. Maybe try both. Here's a good ACT workbook: http://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Good luck.
No worries then, haha. I figured I would throw the offer out there just in case.
As a side note, this book/the process it uses has helped me immensely:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381033224&sr=8-1&keywords=get+out+of+your+mind+and+into+your+life
I haven't had a full-blown panic attack in a very long time.
Everyone is different, and every therapy is different. If you find yourself getting stuck, spinning your wheels, not knowing where to turn, it might be worth just seeing what’s out there. There are lots of different ways to carry your pain – some that can enable you, and some that can keep you stuck.
I think it’s really natural that you’re struggling. It would be weird if you weren’t. Like, what would it say about you if you just “got over it” and “moved on” without looking back? That would be weird, right? You loved this person. That’s where this pain comes from – love. So, maybe this sort of pain is good pain. It tells you something about yourself, about what you care about. Maybe it’s not the sort of pain that needs to be shaken off. Maybe it can be carried forward with compassion. Maybe you can use it as a guide to what’s important in your life.
Like I said, there are different ways to relate to pain. I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Good book with scientific support. Good luck.
Currently going at it with a psychiatrist and this book. Going well so far.
Here is a national care crisis number. 1-800-273-8255 Please call. They are very nice and have special training. We all want you to stay here. . Also call your therapist (glad to hear you have them) and set up an appointment soon. Hugs.
........
If you want to do a workbook, the best one I know is for ACT, which is pretty similar to DBT. My library has it but it's also on Amazon:.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572244259/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_2B1VCbQPY3CPT
A lot of good suggestions here, but if you could only read one book that will really lead you to a happier life, by having you take actions and making realizations about where you are it's definitely:
"Get Out Of Your Mind and Into Your Life" by Steven Hayes
Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Life
CBT?
I'm in a much different place now than I was 10 months ago. I started going to therapy for what I was eventually told is functional depression. I had active thoughts not of killing myself, but how nice it would be to be dead. Every day was groundhog day. Life was pointless. I am just a cog in the wheel and at some point I will be replaced with another cog in the wheel that doesn't know any better. At first it was every two weeks, and then I bumped it to weekly because I wasn't seeing results. Are you familiar with the phrase death by a thousand cuts? Therapy is healing by a thousand tiny steps.
First it started with gratitude exercises, which I thought were absolutely bullshit. Take 10 things a day you're grateful for and repeat them to yourself. Like, I'm grateful I missed that red light I always catch on my way to work. I'm grateful to have a caring girlfriend who loves me. Shit like that.
Next it was just completely switching up my routine and doing something different. Instead of going home and going straight to video games with a beer in front of me to get out of my head, my girlfriend and I would go to the beach for a walk or around our neighborhood. Then we would plan and cook elaborate meals. In the mornings I would wake up early and stretch instead of just waking up, getting ready for work, and walking out the door.
Then there's the talking about shit part in therapy. By saying stuff and having a trained professional as a sounding board, they become an interactive mirror. They take the shit you say and put it to you differently. They force you to look at it from a different perspective. They help you unearth the why behind the way you look at everything.
Because we are human and have the ability of language, there's a constant dialogue going on in our heads 24/7/365. As stupid as this sounds, you basically have to ninja mindfuck yourself out of this thing you do that you seemingly have no control over because you've never been presented with the tools. These tiny changes should eventually lift the thick film of shit from your perspective on life.
There's a book called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life. Here's an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
I'd suggest using that in conjunction with a therapist. Even though I'm not perfect and I still have the occasional issue with alcohol, I'm light years ahead of where I was less than a year ago. I'd also suggest finding a therapist in your age range, and preferably a woman. But you do what makes you comfortable.
Good luck.
Look into, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
Pretty much its therapy that revolves around practicing mindfulness. Very easy to do and good to do with others. Maybe you and your grandmother could do some mindfulness meditation stuff together.
Check out this book. https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Maybe try looking into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It's about using mindfulness techniques to help you live using your values as guideposts, and helps you stop over-identifying with your thoughts. Not every thought that enters your mind is "true" or even helpful. Mindfulness isn't about making everything positive, it's about gaining a meta perspective and being able to commit to action that is in line with your values and appreciating the present instead of dissociating and worrying about the past or the future too much.
