Page 33 - How to play life to your advantage -print

Once you see what words you have used on yourself you can start poking holes in the

words. This is a system of therapy called ANT Therapy, or Automatic Negative

Thoughts.

For example, if I start feeling really depressed and hopeless but I don’t know why. I

don’t know why that feeling has come over me. If I stop, and ask myself, “What was I

just saying to myself?”. What I might realise is that I had just sent a text message to a

friend and they hadn’t replied. Maybe I then said to myself, “Why did I say that? I’m

such a crappy person. Why can’t I get anything right?” I then might feel gloomy about

who I am and what just happened. If I acknowledge that course of events though, it

then gives me the power to rethink my self-talk. “Am I really a crappy person? Do I

always fail? Can I remember a time that I didn’t fail? Is it just that I am impatient?” and

so forth. By picking holes in your self-talk you can start breaking free from the

emotional trigger around that situation.

What this is implying is that through your self-talk you are actually capable of gaining

more and more power over your emotional regulation.

The type of self-talk that I have personally started practicing on a daily basis

sometimes multiple times a day is I say things like:

“I am a powerful being”

“I am enough”

“I am lovable”

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