File a Case
Using your imagination and building similes can help you find new, more rational and adaptive explanations for your counterproductive self-criticism.
Your imagination if a powerful tool that can help you overcome a lot of anxiety, stress, and unreasonable expectations. Here is an idea how to apply it, so that you can reinvent your harsh self-critic.
The Case
This step involves some imagination. Close your eyes and imagine you are in a courtroom. The defendant here is your self-critical thought. There is an objective jury and all the evidence for your thought is slowly being laid out.
The Evidence
What is that evidence? Is there any? Is it sufficient to convict the defendant (your thought)? If you find no real evidence, toss away the thought. It isn’t true and is pulling you down.
If there turns out to be thin evidence, turn to the jury and say ‘I am not sure if this is really true. I will have to continue to explore and challenge this’. And that’s what you do then. Explore and challenge the self-critical thought, until you find the truth.
You can do that my checking in with others – what do they think, what do they do? You can also search for evidence both for and against the thought.
Check out our quiz-page with tests about:
Full reference:
Liya Panayotova (Mar 28, 2016). File a Case. Retrieved Dec 08, 2024 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/e/file-a-case
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