mental health

Sitting With Feelings That Won’t Go Away

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After writing earlier this week about how my mental health catches me off guard, I wanted to build on that message and have some tips and techniques for people to use when the same thing happens to them. But before I could dive into that, I had a few thoughts that were nagging at me. I understood how these things catch me off guard, but I couldn’t understand why. Doesn’t everyone have thoughts that distract them? I’d guess that some of the thoughts and feelings I struggle with are similar to ones that many people have. So why do they have such a big impact on me? Before I can tackle the how, I needed to tackle the why – which is what I’m writing about today.

Dealing with depression and anxiety often involves dealing with intrusive thoughts on a regular basis. I’ll be going about my day, maybe getting lost in a task at work or one of my hobbies, and then a thought will pop into my head. Most of my energy is spent dealing with the thought itself; I do some thinking about whether or not the thought is true or accurate. Sometimes it’s decoding a thought to realize it’s not even rational, or the fear I have is logically impossible.

But what often sticks with me isn’t always the contents of the thought I have. What tends to stick around are the feelings that these thoughts have instilled in me. I don’t always remember the thought process that made me feel sad; all I know is that in that moment, I’m sad. The same goes for times when I’m feeling anxious, restless or depressed. The feeling lingers well beyond these thoughts. If I’m not vigilant, those feelings can fester and grow much stronger simply by refusing to go away.

I think a big part of why these feelings linger, and why I feel so caught off guard sometimes, is that I don’t always accept what’s happening. Even after a decade of dealing with anxiety and depression, my brain’s instinct is still to reject any unpleasant or unwelcome thought that pops into my brain. My first instinct is to try to get rid of the thought as quickly as possible, and to get rid of it on my own terms. It’s a fight-or-flight response that does the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than making the thoughts/feelings disappear, the instinct of rejection allows them to stick around longer than they would have, creating a cycle that feels impossible to manage.

Writing this also got me thinking about the role fear plays into our mental health. Fear of the unknown (which I’ve written about before), but also fear what we’ve already been through. Sometimes, my intrusive thoughts can remind me of an unpleasant or unsuccessful experience with my mental health and it can bring me back to that time. I feel stuck or lost in that moment, and I’m terrified of being back there again. Understanding why things impact us is just as valuable as how they impact us and the more we reflect on that, the more we learn – about our mental wellness and about ourselves.

When Mental Health Catches Us Off Guard

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Life has its ups and downs, and mental health is no different. There are times when I feel like my mental wellness is in the best place it’s ever been. Other times…not so much. Most of my time is spent bouncing somewhere in between these two extremes, but highs and lows are part of life. I’m used to dealing with these highs and lows, but part of that familiarity is what I’ve learned from previous experiences. However challenging some things can be, it’s comforting when you know it’s coming. Sometimes I can feel my mental health slowly deteriorating, which is when I know it’s time to make some sort of change. Other times, I get caught off guard with moments of anxiety or depression, which is what I want to talk about today.

It happens a few times a week; sometimes daily. I’m in the middle of something – at the grocery store, doing some cleaning or organizing, even sitting around at home – and my body tightens up. I’m panicked, and I don’t know why. It’s not always clear what direction this pang of panic will take me in. Sometimes it’s the onset of an anxiety attack or a panic attack. Other times, it’s a reminder that I need to do some deep breathing, or need to slow myself down.

When mental illness manifests itself in several ways, it can be a challenge to determine what might be happening in a specific instance. It might not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things but for people who get stuck on specifics, it can feel like a moment that never ends. Is it my anxiety? Is it my depression? Some other third thing? Does it even matter? In the moment, that thought process can quickly evolve into feeling overwhelmed, exacerbating my existing feelings.

There’s a saying that goes something along the lines of, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” and that’s an apt description for my relationship to my mental illness. No matter how hard my mental health challenges get, I always feel slightly more hopeful when I know what I’m up against. When it comes to our health, we can have anxiety over fear of the unknown. If you’re already predisposed to have anxiety, that fear can run your life at times. When I don’t know what’s going on or how it’s affecting me, I can wind myself up even more – the opposite of what I was hoping to do.

I don’t enjoy when this happens but, like other aspects of my mental health, I grow in experience and knowledge every time it happens. Whether it’s grounding yourself or finding a way to get our of your head, you have options when it comes to being caught off guard. Wherever you are in your mental health journey, I hope you find what you need today!

Now, over to you! Do you ever feel like your mental health catches you off guard? What does it look like for you? Let me know in the comments!

Adjusting The Way We Talk About Mental Health

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If you’re a longtime reader of My Brain’s Not Broken, you know my fascination with words and language. I have posts all about mental health terms and why we use the words we do when we talk about mental health. This blog started as a way for me to tell my story, and there is no story without writing one word after the other.

