Saturday, December 5, 2015

Fairy Dust Optional

“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!” 
 --J.M. Barrie ~ Peter Pan

I'd been noticing that I have allowing my thoughts to run away with themselves and they weren't going to happy places. Here's the general idea...I'm home alone and hear a noise I don't recognize. Is there someone trying to break in the house? What would I do if they got in?...and so on and so on.

I decided that as part of living my life deliberately, I would work on being in charge of my thoughts. For example, if I heard a noise, I decided to imagine that someone was leaving a gift for our family on the doorstep (that has happened before so it wasn't far fetched).

I knew I was starting to make it a habit when I had a bad dream the other night. In my dream, I was at my church building, helping other church members clean up a huge mess. They all had to go to other parts of the building for various reasons and I was left in the room. A man walked in the room and I knew he was going to hurt me. I made the conscious decision while still dreaming to change the story. I decided that he was nice. He then looked at me and said, "You're tired. Sit on this chair and I'll clean up the mess." I've worked for a long time to get to the point where I can change my dreams. It doesn't always work but I'm trying.

I talked to a dear friend who is a Psychologist and she told me that this is part of a psychotherapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I've got some research to do :-)

1 comment:

Janae said...

It is! CBT is a neat therapy model. It's been helping me a lot with my anxiety disorder. :)