note before bed
- Thoughts influence feelings which influence actions. (This can sometimes be reversed as "act as if", but it's more difficult the other way.)
- The easiest way to affect our actions is to catch your [maladaptive] thoughts.
- Even if I'm paying attention while starting a second task (such as checking e-mail) I can quickly get sucked in and lose attention to the original thing.
- Give yourself time to assess the situation before acting upon it.
- Get bumped into: "If you wanted a hug all you had to do was ask." - that made me lol
I wanted to make a better write-up of tonight, but now that I'm ready to do the free-writing (as opposed to just typing up notes from my notebook, as seen above) I'm really too tired to put that much mental effort into constructing a proper entry. However, I will say that I played Apples to Apples for a bit with some of the residents, which was enjoyable. Frustrated that I wasn't allowed to watch Rachel Maddow at 11, since that's when lights out is. Ah well.
Actually, I do have the energy for one brief discussion regarding the mental health element: During one of the group sessions today, I was talking about how certain things are impossible for me. I believe I was only talking about receiving financial aid basically ever again being impossible, which it pretty much is, since there's a strict policy against it in my situation. Once you've "attempted" - i.e., passed, failed, or withdrew from - at least 150% of the credits that are required for your major, you're no longer able to receive any federal student aid, including loans run by Firstmark or whatever. I'm in undergrad which requires 120 credits, 150% of which is 180 credits, and although I don't seem to have access to my total number of attempted credits right now, it's past 180, and by the time I graduate from undergrad any boost I would get from an additional number of required credits for grad school wouldn't make up for the credits I'd have used finishing my degree. Anyway, going back to the point, one of the residents at group challenged me by saying "'can't' shouldn't be in your vocabulary" or something along those lines, to which I basically replied "well, I can't walk on the surface of the sun". We kind of had a bit of back-and-forth on the topic (with another resident saying "you can walk on the grass" or something like that - I don't get where he was going with it or if he understood what I was saying) and she had to leave the room. Later when we weren't doing anything I asked her if I had made her mad, and her basic deal was that "can't" is a word that promotes hopelessness and is basically self-destructive, and she didn't want to hear me going on about what I "can't" do while she was trying to recover from her own crisis. I definitely see what she means regarding "can't" having great power to make us feel depressed, etc., but I think rather than banning the word from our vocabulary we should be focusing on asking ourselves "Is it really something we 'can't' do? And if it is, what other means are there to achieve the same goal?"
Actually, I was just thinking now of and episode from Get-It-Done Guy that kind of ties in with this: if there's a goal that for some reason we CAN'T achieve - actually can't achieve - we can ask ourselves what ultimate goal that first goal was a means to. Can we set a new goal for ourselves that will help us achieve our ultimate goal? But even that exercise might be something to be cautious of, again because "can't" is a word that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a mental health context.
Alright, I need to be up in around 7 hours, so I'm going to wrap this up now. (And probably try to find out where my roommate is - she hasn't been in the room since we stopped playing Apples to Apples downstairs earlier, and I'll have trouble sleeping if I keep wondering when she'll come back.) Good night, y'all.
P.S. Forgot to mention that I called jamestdr today, and during the conversation he told me that he contacted aikachi on Facebook and he's covering my July and August rent for me, which is an incredible blessing since I have about $1 in the bank and I won't get *any* pay until at July 12th. (Hopefully it'll be a full paycheck, but who knows if they'll be able to give me full-time hours as soon as I get back, so it may not.) My plan was to ask grandpa or possibly dad to loan me some money to pay just my June rent, but honestly I could have seen it ending up with me being too scared to ask them and curling up into a depressed ball of anxiety in my room unable to face Sandy. (That or leave a letter for the landlord explaining the situation and hoping that she'd give me a grace period until I start getting paid again.)
Okay, bed for REAL now.
- The easiest way to affect our actions is to catch your [maladaptive] thoughts.
- Even if I'm paying attention while starting a second task (such as checking e-mail) I can quickly get sucked in and lose attention to the original thing.
- Give yourself time to assess the situation before acting upon it.
- Get bumped into: "If you wanted a hug all you had to do was ask." - that made me lol
I wanted to make a better write-up of tonight, but now that I'm ready to do the free-writing (as opposed to just typing up notes from my notebook, as seen above) I'm really too tired to put that much mental effort into constructing a proper entry. However, I will say that I played Apples to Apples for a bit with some of the residents, which was enjoyable. Frustrated that I wasn't allowed to watch Rachel Maddow at 11, since that's when lights out is. Ah well.
Actually, I do have the energy for one brief discussion regarding the mental health element: During one of the group sessions today, I was talking about how certain things are impossible for me. I believe I was only talking about receiving financial aid basically ever again being impossible, which it pretty much is, since there's a strict policy against it in my situation. Once you've "attempted" - i.e., passed, failed, or withdrew from - at least 150% of the credits that are required for your major, you're no longer able to receive any federal student aid, including loans run by Firstmark or whatever. I'm in undergrad which requires 120 credits, 150% of which is 180 credits, and although I don't seem to have access to my total number of attempted credits right now, it's past 180, and by the time I graduate from undergrad any boost I would get from an additional number of required credits for grad school wouldn't make up for the credits I'd have used finishing my degree. Anyway, going back to the point, one of the residents at group challenged me by saying "'can't' shouldn't be in your vocabulary" or something along those lines, to which I basically replied "well, I can't walk on the surface of the sun". We kind of had a bit of back-and-forth on the topic (with another resident saying "you can walk on the grass" or something like that - I don't get where he was going with it or if he understood what I was saying) and she had to leave the room. Later when we weren't doing anything I asked her if I had made her mad, and her basic deal was that "can't" is a word that promotes hopelessness and is basically self-destructive, and she didn't want to hear me going on about what I "can't" do while she was trying to recover from her own crisis. I definitely see what she means regarding "can't" having great power to make us feel depressed, etc., but I think rather than banning the word from our vocabulary we should be focusing on asking ourselves "Is it really something we 'can't' do? And if it is, what other means are there to achieve the same goal?"
Actually, I was just thinking now of and episode from Get-It-Done Guy that kind of ties in with this: if there's a goal that for some reason we CAN'T achieve - actually can't achieve - we can ask ourselves what ultimate goal that first goal was a means to. Can we set a new goal for ourselves that will help us achieve our ultimate goal? But even that exercise might be something to be cautious of, again because "can't" is a word that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a mental health context.
Alright, I need to be up in around 7 hours, so I'm going to wrap this up now. (And probably try to find out where my roommate is - she hasn't been in the room since we stopped playing Apples to Apples downstairs earlier, and I'll have trouble sleeping if I keep wondering when she'll come back.) Good night, y'all.
P.S. Forgot to mention that I called jamestdr today, and during the conversation he told me that he contacted aikachi on Facebook and he's covering my July and August rent for me, which is an incredible blessing since I have about $1 in the bank and I won't get *any* pay until at July 12th. (Hopefully it'll be a full paycheck, but who knows if they'll be able to give me full-time hours as soon as I get back, so it may not.) My plan was to ask grandpa or possibly dad to loan me some money to pay just my June rent, but honestly I could have seen it ending up with me being too scared to ask them and curling up into a depressed ball of anxiety in my room unable to face Sandy. (That or leave a letter for the landlord explaining the situation and hoping that she'd give me a grace period until I start getting paid again.)
Okay, bed for REAL now.