Category: anxiety
Reflections From The Road (Part 2)
Turn on the TV anytime and you can find amateurs and professionals with varying degrees of emotional snake oil sales gimmicks for helping you deal with the pressures in your life. Oprah has made billions pretending to be a psychologist and has launched the careers of myriads of self-help gurus. Arguably she has been an excellent proponent of self-care and has called attention to the plight of those struggling with mental health issues. I owe her a debt, I suppose. She and her bald friend, among others, have made going to a counselor fashionable. It is no longer taboo to see someone about your failing marriage or your personal problems. I fear, however, that the pendulum may swing too far now that obesity and anxiety, as well as depression and addictions, are now reasons to go on disability. While this may help some, many others will undoubtedly line up to exploit the opportunity to get ‘something for nothing’. Even more problematic is the reality that going on disability is often the worst thing some of these people can do. Every day at the addictions center where I work part-time I have to bite my tongue when another addict goes on disability in spite of the fact that their ailment is self-induced and some are looking, yet again, for a feel good solution to a difficult problem. Not working can be the absolute worst thing you can do in addiction recovery. We have known for generations that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop”.
Recently I read a great article on Cracked.com called, “You hate yourself because you don’t do anything”. It’s one thing to take time to address your problems. It’s another thing altogether when a recovering addict hasn’t worked in years and blanches when I suggest one of their problems may, just maybe, be that they have way too much time on their hands.
In counseling I often come across unemployed people who tell me they are too busy to do what I am suggesting they need to do to get better. I know this is politically incorrect but I often look them straight in the eye, screw up my most professional looking expression, and ask, “Are you unemployed busy or really busy?” Granted some people are doing many good things, but often those I run across will admit that they had to come to see me at ten and have to go to the Walk-In Clinic at three – they’re swamped. They have succumbed to a lifestyle that lacks productive routine and are not working towards re-engaging in society. We only have one life, one precious and finite life, to experience and contribute. Spending that life in poverty and boredom, when we had other options, is a tragedy that affects the generations to come. Don’t misunderstand me, I am a huge proponent for the plight of the poor and hurting. That is why I am so passionate when such a lifestyle is avoidable. Some people need to get off their ass and help themselves. No one cares about your problems as much as you do and this isn’t television – there is no knight in shining armor, no billionaire talk show host that is going to swoop down to rescue any of us.
I work in a Fibromyalgia/Pain Clinic and see hundreds of people every year who have been dealt the worst hands imaginable. I have patients who can barely move, let alone work. Every week I speak with the most amazing people who feel they have “lost their life” to terrible illnesses. Their courage to move forward, in spite of chronic pain, fatigue, and illness, is inspiring. Many have been abused by the medical system and offered horrible medical and psychological care. They would love to work again, run again, contribute again, but cannot. It is maddening how few of them are accepted for disability, and they are often subjected to the cruelest interrogation by insurance companies who belittle them and subject them to emotional and financial hardship. There is something wrong with a system that gives money to able-bodied twenty year-olds who are too lazy to work yet rejects someone who has legitimate and life-altering illness.
Personal growth is about movement. I am writing a book right now called, “How to Improve Your Life 52%”. Real change is about doing the little things. As I have said on many occasions, drastic change is rarely lasting. It is all about momentum, moving forward inch by inch, a little bit day-to-day. Maybe that means getting up at the same time every day. Perhaps that means listening to an audiobook on psychology or self-help. Some of us need to start down the road to reconciliation by making a phone call. You might need to put down that doughnut or only smoke ten cigarettes a day. The key is to get started – do something. Doing something little is always better than planning to do something big. Sometimes change starts by getting off the couch. You may not be able to do a hundred pushups but you can do one. Baby steps.
I think I will take my own advice and get up and stop writing…
Self-Medicating
I have radically changed the way I think about addictions.
I work part-time in addictions and see it’s effects literally dozens of times each week. It’s easy to believe that the problem is the addiction – if we can just help people stop drinking than their life will work itself out. Unfortunately this is not even remotely true and people who understand people are realizing that the addiction is simply another symptom of something much deeper.
When I was young and drugs came calling they were just another solution to the problem called “My Life”. Chocolate made me happy right now. So did cocaine and boobies and volleyball. Basketball sorted me out, so did pot. My only crime was that I grabbed too hard at one of my solutions to stress. Why couldn’t I have developed an addiction to body-building instead? Chocolate is nice, why couldn’t it have been to chocolate?
