Hello everybody and thank you for taking the time to read this. I am 23 and have struggled with low self-esteem since forever - I have been sloooowlyyyy getting better recently but I have a specific problem that I don't know how to deal with. Once I am in a bad mood and start thinking negative thoughts about myself, I cannot stop - and every single new little thing that happens is then interpreted by my brain in the most negative way possible, which causes more negative thoughts, which causes crying. Basically the ONLY way I can ever make myself stop crying is to get myself very very absorbed in something else - for example start reading a book or watching a video completely unrelated to the situation. If I don't have access to such a distraction, I will just keep crying, or being on the very verge of crying, for hours until I finally become distracted.
The distraction technique works well enough to get by in most cases, but recently I keep being in a situation when I can't use it. Namely I started martial arts classes, which are usually great and I really want to keep attending them. However sometimes I get very angry at myself for taking much longer to learn techniques than other novices. (It is objectively true that I am a slow learner when it comes to martial arts, as I have never done something similar before and my body coordination is pretty bad in general.) The fact I am a slow learner makes me think negative thoughts about myself, and when others try to teach me I feel like they can all see that I suck, which makes me unable to focus on the lesson and I do even worse, which makes me more angry at myself - you see where this is going...
So far I only full out cried only once at those lessons, but I have been close a couple of other times and I fear that others may be noticing. My biggest problem is that I cannot stop and read something on my phone - I need to focus on the lesson, but also to break the chain of negative thoughts somehow. I am not good enough yet at CBT techniques to use them effectively, especially not when I need effects so quickly.
So I was wondering, does anybody have a trick or a technique they use to break the negative chain of self-hating thoughts? Thanks!