What I hated most about my depression is it would take anything that happened and make it terrible. I got a promotion? Great, more work to do. My wife cooked my favorite meal? Great, now there’s a ton of dishes to do. I’m gonna take a break and play a game? I’ll probably lose, why bother playing.
And this fatalism morphed into anxiety that made it so I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I’d lay there paralyzed with fear about failing at everything that day, to the point where I’d set my alarm to go off early just so I could have time to have a panic attack.
One thing that helped me a lot was to give that little voice a name, and then tell it to fuck off every time it spoke up.
another good trick is to give the voice a stupid cartoonish voice: make it say things like goofy… it disarms it if it sounds ridiculous
(also works for intrusive thoughts about yourself: they’re late because they don’t want to spend time with me, they say they like my thing but they sounded sarcastic, etc)
it’s not a different voice to start with: i hear it as… my inner monologue i guess?… sometimes not even a voice exactly; it’s just a feeling… but if you repeat it, or put the feeling into a voice and say it in a ridiculous way then that, for me, overrides the original feeling
maybe it’s acknowledging it exists, thinking about it, and then turning it ridiculous makes you consciously put it into a “fuck you that feeling is false” category… i’m not really sure beyond here :p
What I hated most about my depression is it would take anything that happened and make it terrible. I got a promotion? Great, more work to do. My wife cooked my favorite meal? Great, now there’s a ton of dishes to do. I’m gonna take a break and play a game? I’ll probably lose, why bother playing.
And this fatalism morphed into anxiety that made it so I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I’d lay there paralyzed with fear about failing at everything that day, to the point where I’d set my alarm to go off early just so I could have time to have a panic attack.
One thing that helped me a lot was to give that little voice a name, and then tell it to fuck off every time it spoke up.
another good trick is to give the voice a stupid cartoonish voice: make it say things like goofy… it disarms it if it sounds ridiculous
(also works for intrusive thoughts about yourself: they’re late because they don’t want to spend time with me, they say they like my thing but they sounded sarcastic, etc)
Ooo, that’s a good one! Like “yoUr cowoRKeRs DOn’t ACTUALLy LIke YOU” or “yoU’Re GONNA gO BrOKE anD LIVe On tHe STrEET.”
Gawrsh, my buddy Donald has better luck working than you do! Guess you’re gonna keep being nothing! A-hyuck!
…actually yeah. This is helping. I’ll keep this in my back pocket.
So question: does it feel like another voice to you? For me I just feel like I’m talking to myself, or no voice at all, just first-person thoughts.
Is part of the work kinda externalizing that part of you, and giving it a voice?
it’s not a different voice to start with: i hear it as… my inner monologue i guess?… sometimes not even a voice exactly; it’s just a feeling… but if you repeat it, or put the feeling into a voice and say it in a ridiculous way then that, for me, overrides the original feeling
maybe it’s acknowledging it exists, thinking about it, and then turning it ridiculous makes you consciously put it into a “fuck you that feeling is false” category… i’m not really sure beyond here :p
Thank you, that is a helpful exercise. I’m going to try that