Dealing with your maladjusted life by stopping only one of the symptoms does not make sense. Somewhere along the line in many lives drugs became medication, not recreation. Cocaine helped you not have to think about your crumbling life. Drinking and sex helped you believe you were important. Being high kept you from thinking about your struggle to hope that things could change.
In counseling I encourage clients to look beyond their need for medication and address the actual disease they have been medicating. We need to learn to put our lives in perspective and change dysfunctional thinking patterns. Taking responsibility for your own heart and happiness truly is the best thing you can do to improve your life.
Related articles
- Does It Really Matter What You’re Addicted To? (scott-williams.ca)
- Catastophizing (scott-williams.ca)
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I’m Going To Explode!
Panic attacks. Many of us have had one, or several. Somehow things stress us out so much that at some point we start to melt down. Little things become big things. Problems become impossibilities. Everything starts to overwhelm us. Some of you know what I am talking about.
Stress is like that too. The relentless and unbending pace, day after day after day. The problems with my parents, or my kids. The never-ending need to be doing something. The never-ending list of things to be done. The meaninglessness of it all.
It is truly shocking how many of us live our lives in a constant state of anxiety, pressure, and stress. Day after relentless day of problems and issues and things that absolutely must get done before I can fall into fretful sleep. It is no wonder, than, that so many of us live on the edge of constantly boiling over, constantly in danger of being overwhelmed. Constant anxiety can do that. So can ongoing anger, or depression, or grief. Even ordinary “never going to change” stress and problems can potentially take you to the edge.
Remind you of anything? Ask anyone who’s had an orgasm (and I hope you are one of them) and they’ll tell you that at some point in the whole process you reach what I will call, for lack of a pretty term, the “point of no return”. After this point the house could burn down around you and you’ll still need “just a minute”. There is a vast store of energy just begging to be released. Momentum is building alongside a weakening will to resist and your capacity to hold off a crisis is sorely tested. The train is coming and there is nothing you can do about it.
Anger is also like that. It builds; becoming more intense and more animated, until things just start spilling over. Have you ever wondered why people often seem to make little sense when they are exploding? Maybe that’s because this release of emotion is closer to an orgasm than we care to admit. The build up, the release, the relief. You feel better in spite of the fact that everyone around you feels worse. Time for a cigarette.
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Catastophizing
from dictionary.reference.com:
verb – to view or talk about (an event or situation) as worse than it actually is, or as if it were a catastrophe: Stop catastrophizing and get on with your life! She tends to catastrophize her symptoms.
It’s something many of us do every day.
Some months ago I got a call from the unemployment office. Years ago I had been unemployed, had collected EI, had started a restaurant, and there was some negotiation over when my EI claim should end. Now years later a supervisor was calling for what felt like an urgent meeting.
I freaked out. I didn’t sleep well for the days leading up to the meeting. I had all my paperwork in order, I was confident I had done nothing wrong. I knew intellectually that it should be no big deal.
Catastrophizing. Making a mountain out of a molehill. Jumping to the wrong conclusions. Expecting the worse. Ever happened to you?
Catastrophizing is one of the classical cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are those emotional coping mechanisms we employ in order to cope with stress and issues in our life. They are things like emotional reasoning – letting our heart make decisions that should be made with our head; or “should” statements – I should be a better person, I should be over anxiety by now, I should not eat that bagel (ok that one may be the right thing to think…). Cognitive distortions keep us sick. We develop these ways of thinking because they work, or at least they used to. It’s tempting to “filter” out positives and believe the worst. Anyone over thirty knows that life will hand you enough manure to convince you that the worst-case scenario is often the right one to believe. Thinking all men are pigs can keep you from ending up in pig crap. Catastrophizing prepares you for the worst, and the worst sometimes happens.
Letting go of our own distorted ways of thinking takes a bucket of work. Being willing to set aside feelings and beliefs that have served us, sometimes for generations, is no simple task. Letting yourself forgive, or trust again, let someone love you, or work through your abuse can be the most daunting thing you ever do. Most of us are tempted to change our actions and hope we will eventually fake our mind into someday playing along. While this can bring limited success, growth happens when we change the way we think, not just the way we act.
Religious people may recall the Bible verse which says that “as a person thinks, so are they”. In therapy we say it this way, “Change your mind and your butt will follow”.
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I Work Out, I Eat Right, I Do Yoga… So Why Am I Still Depressed?
Have you ever had an emotional or mental breakdown? I have. At the time I was doing martial arts several times a week, was involved in a spiritual community, was learning and growing, but none of that seemed to matter.
