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For me.....Stopping and breathing and determining what the actual problem is.....is easy.

My problem is....I get stuck at the 3rd step - "Come up with THREE possible courses of action" - I can never think of courses of action to fix the problem. (whatever the problem is) I only think negative when it comes to the third step and then I get stuck and extremely frustrated!!!

Then I begin to start thinking there is no possible course of action that I can take !!!!! Which makes a new problem
New problem being - I am helpless

So then what?

Am I doing/thinking something wrong?

Any suggestions for me?
please an thanks

ANY input or question or something VERY welcome - no ones replied to any of my posts since I've registered here

I think you need to look at The Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking an Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking. I do see twisted thinking, and I suspect untwisting will help.

Also, if you give us an example, we may be able to help better.

I know an example would help....I'm just trying to think of an example!

I know I have twisted thinking and I know about the 10 forms....it's just very very hard to apply it to myself.....

IMO when doing this exercise there are always two easy choices... once choice is to do nothing and survive the distress as it is. one choice is something like do something to completely counter whatever the distress is. Something that will make it go away completely or close to that.

The work we do on the third choice is where the payoff is IMO. Somewhere in between the two extremes... in between the black and white... in between the right and wrong.... the gray areas of the issue. It almost doesn't matter, IMO what choice we make in the gray area.... what matters is that we get in there and get to mucking around and decide something and put it all on some paper. Once that's done, it will be easy to improve on our choice somewhat, and we'll have to fight ourselves not to do that.

In doing that, the thinking process is alive and we can see it and simple as it is, we have come to be in control of it instead of the other way round.

That's my little take on it, anyway. Grab what ya like, if anything, and leave the rest.

You would find many examples in this "steps" Forum. Just keep going back till you find three or four and have a sense of what folks do that they seem content with. It's right here.

Relating to both untwisting and the five steps... you wrote:


It seems to me the problem here is not properly defined. Are you really helpless? Is it that you feel helpless? Is it that you are lacking in skills or knowledge?

I agree, if you could give an example, even just of a very small instance of this, it would help.

I was surprised when I started applying it, how many of my problems had obvious solutions. Generally I could come up with three solutions- one being the solution I would always go with in the past (and generally the wrong colution), one being to do nothing at all and just stew, and one being a pro-active, positive result.

The key to using the ten ways to untwist, in my opinion, to help you get to the bottom of your frustrations, is just be very systematic. Take the steps one at a time, slowly, don't just scan them and try to see which ones you wanna use, go through each, and if you determine one doesn't apply, move on to the next.

Thats what I do, at any rate. Hope it helps!