Not having a good day

[firecat]

When I get stressed in certain ways then I start getting a zillion messages per minute running through my head, all of which have the words "YOU SHOULD" in them.

If this happens to you too, how do you turn it off?


(There's no emergency. I just want to fix a bunch of things that I am not in a position to fix, although I might be able to influence them.)

Comments

[zeborah]

I haven't tried this exactly but I've done variations on it (eg when I'm so busy that my mental to-do list is clamouring in my head so that I can't focus on any one thing, I write them all down and suddenly my head's a lot quieter and the list's a lot shorter; also lists of pros and cons when decision making) -- so I'd try writing down each one of the things my head is saying "I should" about, and next to it write the reason why actually I needn't or shouldn't.

Once my head's unpanicky, I have a two-pronged approach to keep it that way:

1. distraction - reading, internet, tv, favourite fanvids, whatever's easy and fun
2. achievement - writing, vidding, making a website, creating a Wikipedia page, tackling the to-do list - once I've got enough mental energy to do this kind of thing it helps repair my sense of self-awesomeness. --This would be the point at which, if it happened to turn out any of those "I should"s was still true, I could actually cope with doing it.

[firecat]

That sounds like a good collection of tools to apply!