So what happened?
Clinicians often refer to a nervous breakdown as technically an “adjustment disorder“. Your external work gets kicked in the spleen so hard that no amount of yoga or protein shakes or Mona Vie bars can hope to compete. Your inside world is depressed, or anxious, or panicked, or all of the above. Often psychosis shows up with tequila shots for the party. Your world crumbles and you simply can no longer cope. Sound like anyone you know?
People who have never been in a severe depression or have had a breakdown cannot hope to understand why people often consider suicide. To the outsider, suicide is a coward’s way out, or a selfish act, or just plain crazy. True enough on one level – crazy does certainly show up. It is hard to understand from a distance, but when things get that bad one is not thinking in their rational mind. Obsession has become a way of life. They call it a “breakdown” for a reason.
Most of us do not realize that we have several gauges of health. Until someone told me I believed that if I was working out, eating right, and learning and growing, I would be fine when things went sideways. I did not realize, and did not pay attention to, my emotional gauge.
Working out, eating broccoli, and going to a church does not necessarily mean that you are not emotionally bankrupt. Those things may help to keep you healthy, but put a group of emotional succubus’ in your life and things start to go wrong.
When you pause to think about it, there is usually three kinds of people in your life. There are those who, after you have spent time with, you feel better for having been together. Then there are those who do not affect you one way or the other.
Did I mention there were three groups? You know the last group. When they call a piece of you dies inside. Being with them sucks the life out of you. They are never happy, or always complaining, or your mother. People like this drain your emotional gauge. Add a relational breakdown, or a child who is unruly, a job that is stressful, and someone who is disappointed in you and you can begin to lose hope. Add to this the crazy schedule we all try to maintain with little or no time for reflection or self-care and you have a recipe for a meltdown.
Don’t even get me started on those of you who also have small children.
Taking care of your emotional stuff is the best thing you can do for yourself besides taking a week on a beach somewhere without a cell phone or your children. Paying attention to your emotional gauge will help you in ways you could never imagine. A healthy person with a healthy heart is the best defence against hurt, stress, and pain.
Pay attention to yourself. You’re worth it.
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You Don’t Measure Up
Hyper-responsibility.
Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Feeling the need to make sure everyone does what they should. The need to manage not just myself, but everyone around me.
If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
It’s chronic…spoken or unspoken it’s there. I know because I have been a control freak and I am tired of living that way.
I am tired of the pressure to judge, fix, correct, straighten out, spank, corral, frighten, pressure, guilt, condemn, and look down on others. I know nobody says they do that but I have and I see it all the time.
I’m weary of feeling like I have to save the world and that for others to stay saved depends on me and my ability to be good enough. This constant feeling that everyone is teetering on the edge of total rejection and that one slip up from you and their eternal soul’s blood is on your hands is too much.
My God! That’s a massive weight to bear…who can handle such pressure?
Face it – you don’t measure up…. Get over it!
You don’t measure up.
You don’t measure up.
Admit it…. And be free!
Obsession
My wife is planning a trip to somewhere warm and she is doing it wrong. As a guy I would go online, find the very first place that was on the ocean and book it. It wouldn’t matter if it had air-conditioning or bedrooms or anything so trivial. As long as it had wi-fi (which I wouldn’t use) and I could hear the waves I wouldn’t obsess about the options and would worry about the other details when I got there. Last time I was in Hawaii I got in a taxi on the Big Island and told the driver, “find me a rental car that a local would get”. He took me to a Rent-A-Wreck where I paid nineteen dollars a day. Hertz wanted fifty-five. The next day we asked around until we found out there was a Wal-Mart in town. Supply problems solved. I’m a fairly “live and let live” kind of dude and investigating options isn’t part of my DNA. I am all about decision-making, don’t confuse me with details or facts. I like to fire the weapon, not waste all day aiming. I suck at board meetings. After about forty-five minutes I am ready to kill something. I do not ordinarily obsess about details.
For people struggling with mental health issues, however, obsession is a very real temptation. In counseling we talk a lot about cognitive distortions, about how easy it is to catastrophize when anxious or upset. It is also tempting to employ something called emotional reasoning – using our heart, not our head, to make decisions and formulate opinions regardless of the objective facts. Then there is black and white thinking, and “should” statements, and making mountains out of mole hills and seeing the negative in every situation. You can see where I am going with this. There is something in all of us that, when we are stressed or hurting or in trauma or struggling with anxiety or depression, likes to obsess about possibilities and worst-case scenarios.
