Over the last several we’ve discussed all the ways that we experientially avoid, including escape strategies and reassurance seeking, situational avoidance, somatic avoidance, cognitive avoidance, and emotion-driven behaviors. The last form of avoidance is emotional avoidance. Emotions are evolutionarily adaptive states that motivate behavior. Every emotion has or has had some utility in the evolutionary past. …
At the end of last year, we discussed experiential avoidance including escape strategies and reassurance seeking, situational avoidance, somatic avoidance, cognitive avoidance, emotional avoidance and emotion-driven behaviors. For the next several weeks, we will shift to another type of response mechanism that creates, maintains, and intensifies psychological suffering: repetitive negative thinking. Repetitive negative thinking is the …
Worry is a two-part process including an uncertain question and an attempt to answer it. Whether the attempt to answer it occurs via analysis, problem-solving, distracting, or getting reassurance, the attempt to answer is always problematic because it can never “solve” an unanswerable question and it makes the original uncertainty feel more threatening. We typically …
I’ve decided to organize the categories of repetitive negative thinking into types so that I can also organize interventions that will be most helpful for each type. You won’t find this in any textbook, scholarly articles, or elsewhere on the internet. I’m using these types for us to have shared language without unhelpful interpretations that come …
Your process for any task is your series of steps to achieve your end. Your process for brushing your teeth or cleaning your kitchen may seem to you like “that’s just how you do it,” but if you surveyed the next 10 people you encounter it is very likely that their process for those tasks are …