In honour of Mental Health Awareness week 2018 (from 14th of May), I thought I'd write a little bit about one of my issues that I've been trying to tackle recently...
I experience anxiety; and a large part of my patterns of thinking and thought processing is shaped by this crippling fear and worry. It can express itself in numerous ways but one thing I, and like many others in this world do, have a tendency to catastrophise. This is when we assume that a situation is considerably worse than it actually is. You believe you've found yourself in the worst-case scenario. It can feel like the entire world is going to end, that there is no way out of this and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Anxiety coupled with depression can make this way of thinking a surefire spiral downwards. It is really easy to let things spiral out of proportion in your mind. You get into a pattern of thinking that everything is terrible and there is no way out of this situation, you feel hopeless. I have this tendency to not be able to see the bigger picture, I'm blind to the fact that it might be possible to get out of the other side. When I'm in the throws of a depressive episode and something bad happens (with hindsight its almost always something never as bad as I first assumed it to be) it can set off this reaction where I assume the worst. It usually involves a lot of paranoid thoughts and assumptions. I start to believe that this moment will have a serious impact on my future and I can let it take me over for a long long time. Sometimes, if I don't challenge these thoughts, they can spiral and continue on until it just becomes another part of my usual thought processes.
For example, say I get a grade on an essay that I'm not that pleased with (take for example the first time I got a 2:1 not a first at uni), it will start off this chain of thinking:
"Oh wow this is pretty disappointing...this might affect my overall grade... if it does, then I might not finish with a strong grade and then people won't want to employ me... I could end up without a job... I won't be able to live, I could be homeless... My future is worthless... I'm never going to amount to anything... If people know I got this grade, they'll think I'm stupid and that I just pretend to be clever...My teachers will all know I've failed, they'll be disappointed... If my parents find out they'll be disappointed and wonder why they support me in going to uni...I won't be able to write another essay because I'll just have the thought of this bad grade hanging over me..."
This is just some of what my brain conjures up for me deal with. And you can see just how silly some of the things are. I'm probably not going to end up jobless and homeless because of some meaningless grade on a test. But its very easy to just say to someone 'you know its not really that bad', so how do we deal with these thoughts? We have to challenge patterns of thinking, once you do this, it starts to re-wire the way you've programmed yourself to react to situations.
Each time you feel yourself spiraling out, firstly, try to put the incident or situation in perspective. Does this one thing affect my entire life, are all aspects of my life falling apart or do they just feel like they are? If its something to do with work, think, how are things with my family, my home, my friends? Usually you can see that in perspective with the rest of your life, this is one segment that at the moment isn't going right, so don't let it negatively impact upon the rest of your life. Remember that your thoughts don't define you. You have this perspective of yourself and your own personal opinion of yourself clouds your judgement. What feels to you like its causing the literal end of the world as we know it might only be a minor inconvenience to others. This doesn't mean people have the right to scoff and brush off peoples problems and label them drama queens etc, it means we have to respect that people handle things differently and that we all have our own measures of pain, worry, upset, discomfort and so on.
A premise of acceptance and commitment therapy is that we should first acknowledge that we are having this disturbing thought. We all have them. The more that you acknowledge and accept that you are having these thoughts, the more likely it is that it will pass and we won't become bogged down by it. Whether a thought passes or becomes stuck largely has to do with what we make of it.
Its very easy to let yourself get carried away with abolishing your future when you feel hopeless. Depression and hopelessness make fine companions. Feelings of hopelessness stem from making the cognitive error of applying present concerns to both short and long-term future. We assume that because things are bad right now, this is the way it will always be. And for me this has certainly cause me to get stuck in my ways, I think 'i'm going to be like this forever so why should today be any different' and it doesn't allow me to challenge my thinking or recognise any thoughts that might be counter to my current situation. I'd liken it to when you have a cold and a blocked nose, you can't remember how it feels to be able to breathe properly. But then, eventually, you get over the cold and you can breathe clearly again. With mental health, it can take a long time for things to get better, but this doesn't mean you should deny the possibility of improvement.
When I get over the other side of a tough moment I realise that it was possible for me to make it through the other side. When I think back to this year alone there are moments where I thought suicide would be the only option because I literally could see no other way out from under the darkest of clouds. But I'm still here, it was a gnarly rough journey, but I made it. I'm trying to challenge my irrational thinking. I'm making a conscious choice to look at all of the options, know that, yes, bad things happen and I will feel pain and all of these bad emotions that make me a human, but they can only be temporary. There is always a solution. If I can't see one, its just that I've not uncovered it yet. Sometimes time is the only thing that can help. I've learnt its a great healer, I'm still trying to trust that!
So, I hope this has been somewhat of a help if you, like myself, fall into that terrible trap of magnifying our problems and letting our thoughts control us. It is possible to challenge your thinking, it takes small steps, but repetition is the best way to learn.
Love and light,
Lily
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