Need to stop thinking about…

I’m wishing tonight, after having a pleasant dinner out, that I could stop thinking about things that touch me too deeply. Tears are welling in my eyes and threatening to fall down my cheeks as I can’t do anything to help. I’ll try to concentrate on something I COULD do last weekend.

I managed to help my young friend Olu “Climate” Idowu from Nigeria raise the last couple of hundred dollars that enabled him to attend an important meeting in Ethiopia. He has been running a program to teach youth to sustainably work the land so they can become employed and feed themselves and their families. By flocking to urban areas, rural people in developing countries have lost the skills they thought would be useless in the city. As Olu and I were chatting on Facebook I also got a message from Thalini who is training to be a surgeon in NSW, Australia, wondering how to do something that I know all about, and I thought !! Bingo!!

Maybe Thalini would have some of the cash Olu needed for his conference and I could in turn help Thalini with her problem! It worked and didn’t cost me a cent of the money I haven’t got!

So this week I became an international online entrepreneur! That must be an achievement I can be happy with.

What techniques can I use in the future to stop myself becoming too sad and emotional about problems that other people are in a much better position to fix? Genuine help needed!

Positive post script:

The rescue cat pictured below was adopted and neutered. She was previously on death row at Manhattan Animal Rescue in New York City because she was found roaming the streets. She was approximately 5 years old, and as you can see, not the most attractive-looking animal you might expect to take home.

Kitty’s got the blues

I contacted a heap of people who lived in or near NYC to try to get her a kind, warm home. Someone responded and I am so very relieved.

Disaster – OMG!

Yep- that “little” thing that sends the whole day to hell, is one of my most destructive habits! My therapist & I call this “disaster-ising” and I really have to keep trying hard to stamp it out. [Does anyone else remember the "father" of Cognitive Therapy, Albert Ellis, whose Rational Emotive Therapy talked about disasterizing and awfulization?]

Dr Albert Ellis

Something ALWAYS seems to happen when I’m doing a trivial or loathed task that “puts me off” for the rest of the day. It’s often when I’m getting our breakfast things out of the dishwasher- a glass that’s been leaning on a cup crashes down on its side, breaking. My automatic thought is “Oh no- that’s terrible- the whole day is going on bypass while I deal with this unthinkable occurrence!”

I KNOW why I do this also- but 55 years of fearing the same thing is A BIT MUCH!! I still react as I did as a kid when, if anything I was near, broke or was dropped, I’d get yelled at- “naughty, bad, WHY?, smack, shout, smack” from my father. Mum would HIDE broken stuff from him when he wasn’t there- he was just irrational- obviously doing his own disaster-ising. However, the emotional wreckage & humiliation persisted and when I’m in a down phase, it leaps out & gets me.

All I can do is “self-talk” and maybe play a silly video like Eddie Izard’s “DeathStar Canteen”. Most times currently I might be able to do a few mundane things after a breakage, but it still stops me from doing pleasurable stuff, like hobbies. I just try to carry on regardless, thinking “Accidents will happen- the world is a chaotic place- get on with the day”.

Thanks for the reminder post, Natasha!

This post was inspired by Natasha Tracy’s blog post Emotional OverReactions – Depression.