Changing Your Thinking 6 - Depression

Change your thinking - beating the blues
Worrying is a cognitive process
Anxiety is more primitive - sometimes not conciously thinking about it. Muscle tense up and arousal.
Anxiety - perception of threat.
Depression -perception of hopelessness.

Stopping behaviour - helps us change ourselves.
Cognitive bias - mood affects thinking - sometimes we get caught up in our thinking
Cannot trust content of our thoughts.

Feeling down-
Lack of energy, heaviness
Majority of depressEd people may also have anxiety, but not the other way round.

(clinical/major ) depression: long term, hard to function.
Symptoms: lose appetite, depressed mood, lost interest
Melancholic depression - biological

What causes depression.
- Not always due to a reason.
- Biological
- historical
- psychological - personality style
- environmental

Black dog institute day high risk for these groups
- Anxious worrier
- irritable
- socially avoidant
- reserved - don't feel they are ok so pretend things ok, don't let people know what you are really feeling
- sensitive to rejection
- self critical.

Biological based depression :
-Melancholic
-Psychotic - delusional, paranoid, really agitated - use electric shock
-seasonal affective disorder -

Bipolar disorder
-Bipolar 1- very rare but psychotic, mania
-bipolar 2 - severe black intense depression.
-Bipolar - strongly correlated with intelligence.

Stress triggers depression
-Acute stress
-chronic stress

Rumination
- Self doubt, over analysing, others have better things.
- unproductive and not really solving problems
- feeling defective failure guilty

Strategies for managing depression
- Perceptions feel 100% true
- feels like no solution and permanent
- in reality, things change or our perception change

Mindful observation
-Observe and label the thoughts - worry, over thinking, Rumination

Behavioural strategies :
Activity scheduling
Achievement activity
Pleasurable activities
Goals are important
Social support
Long term plans
Exercise

Apps;
Mycompass
Head space
Mood gym
Worry time

Controlling Your Thinking 7 - Self Esteem

To avoid depressed state :
Exercise, do pleasure things, socialise, do something leading to accomplishments.

Core beliefs or schemas hard Wire or brain - causes wrong thinking like mind-reading

SELF ESTEEM
way we perceive ourselves, relative to other people
- Affects what we put up with., confidence, sense of belonging, affects who we marry or make friends.
- Affects mood and risk of depression.
- Could be a state or trait
- everyone who is depressed has low esteem
- leads to self diminishing behaviour - gives negative feedback. High self esteem leads to more friendly - more positive feedback
- comes from past experience, early childhood, adolescent
- temperament - eg introvert find harder to make conversation and like to be alone. Extrovert - talking to people is positive.
- Subsequent life experience -social interaction, negative experience
- can be: healthy, fragile, poor
- core belief of self
- cognitive bias is like prejudice, when there is strong belief - accept info that aligns with our beliefs, but make excuse of opposite evidence.
- High reserve, perfectionism, workaholic is related to low self esteem. People trying to prove themselves.
- At the end, relationship more important.

Comparing yourself
- When feeling down to see others more successful, then low self esteem
- better to compare ourselves with our own self.
- Can set goals for ourselves - for our own sake.
- Unfair to compare. Irrational, self defeating

Challenge
-Self acceptance
- setting goals

Labelling
-Making gross generalisations
-no point labelling because that gives us a single label.
- we are all a complex mixture of things
- think: I'm not dumb - I'm not good at statistics
- think: I'm not social misfit -I'm shy with people
- good to be specific, not good to label

Social anxiety
-tend to focus attention on ourselves
-avoid pre event planning - mind reading, analysing

Address cognitive bias
- Focus on skills, strengths, qualities

Acknowledging shame can be good, eg with weakness.
-Shame tired to self esteem

Tips:
Acknowledge reality -drop judgement
Self diminishing behaviours
Body language, eye contact,
Honest assertive communication -builds relationship based on equality 

Controlling your Thinking 5 - Anxiety

Anxiety
Worry time app
Breathe 2 relax
Google-centre for clinical interventions - workbooks

Fatigue, out of control, phobia
,-response to perception of threat
Fear- very extreme danger short term.
Anxiety-general world feels unsafe, partly aroused, long term threat- motor tension.
Leads to lots of physical effects.
Effects cognitive functions, memory
Effects behaviours
Effects performance - can improve performance, but to much lead to hyperstress
Anxiety disorder - in very serious case.  This impairs our functions
Generalised anxiety disorder - general tendency to worry. Muscle tension, fatigue, concentration, irritability.

State anxiety,- due to circumstances
Trait anxiety -due to our own personality. Can be physical, even if we know about it.

Common threats
-Negative appraisal
- conflict,  failure, loss
Anxiety begets anxiety
-Mindfulness may help

Behaviours
-Use behaviour to dispute anxiety. When logical doesn't work, use behaviour.
-Trying to say right thing or self focused lead to anxiety. Over thinking.
- Don't think to much
- somatic - drugs, alcohol
Safety behaviour: over planning, bottled water, worrying, perfectionism,
End up spending to much time worrying will not be productive .

--- good mental hygiene
Daily physical exercise helps
Good nutrition
Good sleep
Not smoking or excess drinking
Practise cognitive flexibility - let go of the "I should " thinking. Identify the faulty reasoning
Anxiety creates cognitive bias - just need to recognise the anxiety.
Notice the over thinking.
Exposure - learn to face the worries by confronting it.
Make one phone call a day if we are socially anxious
Deep relaxation - When relax our bodies, it will break anxiety cycle.
- Progressive muscle relaxation
- medication like valium relaxes muscle
- anti depressants also relieve anxiety. 

