Spirituality

Spirituality can encourage people to have better relationships with themselves, others, and the unknown. Spirituality can help you deal with stress by giving you a sense of peace, purpose, and forgiveness. There are multiple ways of practicing spirituality, like aroma therapy, journaling, and cognitive reframing.

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Aromatheraphy

Aromatherapy is the practice of using essential oils for therapeutic benefit.

Below you can see some of the benefits of popular essential oils.

Lemon

Lavender

Energizing, stressrelieving

Eases anxiety, good for insomnia

Peppermint

Sandalwood

Boosts energylevels, releases tension

Increases focus, clarity and sleep

Cognitive reframing

Cognitive reframing is a technique that consists of identifying and then changing the way situations, experiences, events, ideas, and emotions are viewed. Follow the 5 steps below to change the narrative and take control over situations in your head.

5 steps

The 5 Steps of Cognitive Rethinking is a skill for carefully examining your thinking when you are feeling upset or distressed about something. You can use it to deal with any situation in which you are experiencing negative feelings. If a close evaluation of your distressing thought indicates that it is not accurate, you will change it to a more accurate and less distressing thought.

Step 1 - The Situation

In Step 1, you write down the upsetting situation. The situation might be an actual event, or having an argument with someone, or a memory of an event such as thinking about the disaster. In either case, just write one sentence describing the situation.

Step 2 - The Feeling

Identify the most upsetting feeling you had. Pick one of these 4 and complete the 5 steps with this feeling in mind.

1. Fear and anxiety

2. Sadness

3. Guilt and shame

4. Anger

Step 3 - The Thought

Step 4 - Evaluating the Thought

In Step 3, you identify your thoughts about the situation that are underlying your upsetting feelings.

• For fear or anxiety, ask yourself, “What bad thing do I expect to happen?” “What kind of danger am I in?”

• For sadness or depression, ask yourself, “What have I lost hope in?” “What is missing in my life or in me?”

• For guilt or shame, ask yourself, “What bad thing have I done?” “What is wrong with me?”

• For anger, ask yourself, “What is unfair about this situation?” “Who has wronged me?”

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Is there another way of looking at the situation?

2. Is there an alternative explanation for what happened?

3. How would someone else think about the situation?

4. Is my concern based more on how I feel than the actual facts in the situation?

5. Am I placing unrealistic and unobtainable standards on myself that I would never expect other people to achieve?

6. Am I overestimating how much control and responsibility I have in this situation?

7. What would be the worst thing that could happen if my fear were true?

8. Am I not considering everything I can do to deal with the problem or situation?

9. Am I thinking that because a low-probability event happened to me, that it is very likely to happen again to me?

Step 5 - Making a Decision

Step 5 involves making a decision about whether your thought is accurate or not, based on all the evidence you have listed in Step 4, and then taking action based on your decision. When considering the evidence for and against the accuracy of your thought, you should place the greatest weight on strong evidence that is objective and based on facts, and give less attention to weak evidence that is based only on feelings or beliefs. Being objective when evaluating your thought is important, since you want your understanding of the situation to be as accurate as possible so that any actions you take are informed and effective.