As I mentioned in an earlier post, my great aunt GiGi, who was one of my mental health heroes, owed her life to Recovery Inc. and she would occasionally share with me nuggets of its wisdom, like the following tools, quoted or adapted from Dr. Abraham Low’s writing:
• Treat mental health as a business and not as a game
• Humor is our best friend, temper is our worst enemy
• If you can’t change an event you can change your attitude towards it
• Be self-led, not symptom-led
• Symptoms are distressing but not dangerous
• Temper is the intellectual blindness to the other side of the story
• Comfort is a want, not a need
• There is no right or wrong in the trivialities of every day
• Calm begets calm, temper begets temper
• Don’t take our own dear selves too seriously
• Feelings should be expressed and temper suppressed
• Helplessness is not hopelessness
• Some people have a passion for self-distrust
• Temper maintains and intensifies symptoms
• Do things in part acts
• Endorse for the effort, not only for the performance
• Have the courage to make a mistake
• Feelings are not facts
• Do the things you fear and hate to do
• Fear is a belief — beliefs can be changed
• Every measure of self-control leads to a measure of self-respect and ultimately self-confidence
• Decide, plan, and act
• A firm decision steadies us
• Anticipation is often worse than realization
• Replace an insecure thought with a secure thought
• Bear the discomfort in order to gain comfort
• Hurt feelings are just beliefs not shared
• Lower your standards and your performance will rise
• Things happen by chance and not by choice
• People do things that annoy us, not to annoy us
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