Controlling Your Thinking 4 - Behaviour Disputing and Mindfulness

Meta cognitive beliefs - think that worry or anger will protect us. Not really true.

Labelling others is not good for us.

Rude behaviour could be due to their pain.

Logical disputing,- challenging own thoughts

Persuasive disputing - thinking lIke that does not help

Change behaviour- which change cognition

Cognition affects behaviour.

- that task is loathsome

- they won't like me

- ...... all this affect our behaviour

... whIch also affect our thinking

Behaviour Disputing

- experiential learning that our beliefs is actually wrong

- I shouldn't take social risk , awful to be rejected.

- taking small risks to dispute, is helpful.

- I should always appear independent, and in control.

-

MINDFULNESS

emotional distress due to current situation

But mostLy anger is about things in past, worry is about future.

- mindfulness is being in the present, pretend to be an external observer.

- pick up truth from noise.

- non judging during mindfulness exercise.

- observe with curiosity.

-

Internal Discrepancy monitor

- mismatch between current and desired states, causing distress.

- rumination- think one's way out of problem, but does not work.

- try to notice when we are runinating, and get out of it.

Defusing

- notice they are just thoughts, not really reality.

BenefiTts of mindfulness

-Metacognitive awareness, notiCE our own thoughts.

- reduction of recurring thought process.

- greater ability to tolerate pain.

Apps - head space.

Controlling Your Thinking 3 - Anger

Anger

-Perceived violation or injustice

- with perception of threat

Affects: Cognition, behaviour

Pre frontal cortex

- Making rational decisions

Amygdala

-Sends signals to adrenalin near kidney

Rumination

- Going in circles in unproductive ways

Anger prove personality

- Some biological - hot temperament

- low tolerance for frustration, high threat perceptions

- stop - breathe - leave

- -- progressive muscle relaxation,  mindfulness practice

Managing short term anger

- Exercise, talk to someone, write about it

Does this behaviour HELP ACHIEVE OUR GOALS

Stay solution focused

Stay away during hot phase

***Often feel angry on people who we think have power over us.

Controlling Your Thinking

This post is more about using psychology to improve our mind. So what has this got to do with Finance and gettting wealth? Everything.

A healthy mind is what is required to generate wealth. A mind that is bogged down, like a sinking ship struggles to survive, let alone achieve anything extraordinary. So the post here is a collection of notes that was taken during a course called "Change Your Thinking" which is based on Cognitive Training.

---------------------------
Brain constantly produce thoughts. Can have different interpretation or meanings. Eg what have you been up to? Why do people have different interpretation. Prior events may influence this. Personality, culture context (family values), lessons learnt early in life, our perception of people, how safe our environment felt when young.

Challenge our beliefs, not enough to just understand. Changed the way we think, then that will change the way we feel.

Thoughts - When anxious thoughts are faster.

CBT: counselling, stress management,
Change way we think, Changing the way we feel, change way we behave
- Include cognitive strategies, behavioural strategies, mindfulness strategies.
- aim to reframe ways of thinking: upsetting emotions, unhelpful behaviour.
Adaptive behaviour- will help us achieve goal.
Maladaptive- do things that are not helpful

Cognition - way we think, thoughts, beliefs, perception.  Beliefs can influence thoughts.
emotions - anxious, angry, can lead to threat focused thoughts, lead to negative thoughts depression.
behaviour

Mindfulness - watch the thoughts without believing it.

Emotions - help us to survive, motivate behaviour,  pleasant /unpleasant, adaptive /maladaptive

Temperanment- is the biological part of our personality, gene . Cannot change.
Can learn to react and think differently.
Inflexible thinking can be maladaptive.
Genes, history, environment influence way we feel.
People assume their thoughts are correct.
Thoughts and beliefs can be changed.
Develop cognitive flexibility - reduce unpleasant emotions, increase adaptive behaviour. 

Line of Credit and Tax Consequences

I'm starting to look into this loan option known as the Line of Credit (LoC).

So far I found these websites
http://www.pwafinancial.com.au/index.php/resources/latest-news/122-deductible-interest.html

 

It gives a clear warning about using a LoC, originally for a property investment, then later use part of it for other investments. The tricky part is that any repayment may actually reduce the tax deductibility of the interest payments. Examples are given in the article.

http://law.ato.gov.au/atolaw/view.htm?docid=TXR/TR20002/NAT/ATO/00001

This is the official Australian tax ruling of how LoC are to be treated and implications for deductibility of interest on the loan.

More to come.....

Budget 2015: Age pension eligibility criteria tightened in 'sustainable' overhaul

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-07/budget-government-to-outline-changes-to-age-pension/6450946

Excerpt:

At the moment, couples can own $1.15 million in assets on top of their family home to qualify for the part pension.

That threshold will now be reduced to $823,000 for couples meaning about 91,000 people will no longer qualify for the benefit, while another 235,000 will have their pension reduced.

But the bulk of retirees will either see no changes to their pensions, or will receive a small boost.

Rumours and runs in opaque markets: Evidence from the Panic of 1907

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/5/8/global-financial-crisis/rumours-and-runs-opaque-markets-evidence-panic-1907

Negative Gearing: What the banks don't tell you

Negative Gearing: What the banks don't tell you

// Business Spectator

Australia's most notorious tax break may not be all that productive for investors in the near future.