health

Five Ways to Deal With Mental Filters

Nathan Smith2 Comments

In Tuesday’s breakdown of mental health terms, I wrote about mental filters, what they look like and how they appear in our lives. Mental filters can go my many names, but what’s important to know is that they can impact the way we view the world. When mental filters go unchallenged for too long, they can change the way we think, the way we perceive what’s going on around us. Filtered thinking can become instinctual without us realizing and have a severe impact on our thought patterns. Today, I want to look at five things you can do when dealing with mental filters and filtered thinking.

Notice your mental filters

One of the reasons mental filters can grow into harmful thought patterns is because they go unchecked. My filtering went unchecked and unchallenged for years, to the point where I just thought that’s who I was. Mental filters have a way of clouding your brain, and making you think that’s just how your thought process is. Even if you can’t stop yourself from filtering, noticing when it’s happening is a big first step.

Replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts (easier said than done)

When you’re able, try to replace the negative thoughts with positive ones. They could be positive thoughts about your situation or yourself in general; any positive thoughts are going to help. For a long time, I was under the impression that positive thoughts were thoughts that improved my mood or made me happy. With time, I’ve learned that while that’s sometimes the case, it’s not the only purpose of positive thinking. In this case, positive thoughts are directly challenging the negative ones, trying to find a healthy balance where your brain can rest. Even if it’s only occasionally, replacing negative thoughts with positive ones is worth trying.

Recognize your thought patterns

I’ll be honest – I don’t always know why I have the thoughts I do. Some things just pop in my head, never to be thought again. Other times, it’s like a thought can’t get out of my head for hours. Even though I don’t understand every thought or why it’s there, there are patterns. Over time, I’ve learned to recognize these patterns – what they look like, and what triggers them. I can’t always stop these patterns from occurring and I won’t recognize them every time. But the effort I put in to recognize these patterns, and try to combat them when they occur, will grow stronger over time.

Call it out for what it is

The terms mental filters, filtered thinking, or filtered thoughts aren’t as widely known as other psychological terms, and that’s something that needs to change. When we can name something for what it is – or name what we’re doing, what’s going on in our brain – we can lessen the damage or confusion around it. The times I’ve been able to recognize my filtering and call it out for what it is, I feel better. I feel more equipped to handle these thoughts and even though they might still make me anxious, the impact is lessened.

Separate the good from the bad

This might be the most obvious thing in the world, but not all of our thoughts are bad. In fact, for some of us the majority of our thoughts aren’t bad. But there is a fixation we can have on negative thoughts, where it feels like we have much more of them than actually exist. By separating the positive thoughts from the negative ones, we can compare and contrast how big of a challenge we’re up against. One negative thought has the power and ability to outweigh several positive ones, especially when we fixate on it. By actively trying to separate these thoughts, we can prove that more often than not, positive thoughts are buzzing around in our brain – it’s just harder to locate them.

What are your thoughts on mental filters, or filtered thinking? Have you heard of this term? How do you try to deal with filtered thinking? Let me know in the comments!

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions." - Leonardo da Vinci

Balancing Accomplishments with Wellness

Nathan Smith2 Comments

Earlier this week, I investigated why people (myself included) downplay their accomplishments. There was a lot I learned from writing the post, but the most important thing was this: people don’t do things for no reason. There is something behind the way we are, even if we can’t see it or understand it. I don’t always know why I do the things I do, but that’s okay. That doesn’t mean I can’t work toward my goals, toward things I’ve dreamed about. But it’s not easy. What can be challenging is acknowledging where our mental health is at – and how we can continue to strive for more.

One of the things I love most about people is the variety of the hopes and dreams we have. Our goals are as unique as we are; the road to success for one person can look entirely different from someone else. Not only do we have different goals, but we also have different ideas about how we can meet those goals. A natural approach for me could be a completely foreign idea to someone else, and vice versa.

If you’re reading this and thinking that I’m stating the obvious, and you may be right. But when people talk about achievements and accomplishments, we don’t always include context. You and I might have the same end goal, but getting there could look different for each of us. And not only is that okay, but it’s a necessary reminder if we want to maintain mental wellness.

