{"id":97,"date":"2012-12-11T18:24:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T02:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2014-11-21T22:39:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T06:39:46","slug":"overcoming-guilt-with-cbt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/overcoming-guilt-with-cbt\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcoming Guilt With CBT"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a few weeks of CBT and homework exercises<\/a> I’ve figured out a very clear pattern. Many times when I am feeling very down and guilty, my automatic negative thoughts<\/a> have something to do with my daughter having a problem as a consequence of me being an incompetent mother. With the help of my therapist, I am starting to realize that my current struggles with being a mother and having postpartum depression<\/a> really originate from my lifelong feelings of inadequacy. The main difference is that being incompetent was never as important as it is now. Whenever my self-esteem was very low in the past I could easily shake it off by calling friends and having fun with them. Getting distracted worked. My problems with self-esteem never had much to do with my looks or with what my friends thought of me. Every time I felt down it was because I thought I was not being successful, capable or smart enough. Now that I have an inescapable responsibility for the care of a baby 24\/7, my incompetence could have terrible consequences for her wellbeing.<\/p>\n

I’ve learned to identify certain convictions that I’ll have to overcome to stop feeling guilty and get out of this hole. Some of them are: I believe that making mistakes is unacceptable. I see my mistakes and I conclude I am useless. Any average woman is capable of taking care of her children, so my mistakes when taking care of my only baby daughter are not acceptable. Being a terrible mother not only shows that I am inadequate, but it also has dangerous consequences to a defenseless child. Emma goes hungry because of me. She is not gaining enough weight and I am to blame. My sadness is going to have a negative impact in her own mental health. If my husband gets tired of me she’ll grow up in an unstable family.<\/p>\n

I realize now that my own assessment of my performance and failures is not completely rational. I can’t just go on feeling guilty. I need to start questioning the judgement I pass on my actions.<\/p>\n

The internal negative feedback might have helped me get stuff done before, but now it’s mainly destructive. Telling myself I was an idiot after a bad grade might have helped me study harder for the next test. But telling myself I did something wrong every time my daughter cries is not getting me anywhere.<\/p>\n

I’m glad I’ve found a way to overcome the guilt, but it’s not easy. Every time Emma starts crying I need to catch myself when I start thinking I’ve done something wrong. I need to constantly check my automatic negative thoughts<\/a> and question the ones that are making me feel sad and guilty. I still have these negative thoughts many times a day, but I no longer allow them to dwell in my mind all day and drag me to the deep hole of depression. Now I’m more aware and I feel more empowered to challenge any destructive way of thinking and get my life back.<\/p>\n

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After a few weeks of CBT and homework exercises I’ve figured out a very clear pattern. Many times when I am feeling very down and guilty, my automatic negative thoughts have something to do with my daughter having a problem as a consequence of me being an incompetent mother. With the help of my therapist, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cbt-examples.com\/mia\/cbt-post-partum-depression-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}