Manage Stress and Avoid Anxiety Part III Psychological methods of stress management

The principles of cognitive therapy suggest that negative thoughts popping up in the mind on various occasions are significant in the development or exacerbation of depression, anxiety, anger, low self-esteem, self-defeating behaviours and difficulties in stressful situations. Therefore one has to identify and challenge these negative thoughts which are automatically generated into the consciousness in order to enable a person to reduce distress and enhance the ability to cope with stressful situations. The psychological techniques of stress management can be summarized as follows:

•         Learn specific strategies to think more realistically and positively about life.

•         Avoid negative thinking and cognitive distortions.

These techniques are collectively referred to as cognitive restructuring procedures.

COMMON COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

1. BLACK AND WHITE THINKING (ALL OR NONE THINKING) 

Some people see everything in terms of ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ with no middle ground. One may self suggest that being in a relationship with somebody or in an association with some movement must be all good, otherwise it is a terrible and unfulfilled relationship or association.

2. CATASTROPHISING (EMOTIONAL THINKING)

Some people exaggerate their mistakes or problems by blowing them up out of proportion. For example, suppose your boss asked you to do something again. If you think that it is ‘the worst thing that could have happened’ it is emotional thinking. Catastrophising or emotional thinking always causes tension and anxiety.  

3. MIND READING                 

This is reading more into the behaviours and expressions of others than is really there. For example, if your boss calls you into his office to speak to you. While coming out from the room you think: ‘He looked at me strangely. He is angry with me.’ Not even experienced psychiatrists and psychologists have the power of mind reading. Mind reading is a negative automatic thinking.

4. FORTUNE TELLING (SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY) 

Some people are in the habit of imagining the worst will occur in events and assuming all life events will turn out badly. Example: Not wanting to attend a party one thinks:”I know I’ll have a bad time and no one will speak to me.” Using this cognitive distortion can lead you to actually making a negative scenario a reality (At the party he feels uncomfortable and avoids contact with people). This is often referred to as ‘self fulfilling prophecy’.

5. LABELING                             

You attach a negative label to yourself or others instead of describing the actual behaviours or actions. Example: calling one a hopeless loser rather than just acknowledging that one had made a mistake.

6. OVER GENERALISATION                  

This is drawing a general conclusion on the basis of only one incident. One bus conductor misbehaved to a passenger. The passenger draws a general conclusion that all bus conductors are bad and misbehaving.  

7. MENTAL FILTER                              

Some are in the habit of taking into consideration negative things and incidents only. A clerk in a bank was working very well and was happy. At the fag end of the working hours a customer expressed some anger for the delay. The clerk forgets all good tidings of the day and broods over the angry response of a customer.

8. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE       

A girl’s friend said: “You look good in the photograph.” The girl’s response was: “Oh! It is only because photographer touched the negative.”

9. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS                   

The person has not arrived in the exact appointed time. One jumps to conclusion: “He will not come today.”

10. MAGNIFICATION AND MINIMISATION                             

Overestimation and underestimation of one’s own potentialities are self defeating negative thinking.

11. PERSONALISATION                    

Owns others lapses and faults. The student failed in the examination owing to lack of preparation. The father of the student tells himself: “My son failed because of my lack of attention and proper parenting.”

12. “MUST DO THAT” THINKING

One should be able to understand others’ weakness and difficulties. Otherwise the individual will suffer from anxiety and tension due to lapses of others.

How Children Respond to Double Messages from Parents Part II

In Part I of this post, I began the discussion of how children decide how to respond to consistent double messages about what is expected of them from their parents.  I mentioned that they respond according to three general principles of ranking the conflicting elements of the double message, and described the first.

Hmmm.  I find myself questioning your gesture



In this post, I will describe the other two.  Actually, the first two general principles are merely examples of the third, overaching principle.

Principle #2.: Children pay more attention to what adults say to each other, or to generalizations they make about various issues, than to any direct instructions or admonishment said to children.

For instance, a mother might verbally prod her daughter, in a compulsive repetitive manner, to get married - after having spent years telling anyone who would listen about what jerks all men are, and how unhappy she is with her own spouse (her daughter’s father). The degree of the mother's preoccupation with both the subject and her daughter's stand on the issue would quite likely lead the girl to the conclusion that her choice regarding marriage is of major concern to the mother.

Once again I will ask you to suspend your disbelief and assume that the daughter's appraisal of the mother's opinion, right or wrong though it may be, will be a major determinant of what the daughter does, regardless of the daughter's own personal preference. So what to do? The mother's negative comments about men, according to principle #2, would seem more important than the direct admonition to marry, so most likely the daughter would not marry.

However, once again, she will face criticism if she stays celibate. A possible solution is for the daughter in such a situation to end up picking a series of jerks with which to hook up, in order to satisfy both ends of the double message. That is, she follows her mother’s instructions and keeps trying to find a husband, but proves that her mother is correct about how men really are.

Whether she dates a series of jerks or actually marries and then divorces a series of jerks will usually depend on other relationship issues in her family of origin, such as what role her father plays in this family drama.

This leads us to the general principle, principle #3. When someone compulsively engages in repetitive behavior, family members will invariably conclude that this behavior is quite important to the perpetrator. In the example from principle #1, as mentioned, they conclude that mother likes to do housework AND complain about it. In the example from principle #2, they conclude they have to try to do what they are told while conforming the way they do it to the parent's apparent expectations. 

Far be it for a child to deprive a parent of a cherished role. In the first case, they will “help” their mother by making sure that she has plenty of housework to do, and plenty to complain about.

In order to do so, they may appear to be oppositional to the parent, but the oppositionality is merely an illusion. To borrow a phrase from Marshall Mcluan as co-opted by psychoanalyst Leston Havens, the medium of the total picture of the mother's behavior over the entire history of the relationship takes precedence over single element - particularly any verbal message. The mother's total spectrum of behaviors, in context, is more important that what she says on any specific occasion.



Keeping these three principles in mind, it becomes easy to see why oppositional behavior is so common in dysfunctional families. In cases where parents are ambivalent about themselves, they induce children to appear to disregard verbal messages in favor of some other factor.

This may have biological roots. Attention to non-verbal behavior preceded attention to verbal behavior in the evolution of social animals.