August 2020
Mental Health Challenge:
Judgement. We all judge, every single one of us! It's not a bad thing either, we need to make judgements, it's how we assess whether something is dangerous or safe. When your making your breakfast in the morning and you pour your milk and notice it has a funny smell, you make the judgment "this milk is has gone bad". It can be useful to also judge people and things that may potentially cause us harm however there are times when judgements can have a negative impact on our thought processes. When we get caught up in judgmental thinking we can become overly-critical and set unreasonable expectations for ourselves and others. Take a step back and observe our thoughts and becoming aware of our own judgments can help us to be more balanced in our thinking and reduce our overall suffering. This can especially be an important skill to practice with COVID-19 having such profound impacts on the way we live our lives. We may experience thoughts like "This is unfair", "My summer is going to be the worst", "I'm going to waste this year and accomplish nothing". This type of thinking can make us feel sad and angry and leave us feeling stuck. That's not to say you are going to ignore judgemental thoughts or try and go through life without having judgements, rather make it a goal to try and notice when those thoughts come up and describe the observable facts about the situation. For example, rather then saying "I'm stupid" you could say "I got 8 out of 18 on my test. I notice myself feeling embarrassed and angry for doing poorly. I notice myself having an urge to close my textbook and watch television". Practice observing your judgemental thoughts and replacing them with more objective observations. It may take some time but be patient with yourself and see if you notice a shift in your mood after practicing.
Mental Health Tip:
When we get caught up in our thoughts and allow them to dominate our behaviour it is called fusion. Defusion is the process of distancing ourselves from our thoughts and letting them come and go as they will rather then letting them control our lives. But how do we do this? Here are the steps to one of the easiest ways of doing this.
1. Write down the different thoughts that are going through your head leaving about an inch to the left of each thought.
2. Read the thoughts out loud. Often times people will start to notice that even the act of writing them down will give them some distance from their thoughts.
3. In front of each thought write "I notice that I am having the thought that".
4. Read each thought out lout saying first "I notice that I am having the thought that".
The next time you find yourself thinking negatively or experiencing a lot of judgements give this a try and see how it works for you.