Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Archives - Lisette Zeeuw M.Sc.

How to deal with Anger and Frustration: The complete guide

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Lisette Zeeuw — Leave a reply

Everyone knows what it feels like to be angry or frustrated. It’s that tension that you can’t shake off. It’s that uncontrollable temptation to let it all out. It can be good to express our anger. It shows others what we care about and it can be a motive for change. Unfortunately, we usually act in the heat of the moment. This causes us to do or say things that we didn’t want to. We hurt the ones we love or take it out on those people who deserve it the least. Afterwards, we feel like we’re a bad person, or we feel ashamed. And the worst part of it, is that our message doesn’t come through.

I know that it can be really difficult to control these feelings. Especially when you’re not feeling your best, it’s easy for anger or frustration to take over. When we’re feeling depressed, anxious, or stressed, it’s more difficult for us to regulate our emotions. We just don’t have that extra patience to protect us from being unnice or irritable. Luckily, you can train yourself to gain more control over your anger. If you want to know how to manage your anger, and express your needs without hurting others, this blog post is for you.

Why do we get angry or frustrated?

We get angry or frustrated when we see that our personal rules get broken. Everyone has its own set of values and rules. This personal rulebook gets established during our life and is based on our experiences. When these rules are rigid or are not very flexible it’s easier for us to become angry.

For example: if I think that everyone should be listening to me all the time, this can become a big source of frustration. Since it’s really hard for people to listen constantly, it’s quite likely that your rule will get broken. Thereby the chances of you getting angry or frustrated increase as well. That’s why our personal rules are an important cause of frustration and anger.

We also get angry when:

Other people don’t act the way we want them to. For example, when our personal rule is that after dinner the dishes need to be done, we get pissed-off when our partner/roommate doesn’t do this.

Unexpected things happen. We humans function by routine. This helps us to prepare ourselves, and to plan our day. When unexpected things happen we get confused, our plans might be disrupted, or we think that we’re not properly prepared. This is something that no-one likes and therefore causes frustration.

Someone hurts us. When someone says or does something that hurts us, our instinctive response is to get angry. Anger is a natural response to situations that threaten us, or our beloved ones. Of course behind this anger or rage lies our vulnerability. Many people don’t see or acknowledge this. However, sometimes we can get better results when we speak from our vulnerability. Later I’ll explain you more about this.

Anger and Frustration, irritability, Angry, Frustrated

Use the STOP Action Plan when you notice that you’re becoming Angry

What to do when you’re getting angry or frustrated: The STOP Action Plan

STOP! The most important thing to do when you notice you’re getting angry is to stop. When you act in the heat of the moment usually the outcome is not the way we want it to be. So give yourself some time. I know that stopping is more easily said than done. Some of the following tips might help:
1. Go to another room (if you’re in a restaurant go to the bathroom).
2. Ask for a break. If you already started to talk about the topic that makes you angry ask for a break. Tell the other one that you notice you’re getting angry and that you prefer to talk about it when you’re feeling calm again.
3. Take some deep breaths. Our mind and body are connected. When we relax our body we also get calmer mentally. Try to take some deep abdominal breaths.
Analyze the situation. It doesn’t end with a time-out. Now we have to analyze the situation. Why am I feeling angry exactly? What causes me to feel hurt or annoyed? Am I seeing things the way they are? What are the facts? Are there any alternative explanations to my interpretation?
Think about your goals. Think about what your goal is in the situation. What is it you want to reach when you express your frustration or anger? Sometimes when we fight we get the opposite result of what we want. For example: if your goal is to spend more quality time with our partner, it’s not a smart idea to start a fight on the household when you’re finally alone with him/her. Instead show that you appreciate this moment by saying something like “I loved our time together today. I would really like to do this more often”. Thinking about your goals can help you to decide on starting the fight or not, and to think what your anger is really about.
Try to be empathic. When other people are involved, being empathic can help us to calm down. By putting ourselves in the other person’s position we get a better understanding of the situation. Why didn’t he/she listen to you? Maybe he’s tired or maybe he had a crappy day. To you this might not seem a good excuse but think about it: How come the other is behaving the way he is? Have you ever felt this way? How did you behave? What did you most need in this moment?
Decide to act or not to act. Now that you’ve reflected on the situation you might have a better idea about what caused you to be frustrated or angry. Also, you might have discovered that the other one might have its reasons for acting the way he does. This information can help you to make a better decision about what to do. Is it worth it to start a fight? Will I be able to express my needs without hurting or offending the other one?
Act. If you decide to act, use the following tips to make sure your message gets along, without hurting the other one. If you decide not to act, try to say this to yourself “I’m not going to fight over this, it won’t get me anywhere”. By saying it you’ll be more likely to control yourself.

