Use a gratitude book

What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

Each day I try and write three things. Simple things I’m grateful for.

Not wondrous things, but little ones.

Traffic lights staying on green, getting to an appointment on time, a phone call from a relative, an unexpected laugh with a friend. Maybe seeing the first tadpole or daffodil of the year.

Just list 3 things, with today’s date, maybe add a little sketch of what’s happened. Each positive gratitude trains your brain to  feel less negative. I’ve dome it for a couple of years now. It helps X

Gratitude book

What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?

My gratitude book it is blank

I feel like I’ve nothing to thank

Thinking all things are bad

When there is some good

But I keep on getting so sad…

I may try and fill in the blank

Pages with three thoughts a day

But it’s been so hard

To find the right way

I really don’t know what to say.

Words and drawings

For over a year

I collected my

Thoughts so dear

But then in December

Bad things I remember

Made me give up

On any small cheer.

I’ll start again one day

If my troubles do go away

My mind is in rubble

With no happy bubble

I hope that’s not how I will stay.

Not knowing

What makes you most anxious?

The world I’d bleak and I don’t know what to say or think. Words and thoughts churn round in my head. I feel anxiety about not getting something right, something I should have done months ago that could have massive consequences now or in the future.

Because I was focused on myself I didn’t see other people or a person who might have needed my help. It’s six months and the Earth has travelled half way around the Sun. That’s 186,000,000 miles. And now I’ve only just realised I should have been there for someone 186 Million miles ago! I feel idiotic, I feel great anxiety that I will not be forgiven. I feel I have lost a chance where I could have been of help…..

Even now, writing this, it seems a trivial response, too self serving, am I writing something that will help, or to just try and exonerate myself. Guilt and anxiety, mixed emotions and sadness…