Obsession.
Obsession is an emotionally bankrupting practice. Letting your mind “go there” is rarely healthy or productive. For some reason we have this impression that we shouldn’t deny our feelings and we should let ourselves experience all that frustration and fear and negative thinking. Sadly, many people believe that if they don’t catastophize the hell out of their problems they are somehow being untrue to their emotions and inauthentic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practicing healthy mindfulness and being true to oneself has little or nothing to do with obsessing yourself sick. Emotional regulation is an extremely important, though often overlooked, part of maturity and growth. It is my contention that my journey to maturity and wisdom is nothing less than learning to control my thought-life. As James Allen says in his classic As A Man Thinketh, “Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.” The Bible, another good source of wisdom, says it this way, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. That is good counseling advice, whether you are religious or not. Obsession is sickness.
Learning to reign in our thoughts, as hard as that seems, is a learnable skill and not impossible. A good counselor will help you take control of your cognitive distortions and learn to process your thoughts in a healthy and hopeful manner.
It isn’t easy, but it is incredibly worth it.
Related articles
- What is Catastrophizing? – Cognitive Distortions (psychologytoday.com)
- Use Your Compass (scott-williams.ca)
I Know You
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.
That statement about you is called the Forer Effect, and I was reminded of it again while reading Cracked.com. The Forer effect refers to the tendency of people to rate sets of statements as highly accurate for them personally even though the statements could apply to many people. The above paragraph is completely generic and is used to illustrate how easily we can be convinced that vague generalities are actually accurate perceptions of our psyche. Most of us can relate to the statement above, it seems to describe us. It is the same effect that you get when you talk to a psychic, or read astrology, or practice astrotherapy. People tend to practice wishful thinking, tend to identify with generalities because we want to. We also tend to accept statements like this about ourself because they are flattering. This is the reason why people spend millions of dollars every year on the pseudosciences and on paranormal fortune-telling.
This is also the reason why most counseling doesn’t work.
There is a tendency in all of us to believe what we want to believe. We are tempted to seek out someone to confirm what we already believe about ourselves. Many of us are also seeking someone to give us permission. I cannot tell you how many times I have been confronted by persons who have come to me hoping to coerce me to tell them it is ok to do whatever it is they are already contemplating, no matter how destructive.
Here is a typical example that counselors are confronted with all the time: You want to have an affair and you are convinced that, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that things will not end well, this time it will be different. You want to believe that you are special, that you are the exception to the rule.
But you aren’t.
None of us are. We are all bound by the same cause and effect rules, the same fallibility, the same propensity to lie to ourselves when we really want something. I know this because I am not the exception either. I have done things, and said things, and contemplated things that I suspected were not in my best long-term interest but I did them anyway because I wanted to and on some level I was engaging in wishful thinking.
Counseling often doesn’t work because you have come to the appointment knowing what you are going to do already because you are convinced that you understand the situation better than I do. In some very legitimate terms you are correct. The problem arises from the fact that you know the situation too well, are too involved. You cannot see the forest for the trees, as the old saying goes. That is the reason that unpacking your problems with someone who is knowledgeable and empathetic can be such a valuable experience. Einstein said it so well when he said, “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” He was profoundly right. We are all tempted to believe our own bullshit.
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Chasing Tornadoes
One day, while living in Denver, Colorado, we heard that there was a tornado brewing in our area. This may seem like a big deal to you if you live somewhere else, but in Colorado tornadoes are a fact of life. I witnessed dozens of funnel clouds every year and often they would touch down, usually in a trailer park. God hates trailer parks. It’s not bad enough that you live in a home that can burn to ashes in four minutes. For some reason God has this habit of skipping houses with minivans and spanking the trailer folk.
Back to the true story. My wife is listening to the radio and she hears about this tornado heading right towards our neighborhood and she starts to get nervous, especially since my dad and I had gone for milk almost an hour ago and hadn’t gotten back. She started putting two and two together and started to shake her head and think to herself…. “they wouldn’t!”
Ok so my dad and I are cruising home from the Quickie Mart and we turn on the radio and we hear about this tornado heading right towards our neighborhood. We start to get excited. We had never seen a tornado from like, real close, and thought it would be cool to go looking for it. Actually it was my dad’s idea so that explains a lot about the kind of upbringing I had.
So here are two stupid Canadians in a Dodge Colt driving towards the tornado. We’re passing vans and cars and your basic fleeing mob going the other way. It was awesome, there was no traffic in our lane.
