{"id":41350,"date":"2020-03-23T07:40:29","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T11:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=41350"},"modified":"2020-03-19T10:42:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T14:42:26","slug":"my-favourite-exercise-for-soothing-anxious-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2020\/03\/23\/my-favourite-exercise-for-soothing-anxious-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"My Favourite Exercise For Soothing Anxious Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"With the craziness of the past week, I\u2019ve definitely had many moments of feeling anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed. Throughout hard times like this, I think it\u2019s more important than ever to sooth anxious thoughts and think rationally. Even though things may be hard and stressful in real life, it\u2019s also important that we not get overly caught up in the emotion of a situation, which can make things feel a lot worse.\r\n\r\n
\"A<\/a>
creds: giphy.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n
My favourite exercise to help sooth anxious thoughts was taught to me by my therapist. It\u2019s called creating a Thought Record, and it\u2019s a great way to put your thoughts \u201con trial\u201d and see whether you're actually overblowing a situation and causing unnecessary stress for yourself.\u00a0I generally complete a Thought Record when stressing about something and feeling myself spiral into emotions that may not be rational or helpful in the situation. To complete a Thought Record, I just write down the answers to the following questions, thinking through my thoughts:<\/div>\r\n \r\n\r\n\"A<\/a>\r\n\r\n1. Situation\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nFirst,\u00a0<\/span>I begin by identifying the situation that caused my anxious feelings or other emotional reactions. I describe exactly what happened in the situation, taking care to stick to the facts of the situation. So, who was involved? What happened? When and where did the situation occur?\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n2. Automatic thoughts\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nI then write down all the thoughts and images that pop up in my head in relation to the situation. So, for example: \u201cI won\u2019t be able to get through this,\u201d or \u201cthings are\u2019t going to get better.\u201d Once I've listed all the thoughts and images that are popping up, \u00a0I then identify the thought that elicits the strongest reaction for me\u2014this is the \u201chot thought\u201d that is occupying my mind the most.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n3. Evidence that supports the hot thought\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s time to put the hot thought \u201con trial\u201d! To do this, I list out all the \u201cevidence\u201d that supports the hot thought\u2014so, if my hot thought was \u201cthings aren\u2019t going to get better,\u201d I would write down some facts of the scenario that support this claim.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n4.\u00a0<\/span>Evidence that does not support the hot thought\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nNext, I switch sides and list evidence that does not <\/i>support the hot thought\u2014so, facts of the situation that show me things might actually get better, in this example.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n5. Balanced thoughts\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\r\n\r\nI'm almost done! Now, I play the role of the judge and look at the evidence I've written down, trying to determine a \u201cverdict\" which sees the evidence-based reality of the situation. So, in this example, my verdict may be \u201cit feels like things aren\u2019t going to get better right now, but the evidence shows that it likely will.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\"A<\/a>\r\n\r\nThere we go! After doing this exercise, I feel like I have more of a handle on a stressful situation. I can also see the ways in which my mind was creating irrational thoughts and pictures that didn\u2019t align with the evidence of a situation. I highly recommend you try this out if you\u2019re feeling anxious or stressed!\u00a0<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\nWith the craziness of the past week, I\u2019ve definitely had many moments of feeling anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed. Throughout hard times like this, I think it\u2019s more important than ever to sooth anxious thoughts and think rationally. Even though things…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “My Favourite Exercise For Soothing Anxious Thoughts”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “My Favourite Exercise For Soothing Anxious Thoughts”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":374,"featured_media":41351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7204,62,1,69,58,66],"tags":[86,27705,13627,259,1882,1439,27707,27706,85],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41350"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41371,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41350\/revisions\/41371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}