My story has evolved over the years, and I think a big reason for that is because my language has evolved. I have a different way of talking about mental health than I did in years past, and I know I’m better for it. But making those adjustments – even just recognizing that they need to be made – is a challenge.

For most of my life, I didn’t realize how self-critical my thoughts were. I thought everyone had thoughts about themselves. Positive, negative, somewhere in the middle; that’s just the way things were. What I’d failed to realize is the impact of the world around me. I’d read, listen to or watch people use unfamiliar words without any context. Sometimes I was curious and asked questions but otherwise, I was on my own to figure out what they meant.

Looking back, I don’t like how I talked about mental health for most of my life. Now I realize that writing that at 29 is much different than at 49 or 59, but still. At least two-thirds of my life (possibly longer) were spent not knowing how to talk about certain issues.

Until I started having my own struggles, mental health definitely felt like one of them. I couldn’t connect hearing someone talk about their anxiety with the anxious thoughts I was having. I didn’t understand that the depression a person was describing was identical to thoughts I’d had, or feelings I was familiar with. There was language people were using that didn’t make sense because I’d never heard it before. And rather than ask questions, I made assumptions. I tried to go off what I already knew, instead of learning things that could have helped me learn more about myself.

There are plenty of valid reasons to adjust the way we talk about mental health. Society hasn’t always been able to have healthy discussions about mental health, and it shows in how we talk about it. We use words that stigmatize and phrases that disrespect because that’s what we’re used to.

Language persists when people use the same words and phrases over and over, but that doesn’t make it okay. It’s time we challenge that language for what it is. We deserve to be kinder with ourselves and gentler with our struggles. Change isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen overnight, but it is absolutely worth it. And like many things when it comes to mental health, this change happens one moment, one decision at a time.

Now, over to you! How do you think our world can adjust the way we talk about mental health? What are some of your suggestions? Let me know in the comments!

"A different language is a different vision of life." - Federico Fellini

Five Ways to Manage Thought Spirals

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Earlier this week, I wrote about thought spirals, what they look like, and what we can do about them. Thought spirals can be tricky to deal with, but there are ways we can try and manage them. I’ve dealt with many thought spirals over the years, and these are some of the most effective ways I’ve found of slowing my brain down and getting back to center:

Acknowledge what is happening to you. Name the fact that your thoughts are spiraling. This might not sound like a big deal, but there is tremendous power in being able to define something, to name it or to understand what something is called. This is especially relevant when it comes to mental health, because we as a society haven’t always had healthy ways to define our experience, which lead to further stigmatization. If it feels like your thoughts are spiraling, it’s good to admit that. You might not be able to solve the problem in the moment, but knowing what something is can make it less intimidating.

Control your breathing (make sure it’s steady – check on your physical self in this moment). The link between mental health and physical health is a very real one, and our physical health can absolutely be impacted by mental health challenges. I know for myself, anxiety manifests itself physically, which means that an anxiety attack can sometimes impact my body as much as my brain. A good way to find some semblance of control is to regulate your breathing. Whether that’s taking a few deep breaths spending more time to find your breath, getting back to level is a great way to calm your brain down.

Ground yourself. Though this might sound similar to controlled breathing (and they are certainly linked), grounding yourself is much different. Thought spirals can lead to getting lost in our minds, which might mean we’re less in tune with what’s around us. Finding ways to ground yourself (here are some tips!) and remember who you are, where you are and what’s around you can help slow down that thought spiral.

Challenge one of the thoughts you’re having. A thought spiral can create a lot of different irrational thoughts, ones that can build on each other and make things overwhelming. But if we can isolate one of these thoughts and challenge it, we can try to lessen the impact of this domino effect. Challenge one of these thoughts by asking questions like is this true? Why do I think this is true? Attacking illogical thoughts with rational logic is good way that I slow down when my thoughts are getting out of hand.

Get someone else’s perspective. Mental health challenges feel isolating. Oftentimes, people think they’re the only person in the world who feels the way they feel. That can make someone feel helpless or hopeless, and makes it more of a challenge to reach out. Getting someone’s perspective can be invaluable, and can be a big help in many ways.

Now, over to you! What are some things you do when you’re dealing with a thought spiral? Is there anything you do that’s effective when dealing with a thought spiral? Let me know in the comments!

At A Moment’s Notice

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It happens every so often: I’ll be having a good day, minding my business and enjoying myself, when a thought pops into my head. Sometimes it’s an anxious, irrational thought. Other times it’s a negative thought about myself, one that I’ve likely had a hundred times before. It doesn’t matter what the thought is, really; what matters is whether or not I engage with it (or them, if the thoughts are persistent enough). This daily challenge can change things for me in a moment, and it’s what I want to reflect on today.

