I remember when I worked at a doctor’s office and I had just started on the job
I had a lot of training to learn about the different programs on the computer about the job. I had mastered the majority of the programs but there was one program that I just had a problem with. I knew the program but whenever l made a small mistake my co-workers would make me feel small and dumb. I knew how to do the program but I would always become nervous around my co-workers and make mistakes. It got so bad that they starting telling the supervisor on me labeling me that I was dumb and could not learn anything. I felt so bad about myself that I began to feel like I knew nothing so I continued to make mistakes. My supervisor sent me to a class to learn how to do the program when I already knew how to do it. I received a good grade when I completed the program. My co-workers and supervisor put a label on me which was not even true without knowing all the facts.
I was so caught up in what others thought of me that I continually made mistakes which made what they thought of me as being true. When you are already have low-self esteem and you keep making mistakes this only makes things worse. Then you start putting labels on yourself. I needed to rethink what I knew I was capable of doing and know that everyone makes mistakes but that does not make me a failure. I could not allow people to put labels on me when they really did not know me or what I am capable of doing. I realize now that I will always make mistakes but that does not define who I am and because labels were put on me, I accepted it and became what people thought of me what made me make more mistakes and made me feel more inferior. I will never again allow people to make me feel inferior or put labels on me without really get to know who I really am.
I would manage my emotions in the future by not allowing others to make me feel like I cannot complete tasks when I know that I am capable of doing anything if I put my mind to it. I cannot allowing myself to feel like a task is so hard that I could not finish it or do not have the capability to do or finish it. I also realize when I think with my emotions it can cloud my judgment of what is real to me and what is not. When I allow anyone to make me feel what I am not I am giving that person power over me. No one should have any power over me and my emotions. So I must always be in control of my emotions at all times. I also must feel confident that I am capable of accomplishing anything that I am able to do.
I will use factual information in my essay because I cannot judge anyone based on what they have done. I must have actual facts about the prison reform and how, when and why it was created. I must also know that everyone prisoner has their own story and there is the truth and there also are the lies. The truth about prison reform is that some prisoners are being mistreated and abused because of what they have done and because some people are just cruel to people who are in prison. So I will use the GCU library to back up my claims about prison reform. I will input actual experience of what some prisoners have been though in prison and what they did to survive and if they received the help that they needed through the prison reform. The truth is that all prisoners did not commit these crimes and some were falsely accused and still they are mistreated and abuse in prison.
Emotional Reasoning: What you feel must be true
I sometimes feel that some of my friends feel like I am not smart and poor.
Because I feel that I am not smart and because at that time I did not have a job I felt like I was poor. My friends have good jobs and cars and houses at that time I did not have a job, lived in an apartment and did not have a car. These friends sometimes made remarks pertaining to my situation which may me feel like these things that they said were in fact true about me, because I already felt the same feelings. So I believed what others said about me because of my situation.
Not realizing what they said about me was not true because they were basing it my circumstances and because I was in living in that circumstance I started to believe it as well. Because I did not have a job did not make me poor or because I did not know everything does not mean I am not smart.
This type of emotional thinking can distort your critical thinking because you constantly believe something about yourself that is not true. When I started to believe things that seem like they were true I started to believe it and my actions showed what I had been thinking. This type of emotional thinking can have you feeling like everything is wrong with you when really that is not the case at all. If I had felt good about myself then I would not allow my negative and emotional feeling take over me. Also what people said about me would not even affect me because I would be emotionally stable and when I am emotionally stable and not letting my emotions get the best of me that I am able to think with a clear head and mind. Critical thinking and emotions are somewhat inter-connected. So I must be careful to always check my emotions not suppress them but be mindful of them.
I can manage my emotions by not allowing my emotions to get out of control. When I allow my emotions to rule how I think and feel then I can become emotionally unstable. Our emotions can sometimes make us behave in un-acceptable behavior. I know that I must always have my emotions under control. I know when my emotions get out of control it causes me to use my ability to think critically to diminish and make me lose my focus. Also I have to manage my emotions because sometimes I let my emotions get the best of me. I sometimes get angry over little things and I am now trying to get control over my emotions because I realize that my thoughts impact what I feel so I know that my thoughts always have to be positive because when I think positive thoughts I know that I everything will go right in my life.
I will not use this in my essay because I will use facts instead of using my emotional reasoning. When I write my essay it can be based on my emotions because I am for prison reform and against any type of abuse and mistreatment to any prisoners. So I have to do research in the GCU library to find the history and how the prison reform was created and who created it. So must use factual information, however I can state in my essay how I feel about the prison reform and why I am for it and my reason would be because the prisoners are sometimes mistreated and nothing is done about it .The prisoners have no voice so the people who advocates for the prison reform must speak up for them and be heard. So that is my emotion speaking for me in my essay but I still must have the real facts to back up any statement that I write myself.
Personalization: Comparing yourself to others in some type of personal or direct reaction.
- When I was growing up I was always comparing myself to my sisters who I thought were so much prettier than me. Everyone always called me ugly. So as an adult I was always comparing myself to others whether they were pretty or smart.
Also, whenever something happen and it was not my fault I always took the blame because no one believed me so I always got into trouble because people lied on me.
Even now as an adult I find myself always feeling guilty for things that are not my fault.
This has become a bad habit and one that I need to break because this kind of behavior makes me very sad. I still find myself as adult comparing myself to others and still feeling guilty for things that are out of my control. I realize that I have to stop comparing myself to others and also learn to not feel guilty when things cannot be changed or controlled.
