Finished my therapy session for today. The biggest takeaway was learning it’s not that I have trouble coping and dealing with my feelings. It starts with not knowing how to manage my thoughts which trigger those emotions. For example, someone may say they don’t like a piece I did

and my immediate thought is usually I’m a failure. That I’m not good at what I do. Instead of observing and breaking down those thoughts, they just hit me and I feel awful about myself and things in general. So I have to start learning to self observe. To look at a thought and

start asking myself, is there evidence that supports this thought (in this case, is there evidence that I’m terrible at what I do, etc). And following that up with, is there evidence that proves this thought is incorrect? After doing that, I have to build a more balanced

perspective. So instead of thinking or believing I’m a terrible artist in this case, I’ll say this person just didn’t like this piece. Maybe I could have done better or it’s not their taste. But this situation isn’t reflective of my whole career/skills.

It’s a process of facing my thoughts and observing them, while also comparing them to the facts as they are. It’s better than what I do now which is letting myself be flooded and controlled by every random thought, or just trying to avoid them and not engage. I also have to

learn to recognize the bias in a lot of my thinking. A lot of stuff has to fit this internal belief that I’m terrible, awful, and not good at anything. So I need to start recognizing that bias in my thinking and write down evidence to the contrary. That’s tied into the other

task I have which is to start expressing self compassion and acceptance. The psychologist explained that it’s not about self esteem. Self esteem is tied so much to how well we’re doing things; and since some days are good and some are bad, our self esteem fluctuates to extremes.

Instead, self compassion is there for us to accept both the good and the bad in ourselves. The good days and bad days. Etc. I often struggle with all or nothing thinking. So for example, at one point I may see myself as awful and no good. But on a different day, I see myself as

kind and caring. Instead of it being either/or, I have to start accepting that I can be both good and bad. That dichotomy exists inside all of us, and I have to learn to have compassion for myself through that.

Anyway, that’s most of what you got today. My homework is to start building self observing into a habit and studying my thoughts.