Dear Caroline:

Yesterday, Sunday at 1:54 pm (my time) I submitted a post to you ending with: “After you do a little research emotion regulation skills (part of DBT), CBT, and assertiveness skills, let me know what you think about what you read and we can talk about it further.“.  At 2:42 pm, you submitted this post: “Okay, reading about this right now, Anita.”

TWELVE MINUTES LATER, at 2:54 pm, you submitted this post: “Anita, it sounds really good. But I wonder if it’s easy to find a quality therapist. I may need to ask on fb pages or do some research“, and EIGHT MINUTES LATER, at 3:02 pm, you submitted this post: “I found interesting article on assertiveness. There are some exercises and examples how to talk to people. I don’t know if I can do this.. I would like to. But I also feel exhausted. And I am trying since last year. I thought I changed so much already. Why is it so hard.“.

Back to what I suggested to you: I suggested that you do a little research on “emotion regulation skills (part of DBT), CBT and assertiveness skills“, and after your little research, I asked that you will let me know what you think about these three topics.

By little research, I didn’t mean a total of twenty minutes which included you typing the last 2 posts. Maybe you rushed so much because you were anxious and exhausted. You have to be calm enough to be able to patiently read and process information.

Here is from positive psychology. com/ emotion regulation(it includes the mention of the relevant CBT and DBT; I am adding the boldface feature to the quote to emphasize what I believe that you need to do): “Most Useful Emotional Regulation Skills for Adults: Self-regulation is all about pausing between feeling and reactions – it encourages us to slow down for a bit and act after objectively evaluating a situation… With proper regulation and self-control, we gain the power to stay calm under pressure… Here are some skills that can help in cultivating emotional regulation and sustaining it during challenging times in life. 1. Self-awareness: Noticing what we feel and naming it is a great step toward emotional regulation. For example, when you feel bad, ask yourself – Am I feeling sad, hopeless, ashamed, or anxious?…

“2. Mindful awareness:… Simple mindful exercises such as breath control or sensory relaxation can calm the storm inside and guide our actions in the right way. 3. Cognitive reappraisal: Cognitive reappraisal includes altering the way we think. It is an essential component of psychotherapies like CBT, DBT, and Anger Management, and calls for greater acceptance and flexibility… where we try to look into a stressful situation from a whole new perspective. For example, we can replace thoughts like ‘My boss hates me’, ‘I am no longer needed here’, etc. with alternatives such as, ‘My boss is upset at this moment… I know I am hard working and honest, let me give it another try’, etc.. By doing so, we gain a broader and better perception of our problems and react to them with more positivity…..”.

You can’t heal, Caroline, if you don’t do the work such as attentively reading and calmly considering what you are reading. If you do take a few days off work, I hope that you will be able to do this…?

anita