It does help. It's not entirely coincidental that I have finally picked up doing this again as we head into November. My first set of questions, I think two years ago now, were different: have I washed and have I dressed were two of them, because when I was very depressed, those things didn't happen much at all. Then I had a pause and restarted, and I didn't need those two questions any more. I was also mentally strong enough to be able to list bad things without ending up dwelling on them in an unhealthy way. If my brain is fried, the list is a fairly basic prompt on things I can and should do.
One feature of the original list was that I could never say yes to all of them, so it discourages perfectionism, and I could always say yes to one of them, so I didn't ever feel I'd done nothing. They were pretty much all 'yes, no' questions so I could go through the template without much thinking. Since then, like I said, it's changed and evolved.
I still do the list which started with 'got out of bed', 'fed kids', 'got kids to school' (this was 10 plus years back when it was bad and there were days they didn't happen) but like you it has evolved. I know I'm so much better, I also know how easily it can slip. usually by November I'm a mess but this year (touch wood) not too bad but clocks haven't gone back yet.
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One feature of the original list was that I could never say yes to all of them, so it discourages perfectionism, and I could always say yes to one of them, so I didn't ever feel I'd done nothing. They were pretty much all 'yes, no' questions so I could go through the template without much thinking. Since then, like I said, it's changed and evolved.
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