How to express your needs without offending others

Express needs, Angry, Frustrated, Anger, Frustration, Fights

Fights can have a positive outcome. Use the following tips to find out how.

Bring up one issue at a time. Only talk about the thing that matters to you. For example if you want to talk about the fact that you would like to go out more, don’t start about other issues like: “you’re also extremely lazy, you never do anything”, or “I don’t like the way you behave when we’re at my parents place”. This tends to make the other one angry as well, and you might get to hear all the things he/she doesn’t like about you instead of solving the issue.

Be brief and concise. Don’t go on ranting about why you’re angry and how bad it is what the other person has done. Instead be brief and describe exactly what bothers you. You can say something like: “when you do “this” (swear, shout at me, don’t do the groceries, don’t want to watch a movie with me etc.), I feel bad/sad/shocked” etc., or “This is something that bothers me because…”. Then end with “I wanted to talk about this with you and find a solution together.” “What do you think?”.

Let the other one respond. Give the other person a moment to respond. He/she can use this moment to explain himself, apologize, or offer a solution. Try to listen to what the other one has to say before you answer.

Use I-sentences instead of you-sentences. When we fight we tend to say things like “you’re cold” or “you’re irresponsible”. This makes other people more likely to feel offended. Try to say how the behavior of the other one affects YOU instead. For example: “It made ME feel sad when you forgot the appointment with my friends the other day”. By focusing on yourself the other one will be more open to what you have to say.

Don’t generalize. Don’t use words like “always” or “never” when you describe the other person’s behavior. No-one always behaves in the same way and by saying this you can make the other person angry. Instead use words like “sometimes”, or “in the weekend” to describe the frequency of the behavior.

Use your vulnerability. I know that this rule might sound difficult to many of you but it is one of the most effective tools there is. Try to tell the other one what you need and how you would feel if the other one would do this for you. This can be way more effective then when you blame the other one for not doing something. For example: saying that you would feel happier if your partner would ask you about your day will more likely get a positive response then saying “you never ask me about my day, you’re so uncaring”.

Look for a solution. Always try to look for solutions instead of focusing on the issue. Brainstorm about possible solutions with the other one. Try to settle on a compromise you both feel comfortable with. If you don’t find one straight away decide on another moment to talk about it.

Say thanks. Thank the other person for listening to you and for being willing to find a solution. This will increase the possibility that the other one will listen to you the next time you want to tell him/her something.

As you can see, anger does not have to control us. We can train ourselves to be calmer and at the same time express our needs without having to “take everything”.

Feel free to share your opinion about the tips and the STOP Action Plan. Also, if you have any questions about dealing with anger and frustration, please share them. I’ll gladly answer them.

If after reading this article you feel like you’re struggling and you would like to work on this, you can call me for a free 15-minute phone consultation on +34 626 653 339, or send an e-mail through the contact form.

How to make an end to your insomnia

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Lisette Zeeuw — 5 Comments ↓

Insomnia is a huge problem for many people. Not sleeping well can really ruin your day. Unfortunately when people have insomnia they usually take the wrong measures. In this blog post therefore I will give you advice on what to do to stop your insomnia and how to improve your sleep quality.

Insomnia is what keeps us awake at night

Alyssa L. Miller via Compfight

Why do I have insomnia?
Insomnia can have many different causes. Pain, worries, stress and apnea are among the most common ones. Usually what happens is that poor sleep starts a vicious cycle in which: poor sleep leads to worries about sleep, which in turn leads to ineffective measures, which finally leads to poor sleep.

Poor sleep. We all have a bad night of sleep every once in a while. What changes poor sleep into insomnia are the thoughts we have about not being able to sleep.
Worries about sleeping. When you sleep wrong once, it is easy to start worrying that next time you won’t sleep well either. Also, you might worry about how you will feel the next day or about things that might go wrong because of your lack of sleep.These thoughts actually make it more difficult to sleep and raise your anxiety level. This leads many people into taking measures.
Taking ineffective measures.Unfortunately these are usually not the most effective ones. For example, many people start checking the clock to see how much time they have been awake, which makes them even more worried. Others might start taking naps during the day “to make up for the bad night of sleep”, which actually causes them to have more trouble sleeping at night, because they’re not tired anymore. These ineffective measures complete the vicious circle of insomnia since they cause poor sleeping.

