Though early in March it's still winter it somehow feels like spring to me and so what better way to begin this month's round of SharePosts than to write about cleaning house?
My first-ever published article was in the Women's Forum of the local newspaper. Time to Start Spring Cleaning was published in January 1990 when I still lived in the residence and had not yet begun my first job as an administrative assistant.
The suggestion was that you do spring cleaning in January to beat the winter blues and blahs. I felt this season was the perfect time to clean house. Spring cleaning as a wellness strategy involves clearing your mind of the emotional clutter and automatic thoughts that come to occupy it like true clutter over the years.
Spring arrives in two weeks and for this I'm glad. I feel now is the time to focus on a mental health tool that can help you clear out and make room in your head to let in new opportunities and people.
My own spring cleaning started in the fall when I donated two bags of clothes to the Salvation Army and bought new clothes to reflect the new me I'd become. It continued through the end of the year when I devoted my journal to writing about topics I wanted to focus on to be at peace with.
In this winter, I used cognitive therapy techniques to change my thoughts to change my life yet again. I'm a big fan of CBT as a tool for coping with SZ symptoms and for changing your perceptions of what's going on so that you can take control. Your situation might not change however once you change your perception of it you'll be able to cope better.
CBT-the B refers to the behavioral aspect-was a tool I used two years ago with a therapist in private practice. At the end of this article I'll link to my two SharePosts talking about these sessions. Here now I want to detail cognitive therapy techniques you can use on your own to affect changes in your life.
The book recommended to me by Dr. Altman was The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook, 6th Edition that offers simple, concise step-by-step directions for refuting irrational ideas, worry control, coping skills and acceptance among other techniques. It also talks about exercise and nutrition and time management and assertiveness.
The book costs $25 so it's cheap enough to buy. Make photocopies of the worksheets so you can write in them over and over. I will detail the chapter on refuting irrational ideas here because it is a low-rent version of cognitive therapy.
A community member asked for suggestions and I gave her the nuts-and-bolts of this technique and it worked well. I have used it in my own life to change my own thoughts to mediate how I felt about a situation. Using the worksheet on this focus allowed me to take control of another area of my life. Things happened this way in a snowball roll to good effect.
