Keeping a diary and jotting down your worries and troubles on paper is far more productive and a much better way in the process of sorting them out, rather than simply thinking and pondering about them. Get into the habit of doing this, till it becomes natural, wherever you are; i.e the office, on the train, at home.
When you are upset or sad, bad/negative thoughts are stuck in your mind, festering and intensifying and circling endlessly, but when you write them down, you draw yourself out of the equation, seeing the problem in a different light, and giving an impartial, and uncoloured perspective.
Firstly, write down a short summary of the problem itself, i.e. you didn't get the promotion, you had an argument with your spouse/partner. It is important to be specific about what the problem is, be as clear and to the point as possible. Being vague, putting down, 'I hate my life', will not help you to analyse and deal with the problem properly.
Next note down the negative feelings you experience when you think about the problem at hand. Whether it be; angry, sad, hurt, anxious, guilty, etc and put a number from 1 - 10 beside each emotion. 1 being the least you feel, and 10 being the most you feel. In doing this, you can build up an account of your day to day moods, and from it you can see how far you have come and how much better you feel. Seeing an improvement in how you feel, no matter how minute, will increase your sense of well being and self esteem.
Now write down the negative thoughts you have that accompany the negative feelings. Such as if the problem stemmed from an argument with your husband. The feelings you may get are sad, anxious, upset. The negative thoughts you may get are that he doesn't really love you, he doesn't care about your feelings. Something that crops up in your mind automatically without realising it.
Once you've done that, score your thought as to how much you believe that thought to be true. 1 being the least and 10 being absolutely certain. Obviously, when you first think about the negative thoughts, you deem them as 100% correct, absolute and accurate. I mean if you didn't think that way, then it probably wouldn't have affected how you felt in any way.
Doing this will allow you to see for yourself that your premeditated thoughts which hurt you initially are in general unfounded and not realistic at all. Seeing it on paper will allow you to see it from a detached point of view. Show you that those thoughts are not true and only something you believe at the time.
Now I want you to write down a more reasonable and more rational thought, such as, the argument you had with your spouse may have stemmed from several factors, he could have had a bad day at work, or he was feeling tired at the time, etc. These reasonings are far more realistic to the thoughts you had initially. Now score these thoughts according to how true you think they are, again 1 being the least and 10 being true.From here we can now go back and amend our initial thought score. Cross it out and put a score you think now tallys to it realistically. Now we can see that our initial thought process was clearly wrong and not valid at all, or you may not feel so strongly as you first had. Doing this will allow you to feel better as you won't feel so strongly about these initial negative thoughts.
