Tag: anxiety

I’ll be there for you…👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

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The whole point of my blog is to show other people, like me, dealing with anxiety and/or depression that we can do better than just “survive,” we deserve to thrive. So let’s start the day off right and wake up bright-eyed and bushy tailed, or let’s just get out of bed a little easier.

I’ve talked before about how sometimes our feelings get labeled and we just run with it, in the wrong direction. I used to watch Friends reruns every night to fall asleep. Umm…for about 6 years. This behavior could maybe be seen as “Obsessive Compulsive” and considering my dads obsessive discipline and eating disorders running in my family, it’s not that far off that I might have similar behaviors. But I had heard the words “Obsessive Compulsive,” and I was basically scared into thinking I HAD to do this every night to fall asleep.

“Bed time,” is when my anxiety really rears it’s ugly head, I imagine that’s the same for a lot of people. When I was younger I had an overwhelming fear that my house was going to be broken into and the burglar would murder my parents, and other similar variations of that scenario. I suppose when my mind has a chance to quiet, that’s when all the thoughts, “what if..,” “remember when..,” “what did I say?” come into my mind. But if I fed into my “Obsessive Compulsive” behavior, my mind could be distracted from my own thoughts. Maybe true. Maybe not. Just about every bed time study suggests that watching TV while you fall asleep is to advisable. According to the National Sleep Institute, the blue light from your TV (phone, tablet, whatever) can delay the onset of REM which is when you are in your deepest sleep. Not getting enough REM sleep can cause you to feel drowsy in the morning. And for people like me, with depression, I already have enough trouble getting up in the morning, I don’t need to be feeling drowsy too! So did I spend 5+ years not getting optimal sleep? Probably. Did that have to happen? Probably not. But I was convinced I need to maintain this behavior. Flash forward to now. I sleep with my girlfriend, who does not want to watch Friends reruns ever, much less just before bed. So guess what? I fall asleep just find without the TV.

Ok. Pause. Don’t panic. I know being alone with our own thoughts can be scary and certainly anxiety provoking. How can you keep your mind occupied but quiet at the same time? Think good thoughts. Obviously easier said than done, but let me tell you how I can do it.

  1. Let yourself think about feel the thoughts in your head. Ok. Full stop. This sounds scary and maybe like a bad idea, but hear me out. All anxiety is not bad, we know that. It’s part of our instincts that help us to survive. Anxiety disorders are the disproportionate feeling of this emotion. So back to the point, these thoughts are not all bad. So if Im going to bed, if I have these running thoughts of anxiety, I think them, or sometimes I write them down. To me, it signals to my brain, “Ok I hear you.” Acknowledge the feelings and know that you can address them at another time.
  2. Think good thoughts. Remember the things you are grateful for. Even if they are small things from that day, or an overall gratefulness for something you have in your life. Maybe 3-5 things. Think them. Think of the people associated with them and the feelings you feel.
  3. Believe you can fall asleep. Give yourself a chance to do it too. Get comfortable, close your eyes, and think to yourself, “I am falling asleep.” If you get into bed already thinking you won’t be able to do it, you are doomed from the start. And if you don’t give you self a change to even try, well you guessed it. You’re doomed. Believe it or not, you control your own thoughts, and your thoughts control your actions. It’s that simple.

Take control of your thoughts. Acknowledge the thoughts, even the ones that suck, and then change them. You have this ability, everyone does. And if you practice you will get better at it. Let me tell you an example:

My common anxiety thought before bed: Someone is going to break in and try to kill me or my family.

How I change it: Someone could try to break in, but I’ve locked the doors, I have set the alarm, and the dogs would bark if they tried. And it’s been 30 years and it’s never happened so I should be good tonight.

I’m acknowledging the fear, addressing that I’ve taken the reasonable and logical steps and thinking positively. Not too hard!

You have the power to direct your thoughts to positivity and to sleep (and to conquering you’re fears, accomplishing your goals, etc. but save that for another time.)

And like I always say, if you don’t get it one night, and you turn on your blue light of comfort, oh well! You’ll wake up maybe not as refreshed or whatever, but you’ll try again the next night. This is all about progress, not perfection. If you are trying to improve your sleep habits, you are already doing better than you were doing yesterday! And this is just the beginning of getting to the part where you are thriving and not just surviving!

SWEET DREAMS!

Silver Lining

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I got off track. And guess what happened? I lost my mojo. I was not consistently completing my “5 Little Things” and now they are harder to do. The thing I really fell off on was reading everyday. The silver lining here is that I really see the value in reading everyday now. When I’m not feeding my mind I had less to write. My inspiration was not being sparked. I didn’t have any new ideas. Mostly I felt guilty that I had started this project of writing a blog to share my story with you, and I couldn’t stay consistent. But I also thought, “great, another thing I started and couldn’t finish because it got hard.” Story of my life: when the going gets tough…just forget about it. I’d need a whole other website to list the things that I’ve started and quit. But we cannot dwell on the past. What’s done is done. This is something I feel like I do a good job of believing. I realize it can be difficult for many. We cannot continue to punish ourselves for things not, or no longer, in our control. All we can do is manage our actions going forward. For example, because I stopped reading consistently I probably have not made the process in myself or my business and I’ve neglected my blog. The consequences: I probably won’t show up on any “mental health” blog discovery pages anytime soon, I could’ve lost a sale because I haven’t spent time developing my business skills. I could’ve messed up in my relationships because I haven’t been developing my interpersonal skills, etc. A whole slue of things could or couldn’t have happened because I neglected one of my 5 little things for a month.

Finding the silver lining is something I think I have been gifted with. With anxiety and depression this can be very difficult. Anxiety makes me think of all the possible outcomes and often focus on the worst outcomes. Depression makes me dwell on the negative things that have happened or might happen. Focusing on the negative can actually be toxic for our brains, according to Dr. Caroline Leaf, in her book, Think Lean Succeed. Believe it or not we have the power to decide what thoughts we allow into our minds. “The thoughts we focus on will grow,” Dr. Leaf says, so our challenge is NOT to focus on the negative thoughts that are constantly clouding our anxious and depressed minds. If you can find a way to focus on the positive or the silver lining, your positive thoughts will grow and you will pay less mind (literally spend less of your limited mental cash) on the negative thoughts. 

So now what?

Well I could sit here and feel sorry for myself. Punish myself for my lack of discipline, but what will that achieve? Often depression or anxiety lets us punish ourselves for far too long. We feel the guilt and regret so deeply and for so long. But in the journey to better ourselves we must remember the we are only moving forward and not looking backward. And maybe, if you are lucky, you can me the silver lining. In my case, my lack of self discipline gave me something to write about. See? Silver lining. So now I recommit to my goal. I will read everyday. I will do my best. Hopefully reading everyday will help me to write more, and if not I will have to come up with another plan.

The moral of the story was started by a friendly warthog:

You gotta put your behind in the past.

Pumba

When I am setting goals it is easy to think of other times I have failed and use those as reasons to limit myself. But we can never make improvements to our personal lives if we limit ourselves based on the results we’ve had in the past. We have to take risks. You have to focus on the positive. I may have neglected my reading for a month, but in the past 3 months I’ve probably read more books than I’ve read in my entire adult life. So that’s something to be proud of, I think. Set a goal, strive for it with all your might, and if you miss, pull up your boot straps and try again. But in the meantime, remind yourself that you have made progress in your efforts to go after the goal in the first place.