When Billy got up, he noticed his jaw was tight and ached. Stress? Something he did last evening? The dentist had told him at his last visit that he was grinding his teeth. He held up a mirror and showed Billy by running his dental hook on the flat surfaces of his molars. This image then led to worry about his back that felt like it was spasming. This freaked him out more and he began to panic. Rapid awful thoughts and images of being bedridden in pain ran through his head; he wasn't even conscious of where they came from. It was irrational or perhaps hysterical would better describe it, because he wasn't in spasm or bedridden. It was his thinking that made him panic about what could happen. The only way to relieve it besides a tranquilizer or a drink, which he was against, was to acknowledge these feelings, observe and dispute their logic.
He stressed about so many things that translated into muscle and jaw pain that Billy knew it was a habit. He also knew he had gotten through this before and was determined to again. Yes, he was disappointed that his thoughts were so negative and his beliefs about them were irrational. Yes, he was in pain and sinking fast into a bad mood, but he could snap out of it by questioning these images. Disputing them as ordinary events of working these past two days at school; lots of standing and sitting and disappointed that it wasn't teaching. It wasn't that awful, just frustrating not to be teaching. Accept that and it didn't seem so bad. It still sucked, but it wasn't the end of the world and he didn't need a pill or drink to calm down. When things didn't go accordingly and were out of his control he felt awful and like a worm because he had gotten himself into this by his own actions. If his self-esteem was so poor that he accepted every outside event as directly caused by him he was greatly mistaken. The school needed subs and sometimes subs just did hall patrol and cafeteria duty. He learned that he did have a choice by accepting only teaching jobs, not "supplemental" jobs. Even so, anything could happen once at the school and he had to accept that or run afoul again. He had a choice. He certainly wasn't a fool. He had the choice not to beat himself up, if it didn't meet his expectations. It was how he interpreted unfolding events.
It was self-defeating and ultimately taking the joy out of living. If things didn't work out, Billy would try to think rationally and steel himself for all eventualities. The horrible thoughts are not the horrible me, he thought, they are just thoughts.....good and bad. How fascinating it could be, instead of how awful it seemed, Billy thought, was a much superior strategy.
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