I think that the love for potentiality is what sorts those who seek change and those who hide from change. Change is scary, rejection hurts, but those who seek change recognize the potential pitfalls. There is a term for those who seek change -- those people are morphogenic.
What morphogenic people don't always do a good job of is deal with disappointment when the desired goal fizzles. No amount of effort, good planning, or knowledge will guarantee success; there are so many other factors. I have an optimistic friend who takes rejections very well -- in public, at least. I don't know how he takes them in private. He seems to be an optimist anyhow.
I don't deal with rejection well. I tend to prognosticate more rejection and failure when I've failed, as I have with not getting published over and over. Honestly, getting rejected has improved me as a writer, but that's not what I see when I don't get published. I tend to beat myself up, saying I'm not a good writer, I'll never get published, etc.
This is where cognitive journaling comes in.
The theory behind cognitive journaling is that, when something bad happens, our brain reacts in automatic ways -- maybe from parental or cultural conditioning -- that causes an even more bad mood than previously, and that path in your brain from happening to feeling becomes (figuratively) a groove your mood gets stuck in. These bad ways are usually encapsulated in what are known as cognitive distortions -- such as "I'll never get published," above.
Cognitive journaling seeks to replace the cognitive distortion with more balanced thoughts. For example, let's tackle my cognitive distortion:
CD: I'll never get published. I'm a bad writer.
What are some ways we can identify these as cognitive distortions?
- I can't predict the future
- I've already been published -- several academic articles, one essay in a progressive religious journal, and a couple poems in Lindsey-Woolsley (the Allen Hall literary magazine at University of Illinois
These become the basis for contradictions to the cognitive distortions:
- If I quit trying, I'll never find out if I can get published
- I really can't predict the future (otherwise, how come I can only predict bad things and not the latest lottery winners?)
- People liked my writing before, it can happen again.
- This rejection may have nothing to do with my writing.
If I write these down and look at them occasionally, I can (the theory holds) program my brain into thinking more positively.
*****
If I knew about this already, why did I not use it earlier? Because I was depressed, and deep depression tends to believe that everything negative is true. I couldn't get myself to use cognitive journaling because I really wasn't a good writer and I wouldn't get published.
The irony was, in not doing my cognitive exercises, I was pushing my depression further by getting stuck in my negative rut. I'm not saying my depression was my fault because I didn't do my cognitives, but my refusal was a factor in how deep the depression got.
So I'm journaling again, and hoping that it returns me to my optimistic self.
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