When we fall short of our goals, it’s natural to feel dejected and down on ourselves. An added challenge, I’ve learned over the years, is the non-stop comparing I do when I feel like this. I compare my situation to other situations, I compare myself to other people. Sometimes I don’t even compare my situation to one that’s similar. The only difference is that someone succeeded and I failed. Logic goes out the window, and hurt feelings are the only thing left. But when we fail to recognize these things, we legitimize them. We build a flawed thought process that is damaging to our self-esteem, and that can grow over time.

Sometimes doing things in life can feel like a lose-lose situation. We’re frustrated when we can’t accomplish things, and dissatisfied when we do. Everything is too good for us but at the same time, nothing is ever good enough. We have an instinct to compare ourselves to the world around us. These comparisons can cost us our mental health and wellness.

But knowing this instinct and understanding this conflict matters. So much of my experience with mental health is retroactive. I can recognize things that I’ve done or experienced and notice patterns, but it’s all in the past. Knowing what’s going on in my brain in real-time feels like an impossible task, but it’s one I’m improving on every day.

In order to balance my accomplishments with my mental wellness, I need to be present with myself. I need to recognize what’s going on with my thoughts and feelings, and how that impacts me in the moment. And I’m not able to do that in every moment, but I can do it more than I used to. In a world where this was a foreign concept to me when my depression was as bad as ever, I call that progress. And at this point in my mental health journey, that’s good enough for me.

Why Do We Downplay Our Accomplishments?

Nathan Smith1 Comment

Last year, I wrote a series of posts about challenging my instincts toward minimize the good things I do in life.

Back in 2021, I wrote a few posts about challenging my instincts. I’m interested in instincts because for a long time, I overestimated their power. I thought instincts were something that could never change. I thought they were something we’d have to live with, and I would have to learn how to fight them. The reason I wanted to challenge my instincts then, and I still do now, is because I don’t like all my instincts. One of the most challenging in particular is my ability to downplay accomplishments. And I’m not alone. Why do we downplay our accomplishments, and what is behind that? That’s what I want to investigate today.

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More Overwhelmed Than I Used to Be

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It feels like it happens more often than it used to these days. I’ll be trying to finish a task or make a decision, and my brain will freeze up. I’ll get panicked, and I won’t be able to complete the task I started (if I can even remember it in the first place). I lose my breath, lose focus, lose my grip on whatever I was doing. This feeling I get, the feeling of becoming overwhelmed, has become more of a problem for me in recent years. In today’s post, I want to try and figure out why.

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Springing Into a Brighter Mood

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I’m pretty sure I write this sort of post every year, and I love doing it. I write a lot of posts about the way weather impacts my mental health, and today’s post is a similar one. The days are starting to be a little longer, and the weather a little warmer. I feel like I’m shaking myself awake after a long hibernation, and I’m ready go out into the world again. That’s right everyone: winter is almost over and spring is coming fast!

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Five Ways We Can Better Understand Our Mental Health Symptoms

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Earlier this week on the blog, I wrote about understanding symptoms. When it comes to mental illness, many symptoms are easy to see or understand. However, many symptoms also feel impossible to see in ourselves or others. A symptom of depression for one person might not exist for someone else, but both of these people could experience depression. Mental health is complex, and understanding our symptoms (however they look) is a big step on the path toward mental wellness. Today, I want to look at five ways we can work toward better understanding our symptoms.

Do your research – but take it with a grain of salt

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s be honest. The Internet is a big place, and not everything you find here is going to be helpful. The more that mental health has worked its way into mainstream conversation, the more likely there will be disinformation or misinformation about it. On the flip side, researching depression and anxiety on my own terms has been one of the most helpful ways of understanding my diagnoses. Researching symptoms is a good way to understand things more, but it’s important to take everything you read with a grain of salt until you talk with a professional. Which leads me to the second point…

Talk with a mental health professional

If you’re experiencing symptoms where your physical health is impacted, you see a doctor. Why would it be any different for mental health? Talking to a mental health professional is a good first step to get the help you need. And if you think that means immediately seeing a therapist or psychiatrist, that’s not always the case. There are many types of mental health professionals who can provide valuable insight, and reaching out to someone you feel comfortable talking with is the most important criteria.

