By Mary Russell, Psy.D.

Do you ever have moments in your life when you feel like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong? It’s not fair. You feel utterly helpless. You believe you have no control over your life and you are at the mercy of some malicious force committed to screwing everything up.

A lot has been going wrong lately – I have had to be particularly vigilant about slipping into such unhelpful patterns of thinking that only lead to harmful emotions like depression, and maladaptive behavior. I have to watch that I don’t tell myself that nothing I can do will help anyways, so why bother. So what’s a person to do?

Step 1. Use your maladaptive feelings and helpless behavior as a cue to examine what you’re thinking about the situation that’s making you think and act in ways that are self-sabotaging. At the same time (while you need not make excuses for yourself), it is also important to give yourself a break and not put yourself down. You’re clearly going through a time when your emotional, cognitive, and behavioral resources may be sapped and you may not be thinking or functioning as well as you might under better circumstances. Let’s see what you can do to remedy this…

Step 2. If you’re telling yourself none of these bad things should be happening, you’re fooling yourself. Life is full of bad and good things. While we may like to think that bad things will not happen to us, the truth is that they do – and sometimes by chance they will cluster together. In this way, life is not fair – but that does not mean you can’t get through these difficult times. Perhaps the wisest thing to do is expect that things may go utterly wrong sometimes and be prepared for how to cope adaptively and respond in a helpful way.

Step 3. Recognize that while you don’t have complete control over anything, you generally do have some control over most things. It’s a hard idea to sit with. It may be cliché, but Alcoholics Anonymous hits the nail on the head when they remind us to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Recognizing what you don’t have control over can help you identify the areas you do have control over and the things you can do to improve but maybe not completely fix a particular situation.

Step 4. After accepting that bad things will happen and taking as much control as you can to improve bad situations, take a look around. Test out the thought that EVERYTHING has gone wrong. Telling yourself that everything has or is going wrong will generally lead you to see only bad things that confirm this thought and ignore good things that disconfirm it. Contrastingly, holding a more rational thought like – good and bad things happen, life is not fair, I can stand it and do what I can to improve my circumstances – may help open your eyes to lots of things that have not gone wrong and opportunities to improve your circumstances. Good luck and stay strong.