Why did that happen to me? What a stupid thing to do. It's all your fault.
I'm sure you know how it goes.
When something negative happens to us, the brain goes through a process of replaying the event so that we will learn from what occurred.
It's designed to help us avoid a future incident or to know what to do should the same incident occur again. This process can be uncomfortable and if left unchecked; can lead to Acute Stress Diagnosis (I dislike the word ‘disorder’ so have changed it to diagnosis) and at the extreme end, post-traumatic stress.
Physio is a necessary part of healing the body. It can be painful, intense, emotional, and exhausting. Why is it then that we struggle to tell others that we require mind (brain) therapy despite both treatments being similar?
A physiotherapist will identify the cause of the injury by getting us to talk about what occurred and will generally push the hardest on the part that hurts the most to release the blockage to get the blood flowing and reduce the pain. In a similar way, so does a psychotherapist or psychologist, they push hardest on the emotion that is the most painful to release the built-up energy, thus reducing the pain.
As we have discussed in previous posts, emotions will come out, they must. They have to come out otherwise they will fester and grow and make it more difficult to repair the memory (injury) in the same way that we must get physiotherapy sooner rather than later.
The main difference between the two therapies is that repairing emotional pain requires more effort from the client rather than the specialist. It can be very difficult to go back and relive an incident because the accompanying emotion will be refreshed and become real. However, it is a very necessary part of the healing process.
Talking about our emotions isn’t about moaning or complaining about what happened, it's acknowledging our true self. Expressing an emotion significantly reduces it and if the person we are talking with acknowledges that expression, it disarms the emotion so that is no longer as harmful as it might have been.
Talking about mind health should be no different to talking about body health for they are interconnected. Both make us who we are, and I may suggest that the mind is more important.
Visiting a counsellor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychiatrist should be no different than visiting a GP or physiotherapist. They are all necessary in our recovery.
Adaptability!
As someone messaged me recently, 'You said to me that this feeling will pass, and it did.'
There are many terms used to describe our ability to get through difficult times - resilience, grit, flexibility, perseverance, determination, adaptability - the list is considerable. Our preference at WARN is to use the word adaptability; providing coping skills to enable people to adapt to our busy world.
As research has shown, our resilience - the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties - is founded early in life, generally within the first 1000 days. Nevertheless, we can all tap into our resilience reservoir by changing certain thoughts and behaviours.
It is necessary to have stressors in our lives, it helps us to build the range of tools that we are required when adversity hits. The greatest tool we can have is the ability to manage our emotions.
The thing about emotions is that they do not fully develop until our mid-twenties, some even say as late as our thirties. Moreover, if we experience too many emotional experiences at an early age it can have a long-lasting impact on our ability to cope later in life.
What does not kill us doesn't necessarily make us stronger, not if we aren't equipped or haven't used the tools necessary to process our emotions as we go through the challenge. And we know that the impact left in our memory is difficult to forget for it will now be a reference marker on our timeline for any future similar event.
To support this latter point, during a presentation I gave to a cancer support network, a person burst into tears when he described how hard it was to go through his new treatment following a second diagnosis of cancer. His emotional response was heightened further by having already been through the experience before. He was therefore more fragile this time because of his earlier experience.
A helpful way to learn how to cope with 'life' is to expose ourselves to situations that take us out of our comfort zone, to stretch us to do things that we never imagined we could, to possibly frighten us a little. Something to get us to feel our emotional response and learn how to process the feeling and reduce it.
The best time to start learning about managing our stress responses is as early as possible, beyond the first 1000 days when we have grown fully into our limbic system where our emotions are regulated.
There is a balance between empowering our young to prepare them for life's challenges and putting them under too much pressure. Maturity is an important aspect of managing emotions. As discussed, too much pressure at too early an age where the brain hasn't developed adequately may reduce their ability to cope.
Hopefully, this is helpful for you as an adult if you believe you aren't as resilient as others appear to be - it may have been something that was outside of your control. It's not necessarily our fault.
Let's talk!
Knowing Your Limits To Manage The Risk Of Burnout.
Do you know your limits?
Burnout can be caused by feeling like you have no control. A pressure we have produced internally. An "I must do this" mindset.
It can also be external, hearing from others about what "you should" do (refer to a couple of posts back). The key here is knowing your limits and standing by them. For each of us, those limits will look slightly different.
Work can get busy for many of us, as can the pressure to be everything to everyone in our personal lives.
If you're feeling under pressure:
💡 At work, speak with your supervisor or manager about expectations. Gain clarity on what they expect of you, not just what you think they expect. Even better - compile a list of your workload/tasks and deadlines. They may be unaware of just how much you have on your plate.
