An Active Exercise In Trying To Feel Better

An active exercise in trying to feel better is to identify the antagonizing thought that's sitting in your head, like a crown of thorns. Put a pin on that thought, highlight it and let it stand out from the rest of the many things you may be thinking about simultaneously. 

Now let's strip it of any adornments that add any glamour or weight to this little bitch. Let's not romanticise what's already painful and/or uncomfortable. What is this thought based on? Is it based on real problems? If yes, then let's identify the problems and create solutions to each of them, one by one. 

If it's based on imaginary issues then let's write them down too, one by one, and prove why they're imaginary and not real. 

Once that is done, and we are faced with nothing but an incident or a sentence or a thought or a fear that has managed to plague our mind for so long, it is easier to fight and defeat this monster. We have objectified it, and facing it now feels far less intimidating. The fear of loss is smaller and more meek. 

For someone who has been afraid of numbers and is infamously a sufferer of dyscalculia, such objectification and numerification of problematic factors is strangely and ironically soothing. Once I see the numbers on the left hand side of the page and I know I have a list to turn to in order to smoothen things out for myself, I feel instantly stronger.

Try it sometime, it works.