Now that we’ve established what the different levels of thoughts are and how they can negatively impact our mental health (Our flower bed) - lets look at how to manage & overcome this.
Please see the previous flowerbed post to understand the different levels of thought.
This will help to explain what Core Beliefs, Assumptions, Rules & NATs are.
We all have a set of beliefs, rules, thoughts which will need guidance/changing at times.
People’s life experiences, environments, history, upbringing, life context makes us all different.
Our mental health is on a spectrum which is forever changing & adapting.
It is completely normal to have the odd negative thoughts & feelings.
However, if these negative thoughts/beliefs begin to impact your life & cause distress this is where therapy can help.
A good first step is to look at spotting & challenging the NATs on the spot.
Challenge their validity, consider alternative perspectives.
This can sometimes be enough to get people back to living a healthy life.
However, if there is underlying core beliefs, rules & assumptions then further work might be needed.
The next stage is to investigate & find out what your core beliefs are & what rules & assumptions are underneath them.
Then we can explore how these rules are serving you & how they are hindering you.
We can then begin testing if these rules are helpful by experimenting with how we interact with ourselves, the world & others in situations.
By doing the above, we will be able to develop more helpful & flexible rules, beliefs & thoughts.
We can begin to re-write our new sets of beliefs & aim to live by them instead.
We can continue to gather evidence on whether this is working & keep up the CBT tools to manage things.
Make sure we are tending to ourselves in the basic ways, such as routine, sleep, sunlight, exercise/movement, diet, caffeine etc.
The past is the past. We cannot change what has happened in our past. But we can change how we look back on the events. We can change our current life & take healthy steps to set up the future that we would like.
