I think each of us has heard such advice more than once, from relatives, friends, acquaintances, coaches, mentors, and some even from psychologists. Have these tips ever helped? Was there any benefit from them? Did it really become easier for us and did we finally understand what needed to be done? “What kind of advice?” - you ask. Yes, here they are! But you’ve already started to guess, right?) Be positive Don’t worry Everything will be fine You need to believe in yourself I believe in you Try to distract yourself Just stop worrying (don’t worry), etc. But don’t judge strictly, I agree - positivity is not a bad thing and it would really be good stay in it from time to time) But isn’t it true that giving such advice or parting words - thinking positively, is the same as telling a person who is afraid of heights - “Don’t be afraid of it, just rise high and look down. It’s so simple!” You understand that such advice is unlikely to be of any use! Or, for example, the most popular one now is “you must believe in yourself.” At first glance, this is also not bad advice. But have you ever thought that in the subcortex it sounds something like this: “Yes, I see that you doubt your abilities, you are weak and cannot cope with yourself. But don't be a weakling. So throw all this nonsense out of your head and believe in yourself, that’s how I want it!” When you hear this, do you start to believe in yourself? Hardly! What about the fact that your friend “believes in you”? Does this help you? No, this is certainly great, but I don’t think it makes it any easier for you! And if you look at it from the other side, your friend's confidence in you has nothing to do with your confidence in yourself. And very often such statements “I believe in you” add even more doubts - you just don’t know what I really am! How can you believe in me when I can’t believe in myself? Logical, don’t you agree? Or, for example, someone close to you, seeing your “sour or anxious face,” says, “Listen, you need to relax or get distracted, let’s go for a walk.” And now you are “walking”, but your mood does not lift, and anxious thoughts continue to swarm in your head and you cannot be distracted. You think about your problem all the time, and you also get irritated when you are distracted from your thoughts or asked what you think are stupid questions. Come home after a walk and get even more upset because you couldn’t “distract yourself and relax”! Here’s a case from practice. So my client O., a young woman, 32 years old, talked about her past experience of working with psychologist K., by the way according to him in the CBT approach, O. turned to K. for a consultation with an everyday question. She lived in a civil marriage with a man and recently thought that he would leave her. But it’s easy to say that these thoughts did not come out of her mind. head both day and night, and even when she had difficulty falling asleep, she had terrible and disturbing dreams about how he still abandoned her. And nothing concrete seemed to indicate this, they had a good relationship and there was nothing to complain about. And O. referred to premonitions. So, when at the consultation they decided to work, first of all, with anxiety itself and learn to overcome it, O. hoped that K., as an expert in this field, would tell, explain, and teach everything. her to cope with this obsessive feeling. And so they sit opposite each other, O. listens carefully to his every word, like an incredibly valuable source of wisdom, and ... K. says: “You just need to stop worrying.” O. at first thinks that she didn’t understand and asks again: “How can I stop doing this?” K smiles and adds, “Every time you start to worry, just tell yourself, “Stop.” Then he hands O. a rubber band and asks him to put it on his wrist. “Every time you start to worry, hit yourself with a rubber band and say Stop!” O., a little hopeful, goes home and starts trying to snap the rubber band and order herself to stop, saying a stop thought. She does this all week. Of course, this distracts her a little, but the disturbing thoughts return again. Through!