I was so caught up comparing myself to others that I started forgetting who I was literally. I was worry about what new clothes my friends had and what grades they were getting in school they sometimes I felt like I was actually going crazy. It is amazing when you are thinking about what other people have and you really do not even cross their mind. I just wanted to be like other people and be accepted and when I felt like someone was doing better then me in school or even at work I would either get sad or mad. I really needed to look at what I was doing to myself and change my way of thinking. I needed to accept who I was and my positive traits that I have. Focusing more on myself will make me more aware of what I need to change to make me a better person.
believe it is important to manage your emotions especially when it comes to comparing yourself with other people. If my focus is always on someone else, then I will never have the time to look at myself or my faults. I need to learn how to separate the truth and what is false. If I really think about half of the people I am thinking about are no better than I am in fact we sometimes have the same traits, but no person is really better than the other person. We all have the same or similar problems and we all feel like we want to be someone other than who we really are. If I change my way of thinking and think more about myself in a positive manner, I would not even think about others because my focus would be on improving who I am.
Catastrophizing: Jumping to conclusions about a particular event.
I have the bad habit of always assuming the worst if one of my friends does not call me for a week then I assume we are not friends. I guess when you are use to someone calling you at least once a twice a week and when they stop I automatically assume that they do not care or we are not really friends. I never think that maybe that could have been busy or just did not have the time to talk or text me. Another incident is when I had applied for a job I had some college credits but I felt I was overlooked when the other person got a second interview and I was sent home. I started thinking that I would never get another job interview or that know wanted to hire me. These were all negative assumptions in my mind but I believed all of them. I need to learn that when things happen they are for a reason and all a part of life.
This type of thinking not only hurts me it also hinders me. When I continue to believe that something bad is going to happen it usually does but sometimes it doesn’t.
I must guard my thoughts when bad things happen and not over react when things do not turn out like I want them to. Life is not always going to be how I want it to be. So when the challenges and hurdles come my way I must be able to deal with it and continue to move on in a positive manner. I cannot always assume the worst about people or events.
Things happen, people change sometimes we must go along and learn how to deal when adversity comes in our life. Nothing last forever and nothing is a guarantee yet we must try to make the when bad things happen to us. I must keep a positive outlook even when things look like it will never happen.
- I would manage this emotion in the future by not jumping to conclusions and stop assuming the worse. I have to change my way of thinking and always hope for the best even when it looks like it is not going to happen. Always assuming the worse when I do not get the job, or that new house can make thing much worse than they really are.
I can remember when I wanted this promotion at my old job and I was qualified but they gave it to a girl that had just started working at my job. I felt so hurt, my heart was broken and I started thinking that I would never get a promotion and because I kept thinking that negative thought it never happen. I never received a promotion and so I left that job because I felt like I would never succeed there. I realize now that your thoughts and emotions are very powerful and the very thing that you say you will not have will come true. So I know now to always think positive and believe that you will succeed if you believe.
- I will not use this in my issue because I can never assume and not have facts to back up my claim. If I am writing about real life experiences, I must be able to have the proper citations in my essay. I have to be careful to not assume that what I am writing is correct or true. I cannot write from my own life experience because I do not have the facts to go along with it. So I must do my research through the library and find the topic that I chose and have all the necessary information to persuade my audience to like my essay. I will write from the facts that I find in the library. I will have different views about prison reform pro and con and still I cannot assume from this I must have actual facts about my topic and be able to have an essay worth reading.
Filtering: Thinking in a negative manner and leaving out all positive details.
I can remember this incident like it was yesterday, one of my best friends betrayed me. The betrayal was very traumatic because it affected two other people besides me. Her actions were uncalled for and all though many years have went by it still haunts and hurts me. I questioned her friendship of 43 years. I felt as if she was never my friend. I became obsess over this betrayal until today I am still talking about what she did and how she hurt me and how I wanted her to pay for her actions by telling the whole truth so I could forgive and forget. Yet this incident is still with me it haunts me day and night. She has lied several times about the story never really telling the whole story. I really need to forget and forgive but yet I let this twisted thinking of mine get the best of me. I do hope that one day I can forget so I can move on in peace.
I know that this type of thinking can distort your thinking and have you thinking in a dismal way. If I take a particular situation and obsess over it eventually it will mentally harm me. When the situation with me and my friend happen, at first I could not believe that she could betray me that way that she had and for years I did not know that she had betrayed me. When the truth finally came out I kept talking about it even though something positive came out of it was her betrayal that still haunts me. I still talk about and I need to let it go because it has become an obsession. I still want her to pay for her actions by telling the whole truth and say that she is sorry, however that will never happen and because of her betrayal she lost a good and dear friend.
I have been trying to manage this emotion but it has been very hard for me. I have tried to talk about it but it still bothers me.
I know I have to get past this betrayal in my life but it is so very hard.
This emotion has now became an obsession and even when I write about it in this worksheet it still feels like it happened yesterday. I still want answers so I can have some type of closure. It feels like a weight and I still talk about like an obsession.
I know that I need to let this go but it does affect me in many ways. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all but then someone will bring up a situation similar to what happen to me and then I start thinking about it again. I know that I have to find a way to let this go.
- I will only write the facts when doing my essay. Although there are some troubling issues in my essay, I will only concentrate on the facts about my topic. I cannot be swayed in another direction because my topic has affected me in a personal way.
I must remain bias and write an essay that will state all the facts in a favorable manner.
Because this essay is personal I must remain focus and tell my story and let my writing be my voice. I want my reader to feel the pain that I feel when I write this because my topic is about people who feel mental and physical pain everyday. I chose this topic because I am an advocate for reform. I always want to protect those who cannot protect themselves because of their circumstances. So this essay will be a story that needs to be told and hopefully understood.
