What helped me

Okay here goes. I am a nurse and have had good health benefits so that led me to psychiatrists and lots of meds initially. I had limited success but my life was full of ups and downs. Then I read the cbt book by sam obitz on overcoming anxiety and depression and related to his story. It was the first book we read in my a cbt group and it has turned my life around and working on the TEA form thought countering exercise daily has built my self esteem in addition to getting rid of my anxiety and depression. If you are self motivated and willing to put 15 minutes or more a day into countering your thoughts in a TEA form I think it would be worth your time to give it a try.

Thanks for the recommendation. What is the TEA method?

The TEA-forms exercises are from Sam Obitz' book:

http://www.supertao.com/index.html

All one can learn about it on the Web is from people such as cubboard doing posts like this. I suspect it is to get people to buy Obitz' book which you can only buy from his site.

That may be true, but cupboard is new here...

Actually, the Self Help book this forum is about is available for reading free right here... the link is in DrClay's siggy, as well as in DocJohn's intro and welcome to this forum

There's a plethora of material to fix oneself up found there.

That sounds like an interesting book but I couldn't find it at Amazon or on Google. Where can I find it? I'd like to review it. Thanks for mentioning any good book that has helped one life. I have heard that only about 10% of the people who buy a self-help book actually read beyond the first chapter. It sounds like you read this book well.

Hope to hear from you soon.

DrClay

Hi Perna -- I haven't looked up any research on this. I'm just going with what I've been told and what I infer.

First, I put myself through 6-week outpatient treatment programs twice -- once for addictions and once for co-dependency. In that program, we were given the figure "28 days" to ingrain a new habit.

Second, I've done a fair amount of reading and study about creativity. All the "brain-busting" and "think out of the box" activities are, as I understand it, to create new synapses in the brain. One writer -- I think it was Edward de Bono -- explained it this way:

Imagine a bowl of red Jello, turned upside down on a platter, so it's a gelatin mountain.

Now, imagine a bowl of hot black ink. Ladle some hot ink on top of the mountain. What will happen? Erosion. The hot ink will cut rivelets into the gelatin. Now, take another ladle of hot ink. What happens? The ink will flow down the same rivelets that have already been cut into the gelatin.

In a similar way, our brain creates electro-patterns across the synapses in our brains. When we are trying to create new patterns -- whether those of innovative thinking or new habits -- we are trying to get the brain synapses to connect in new ways.



From this I infer that doing something three times a day would not have the same effect as doing it every day for 21 or 28 days. I do think it would be useful to do the activity 3 times a day; if nothing else, it would demonstrate supreme commitment to this activity.

Here's my reasoning on why 3x/day for 7 days doesn't = 1x/day for 21 days. If I decide that I am going to exercise 3 times a day, at the end of 10 days I have developed the habit of exercising when I arise, after lunch, and before bedtime. But this means I have 10 days of performing this habit upon arising; 10 days of performing this habit at lunch; and 10 days of performing this habit at bedtime.

A 10-day habit is, presumably, less engrained than a 21 or 28-day habit. Were I to let go of the lunch exercise period (too busy at that time of day), but continue with the morning exercise for 21-days and the evening for 28 days, my bet would be that the 28-day habit is the one that has the best chance of becoming a lifetime routine.

Again, I am using inference and my limited understanding here. Best wishes with your project. I hope you will let us know the results.

Thanks Wants2Fly; I'm not even sure what I meant anymore :-) I agree with your 3x day 10 day analogy but maybe the 3x makes the "whole" more intense and provides backup so even though there's only 10 days for each, the chances that one will last 2-28 with at least one so have a "habit" intact are greater?

How about if you don't set a time/pattern and just 3x a day; you have 10 days of 3x a day and then say you do only 2x for another week and only 1x a day for at least 4-11 days; do you have a habit then? :-)

I think by "speed" I was doing some sort of thinking on "intensity" (my brain never goes from Point A to Point B in a straight line willingly :-) Your 3x a day thing and what I did with it above has helped me a lot, thanks!

Maybe there's something too in that some things; 3x for 10 days would definately benefit one "more" than 1x for 10 days? And there's sometimes "guilt" in there. I buy Deerpark water that gets delivered in 1/2-liter bottles and right now for my 2 week project I have that I want to drink 4 a day. I only drank 3 yesterday and having a higher than usual amount (I use to drink several but then slacked off and want to get back into the habit) can both encourage and discourage and I wonder where the setpoint is? I've read one is supposed to drink an ounce of water for each 2 pounds one weighs and figured it out and theoretically, I'm supposed to drink 17 of my bottles of water a day :-) I'd definately give that up not even before a single day was through. I wonder how just "knowing" that little 17 number discourages me, despite the unlikeliness of it being "true"/good for me to do? Maybe I should decide to drink 6 bottles (I've done 4 before and it's "doable") a day to make sure I drink at least 4? I think these sorts of things are what I was thinking about. :-)

I have no further wisdom, Perna. Sounds likely to me.

It is one of the thought countering forms from cbt. Acronym for Thought Error Answer. They are pretty basic but work well for me.

I am one of those quilty of only reading part of many self-help books but usually at least four or five chapters before giving up! But don't give me too much credit because this is a very short book just over 100 pages long. I think you would like it though because it is the authors story of his trials and tribulations along the road to finding things that worked for him

I think that is one problem with most self help books... you need to constantly refer to them. If you print off the parts of drclay's book and carry it with you, you can refer to it often to help keep on track!

http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org/

And if it gets dogearred, you can print it off again!

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drclay said:
That sounds like an interesting book but I couldn't find it at Amazon or on Google. Where can I find it? I'd like to review it.
DrClay

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It's available at www.supertao.com

Another good book for chaning old patterns of thinking is "Mind Over Mood..."

First, you rate how you're feeling and why you feel that way..Like, hmmm, I must be crazy because I feel like I just said a stupid remark and i feel like everyone who heard it thinks I'm crazy....then think OUTSIDE the box as it is put in this thread....did anyone CALL me crazy? Did anyone even show a reaction? Am I really crazy or just being a human with a sense of humor? Then: reach your conclusion: I am not crazy. Then re-rate your mood after your conclusion....now I feel sane, healthy, and ready to re-rate anything else that comes up..

This book has really helped me....

P.S. Mind Over Mood is by Dennis Greenberger & Christine A. Padesky

cupboard:

That book does sound interesting but tell me more about it. Did you continue to like the book? And did it help you? What kind of things worked for the author?

drclay

Bronee gave me this web address for a site for loew self esteem,, it works i think and i dont have much self discapline...
http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/
have i spelt discapline right????... hehe