Here’s an interesting fact from the Cleveland Clinic: Every day, your brain processes about 70,000 thoughts. That is a wildly high number, especially considering there are 86,400 seconds in a day. If you get the standard eight hours of sleep, you’re talking about more than a thought per second.

And that’s where the trouble comes in. When it comes to negative thinking or thought spiraling (which I’ll share more about next week), all it takes is one thought we get stuck on, or pay more attention to than we should. All it takes is a moment of rationalizing an irrational thought and suddenly, our brain is off to the races. This doesn’t mean our actions are always impacted, but such a big shift in our thought process could change the outcome of our day. If it happens over and over again, it could start to shape the way we see the world – and ourselves.

I’ve learned a lot of things when it comes to dealing with mental health challenges. No matter what they are, each thing comes with a varying degree of difficulty. They can be very clear things to learn or very difficult things to process, but it’s always a challenge to figure out how to go forward with what I’ve learned. Some things are harder to accept than others, and some take more time. Even though I’ve gotten better at dealing with it, the idea that a single thought can distract me and interrupt my day is something I still struggle with.

At a moment’s notice, my day can go from nothing special to challenging. And it’s all because of a momentary lapse in dealing with one of the thousands of thoughts we have every day. It can distract me from interacting with the people I love, or a good conversation I’m having. It’s something I can get stuck on while trying to do other productive things. Even though there are so many times I successfully deal with some of these thoughts, all it takes for me to lose focus one time, and my brain is headed in another direction.

We do it every single day, but processing thoughts isn’t always as easy as it sounds. All it takes getting stuck on one or two thoughts to interrupt our flow, and then we face a challenge. Either we engage with these thoughts and try to figure out how to get out of that thought process, or we lean on what we’ve learned about ourselves to move through them. It’s a challenge that comes to people every single day at a moment’s notice, and it’s something I hope to learn more about and grow from.

Have you ever had a thought pop into your head that you knew would lead you down a rabbit hole? How did you (or do you) deal with those thoughts? Let me know in the comments!

It’s the Most Busiest Time of the Year

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Does the title of this post sound a bit off? Well, that’s because it’s a play on the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” a classic Christmas song that has more covers and iterations than I could care to count. And even though this time of year actually is one of my favorite times of the year, it’s also incredibly busy. But even though it can be incredibly busy, this can still be a wonderful time for reflection and connection. It’s a bit tricky, but here’s what I’ve learned to get the most out of this time of the year.

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Calling Out for Change

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TW: this post discusses suicide and suicidal ideation.

Before I write about a post that discusses suicide, I breathe a big sigh. I try to hold back my own personal emotions because I need to focus, but the shadow of depression hangs its head over me. Because this thing is so hard. It’s so hard to sift through all the feelings and emotions that come with learning the news that someone has died by suicide. There are a million different directions that news can take your brain and what you start thinking about. But after ten years of living with depression and having experienced suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideation before, I get sad. Sad and frustrated.

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Getting Back to the Present Moment

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Earlier this week, I reflected on some of the challenges of going on autopilot. Though it can be helpful when I’m dealing with anxiety and depression, going on autopilot can also make things more difficult. I can get too focused on accomplishing my goals, and rush into doing something. I am not always the most decisive person (and I know my friends and family would agree), and being on autopilot often exploits my indecisiveness. I tend to feel best about my decisions when I am in the present moment, I understand what’s in front of me and I know the various possibilities. That being said, it’s not always easy to get back into the present moment, and I’d like to talk about that today.

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The Drawbacks of Going on Autopilot

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Last year, I wrote a blog post about the trouble with being in ‘autopilot’ mode when it comes to our mental health. At the time, my focus about being on autopilot came in terms of awareness and understanding. Rather than simply recognizing the what and where, I wanted to understand more about the why. In time, I’ve learned how to harness that focus to get things done even when I’m experiencing symptoms of mental illness. However, there are also drawbacks to this approach and today, I’d like to reflect on some of what I learned.

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Getting Out of My Head

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Some days I wish I could get out of my head. I don’t always know what I mean when I say that, but the sentiment is there. It feels like I live most of my life inside my head and every so often, I want to burst out. I’m sure actually doing so isn’t as dramatic as all that, but it feels like it would be. Being ‘inside your head’ is a fancy synonym for overthinking a moment or situation but when you do it often, it feels like it’s just the way you experience things. After quickly retreating inward for many weeks, I’d like to try getting out of my head, and here’s why.

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