So you had a rough time during the 2008 recession and you think there's nothing of value in therapy to help with specific "real life" situations like finances. Why is this situation so painful for you? Do you think it makes you a failure if you're effected by a shitty economy? Do you feel shame? These are things that you actually can address in therapy. You can learn a lot about why certain emotions come up for you, or why you might avoid certain emotions. Pretty much all suffering is avoidance. Avoiding things within yourself creates tension and when you over-identify with your thoughts and think that changing your life is some kind of intellectual puzzle to solve, you're going to have a bad time.
I think if you are capable of living in the present, have clearly defined values, and commit to taking action with those values in mind, your suffering will reduce significantly and you will find that hiccups in life like losing a job become less catastrophic because you'll have a better perspective and know what action you should take. If you have a better relationship with your self-concept, losing a job won't bring up a lot of shame or self-criticism, instead you might even be able to feel genuine self-compassion.
That's what's so great about therapy. Sure, you can't solve life's "big problems", but you can change the relationship you have with yourself and change your perspective on what it means to face those big problems and that failure is not the end of the world.
Rather than answer the question directly, may I suggest looking over the material at the first link and just allowing it to be there?
Masters of Meditation
I wrote what I did because because I have been meditating Vipassana-style since the 1970s... and do not experience that any form of "defined," inSTRUCTional, conditioning meditation -- including Mahayana or Vajrayana -- is ever really useful, but is too often misleading, counterproductive and sometimes even plain dangerous.
Functional meditation takes us OUT of our minds. Dysfunctional meditation is too often about how to change our minds somehow. Thus, what one winds up with is just... another mind. (Have a look at this?)
When one meditates long enough, they come to be able to recognize and acknowledge when they are back IN the child's mind. All that matters then is processing what is encountered right then with something like the 10 StEPs + SP4T, Somatic Experiencing, self-administered EMDR or some other form of exposure therapy.
The Meditation Book List
You could try Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. You can use it very well by yourself without a Therapist.
I suggest this book to get started:
https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499698008&sr=8-1&
I'm doing ACT. Dunno if it'd help you or not but it feels like the anti-CBT for me. Rather than replacing thoughts, it's about not fusing/identifying with them.
If you're a book kind of person, I'm using Things Might Go Terribly Horribly Wrong (but I'm also seeing a therapist, too -- although I should add that I'm out of crisis now and into rebuilding.)
If nothing else you might find it a nice change from the "fix what's broken" approach. ACT's approach is more "everyone's broken to some extent, here's how to handle brokenness".
The "standard" book for ACT is Get Out Of Your Mind And Into Your Life.
Check out some of the ACT resources in the field for finding and moving towards your values. It's useful for both your professional and personal development!
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life by Steve Hayes is a good place to start.
I use this Acceptance and Commitment Therapy workbook pretty freuqently with my clients and most say they find it really helpful. In a nutshell, ACT is an offshoot of CBT that incorporates mindfulness strategies and aims to promote acceptance.
therapy is great. Barring that, mindfulness is exactly targeted to becoming more present and less caught up in worries. Headspace is a great app with some guided meditations and videos for beginners. The first ten episodes are free, and actually you can just use them over and over and it's great.
Barring that, assuming you want to learn to be more productive with your inner monologues, learn more about how to use them productively. "How to be an Adult" by David Richo is an amazing book for personal growth. Great for understanding what is going on inside of you. Another one that is more of a workbook but is really tied in to what you're describing is called "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life". It has some great descriptions about what goes on in the mind, with a series of increasing and varied activities for you to practice dealing with them.
Doing other activities can help in the short term, like a distraction, but ultimately your growth in this arena will come from seeking to understand and work with your thoughts better, not just avoid encountering them.
Good luck!
Here you go.. I haven't read them yet, Let me know what you think if you get to them first. I just finished Mastery by Robert Greene and it was pretty incredible. It really hit home since I don't know what the shit I'm doing with my life yet
Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life
basically from:
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; Steven C. Hayes
seems like a reasonable way to deal with avoidant behavior - just keep writing in my notebook my goals, and when I just can't "eat the frog" and take the first step, just speak kindly to the part of my being that is turning forward motion into pain
Hiya! Hope everyone is well.
