acting in old ways in the face of major new realities, and
personalizing, labeling, minimizing, magnifying, blaming, fortune-telling, mind-reading, negative-filtering, and all those other nutty cognitive distortions.
I hope that we nuts can figure out how to save ourselves and the planet before it’s too late, so we can keep being nuts together in less nutty ways.
All my photos today are nuts!
If you’re nuts about any of those photos, you can click on them to enlarge them.
Here‘s one of my favorite songs about how we’re all nuts (from before the days of social distancing):
If you’re nuts like me, please leave a comment below.
I am grateful to share this nutty blog with you, every day!
Do you see any metaphors in my other captured images from yesterday?
I wonder if it’s a metaphor that on this Presidents’ Day weekend my phone and my laptop are not communicating and are refusing to share images with each other. Maybe it’s a metaphor that I’m working harder to create these posts, starting on my phone and then completing my daily blog on my laptop.
Nevertheless, it’s easy enough to share this metaphor-filled song, performed by The Temptations and UB40:
I look forward to any metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech in your comments, below.
Thanks to all who helped me create this “Metaphors” post, including YOU!
Emotional Reasoning.
We take our emotions as evidence for the truth. Examples: “I feel inadequate, so there must be something wrong with me.” “I feel overwhelmed and hopeless, therefore the situation must be impossible to change or improve.” (Note that the latter can contribute to procrastination.) While suppressing or judging feelings can be unhelpful, it’s important to recognize the difference between feelings and facts.
My definition of “Emotional Reasoning” does NOT include examples of the negative aspect of that, as in “I do NOT feel that way, therefore it’s not true.” I’m reasoning that I could have written that definition with this example: “I do not feel adequate, so there must be something wrong with me.”
All this came to my emotional mind this morning when I read this news headline:
That is all emotional reasoning. I know that two of those statements are true, no matter what I’m feeling. And I have many emotions about the third statement, so who knows if it’s true?
Do you see emotional reasoning in any of my photos from yesterday?
While artfully couched in the iconography of the Christian nativity, the songwriters were making a political statement: a plea for peace, and a reminder of the ravages of war.
The song opens with the night wind speaking to a lamb, long a literary symbol of peace. Soon we hear the line, “A star, a star, dancing in the sky//With a tail as big as a kite.”
“The star was meant to be a bomb,” said Gabrielle Regney.
Later we hear the lyrics “A child, a child, shivers in the cold,” which Regney said is a reference to the “real children” who inspired the song.
And the line, “Let us bring him silver and gold” was a reference to “poor children,” said Regney — a reminder of the human cost of war.
But no matter how you interpret the song, Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne left no mistake about the central message at the climax of the song.
“The biggest part for them was the ‘pray for peace’ line,” said Regney. “That line, ‘pray for peace,’ was very big for both of them.”
These days, I don’t ask myself “What could possibly go wrong?” because I know the answer might be:
every little (and big) thing one’s catastrophizing mind might think of and
other things, too.
Asking myself “What could possibly go wrong?” is not my favorite waste of time, because expected and unexpected things go wrong every minute, every hour, every day.
However, there is a way of asking that question that assumes a positive outcome. For example, what could possibly go wrong if I share all my photos from yesterday?
I don’t want to get too hung up on presenting definitions and synonyms of “hang-up,” so here’s a list of hang ups that preoccupy me and others, these days:
What am I supposed to do about an important discussion from last night’s Coping and Healing group, in which we focused on radical acceptance?
Radical Acceptance means completely and totally accepting something from the depths of your soul, with your heart and your mind. You stop fighting reality. When you stop fighting you suffer less. (From “Three Blocks to Radical Acceptance” by Karyn Hall, PhD.)
What am I supposed to do about asking for comments?
What am I supposed to do about gratitude for all who helped me create today’s post and — of course! — for YOU?
Who’s to blame for never writing a post titled “Blame” before, even though it’s one of the thirteen cognitive distortions discussed here?
I’m to blame for that and for repeating that description here:
We blame ourselves for every problem, or hold other people entirely responsible for a negative situation or feeling. When we focus on assigning blame and figuring out who is “at fault”, we are usually ignoring the complexity of a situation. Also, blaming can result in staying stuck in negative feelings, rather than moving towards action and solutions.
Does it help to blame? What about this major news story?
I’m very upset about that news story. Can you blame me?
However, I don’t want to stay stuck in negative feelings. I’d rather move towards actions and solutions. But what actions and solutions are there?
I try not to blame myself for becoming overwhelmed, sometimes, by the immensity of problems.
I do think there is a difference between blaming and taking responsibility. Blaming keeps us stuck in the past and pointing fingers at each other. Taking responsibility is more adult, focusing less on shame and more on the next achievable steps.
I take responsibility for all these photos and please don’t blame me if they don’t relate to today’s topic (because I took them all before I knew what I was going to write about this morning).
I take responsibility for expressing my sincere gratitude at the end of every post. Thanks to all for helping me create this blog and for reading it, here and now!
As I described in last week’s post — Day 2328: A Year of No Worry— I have pledged to not worry for a year, which has been helping! As also described in that post, I told an employee at Home Depot — who said, “It’s my job to worry” — that there was a huge difference between worry and helping.
Yesterday, in a therapy session, the difference between worry and helping came up again.
As you can see from those lists, worry entails many negative experiences and helping includes much more positive experiences. In some cases, the experiences are almost opposite (“frozen” vs. “warmth” and “future” vs. “in the moment”). And yet, people often intertwine worry with helping, believing that unless they worry about others, they will focus too much attention on themselves — becoming selfish jerks rather than helpers. As usual, black and white thinking (one of the cognitive distortions found here) causes us to think it’s all or nothing — either we are selfish jerks or worrying helpers.
What I’m discovering, in my year of no worries, is that letting go of worry is helping me become a better helper to others. Worry saps my energy and gets in the way of my being as much as possible in the moment with others and therefore more sensitive to their needs.
I’m not going to worry about whether my writing in today’s post or my other photos from yesterday are helping.
If you need help interpreting any of those photos, don’t worry. Ask for help and I’ll give it, worry-free.
Here‘s what comes up on YouTube when I search for “The difference between worry and helping”:
I think that video about differences between humans and animals is very helpful.
