Daily Practice – Session 1

Congratulations on watching the first session! You’ve completed the first step!

Now, it’s time to practice. Remember: Understanding alone does not create new habits, only practice can do that.

Connecting the dots: Negative thoughts create secondary stress, and stress manifests itself in symptoms, including the symptoms that brought you to this course. By challenging negative thoughts, we reduce secondary stress which otherwise exacerbates our symptoms.
*During this cognitive module, we will not yet be working on the actual symptoms, but rather only on thoughts in general that increase stress, as stress increases symptoms.

If you’re ready to start working on changing unhealthy habits feeding your symptoms, then here are some ideas to get started this week:

1. Schedule a fixed time every day to practice for a few minutes
2. Set a reminder – for instance on your phone or watch – for the scheduled time
3. At the scheduled time, try to identify a recent thought containing a Red Flag
4. Fill out a row in the Courtroom table here (). (wait with this step if you haven’t completed the second part of the lesson)
5. Share one of your Red Flags in the Community group here ()
6. Try to provide feedback to others as well. Research has shown that community support increases the chances of therapeutic success!
   *I recommend opening the Community group and clicking “Subscribe” at the top of the group in order to receive notifications of new discussions posted by others!

Time required: ~3-5 minutes/day. If you did not identify any Red Flags on a certain day, then it will take even less time.

Bonus exercise: Try to notice when others around you use Red Flags while they talk in order to develop your awareness. (But don’t say anything to them!)

That’s it! Just a few minutes a day and you’re on your way to an emotionally healthier lifestyle!

See you next session,
Dr. Ohad

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BEWARE OF SELF-SABOTAGE:

• Expectations:
  • I expect to completely understand this exercise
  • I expect to successfully challenge every thought
  • I expect myself to practice every day without fail
  • I expect to see an improvement in my symptoms this week
  • If I challenged a thought, it shouldn’t appear anymore
• Criticism:
  • I didn’t practice enough
  • It’s not ok that I couldn’t challenge this thought
  • I should have practiced every day
  • Why didn’t I see an improvement yet?
  • I shouldn’t be having this thought anymore
• Assumptions:
  • This will be too hard
  • I won’t be able to practice consistently
  • This won’t work for me