What Do You Do When You Can't Stop Wishing?

[The Albatross]

Challenging/refuting cognitive distortions can also come into play... but first you need to decide what your pay off is for all this wishing. Personally I would suspect avoidance of guilt/blame/shame... but the flip side of that is learning how to live a life adequately even with adversity.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

I think I would start running down some core belief stuff.

I think that is a great idea. I have issues with that because of my right and wrong issues, but it's been something that I've known is important. Perhaps it's time to start that challenging work.

Personally I would suspect avoidance of guilt/blame/shame...

Yep, I'd say that is correct. Thanks for your response. I think it might set me back in the direction I need to go in.

 

[Saria]

I don't know if this is silly or not, but I wonder if you could make this your very own @JEKBreatheandBelieve -adapted seIf-compassion challenge, like we did back in December/January? Not sure how it would work, but it's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read your post. So when you're aware of thinking about wishing things were different, could you then acknowledge that you have a wish to be happy? That you have a wish to be safe, to be healthy, to be loved. To realize you want to be understood and to be comforted. Maybe that's the beginning of feeling compassion towards yourself? To realize you have a wish to be happy? And that every part of you deserves to feel happy.

I don't know about you, but I often tend to blame myself for all the stuff that has gone wrong in my life. So when I for example wish I didn't have so many symptoms and wish I was able to work, I get all those "you're such a failure", "everything is your fault" thoughts, which makes it even harder to access some sort of comfort or compassion I may have towards myself. It's hard to face all the pain and the raw emotions though. I'm in the middle of such an opening process myself, and I try to think of it as cleaning a wound. Almost unbearably painful, but necessary for proper healing of a wound that never got the attention and care it needed.

I was also wondering what the right and wrong issues that you mentioned is about, related to core beliefs?

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

@Saria , thanks for the reminder of the self-compassion challenge. I found some of that stuff really helpful and I think it helped lead me to starting to learn more mindfulness.

I have huge right and wrong issues and therefore view everything as wrong that I do or state.

 

[Saria]

@JEKBreatheandBelieve Yes, me too.
I can really relate to that. I feel that i am wrong. In my core. So then everything I do feels wrong, even if I rationally know that's not the case. It's exhausting. Don't know if it's the same thing with you, but either way I hope it's getting better and that you've found ways to work with it.

Perhaps it is a sign that some grieving needs to be done, some reframing, and working towards making choices towards helping some future-oriented wishes to come true

And it sounds like you're onto something here. Seems like you're already heading in the right direction.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

I feel that i am wrong. In my core.

Yes, sometimes I feel that way, too. It's been helpful getting people's responses on here because it reminds me of ways I can deal with this constant wishing other than feeling wrong that I am constantly wishing even though I know it's not helpful.

 

[Whyteferret]

Some wishes may be fine. Wishing the past be different is pointless. You can't change it. Wishing for something now or in the future might provide some goals to work towards.
the things that you can't change are the ones to release (like your doctor not leaving).

As for stopping: I find distraction a good tool for my intrusive thoughts. It doesn't always work for me though. One thing my therapist told me makes sense. Practice it. Keep doing the distraction. For example, I want to give up when my internal prayers- for lack of a better word- don't stop the thoughts once I stop. He told me to just start again.
lol. Then I get the prayer stuck in my head but it beats the intrusive thoughts. Those are ugly