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Developing A Wellness Toolbox
Recovering Your Mental Health
Dealing w/Psychiatric Symptoms
Alternative Approaches
Does Remedy Work
Controling Anger
Anger Management
Electroconvulsive Therapy
How to Avoid a Manic Episode
Emotional Thought Stopping
How to Fight a Problem
How to Break a Habit
Could it have been Different
What do you do Now
Getting Well
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Dr
Robert Rich, M. Sc., Ph. D.
Member of the
Australian Psychological Society
Associate Member, College of Counseling Psychologists
If something works, do more of it. If it doesn’t
work, do something else.
Everything occurs in a context:
 | Where is the problem most likely to occur?
|
| When? (time of day, what day)
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| Who else is there?
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| What are you doing at the time?
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| Are certain thoughts or feelings
associated with the occurrence of the problem?
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| Is it preventing you from doing something
you are relieved not to have to do?
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| What are the benefits of suffering the
problem? (e.g.
do you get more attention, can put off a difficult decision, or what?)
|
| Is the occurrence of the problem
predictable? Can you tell when (under what circumstances) it will strike (or
get worse), when it will leave you alone (ease off)?
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| Is it controllable? What can you do to
influence it?
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Problems feel ‘universal’, as
if they were ‘always there’. Find exceptions: they are the clue to ways of
fighting back.
Scaling
questions
1
(low)
10 (high)
|____|____|____|____|____|____|____|____|____|
| What is the worst possible outcome of the
current situation? On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is that to happen?
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| What is the best possible outcome? Rate it
too.
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| What is the most likely outcome? Rate it.
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| How controllable is it? (1: random and
unpredictable. 10: under your control).
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Keep a problem diary. You
may be tracking an action (yelling at my kids), a thought (I want to light up a
cigarette), an emotion (fear, worry, depression). All of these are 'behaviors'
though other people can't see them. The behavior may be something specific, or
one of a class of things, e.g.., any thought that makes you crash back into
grieving.
Set down:
| when, where, with whom you were
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| what happened immediately before the
target behavior occurred
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| unless you are tracking one specific
behavior instead a type of behavior, write down what the behavior was
|
| what was the consequence of the behavior (e.g..,
how did you feel after, what effects you had on other people).
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Rating, keeping a problem diary,
counting occurrences makes you into an observer. This helps to fight the problem
by making it less pressing and immediate.
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