Can Noticing My Victories Impact How I Feel?

Noticing your victories can have a profound affect on your mental health.  I know many of you say that sounds too easy...  but, when your brain is full of all the things you did not do, all of your inadequacies, all your cant's and should's, noticing your victories begins the positive inner snowball needed for change to occur.  

Noticing Victories

Noticing Victories is a DBT practice that I just love.  It's simple and practical.  It helps people notice and thus feel like they can manage their inner world with affirmation that they can.  It provides raw data facts proving they are getting better.  This practice can be done on your own.  You can note your victories with a loved one daily or weekly.  Praise and cheering from others is powerful and in all honesty, most people feel good when they receive it as well as when they exchange it with others. 

Noticing victories shifts our mental focus (similar to Gratitude).  

1. Mentally noticing  your victories daily.  

2. Making an actual victories list on paper or on your phone.   

3. Noticing others' victories and sharing them.

4. Calling to share others' victories.

    

Noticing Victories Affects Mental Health and Therapy Outcomes

Most individuals come to my office feeling beat down by some symptom, whether it be anxiety, depression, obsessions, or compulsive behaviors.  After years of trying to manage symptoms unsuccessfully, a major wall builds inside of ourselves.  Most people feel they cannot accomplish actions that will help them or if they can, it won't make a difference within themselves.  That is one's emotional mind taking over. The facts reveal that these victories add up and do have an effect on mental health.  

Therapists Reinforce Victories

Having a therapist reinforce and notice that you can do it and that you are doing it, helps keep your momentum going so that you can move through that block of sludge within you.  That block has been an old friend of comfort.  Some call it an inner critic, others call it the truth. Either way, it is a barrier that can be overcome in therapy.  Some of us need the support of a therapist to move through these inner barriers. Let's start the path of reclaiming YOU one victory at a time!