In this video, I am going to show you how to conduct your own therapy session—a kind
of self-therapy, or DIY therapy. Now, for many people, this will be all that
you need to help you to deal with whatever it is you're struggling with. However, if
you've been struggling with something for a while, and it is impacting quite significantly
on your day-to-day life, you might need a little bit of extra support in the form of
some professional therapy—in addition to this.
However, this is a really good starting point. It's based on a talking therapy called Cognitive
Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, which has been proven to be the most effective type of treatment
for a range of mental health problems including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, OCD
problems—it's also very helpful for relationship problems.
Okay, there are nine steps, so I'm going to take you through them now.
The first step is to set aside 10 to 15 minutes once a week to conduct your self-therapy.
Now, this is easier said than done, because the self-care activities are often the first
thing to slip when life becomes busy or challenging. So, sitting down is the hardest part; if you
can do that, you're halfway there—make it part of your routine, that makes it more likely
that it will happen. Okay, for the second step, you're going to
need something to write on; so, a laptop, a piece of paper, or you can do it on the
notes on your phone—whatever, it doesn't matter. But, this is a warm-up exercise for
your mind, and in the same way that we warm up our body before we exercise to get the
most out of our session, you need to warm up your mind to get the most out of your self-therapy.
Often, you'll come to your self-therapy with quite a negative focus, and this exercise
will stretch your mind to include all of your experiences, positive as well, which you will
need for your self-therapy. So, set a timer, so you don't rush through
this, and spend five minutes thinking about all of the things that have gone well this
week. The third step is to then list all of the
things that have been bothering you this week and to rank them in order of how much distress
they've been causing you. The fourth step is to take the problem at
the top of the list. And the idea is that each week, in each self-therapy, you're only
going to deal with one problem—this will make self-therapy feel a little bit less daunting.
But the other thing is, if you can deal with the thing at the top of your list, the thing
that's bothering you the most, often, many of the problems below that kind of fall into
place—resolve themselves. And do you know what? If they don't, they will be there waiting
for you in next week's self-therapy. Okay, the fifth step is to identify the way
that you are thinking about this problem. So, for example, if the problem is a meeting
that's coming up or an assessment that's coming up, your thoughts might be, 'This is going
to go terribly, I'm going to fail, I'm going to be exposed as an impostor.'
In the sixth step of your self-therapy, you want to identify all of the pieces of evidence
you're using to support the thought, this idea, that it's going to go terribly and you're
going to be perceived as a failure and an impostor. So, for example, 'This is just how
it feels,' because these pieces of evidence don't have to be rational, it just has to
be what's in your mind. You might also be thinking, 'I've not done this before,' or
'The last time I did this, I messed up,' or 'I often mess up.'
The seventh step in your self-therapy is to then counter all of these pieces of evidence.
So, for example, if you're thinking, 'It's just how I feel, I just feel it's going to
go terribly,' think to yourself, 'Do you know what? Feelings are not facts.' If you're thinking,
'I've not done this before,' you might think, 'Well, no, that's true; but I've done similar
things, and I'm quite a creative and resourceful person.' If you're thinking, 'The last time
this happened I really messed up,' you can think, 'Well, okay, yeah, it didn't go particularly
well, but I learnt a lot from that experience, so I can make sure those things don't happen
again.' And if you're thinking, 'I often mess up,' maybe it's the case that that's not completely
true; maybe you've messed up, or things haven't gone particularly well sometimes, but most
of the time, you're able to manage yourself in these types of situations.
Okay, the eighth step is to use this information that you've gathered in step seven as a foundation
to think about how you would advise a friend if they came to you with a similar problem.
Because it's the case that we're often much better at helping our friends with their problems
than we are with ourselves because we've got a little bit of distance from their problems,
which makes it easier to think about them. The ninth and final step of your self-therapy
is to make a positive and practical plan of action. So, that might involve preparing,
but not over-preparing, for the event that's coming up; looking through your self-therapy
notes when you notice yourself starting to feel quite agitated; maybe using your breathing
to switch your body into a calmer mode—and if you want to find more out about that, you
can watch my video, 'Three Tips to Help You Manage Anxiety.'
Okay, I hope this was helpful. Thank you for watching.
And I will see you soon.