Hi please I feel overwhelmed with thoughts and have No one to talk to what do I do
Asked by Precious
Answered
05/10/2022
Hello Precious,
Thank you for reaching out, I know it is not easy to ask for help at times. Based on what you shared with your question, it seems like trying to focus on your emotional management could help you with some of those problems until you are able to afford therapy. Regarding emotional management, it is important to accept that we all suffer from emotional instability at times. In the heat of the moment, we say something to a person we love without stopping to consider the shockwaves. Or we blast off an email and wonder why we didn’t sleep on it before pressing Send. Our emotions spill over and, by the time they recede, the damage is done. The converse situation is that we feel gripped by fear or anxiety and fail to seize the moment to speak up or act according to our values. The consequences of freezing can be just as deleterious as those of overreacting, and sometimes more so. Either way, managing our emotions is a tricky business.
When we look back on these situations our stock explanation is, "My emotions got the better of me." But this raises a serious question: Am I in charge of my emotions, or are they in charge of me? Nobody asked me this question at school or told me the answer. Consequently, I stumbled into the adult world with a royal flush of emotions, ranging from joy and excitement to fear and anger, without a manual for how to live with them.
The truth is that we’ve ended up with a tangled mess of advice in this area. Much of the prevailing literature tells us to squash negative emotions and replace them with positive ones. Other experts tell us this is tantamount to putting the icing on dog food and calling it cake. So who, if anyone, is right? To navigate through this emotional battleground, we need to make some important distinctions:
We cannot turn emotions on and off like a tap. They will come and go whether we like it or not. Once this is clear in your mind, you can stop waiting for unwanted emotions to go away. The idea that we can banish them is unhelpful and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny; they are part and parcel of the human experience. Besides, the more we strive to live according to our values and commitments, the more our emotions will rise up to challenge us.
Emotions aren’t positive or negative. The human brain is wired to categorize things as positive or negative and is particularly alert to threats. This made good evolutionary sense for our ancestors, who learned to react to external threats for the purposes of survival. As humans developed language, we employed the same process of classification of our internal state, including our emotions. Thus we see joy as positive, and therefore welcome, and fear as negative and unwelcome.
However, this creates new problems. On the basis that ‘what we resist persists’, suppressing emotions that we perceive to be negative only tightens their grip. So what’s the alternative? If we can experience the full range of human emotions without attaching positive and negative labels to them, the result can be hugely liberating.
You are not your emotions. Emotions are, by their very nature, strong. However, it’s important to get clear that you are not your emotions. You are a person with values and commitments who happens to have emotions that are triggered on a regular and ongoing basis. This point might seem semantic, but it isn’t. When we become fused to our emotions, thinking that ‘they’ and ‘we’ are one and the same thing, we are effectively hijacked by them. If you can notice emotions without becoming them, they no longer determine your behavior.
We always have a choice. A thought or feeling in itself doesn’t prevent you from taking any action. It’s easy to think, "I’m frightened and can’t speak," but this is a trick of the mind. It would be more accurate and authentic to say, "I’m frightened and I’m choosing not to speak." Being able to observe our emotions, even when they feel overwhelmingly powerful, creates a space in which we can reference our commitments and values. While we cannot always choose our emotions, we can choose our response to them. This gets to the heart of responsibility, and responsibility is probably the closest thing to a superpower that human beings possess.
Now that we have discussed emotional management, the next logical step would be to find ways in which to handle the cognitive distortions that lead us towards stress and anxiety, and even depression. Some of the most common cognitive distortions are:
- BLACK-AND-WHITE THINKING: A person with this dichotomous thinking pattern typically sees things in terms of either/or. Something is either good or bad, right or wrong, all or nothing. Black-and-white thinking fails to acknowledge that there are almost always several shades of gray that exist between black and white. By seeing only two possible sides or outcomes to something, a person ignores the middle and possibly more reasonable ground.
- PERSONALIZATION: When engaging in this type of thinking, an individual tends to take things personally. He or she may attribute things that other people do as the result of his or her actions or behaviors. This type of thinking also causes a person to blame himself or herself for external circumstances outside the person's control.
- 'SHOULD' STATEMENTS: Thoughts that include "should," "ought," or "must" are almost always related to cognitive distortion. For example: "I should have arrived at the meeting earlier," or, "I must lose weight to be more attractive." This type of thinking may induce feelings of guilt or shame. "Should" statements also are common when referring to others in our lives. These thoughts may go something like, "He should have called me earlier," or, "She ought to thank me for all the help I've given her." Such thoughts can lead a person to feel frustration, anger, and bitterness when others fail to meet unrealistic expectations. No matter how hard we wish to sometimes, we cannot control the behavior of another, so thinking about what others should do serves no healthy purpose.
