This morning, my therapist shared this really useful hack and I feel like it could be useful to share: it is the pie chart method.
Essentially, it is a great tool to identify the behaviours, situations and events that caused a certain effect, in order for you to truly understand what really happened.
You simply draw a circle, identify the circumstances that caused the outcome and give each situation a percentage of its influence on the outcome.
For example: you bake a cake but it turns out horribly. It could be that 45% of the fault could be given to the oven that has malfunctioned, 30% to the wrongly calculated measurements of the ingredients, and 25% of your inexperience baking a cake. In the end, you will realise that it may not be your fault, and therefore you should stop being so angry at yourself.
Disclaimer: sometimes the fault could be given to you. This is a useful method for those of you who may constantly be harsh to yourselves.
Call a therapist.
Build rapport for six months.
Extend your therapy session on a random Tuesday because you can not function like a proper adult for 90 minutes.
Heal.
emotional processing is so funny because sometimes you’ll be violently sobbing on your bedroom floor over something that happened 4 years ago and then you’ll just. get up and make coffee. and go to the grocery store. and take all this fundamental sadness for a walk. and ponder the cosmic experiences of humanity while eating a sandwich. and that’s healing.