I am bipolar 2 and a book has been recommended to me for cognitive behavioral therapy. I think it might help, especially if you have depression. I don’t know about grief, and I’m so sorry you are feeling in a rut. I hope things get better and if you just want someone to talk to, I’m here.
The book is this:
“Get out of your mind & into your life” by Steven C. Hayes.
I hope this helps you even a smidgen. Try it if you’d like, but know we’re here for you for hugs and support!
https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Dang, I don't know anyone in NYC (I'm out west). Some general recommendations:
Hope that helps.
Get out of Your Mind and into Your Life (http://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259). This is a self-improvement book written from the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy perspective. It's not specifically meant for people with depression or anxiety or whatever, but for people in general. As a student 3 years into a doctoral program in clinical psychology, I find ACT to be one of the most personally empowering psychological "philosophies" out there. It is grounded in solid research and theory, yes, AND it is also deep, liberating, intuitive, and encourages a fundamentally positive approach to life that can help anyone live a fuller, more meaningful life.
Awesome. I think learning acceptance is a hugely undervalued part of getting over anxiety. Here's another good one that might appeal to you. Not CBT; it's ACT, acceptance commitment therapy. Focuses more on acceptance than on telling yourself how wrong you are for feeling anxiety.
Hey, the book you want isn't Buddhist, but based on it's principles. It is a workbook like you want, it's called "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life." You can get it cheaply here:
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Or it might be in your public library! (That's where I got my copy!)
Also, see a counselor or professional if you can. Be gentle with yourself and good luck!
It's all about your internal narrative. What do you tell yourself about your life? If you tell yourself you're a failure you will act accordingly. If you want to change that behavior I recommend Get out of your mind and into your life.
Update: I should mention that this is a book about ACT therapy and no mumbo-jumbo-self-help-book.
Hey emyouth,
I'm so sorry for your loss, it must have been so very hard on you.
> How do I start seizing opportunities so I don't look back on my life with bitterness and regret?
So one path that I think could really work for you is called ACT. The principle is that a lot of the problems we experience come from fighting against ever feeling painful thoughts and memories causing behavioural avoidance. Things like withdrawing, staying in bed, eating etc. can be tactics to avoid pain.
The solution is counter-intuitive - its to become willing to feel pain so you no longer need avoidance and can start living a full life again. This book is full of exercises, its hard work but mind-blowing:
https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
This one is a bit easier going:
https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Living/dp/1590305841
> I've gained about 40-50 pounds
I've been there, and this might sound odd to say, but it presents a great opportunity. It might not seem like something in your control, but it is. Lifestyle changes are great things to play with and simply any form of change can start making things look brighter.
So I know diet evangelism is pretty annoying... so apologies... but I suggest taking a look at r/keto. Look at how many amazing success stories there and how supportive the community is. One theme you will see is how easy people are finding it. You might find another way of eating that attracts you more.
Eating keto can be a hard step to take, but after a couple of days you adapt and it feels like its cheating because its so easy - you become free of junk cravings so it doesn't need willpower once over the initial hump. One reason I suggest keto is that when you start, you get a big drop in water weight. This doesn't mean much from a fat-loss perspective but it is HUGE to the spirit. You get a massive scale shift and look visually different almost immediately which really helps kick-start that positive spiral.
As you continue to see the scale go down and start to see visual changes, you begin fuelling a positive spiral that will grow your self-worth. What is fantastic is that its so measurable. Even if you can't see visual changes immediately you can see the scale go down. You can start going to bed a winner and waking up with the promise of some good news on the scale.
You probably know that exercise has a dramatic effect on well-being and will also fuel that positive spiral. But its also hard to start so suggesting can be unhelpful. The good news is that I often see that once people have started feeling the energy improvement from dropping a few pounds, exercise starts getting attractive again, and once you add that BOOM, you are now stoking a fire that helps you live the life you want.
Best of luck!
I was on my phone before - here's a link to the workbook. ACT is just one mode of therapy, but I've personally found it helpful, and the workbook is very practical. Get Out Of Your Mind and Into Your Lifeis a bit longer, but is also very practical and evidence based.
Cognitive Behavior therapy will probably be the most helpful. It's evidence based, and will give you exercises that you can actively work on to help both you own mental health and the health of your relationship.