💡 In your personal life, it comes down to communication again. Being able to communicate what your limits are. It may be as simple as, "I need some time to myself this weekend, but let's catch up next weekend."
"If you love what you do you will never work another day in your life." - I'm not sure how I feel about this quote. I love what I do and work hard at it, so I still need to manage my limits.
As someone who is self-employed, here's what I like to do:
👉 Mix it up. I like to alternate tasks, switching when I get tired. I might write a couple of emails, then work on a programme for an upcoming workshop, and then connect with a client or two. Mixing it up brings variety, excitement, replenishment, and satisfaction.
👉 I build balance into my day. Balance for me looks like meeting people for coffee, regular exercise, and getting lost in a movie at the end of the day. If I feel overwhelmed; I stop and go for a run, do a workout, or relax with a cuppa for 20 minutes.
If you think you might have burnout, try taking a week off and see if you feel better. If you don't, perhaps it could be. Burnout often needs some form of external intervention. Otherwise, it's just ourselves talking to ourselves about ourselves. Please do seek out professional help if you think this might be you.
So what are your limits? Let's talk!
You Should....
For some of us, one of life's pressures is to try and change how we live according to what our family, friends, professionals, society or others say that we should do.
You should eat this.
You shouldn't eat that.
You should exercise more.
You shouldn't exercise like that.
You should stop drinking.
Relax, just have a couple of drinks.
You should be productive.
You shouldn't work so much.
Sure, it's good to be fit, it's good to be mindful of what we eat, it's good not to smoke, it's good to avoid too much alcohol, it's good to have a work/life balance, it's good to keep our minds occupied, and it's good to conform to norms when appropriate.
Whilst well-meaning, the problem that some of us have is we spend too much time trying to change too many things about ourselves at once. Trying to follow a strict regime, to get the work/life balance right, to keep up with all of what others suggest of us.
The classic pressures we put ourselves under relate to our physical health. We need to eat right, drink right, smoke less, eat less, exercise more; the list goes on. Yes, these are all good things to consider, but so is the health of your mind.
Even thinking about doing all of the aforementioned suggestions places us under pressure, pressure that can easily turn to anxiety and stress if we believe we aren't meeting those expectations.
👉 Our brains are wired in such a way that it is often difficult to make changes. Changing a habit takes sixty (60) to eighty (80) days.
Just one, single, solitary habit.
☝️ To reduce this tension that goes on inside of our heads, choose just one thing that you want to change, something that will make a real difference to you, something that you want dearly to achieve. Then, focus on that single thing for eighty days minimum. When this new habit has become instinctive, i.e. a habit you no longer have to think about, pick just one more thing to change.
Each of us is very different, and that is what makes the world an interesting place. There is no such thing as the ultimate person.
Whilst it's important to look after ourselves, to do the right thing as much as you can for your health - slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Be yourself as you are unique, there is only one of you 💛
Are you in a washing machine, are you in a movie, or are you drowning?
When initially overwhelmed, it often feels like we are in a washing machine, going back and forth, spinning around really fast. There are clothes all around us, some with zips and clips that scratch us every so often. Because there is lots of water (things going on) around us, we start gasping for air. We move faster and faster to try and catch up, to get everything 'washed' so that we can rest at the end of the wash cycle.
But instead, the cycle continues - there are always clothes to wash.
Our brain, recognising that we are in this never-ending cycle, can trick us into thinking nothing is real. We are now in a movie, walking through life without being noticed. It might feel as though if you were to reach out to others, they won't hear you or see you. No one seems to notice that you are there, they don't even look at you. That's what happens in a movie, everything is surreal.
If this is sounding familiar to how you're feeling now, please combat these thoughts and please seek help. Go and see your doctor, a psychologist, or a psychotherapist. Counsellors may also be able to help.
This movie, your movie, sometimes doesn't end well.
It has one of those endings where you are left feeling hollow, disappointed, cheated. We now have feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. We are all-consumed with our thoughts, negative thoughts, thoughts that we begin to believe are real. Logic, what's that? Sleep, what's that? Talking, ha, that stopped a long time ago.
This movie has a tragic ending, if we allow it to.
We are now drowning and there is no one around to help us (or so we think). We've been there before; we don't need help, we can help ourselves, eventually we will pop out of this wave if we keep swimming, won't we? After all, you don't want to seem like an idiot, a failure, a loser. Besides, I don't want to burden others, they have things going on themselves.
You will eventually pop out of the sea if you hold on to what has kept you going, the very things that you love about life. The hook, that's what crisis negotiators call it, the few things that we look forward to each day. The things that give us hope, the things that we come back to every now and then. You see, the heart can rule the brain if you allow it to. So what do you love?
Let's talk!