The vicious cycle of insomnia

It is important to know that whatever the cause of your insomnia is, you can do something about it:

What can I do when I don’t manage to fall asleep?
If you cannot fall asleep there are several things you can do:

Create your own sleeping ritual. It is important to prepare your body for the night and give it a sign that you’re going to bed. So try to create your own ritual before going to bed. You could include brushing your teeth, stretching your body, reading a book. Do this ritual every day before going to bed and you will see your yawns becoming more and more frequent around bed time.

Use your bed only for sleeping. This is an advice that many people find logical but hardly anyone complies with. How easy is it to have breakfast in bed, to watch a movie, to read a book… However, all these activities create a wrong association in the brain: they tell our brain that our bed is for staying awake. That’s why it’s extremely important not to use your bed for other activities than sleeping.

Use the 15 minutes-technique. The 15 minutes-technique is one of the most effective techniques to stop insomnia. It is based on breaking the connection of bed-awake and changing it into the healthy connection of bed-sleeping. It consists of the following steps:
1. Try to fall asleep.
2. If you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes you get out of bed and you go to another room.
3. Once you’re in the other room, you engage in a boring activity like reading the dictionary or the encyclopedia until you feel sleepy.
4. When you feel sleepy you go back to bed. You try to fall asleep.
5. If you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes, get out of bed and start another (or the same) boring activity. When you feel sleepy you go back to bed.
6. Repeat the steps until you fall asleep. Most people fall asleep within 1 or two cycles of the 15-minute technique. It’s used in all effective Cognitive Behaviour Therapy programs for insomnia. Try it!

Do not check your clock. Most people who suffer from insomnia check the clock all the time to see for how long they’ve been awake and how much time they can still sleep. Don’t do this! Watching the clock activates our brain, (especially the digital clocks) and causes you to stay awake instead of falling asleep.

Do not check your clock when you can’t sleep: it will only make you become more awake!

Change your thoughts. When you can’t sleep it’s easy to start thinking about how annoying it is that you’re unable to fall asleep, how crappy you’ll feel tomorrow, and how bad this important meeting will go because of this. At night the frontal part of our brain is less active, which causes our worries to run freely, without control. When this happens try to tell yourself that even though it might feel this way now, tomorrow the world will look different. Also, be a judge of your thoughts and try to think about days that you have been sleepy. Were you really unable to do anything? Was it that horrible?

Improve your surroundings. Try to make sure your sleeping conditions are optimal. So make sure your bed is comfortable, your mattress is soft (or tough as you prefer), and your pillow gives you the right support. Make sure the temperature in the room is about 16-18 degrees, warmer or colder makes it difficult to fall asleep. Also, prevent daylight from coming into your room, it causes our body to wake up, even though we don’t want to. And last but not least, make sure you don’t hear noise in your room, wear ear plugs if necessary.

So as you can see, there are many things you can do if you suffer from insomnia.

Please let me know what you think about the tips and which ones work best for you! Also, if you have any tips please share!

How to gain control over your anxiety: 7 useful tips

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Lisette Zeeuw — 2 Comments ↓

Many people suffer from Anxiety at some point in life. The most common fears are: getting an illness, loosing your job, hurting or losing the people around you, underperforming at important events or not being liked by the people around us. Luckily, anxiety does not need to control us. In this post you will find 7 useful tips about how to fight anxiety:

Know your anxiety. Knowing what makes us anxious is the first step in reducing our fear. Try to keep a notebook of situations in which you felt nervous or anxious. Write down what happened, when it happened and what you thought. This will help you to find patterns in your anxiety.
Remember that anxiety won’t last forever. Anxiety is the reaction of our body to a situation we perceive as frightening. It prepares us to fight or flight from a dangerous situation. Many people think that if they don’t do anything to stop anxiety, it will go on forever. Fortunately however, our body cannot stay in the “fight-or-flight” mode for a long time. If we stay in the situation long enough our anxiety level will always go down!
The red line shows how most people think Anxiety works. The blue line shows that our Anxiety always goes down if we stay in the situation long enough.
Expose yourself to your fears. Usually when we´re afraid, we start avoiding the situations we fear. For example someone who’s afraid of getting an illness might avoid sick people,or going to the doctor. When we avoid we tell our brain that something dangerous is really about to happen, and we can never discover if the opposite is true. By exposing ourselves to our fear and staying in the situation long enough, our anxiety will go down.
Schedule worry time. Sometimes it can be difficult to stop worrying. The best thing you can do is to schedule 1 hour during the day in which you have to worry. During the rest of the day write down your worries in a booklet and save them for your worry time. It might sound strange to force yourself to worry but it´s the best way to gain control over our worries.
Tire yourself. Our body can only be anxious when we have the energy for it. One of the best ways to fight anxiety is to engage in exercise. Take the bicycle, go for a run or go skating. The more tired you are, the less anxious you´ll be.
Breathe properly.The way we breathe can greatly affect how we feel. When you feel anxious try to take deep and slow breaths. Try to raise your abdomen with every breath instead of your chest. This will increase the oxygen level in your body and make you feel more relaxed.
Change your diet. Reduce the amount of coffee, tea, energy drinks and cola you consume. They´ll make you more anxious, which is just what we want to prevent.

