Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

Thoughts are not facts. They are a mix of opinions, judgements, stories, memories, theories, interpretations, and predictions about the future.

The thing about the human brain is that, when you believe something, the brain will scan the environment for any signs that the belief is true.

Thoughts are not facts. They are suggestions offered up to us by the brain to help us make sense of the world.

you have to get to work being your own coach instead of your own worst critic.

When we focus on trying to fix the problem, it is easy to underestimate the power of simply being there.

Emotions are your brain’s attempt to explain and attach meaning to what is going on in your world and your body.

When we feel anxious about something, the most natural human response is to avoid it. We know that if we stay away, we’ll feel safe, for now. But avoidance not only maintains anxiety, it makes it worse over time.

The more work we do on building self-awareness and resilience when all is well, the better able we are to face life’s challenges when they come our way.

Just as thoughts are not facts, feelings are not facts either. Emotions are information, but when that information is powerful, intense and loud, as emotions can be, then we are more vulnerable to believing in them as a true reflection of what is going on. I feel it therefore it must be a fact. Emotional reasoning is a thought bias that leads us to use what we feel as evidence for something to be true, even when there might be plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.

Physically moving your body can help to shift your mind when it is otherwise very difficult.

It reminds us that our mood is not fixed and it does not define who we are; it is a sensation we experience.

But humans are not built to be in a constant happy state. We are built to respond to the challenges of survival.

You might notice that you feel the need for more reassurance from others when your mood is low. If you don’t get that extra reassurance you might automatically assume that they are thinking negatively about you. But that is a bias, and it is quite possible that you are your worst critic.

we have to focus on making good decisions, not perfect decisions. A good decision is one that moves you in the direction you want to go.

Something that I have come to realize over the years of working as a psychologist is how much people struggle with low mood and never tell a soul.

Confident is not the same as comfortable.

If we associate failure with unworthiness, then starting anything new is going to feel overwhelming and procrastination will be front and centre. We protect ourselves from the psychological threat of shame by sabotaging the process before it gets started.

Getting better at relationships does not mean learning how to get the other person to do or be what you want them to be. In couples therapy, you can work on your relationship together. But you can also work on your relationships by understanding your own individual needs and patterns and the cycles you tend to get stuck in.

Procrastination is something everyone does. It’s when we put something off because the job we need to do triggers a stress reaction, or some other feeling that is aversive.

If we don’t do the work to develop self-acceptance, we set ourselves up to live a life in which we may need constant reassurance, get trapped in jobs we hate or relationships that cause us harm, or find ourselves living with resentment.

Not all low mood is unidentified dehydration, but when dealing with mood it is essential to remember that it’s not all in your head. It’s also in your body state, your relationships, your past and present, your living conditions and lifestyle. It’s in everything you do and don’t do, in your diet and your thoughts, your movements and memories. How you feel is not simply a product of your brain.

We naturally look for evidence that confirms our beliefs. We then experience what we believe, even when there is evidence to suggest otherwise.

When you are low on energy, the chance of exercising goes down, along with your mood. Low mood gives you the urge to do the things that make mood worse.

When outbreaths are longer and more forceful than inbreaths, this slows the heart rate and calms the body.

So don’t concentrate on sleep, concentrate on relaxation, rest and calm. Your brain will do the rest.

Feeling down is more likely to reflect unmet needs than a brain malfunction.

Every time we say no to something because of fear, we reconfirm our belief that it wasn’t safe or that we couldn’t handle it. Every time we cut something out of our lives because of fear, life shrinks a little.

Anything that you link to your self-worth can give rise to shame. In order to build and maintain a sense of self-worth, we need to understand that our worthiness as a human being is not dependent on living mistake-free.

There is a period in which we have to grind, doing things that matter to us, even when we don’t feel like it, in order to re-engage with the pleasure we used to feel.

Grief is a normal part of human experience. It is a necessary process to go through when we experience the loss of someone or something that we loved, needed, felt connected to and that held meaning in our life.