Understand mental symptoms and physical symptoms

As I mentioned in my post earlier this week, symptoms of mental illness can manifest themselves mentally and physically. It took time, but I’ve learned the difference between mental and physical symptoms. I’ve learned to recognize symptoms within myself, and figure out if my symptoms are recurring. It’s important to understand what these symptoms are, but it’s more important to know what they are for you. Understanding how my symptoms impact me is one of the most valuable things I’ve learned when it comes to mental health.

Know the difference between acute and chronic illness

For a long time, my symptoms came and went without any further understanding and introspection about them. Learning the difference between acute symptoms and chronic conditions has been very helpful for my long-term mental health. According to the National Council on Aging, acute illnesses “generally develop suddenly and last a short time, often only a few days or weeks,” while chronic conditions “develop slowly and may worse over an extended period of time – months to years.” Once I could start defining my symptoms as acute or chronic, I could better learn how to deal with them.

Take things day by day

This last bit of advice sounds a little cliche but it’s something I come back to time and again. For a long time, my only reaction to a new aspect of my depression and anxiety was fear. I was afraid of learning about new symptoms because I assumed I’d have to deal with them every single day. I’ve since learned that this isn’t the case; a symptom that might be challenging one day might not show up the next. Learning to take things as they come has taught me a lot not only about my mental illnesses, but also about myself. Every day brings new lessons on dealing with depression and anxiety. In my experience, the best way this happens is when you slow down and take things day by day.

Now I want to hear from you! What is a bit of advice you have for someone who is learning about symptoms of mental illness? Let me know in the comments!

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." - Aldous Huxley

The Camouflage of Self-Stigma

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I wish it weren’t true, but I’m extremely familiar with self-stigma. I’ve written about it before; in fact, I tried to break it down in a blog post last year. But as much as I’ve learned about how self-stigma exists in the world, I’m a whole different story. I have so much more to learn about how self-stigma exists within myself. How it moves, what it looks like for me and how to spot it when it happens.

Self-stigmatization about my own mental wellness disguises itself well. If it goes unchecked, this chain of events leads to negative thoughts and anxious spirals. It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn more than once, but it’s a valuable one. The camouflage of self-stigma has always been, and will likely always be, a challenge for me.

One misconception I’ve had to learn about self-stigma is the judgement that it entails. When I first thought about self-stigma (what it was, what it means), I compared it to negative thoughts, self-hate or self-loathing. I thought it was another version of not liking yourself, another catchy mental health term that just means we think we’re awful.

But actually, it goes much deeper than that. To borrow from my post last year about self-stigma, the American Psychological Association defines it as:

“Self-stigma refers to the negative attitudes, including internalized shame, that people with mental illness have about their own condition.”

American Psychological Association

Stigma is a mark of disgrace, of shame. A social stigma (straight from the Wikipedia itself) is “the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society.” If we’re exercising a stigma about our own mental health condition, in some way, we disapprove of it. And even though it’s a tiny aspect of stigma, that can be a lot to unpack for a person.

I’d like to think that I grow more comfortable with my mental health challenges every day, but that’s not true. I’ve definitely grown more comfortable over a long period of time, but every day isn’t a step forward. And when I make a misstep or feel like I’ve failed, I don’t always recognize it for what it is. A harsh word or mean self-critique comes in quickly and before I know it, I think I’m too good for my depression.

I’m quicker than anyone to judge what I perceive as “failures” when it comes to handling depression. I shouldn’t be doing that anymore, I think to myself. I’m past this; I’m better than this. I take a linear approach to a non-linear problem and not only do I not find a solution, but I dig myself in even deeper. It’s a misunderstanding of my own mental illness, and a misunderstanding of mental health challenges in general.

