Don't Hope for Overnight Miracles

For the longest time, and to be honest I still do this to one degree or another, I would go to bed each night hoping and praying that when I awoke in the morning I would magically be changed into the person I want to be, free of anxiety. Obviously this miracle never happened and I believe that this thought process has helped to keep me in the anxiety cycle. The cycle looks a little something like this:

1. Suffer from anxiety all day.
2. Go to bed hoping that during the night I will be healed.
3. Wake up asking how I feel.
4. The first anxiety symptom in the morning confirms I am not healed.
5. Drop deeper into anxiety & depression.
6. Suffer from anxiety all day.
7. Go to bed…

The problem with me is that the very first symptom I feel dooms the rest of the day and any sort of recovery or progress I may have actually made overnight. If I have the expectation that I will go to bed and wake up miraculously symptom free, then I probably never will be. I believe that I need to reset my expectations and expect that I will have symptoms tomorrow but that doesn’t mean that I’m not progressing.

One of the cognitive distortions that I really struggle with is “Discounting the Positive”. This distortion plays a major role in the “overnight miracle scenario”. Rather than celebrating all of the progress I’ve made, my mind quickly grabs onto a single symptom and blows it way out of proportion. I’m working on accepting that it will take time to recover and I’m working on living each day while my symptoms are present but it is much easier said than done — one day I will succeed, another day I’ll fail but each day is progress.