Plenty of What You’ve Tried So Far Made Perfect Sense – Even Though It Didn’t Work

Complex psychological states such as anxiety, regret, obsessions, and depression can make day-to-day living feel like a struggle. When that struggle also involves worry, humiliation, shame, frustration, and resentment, it can make your situation a whole lot harder to bear. You’ve no doubt tried any number of things to cope a bit better… and most of them involved thinking or doing whatever it took to avoid all those unpleasant feelings. From a certain perspective, doing so made perfect sense – if only these things provided you with some degree of long-lasting relief.

Despite the short-lived effectiveness of your strategies, tools, and techniques, you’ve been more or less on the right track – and that may come as a bit of a surprise. Yes, you’ve unwittingly tapped into an aspect of human nature that is common to all of humanity. The way we think gives rise to how we feel – and often to what we do or don’t do as we cope with challenge and distress.

And when viewed from a certain perspective, it makes perfect sense to avoid uncomfortable feelings. After all, everyone needs to ‘keep the show on the road’ and it certainly helps to have a reliable handful of go-to methods for just getting on with daily life.

Here’s What Drives Our Most Intense and Unpleasant Day-to-Day Experiences

Unwanted, distressing, and repetitive thoughts tend to go hand-in-glove with persistent distress – and they really can interfere with a person’s enjoyment of day-to-day life. That said, you might be surprised to learn that everybody around you – your family, your friends, and your work colleagues – knows only too well what it’s like to be distracted by negative thoughts. It’s just that most people keep it to themselves, and it’s generally not a particular problem for them. What makes such thoughts a problem for YOU, however, is the sense that you have absolutely no control over them. Besides that, isn’t it annoying that the more you engage with them, the worse it tends to make you feel?

Depending on the situation, the sense that your so-called ‘pop-up thoughts’ should not be ignored can either be a minor niggle or an all-consuming concern. One of life’s mysteries is that the harder you try to dampen or deal with such thoughts (e.g., by distraction, logic, or seeking reassurance from outside sources), the stronger and more prominent they seem to be. Fortunately, there is a whole lot of science behind our thoughts and assumptions – and there’s a whole lot of science to explain why what you’ve been trying to do – as sensible as it might seem – is likely to be making the situation worse. One thing’s for sure… it’s nobody’s fault – least of all, yours. But if you find yourself struggling with anxiety, obsessions, regret, shame, guilt, humiliation, anger, resentment, frustration, or low mood (and even depression), then psychotherapy really can help you to understand what is happening and – most importantly – DO SOMETHING about it.

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