PI's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Blog
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 2,942
In December 2019 I started seeing a therapist for depression. At the time my "symptoms" were sleeping a lot (~12 hours/day while unemployed), being distant & catatonic with my girlfriend, and just a general "I feel content but not happy" feeling. I specifically sought out someone who would help me practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques. As of ~2 months ago I've felt a lot better.
But for the past few weeks, while I still haven't felt depressed, my therapist has encouraged me to do "daily CBT exercises" (I'll describe examples in future posts), and, well, with daily work/life/exercise, sometimes I just forget to do the homework, so this thread will hopefully be an exercise in accountability for myself. I want to be happy instead of content, and to get there, I need to practice CBT every day - so the hope is that I'll post here (almost) every day.
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 2,942
I’ve been doing a daily “make a list of good things and bad things that happened that day” that my therapist mentioned at the end of our last session. He was correct that, most of the time the “good list” items outnumber the “bad list” items.
What surprised me was that I’ve been saying to myself “well, what can I do to turn these bad items into good items?” And saying that has made me more excited to tackle each day.
(Still lots to work on.)