- CATASTROPHIZING: This occurs when a person sees any unpleasant occurrence as the worst possible outcome. A person who is catastrophizing might fail an exam and immediately think he or she has likely failed the entire course. A person may not have even taken the exam yet and already believe he or she will fail-assuming the worst or preemptively catastrophizing.
- MAGNIFYING: With this type of cognitive distortion, things are exaggerated or blown out of proportion, though not quite to the extent of catastrophizing. It is the real-life version of the old saying, "Making a mountain out of a molehill."
- MINIMIZING: The same person who experiences the magnifying distortion may minimize positive events. These distortions sometimes occur in conjunction with each other. A person who distorts reality by minimizing may think something like, "Yes, I got a raise, but it wasn't very big and I'm still not very good at my job."
- MIND READING: This type of thinker may assume the role of psychic and may think he or she knows what someone else thinks or feels. The person may think he or she knows what another person thinks despite no external confirmation that his or her assumption is true.
- FORTUNE TELLING: A fortune-telling-type thinker tends to predict the future and usually foresees a negative outcome. Such a thinker arbitrarily predicts that things will turn out poorly. Before a concert or movie, you might hear him or she or them say, "I just know that all the tickets will be sold out when we get there."
- OVERGENERALIZATION: When overgeneralizing, a person may come to a conclusion based on one or two single events, despite the fact reality is too complex to make such generalizations. If a friend misses a lunch date, this doesn't mean he or she will always fail to keep commitments. Overgeneralizing statements often include the words "always," "never," "every," or "all."
- DISCOUNTING THE POSITIVE: This extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking occurs when a person discounts positive information about a performance, event, or experience and sees only negative aspects. A person engaging in this type of distortion might disregard any compliments or positive reinforcement he or she receives. Thought patterns can be changed through a process referred to in cognitive therapy as cognitive restructuring. The idea behind it is that by adjusting our automatic thoughts, we can influence our emotions and behaviors.
- FILTERING: This cognitive distortion, similar to discounting the positive, occurs when a person filters out information, negative or positive. For example, a person may look at his or her feedback on an assignment in a school or work and exclude positive notes to focus on one critical comment.
- LABELING: This distortion, a more severe type of overgeneralization, occurs when a person labels someone or something based on one experience or event. Instead of believing that he or she made a mistake, people engaging in this type of thinking might automatically label themselves as failures.
- BLAMING: This is the opposite of personalization. Instead of seeing everything as your fault, all blame is put on someone or something else.
- EMOTIONAL REASONING: Mistaking one's feelings for reality is emotional reasoning. If this type of thinker feels scared, there must be a real danger. If this type of thinker feels stupid, then to him or her this must be true. This type of thinking can be severe and may manifest as an obsessive compulsion. For example, a person may feel dirty even though he or she has showered twice within the past hour.
- ALWAYS BEING 'RIGHT': This thinking pattern causes a person to internalize his or her opinions as facts and fails to consider the feelings of the other person in a debate or discussion. This cognitive distortion can make it difficult to form and sustain healthy relationships.
- SELF-SERVING BIAS: A person experiencing self-serving bias may attribute all positive events to his or her character while seeing any negative events as outside of his or her control. This pattern of thinking may cause a person to refuse to admit mistakes or flaws and to live in a distorted reality where he or she can do no wrong.
- 'HEAVEN'S REWARD' FALLACY: In this pattern of thinking, a person may expect divine rewards for his or her sacrifices. People experiencing this distortion tend to put their interests and feelings aside in hopes that they will be rewarded for their selflessness later, but they may become bitter and angry if the reward is never presented.
- FALLACY OF CHANGE: This distortion assumes that other people must change their behavior for us to be happy. This way of thinking is usually considered selfish because it insists, for example, that other people change their schedule to accommodate yours or that your partner shouldn't wear his or her favorite t-shirt because you don't like it.
- FALLACY OF FAIRNESS: This fallacy assumes that things have to be measured based on fairness and equality when in reality things often don't always work that way. An example of the trap this type of thinking sets is when it justifies infidelity if a person's partner has cheated.
- CONTROL FALLACY: Someone who sees things as internally controlled may put himself or herself at fault for events that are truly out of the person's control, such as another person's happiness or behavior. A person who sees things as externally controlled might blame his or her boss for poor work performance.
If you identify any of these as issues you struggle with, then you will have a better chance of countering them.
If you need additional help, please do not hesitate to reach out once you are able to access therapy, and I will be happy to help, have a wonderful day Precious :)
LPC