Padraig O'Morain's guide to managing life
If you happened to be a werewolf you would be a perfectly normal person most of the time. Only on nights of a full moon would you sprout fur and a tail and razor sharp canines and go out looking for someone to devour.
Emotionally, though, people sometimes turn into werewolves the moment they open their eyes in the morning - and the victim the monster devours is themselves. Many are unfortunate enough to have this happen every morning.
This all occurs courtesy of that old enemy, the critic in our heads. As we start to get out of bed, or maybe even before, it begins. You went to bed too late last night, you didn't need that last glass of wine, how could you have made that mistake...
By the time you get to the bathroom the critic has become a major monster howling for your soul. You begin your day with an emotional beating. It's no wonder some people turn around and go straight back to bed rather than face being fully awake with this sort of thing going on.
What's to be done? There's a little technique I use which helps me. It involves quickly listing, in my mind, and the moment I get out of bed, five things that happened in the past 24 hours that I'm grateful for or glad about. Then I think of five things I hope I'll be glad about tomorrow morning. Sounds corny? You're darn right but it works.
Not that it's always easy to think of five things I'm grateful for or glad about. Sometimes I'm reduced to being glad it stopped raining for a few hours yesterday, that the kids had nice time, that I went and started that painful course of treatment with the dentist instead of having it looming, that the dog found a bone and that I succeeded in tracking down somebody I needed to interview.
Just before I start this little exercise I hear the critic knocking on my mind's door. It's there, peppering for a good rant but by doing my little list I deny the critic its morning bullying session. All this has nothing to do with ignoring reality. It is to insist that the things you are glad about are just as real as the things you want to beat yourself up for.
It's important to do your mental list fairly quickly. If you make the exercise elaborate, for by instance by insisting on writing the list down, you may find it takes up too much time and that it falls by the wayside eventually - though if you already do this and you have the time for it, by all means keep doing it. Also I would suggest that you don't actually cling on to the list of things you hope you will be glad about tomorrow by checking whether you achieved them. That would just become another way of criticising yourself.
The list is there to help you start your day on a positive note - it isn't necessarily there to get done. The list won't have you singing and dancing but it will help you get as far as breakfast.
Put it into practice
To quieten the self-criticisms try this simple exercise: The moment you get out of bed think of five things, however small, that happened yesterday and that you're glad about or grateful for. Then think of five things you hope will happen today and that you'll be grateful for tomorrow.
• Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
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