THERE were six of us at the workshop. We were there to learn how to manage negative thoughts.
It was a two-evening course over two consecutive Thursdays.
How we think affects how we feel, said the psychologist leading the workshop.
So if we change the way we think, would we change the way we feel?
We set sail into the murky waters of our minds and with Christmas and its inherent challenges of family dynamics about to descend on many, the waters were murky.
First we learn the theory.
It goes like this.
Identify a situation and the thoughts and beliefs around it.
Then ask "are there errors of thinking?".
Am I over-generalising, catastrophising, making "should" statements, disqualifying the positive, jumping to conclusions, assuming what people think, seeing things in black and white, feeling overly responsible?
Next step is to dispute the thoughts and come up with some actions.
Great, I think.
No more feeling ordinary.
I can just change my thinking and everything will feel good. As it turns out, this is not the case, but the psychologist reassures us that we can balance our thinking.
First up, Mary tells how she does everything around the house.
She's mad with frustration.
She has two pre-school aged children.
She's never been keen on children but she had them anyway.
Her husband works hard and long hours.
She can buy whatever she wants.
But she thinks her husband is lazy around the house.
He never takes the rubbish bins out.
She's tried leaving them but he doesn't notice and she's the one who suffers.
He's never there to spend time with the children so come the weekends, he applies his parenting methods.
They conflict with hers and the kids get mixed messages.
She gets so frustrated that she can't be with him so she manoeuvres things so she ends up transporting one child to activities over the weekend and he the other.
It's the only way she can get through it.
She wakes up every day thinking "this is my lot".
She doesn't want to leave him.
He's a good man, she thinks.
In the workshop we all put our minds to the task.
Where was her thinking faulty?
Was she over-catastrophising and thinking the world would collapse if the bins didn't go out?
Nup, but things might get smelly, we agreed.
What about the parenting?
Could he take time off so they could parent together and discuss how they might do it?
Not really, he's in a new position and he needs to prove himself.
We work through all options and we're stumped.
The following week when we meet, Mary is a no-show.
In the meantime we've practised our new skill - our thought monitoring tool, our psychologist calls it - and we share examples of how we used it.
Cathy's overwhelming sense of duty to take her aged parents out for lunch every third Sunday is getting her down.
She wants to, but she finds it physically hard and she's frightened they'll fall.
She's amazed how impatient she gets with them.
She'll feel guilty if she doesn't do it.
Fran, who loves living alone, has been approached by a friend who wants to shift in for three months.
Fran thinks her friend will talk too much and she's not sure she can share her space.
She wants to say no but she feels guilty.
Sally has been forced to change roles at her job and to take on morning and nights shifts.
She's worried she won't cope because her sleep will be interrupted, but she thinks she should change because, well, others do it and cope.
She feels bad for feeling this way.
We deliberate and work through the steps. And I come home with an amazing sense of how women so readily take on guilt.
Why is that?
