I attended a useful series of group CBT sessions last year. Something that came out early was that many of us felt overwhelmed by a mass of problems, and either didn’t know where to start in addressing them, or attacked them in a scattershot manner – no sense of strategy, just aiming at the top worry of the moment. The tutor then usefully broke sessions down into particular themes which applied to all or nearly all of us, e.g.  

• - Physical health
• - Relationships / connections
• - Home life
• - Achievements
• - Day to day pleasures (e.g. social life)
• - Work life (for those who weren’t retired)

Now I’m sure many of you could add to this list, like some members of this class (in which one lady had serious financial issues, another was a recovering alcoholic), or divide your problems differently, but  as a starting point, this works for me.

While working through these themes with the group, I realised the following:

• - I frequently underestimate my achievements. I don’t achieve great things, but I achieve a lot of small-to-medium things.
• - There are a lot of small changes I can make to my home that may lead to small improvements in my mood. Buying some striking framed prints of places I like for my living room and some houseplants for a rather barren room upstairs has definitely helped. (And my issues with my house are small compared with many others – I’d forgotten what it was like to live in an overcrowded, cold, drafty house during winter.)
• - I have a lot of physical health issues but I need to focus on a couple I can do something about (obvious, really).
• - I have a real problem with relationships and connections. I’ve never been much of a “people person”; I find it hard to “belong” (I’ll return to this theme in another blog).
• - I really need to take on the tutor’s mantra of “follow your plan, not your mood”. I get sidetracked far too easily.

So – do you find these problem categories useful? Which of the themes are most relevant to you?

Oldie But Goldie

A Moodscope member