What now?

[AnnonyBox]

I've started trying to do mindfulness meditations and keeping a diary of my day to see what triggers my issues. I can identify what events in the day cause my self hatred to flare up, what causes my anxiety to flare up, and so on, but I have no idea how to intervene so that I stop feeling so shitty. What do I do now?

 

[GenesAndEnvironment]

Well, it isn't the events that cause the anxiety and self-hatred. It's the thoughts. (This is basic CBT/ACT, I think). There are several ways to proceed: you could avoid the triggers, change your perception, go meta and accept the "negative" emotions, distract yourself, etc.

 

[signifying nothing]

I don't think the idea is to stop those emotions from arising, but it's about acknowledging them and then letting them go/pass by, rather than getting too caught up in them.

 

[timf]

If you are now able to identify triggers, that is great progress. If an event is repetitive, you are able to construct different strategies to experiment with to see what works. For example, if you find that a trigger is a result of an accumulation of pressures, you may identify when that accumulation is taking place and intervene with a particular indulgence that allows enough time to pass so that the accumulating pressure can dissipate.

If a trigger is caused by a sudden conflict between what you expect and what really happens, you can experiment with lowering you expectations sufficiently so that sudden encounters are not so shocking.

 

[AnnonyBox]

I gave up, wasn't seeing any progress. Thanks for the advice, at least.