One of the core aspects of self-stigma, at least for me, is rooted in shame. Shame about my mental illness, shame about the challenges it creates. But also, shame because there’s still a small part of me that thinks I should be better than this. That I’ve learned enough about mental health that “these things” shouldn’t be happening. But that’s not true; it never was. Self-stigma hides itself, it shapes itself and it molds itself to look like something else. Acknowledging this shame doesn’t mean it’ll go away. But hopefully, means I’m better suited to handle it when it inevitably rears its ugly head once again.

"Judge people not by what they are, but by what they strive to become." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky quote

Music and My Mental Health – Part Two

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Earlier this week, I wrote about the connection between music and my mental health. I’ve wanted to write a post like this for a long time, but it was challenging. It’s hard to put into words the impact music has had throughout my mental health journey. In Tuesday’s post, I did a lot of research to show the benefits of music, and how it can help improve people’s mental health. Today, I want to expand on that a little bit, and talk about my own relationship with music. Time and again, music has given me a space to feel seen, heard and understood in my mental health challenges.

In my research for my post earlier this week, I found a passage from a Harvard University blog that summed up a lot of my feelings when it comes to music:

“As complex human beings from a wide variety of cultures, with a variety of life experiences and mental and physical health needs, our connection with music is very personal.”

Harvard Health Publishing

I love this quote because I think it’s something extremely underrated about music. Human beings are complex, so why wouldn’t our music be just as intricate and interesting? There are so many genres of music; even within those genres, there are sub-genres and musical styles that are hyper-niche and specific. And to me, that feels like a wonderful parallel for mental health.

Even though I don’t create music myself, it’s a constant in my life. I’ve struggled on and off with depersonalization over the years, when I don’t always feel like a real person doing real things. But music is a way to deal with those struggles. In fact, it’s become one of my go-to ways to help me feel connected to the world around me. When I put on a song that matches my mood, my confidence picks up a bit. Things might not going right for me but in this moment, I can speak to that in a way that reminds me how well I know myself.

I love listening to music, but I also love having music on while I’m going about my day. It feels like I’m setting the soundtrack to my day, and I can take that day in any direction I’d like. It’s a reminder that while I’m not always in control of everything, I can still have fun with what’s within my control. And in that sense, it’s an apt metaphor for my mental health.

Music has encouraged me and inspired me. It’s picked me up when I’m down, and comforted me when I couldn’t get out of bed. It’s grounded me when I don’t feel like myself, calmed me down when I feel anxious and boosted my mood when I’m depressed. For all of these reasons, I’m excited to introduce a new type of post that will be coming soon to My Brain’s Not Broken! There are so many songs that have impacted me and my mental health over the years, and I want to share them with you.

Once a month, I’ll share a song I love that has had a big impact on my mental health journey. I’m hoping this will help me share more about myself and my mental health journey, in addition to giving some love to some of the songs and artists that have been there for me over the years. Be on the lookout for this new feature on the blog and until then, I hope you listen to some music that feeds your soul!

This week was all about music on My Brain’s Not Broken, and now I want to hear from YOU. What is your relationship with music, and do you think it has an impact on your mental health? Let me know in the comments!

"Music is healing. Music holds things together." Quote by Prince.

Music and My Mental Health – Part One

Nathan Smith1 Comment

In the five years since I started this blog, there’s something that I haven’t written much about: music. It’s difficult for me to explain — succinctly, at least — but music plays a huge role in my mental wellness. While I dabbled in singing and playing musical instruments as a kid, I never had much talent in that area. But even so, I love listening to music. I’ve grown in my taste and the types of genres I enjoy, but the relationship I’ve developed with music over the years if one I’ve come to cherish.

There are many different genres of music I love, and each of them play a specific role in my life. There are go-to songs I want to play when I’m excited, when I’m anxious, when I’m sad and when I’m depressed. Music has been beneficial for my mental health for a long time and today, I want to share the benefits it can have for everyone’s mental health.

