There’s a chapter in your book titled “How do you make yourself do something when you don’t feel like it?”. We’ve all been there. What’s the answer? A profound book from clinical Psychologist Dr Julie Smith. It provides phenomenal insight into how our minds work, and sound advice on managing our emotions and thoughts more effectively, particularly in response to challenges such as anxiety, stress, depression, low confidence, grief and more. Metacognition - The act of thinking about our thoughts through awareness, being intentional and present, in addition to creating pauses between emotion and action.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Julie Smith | Goodreads

Through it's practical structure, it allows the reader to dip in and out, with bitesize chapters focusing on a specific topic or issue.That’s partly why the book felt such a timely thing to do. I can’t give everybody one-to-one therapy, but I can do something. I can share some basic education as widely as I can.

Dr Julie Smith - AbeBooks Dr Julie Smith - AbeBooks

While initially a raw and intimidating task, confronting fears is crucial in helping us to understand our traumas and problems as opposed to neglecting and letting them fester. Thoughts are not facts. They are guesses, stories, memories, ideas, and theories. They are … one potential explanation for the sensations you are experiencing … So what does this mean for those anxious thoughts that pop into our heads? It means the power of that thought … is in how much we buy into it. How much we believe that thought to be a true reflection of reality. The best way to break down the power that thoughts have over our emotional state is to first get some distance from them. How do we get distance from something that is inside our head? Mindfulness is a great skill … for building that ability to … notice your thoughts and let them pass without getting caught up in them. … If you can notice a thought for what it is – a biased guess, and label it as such, then … that is one way of holding the thought at arm’s length. Your mind can then see it as just one possible perspective. We are then in a much better position to be able to consider the alternatives. …”If we associate failure with unworthiness, then starting anything new is going to feel overwhelming and procrastination will be front and centre. We protect ourselves from the psychological threat of shame by sabotaging the process before it gets started.”

Julie Smith | Goodreads Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Julie Smith | Goodreads

If you want to feel like you have a therapist sitting across from you, empowering you with how to be your best self, this book is for you!' Nicole LePera, New York Times bestselling author of How to Do the Work So my videos have really been about reminding people and helping them to build that awareness – that if this is impacting you in a negative way, you are one decision away from something different. Sound, therapeutic wisdom that is easy to gulp down. Full of principles and advice that work and comfort whether you are in a very bad situation or an everyday worrying one. I'm sure this book is already helping lots of people. Great work, Dr Julie' MATT HAIG, bestselling author of REASONS TO STAY ALIVE The author suggests we identify our values and who we want to be and then analyze our thoughts and behaviors to see if we are going in the right direction. She also talks about identifying our emotions in more detail; instead of saying we are sad, are we really bored, anxious, frustrated? She suggests journaling and writing down our negative emotions to try to make some sense of how and why they appeared which will help us to understand them. One of the most important things to me was the idea of not stopping bad feelings but letting them flow through you while trying to identify what they are and where they came from. This is amazing advice as so many times we are told to stop negative feelings which can be impossible.

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It’s about recognising that you have the power of choice. You have a choice how long you spend online, you have a choice about who you follow and who you don’t and the content you engage in. When you get into mindless scrolling, it can feel like you don’t have a choice. Ultimately, wellbeing comes from inward. We have much more power over our own emotions and thoughts than we think, therefore taking responsibility for our own wellbeing allows us to construct new emotional experiences and responses.