Alternatively, if your area has a psychologist who specializes in ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) I highly highly recommend this form of therapy. Again, it's evidence based and used tools that have been heavily researched and are shown to be effective. The downside is, it's hard to find psychologists who specialize in this, depending on where you live.
There is a workbook that uses ACT, that you can order and use right away, which could be helpful depending on how long you have to wait to get services. It's called "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life". You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539777087&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Get+out+of+your+mind+and+into+your+life&dpPl=1&dpID=51MtkwCKlWL&ref=plSrch
Hope that helps! :)
STC,
There is a type of therapy, its a cognitive therapy, similar to CBT, called Acceptance and Committment Therapy (aka ACT).
It's really powerful stuff.
The man who pioneered it is named Steven C. Hayes. He wrote a fully functional self-help book that WORKS, called "Get Out of your Mind and Into Your Life." From what you shared, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy, its less than $10 used on Amazon, with shipping.
It might be a game-changer for you --> https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
Thank me later... lol
anxiety is always difficult. If you're into reading, self help and mindfulness/meditation I'd suggest reading Get out of your Mind and Into your Life
The book is about acceptance, and is hard to explain, but really doesn't try to use "tricks" or "get your mind off of it" but lets you become a deeper human who allows themselves to think and feel all their thoughts (good or bad), but still is happy. I have been in counseling for years and years, and this methodology is the first to resonate with me.
This one by Steve Hayes, the main author of ACT.
https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
I have UC, and I'm also studying to be a psychologist. ACT is great - out of all the kinds of therapy out there, I think it's one of the best for individuals with chronic illnesses :-) If you're interested in learning more about it, check out the book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life by Steve Hayes.
There's a lot of variation in the type of support that different patients want, so my advice would be to ask your sister what you could do to best support her. (The fact that you're on this sub, and asking this question, is awesome!) In addition, I'd recommend that you learn as much as you can about Crohn's symptoms, treatments, and side effects - I think that would help, no matter what kind of support she needs.
Every patient is different - but for me, personally, the most supportive people in my life are the ones who acknowledge the fact that living with IBD is hard, but treat it as a normal part of life, and don't don't treat me like an invalid (sometimes that can be a very fine line to walk!). My boyfriend and closest friends all have a basic understanding of IBD, have volunteered to accompany me to doctor's appointments (and kept me company during colonoscopy prep!), give me first dibs on the bathroom when I'm not feeling well, and are understanding if I need to avoid certain foods or cancel plans due to illness.
Get out of your mind and into your life. There's a teen version and an adult version.
https://www.amazon.com/Your-Mind-Into-Life-Teens/dp/1608821935
https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0FNNVZWRZP0W0EYZSKXA
I've lost a lot of my life to social anxiety but gotten a lot better through steps that were gradual and not so gradual over the years.
As for actual professional treatment, I can not state enough how valuable cognitive therapy can be. If you have any access to this kind of service use it immediately. Its almost like the therapy was designed with this particular illness in mind.
Even if you can't see a therapist, or don't want to do it right away, there are a lot of good books you can buy with real steps to help you. Here's one-
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
As for personal advice I can share with you a breakthrough I had around four years ago that seems to keep improving my outlook. I realized one day that I spent so much time analyzing each individual encounter I made that I wasn't giving myself a chance to see the big picture, or wasn't acting on it.
Now I just allow myself to mess up and be myself in the moment because I know that over the long term it will lead to me having the most real connections. Its all about changing the perspective of time through which I look at things. I allow myself to relax, and even for certain people to dislike me, because I know the people who really count will be more likely to come into contact with me this way.
I've also improved my self image and see myself as a likable person in a way I never did before. It was hard for me, I think, because I grew up with a speech impediment that in the early years biased me as to how I thought people naturally reacted to my personality.
Its hard to put into words exactly what I realized and I don't think I've done a very good job here. There's a lot more to it, I constantly have to readjust my theories on the world and how I'm framing things to stay ahead of the condition. PM me if you want to hear anymore.
There is hope. The worst part of the illness is how it isolates you, which can severely obscure the reality of things, when you're just stuck inside your own head. The world and other people are much friendlier than your brain is telling you.