Jinked

Writing in my little notebook

I’ve been keeping thought records this past week. I bring them in tomorrow and I guess the therapist and I are going to go over them. When do I jot down a thought record? When I am struck with an intense mood or series of mood. I scribbled one in my little notebook today. It goes like this:

Situation: June 16th 2010, Wednesday
Received an email from Dan about developing a website. He specified needing functionality to collect email addresses for a newsletter.

Moods: anxious 90%, incompetent 90%, obsessive 100%

Automatic Thoughts / Actions:
“I don’t know how to do what he wants.”
“Maybe I should turn down the job.”
“I feel stupid.”
I dropped everything I was doing to obsessively search for a solution so I could put my mind at ease, panicking more and more when I couldn’t find one.

That’s just the first three steps of a thought record. There is more to it, the analyzing, finding hot thoughts and reversing them, proving they are not true. Something like that. I still have to read the rest of my homework. This was one thought record I worked through on my own, realizing that I am not superwoman. I can’t know everything and there is no shame in admitting that or asking for help when its needed. Still, it’s unnerving to me how obsessive I get when in the span of one breath I panic over my incompetence. I shouldn’t use that word, but I will for the sake of ease. It bothers me that I’m not perfect; I feel someone will fault me for it one day. That I will be judged or worse.

Some of my other thought records… they’re a little heftier than this one. Thicker, harder to wade through and swallow. Fear plagues me. Unwarranted fear no less. Oh well. That’s the point of doing the thought records.

Some I can solve on my own. Others I need a little help and that’s okay.

Photo credit: Markus Rödder