As you can see there are many things we can do to gain control over our anxiety. For more useful tips check out the tips from the Anxiety and Depression Association. Also, if you have any questions feel free to comment. I’ll answer them gladly :).

I’m curious about your experiences. What do you do when you feel nervous or anxious? Did the tips help you?

What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Lisette Zeeuw

A lot of people nowadays might have heard of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. For others this blog post might be their first contact with this therapy. But what is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy really? What’s the difference with other therapies? Do clients still lie on a sofa? Is therapy still a process that lasts for years? Find out the answers to these questions in this blog post.

“Couch therapy”, does it still happen or is it out of fashion?

What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a form of treatment that focuses on examining the relationships between thoughts, feelings and behaviors. In CBT, clients learn specific skills that they can use in their daily lives. These skills involve identifying negative thoughts and changing them into more positive ones, relating to others in different ways, and changing behavior.

What is different about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, first invented by Aaron Beck is one of the most researched and most effective psychotherapies. It’s a short-term, goal directed, focused on the here-and-now therapy. This means that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a therapy that:

Can be effective in months (instead of years in other approaches).

Focusses on the problems you currently experience. So in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you don´t just talk about your past anymore. Instead you actively work on the problems you want to solve.

The CBT psychologist, that’s me :), works together with you as a team, in order to reach your goals. Both the psychologist and you will take an active role in the treatment process.

An important part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is homework. Don’t expect complicated math problems though. Some examples of homework are: monitoring your thoughts, reading a chapter of a book that’s related to your problem or practicing a relaxation exercice. Homework gives you the possibilty to practice what we’ve worked on in the session at home.

So to answer the question we made before:

Psychotherapy is not just lying on a sofa anymore. It’s an active goal-directed therapy that focuses on the here-and-now.

So how is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy able to help people?

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you learn new tools to cope with your problems, and new ways of thinking, in order to feel better.

A cognitive behavioral psychologist helps you to identify the cause of why you are feeling this way and give you the support and guidance you need.

Instead of giving direct advice or explaining personal stories, as friends or family might do, a psychologist will listen to you objectively and he will try to get more information so he can help you the best he can. The therapy sessions will be your moment of personal attention, reflection and working on solving your problems.

The psychologist will help you to gain resources and strategies you need in order to feel beter.

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you learn how to challenge your thoughts and change them into more helpful and positive ones. This can help you to feel better and to cope better with difficult situations!

Why change the way I think?

The way we think affects in great amount how we feel. When we have a negative thought about something, it can change the way we feel and act. For example, when you see your friend on the street and he doesn’t say “hi” to you, you might think “he doesn’t want to see me”. This might cause you to feel sad, and even to not meet with him again or to feel awkward when you’re with him.

So, as you can see, this single negative thought you had, can have an important impact on your mood and behaviour. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you can learn how to challenge your thoughts and change them into more helpful and positive ones. This will in turn, affect both your mood and behavior positively, and will help you to feel better.

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you learn how to question and change negative thoughts into more adaptive thoughts.

Our thoughts influence how we feel and behave. Learning how to change them into more adaptive thoughts, can help you to feel better!

How effective is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral therapy has been found to be effective in more than 1000 outcome studies for depression, anxiety, insomnia, and eating disorders, among others, and it is currently being tested for personality disorders.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has also been proven to be effective for certain medical disorders such as: irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypertension, fibromyalgia, post-myocardial infarction depression, noncardiac chest pain, cancer, diabetes, migraine, and other chronic pain disorders.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is also effective in reducing stress, low self-esteem, grief and loss, work-related problems and problems associated with aging.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is as effective as medication, with the benefit that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has more lasting effects, even after you quit therapy.The ultimate goal is for you to be able to be your own therapist and to learn how to help yourself.

If you would like to know more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or if you would like to make an appointment, feel free to contact me.

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