CBT Practice

Distressing event: overeating yesterday
Emotions: anxiety (high), fear (high), and anger (medium)
Automatic thoughts:

1. I will always be fat.
2. I am just going to gain more weight.
3. I will never recover.
4. I am stupid, ugly, disgusting, and worthless.

Disputation:

1. Future telling: I have no clue what the future will hold.  So many things can happen.
2. I do not believe this is a distortion; however, I know that the more self-destructive things I say to myself the more I use eating disorder behaviors, and then the more out of control my weight is.
3. Future telling: I have made progress already.
4. Labeling. I am not sure how to dispute this one though.

Rerate emotions:  anxiety (high), fear (high), and anger (medium).  They are the same, but I do believe I can intellectually think about this in a calmer way.

Today I will be patient.  I will recognize that recovery takes time and errors.  I will continue believing in my dream of recovery.

The Big Picture: 9/11

I am struggling so much with myself right now; my weight is going up and yet  I keep binging.  I know I cannot start restricting to lose weight because that will not end up good either.  I am feeling hopeless and doomed to fatness right now.

But you now what?
Today is September 11, 2011.  Ten years ago today was horrific.  Today I can focus on the big picture.  Today my weight and BMI seem so trivial compared to what today signifies.  My thoughts are with those who lost loved ones, with those still suffering emotionally or physically, and my support goes out to our military, police, and firefighters.  My heart breaks when I imagine getting a call from my sister or husband with one of them telling me, "It is okay, I will die quickly," as many did 10 years ago. 

Coping with Tonight

Today I am negative.  I feel hopeless and angry.  Binging and drinking sound wonderful right now.  I have all these plans to implement steps for recovery... tomorrow.  Starting now would be ideal, but I am exhausted.  It is not going to happen tonight.  What can I do tonight?

I feel like this quote has gained such popularity it is cliche is the recovery world.  One of those, easier-said-the-done-bullshit things.  Tonight I will try to utilize this quote.  I cannot just wait for all these scary, painful moments to pass.  I need to deal with them, to dive into them, and to make the best of them.  Tonight I am overwhelmed with things tasks.  The tasks are not too plentiful, but the nature of the tasks scare me and leaving my feeling like a piece of worthless shit.  This is what I shall do:

Tonight my motto is to just cope with this moment.  This one right here.

Daily Tasks are Overwhelming!!!

 Motivation is something I struggle with.  Motivation to fight the negative thoughts in my head, motivation to go vacuum, or really anything that has a hint of being overwhelming in the moment.  Being able to do daily tasks is important in recovery.

Challenging Negative Thoughts CBT Style 

Activating event: need to do daily tasks
Emotions: overwhelmed (high), worthless/burden (high), failure (medium), and anger (low).
Automatic Thoughts:

1. I am worthless.
2. I am of no use and place too much burden on my husband.
3. I cannot get it all done.
4. I am afraid of being around people.

Disputations (correlating with numbers):

1. Disqualifying the positive: I have things about me that are worthy.  I help people at work.  ...this is all I can come up with. :(  I am feeling really shitty today.
2. I am not sure what the cognitive distortion would be here: I do add stress to my husband.  He was aware of my issues when he married me.  The best thing I can do now is try to get better.
3. Jumping to conclusions: I know I can take it step by step.  Staying in the moment will really help.
4. Ehh... I think this is just a thought/feeling, not a distortion.  

Rerating emotions: Overwhelmed (medium high), worthless/burden (high),  failure (medium), and anger (minimal).