DAY 1 - First Chapter of my book

I woke up at 330am to the sound of my cat throwing up. All kinds of thoughts flooded my head as I cleaned it up and tried to get back to sleep. I finally arose at 4am and closed myself in the bathroom to begin my book, "Thoughts and Feelings".

It is sorted in a chart by problems and what chapters to read in what order for what problem- I looked up Worry and it wants me to start in relaxation. I felt like I needed something more so I started with Perfectionism. THe first chapter to read is about Automatic Thoughts. I am plagued by them in a big way. The first step is to recognize what they are.

An event happens- This caused a thought which causes a feeling. Not the other way around. All feelings are caused by thought.

There is anxious, anger and safety feelings caused by thoughts. I have all three a lot of times.

For one week I am to write down on a chart my automatic thoughts to help recognize my thoughts.

Situation:
(When, Where,Who, What happened?)


Feelings:
(One word summaries) Rate 0-100


Automatic Thoughts:
(What were you thinking just before/during the unpleasant feeling?)

So far I really like this workbook. It is clear and I can relate to it and use it as a tool. I had another book I was trying to learn from about not worrying but it was all about preaching about God and I needed more than that for myself to live my life in addition to praising God.

I hope to keep up with this book and really fix my problems in dealing with stress and anxiety. I have started realizing that situations are not causing my stress, my reaction to the situation is causing the stress. My inability to deal with stresses as individual problems in a rational way.