For this post, I decided to do a little research. There’s logic behind the value of music and why/how it can make us feel good, but I wanted to go beyond that. Beyond being a hobby or a profession, music shows up in the mental health space. Music therapy gives people a chance to write, play or listen to music as a way of understanding themselves. There are also psychological benefits, such as reducing stress and improving cognitive performance.

Music can be a therapeutic tool, and that doesn’t have to be in an official capacity. It could be listening to our favorite song after a long day. Putting on soothing music when we’re wound up, or playing pump-up music when we exercise. Many of us use music therapeutically and don’t even know it.

There is also the way people use music as a form of expression. People make music about every single emotion under the sun. They write music, lyrics, they sing and dance. Writing is one of my favorite things in the world, but I don’t always have the right words to express how I feel.

Beyond myself, I get immense joy from seeing other people use music to express themselves. Through music, we see people work their way through the ups and downs of life. We see them deal with things like grief and trauma, but also with joy and happiness. We see them being human.

Music has a ton of benefits when it comes to our mental health, and it’s the versatility of it that I love so much. In my next post, I’ll explore more of my own relationship with music and it’s impact on my mental health. Until then, go listen to some music!

"Music is healing. Music holds things together." - Prince

Five Ways to Deal With Intrusive Thoughts

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Earlier this week, I wrote about intrusive thoughts, what they look like, and what we can do about them. Intrusive thoughts can be hard to recognize – I went years before I even knew what they were – but we can deal with them and manage them in a healthy way. There are many ways to deal with intrusive thoughts, and I wanted to share some of the best ways I’ve found of doing so.

Name and label these thoughts as quickly as possible. One of the reasons intrusive thoughts can run wild in our minds is because we can’t figure out what’s going on. I’ve had so many thoughts that I wasn’t able to recognize or name as intrusive; that’s years of moments where a false narrative about who I am and what I’m about ran wild. Labeling intrusive thoughts as intrusive, as unwelcome and unwanted, as soon as you can will go a long way toward mental wellness.

Remind yourself that these thoughts are intrusive, and that not all your thoughts are up to you. I used to believe that every thought I had was a conscious decision on my part. I’d like to say that this was because I was young, or even a kid, but it’s mostly because of the misconception I had surrounding my brain and my thoughts. Not all of our thoughts have to mean anything, and most don’t. But when intrusive thoughts come in, it’s important to have that reminder in the moment so that things don’t fester and grow within us.

Don’t expect the thoughts to disappear in the blink of an eye. As much as I’d like to tell you that intrusive thoughts disappear when you acknowledge them, that’s unlikely to happen. In fact, awareness of an issue can often make things challenging in the short-term (something I’ve continuously learned in therapy this year). But even if it feels like there’s no progress being made, there is. You’re becoming stronger and more resistant to the false narratives in your head, and hopefully gaining mental strength in the process.

Acknowledge that there might be an underlying problem. While intrusive thoughts are associated with several mental health disorders, they can also be triggered by stress, anxiety or trauma in our lives. They can be short-term or long-term problems for people but either way, there might be something going on outside of these thoughts that we need to deal with. In fact, many people who deal with intrusive thoughts aren’t dealing with a mental health disorder, according to experts.

Remember that your thoughts are not who you are. People have thoughts, but they are not what make us. Accepting a thought that we’re having does not make us evil, rude, mean or a bad person. Pushing thoughts down, trying to ignore them and not deal with them, do nothing to make those difficult moments pass. Oftentimes, those thoughts will just come back bigger and badder than before. You are so much more than intrusive thoughts that might come and go every so often. In the grand scheme of things, intrusive thoughts can exist as they are – thoughts that come and go just like thousands, or even millions, of others in the course of our lives.

We can’t choose to have intrusive thoughts, but we can choose how we engage with them. The better prepared we are to go up against them, the better chance we have of building a mentally healthy foundation against intrusive thoughts, and other lesser-known aspects of health and wellness.

Have you ever dealt with intrusive thoughts? What’s a piece of advice you have for someone who’s had intrusive thoughts before? Let me know in the comments! Have a great weekend, friends.