How close can you get to a tornado? It turns out you can get very close indeed. Fifty feet if you are stupid enough, or so I’ve heard. I blame my father. What kind of parent would let someone like me chase tornadoes?
The moral of the story is, Canadians are idiots. No, wait, that’s not it. The moral of the story is – it seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, although it was still very cool, we were flirting with disaster.
At the time we believed we knew what we were doing.
At the time we thought we knew the score.
At the time.
When I was struggling with dark depression, at the time I felt I was making the best decisions for my future. At the time.
When I was lonely and horny and had no one to hold, at the time I thought I was making the right decisions for my life. At the time.
When you are struggling with mental health issues and chronic pain and fatigue and loneliness and stress and financial problems it is tempting to make decisions that feel right… at the time. Unfortunately few decisions that are made when we are at our worst turn out for our best. At these times most of us have lost our objectivity and the pain has sapped us of our motivation to do what is difficult. Very often what seems “like a good idea at the time” is in fact very detrimental to our future lives and we are unable to see it. In these moments we need to be very willing to accept the advice of those who love us and can see things more objectively. I have failed to take such at advice on occasion and have usually come to regret it.
Here are a few examples to leave you with:
1. When you are infatuated with your new romantic interest you probably do not see the whole picture; understand that you are not qualified to make long-term decisions at that moment.
2. When you are in love and people are screaming at you that your lover has big problems you need to listen to them because you are not being objective.
3. When you are depressed you will not make good decisions. Yes I mean you.
4. If you are at a vulnerable, hurting, or damaged place in your life if it feels good than chances are you shouldn’t do it.
5. Good advice rarely sounds good when you are in pain.
6. When you are struggling, depressed, or hurting, your inner voice will tell you to do things that are selfish, destructive, and short-sighted. Don’t listen to that voice.
7. If you think no one understands what you are going through you are probably right. Talk to someone.
8. Real change takes a ton of time and effort. Get-fixed-quick schemes don’t work in the long run. Ever.
9. Most of your friends are not qualified to give you advice. Remember that.
10. Get off the couch. Get out of bed. Open the curtains.
11. You will fail. Failure is an important part of getting better.
12. Ninety percent of success is just showing up, even when you don’t feel like it.
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
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Refusing To Let Go
I remember vividly the day my son Ben almost drowned in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. Everything started out fine, until Ben decided he needed to carry his newly purloined favorite balls around in the pit. Its hard enough to walk in there with both hands for balance, it’s impossible with a hand full of balls.
Ben took a step and fell. He tried to wrestle up without letting go of the balls, but he couldn’t. He started to cry but still wouldn’t let go of the balls.
Have you ever tried to reason with a crying, sweating four year old drowning in plastic balls? I began but pointing out to him how much better it would be to actualize the balance ratios by dropping the balls and negating the negative balance issues. I reasoned with him. I counseled him to make decisions that were based on common-sense and not emotion. I told him the story about the rat who wouldn’t let go of the cheese and got trapped in the trap. I’m sure on some deep level he was cognizant of these masterful illustrations, but mostly he just balled his brains out and kept sinking.
Being the mature man I was I began to yell, “Drop the balls!”
NO!
They have this stupid rule at Chuck E. Cheese which states that adults are not allowed to go in the pit, so I sent his older brother Nate in there.
” Nate go save your brother!”
So he’s yanking and Ben is drowning and Nate is having problems and I’m yelling and people are watching and my wife is pretending she’s not with us….
And I’m thinking to myself, “eventually he’ll lose consciousness and we can drag his lifeless carcass out of there!”
Why would a kid clutch so tightly to something that cannot but fail? Why is it so tempting to grasp things that don’t really matter? Why can’t we see when we are drowning in our own stubbornness?
When people come to counseling it often becomes apparent that they are looking for permission, not input. They have decided on a course of action and do not want to let go, even if that journey is going to hurt them, ruin their marriage, damage their kids, or interfere with their future. Often it’s a “want my cake and eat it too” scenario. They want to have an affair, or they want to do something that will result in destruction, or they want to keep lying to themselves about their addiction or their psychological malady. It’s far easier, they think, to continue on the road they are travelling then it is to do the hard work of personal growth. I know a bit of how they are thinking because I have been there myself. I have wanted something so badly that I was willing to blindly rush forward, convinced that somehow, against all reason, things would magically work out.
I didn’t want to let go of that ball.
Or maybe the issue is that you are holding on to something so tightly, an attitude or a painful memory, a slight or an abuse, that you cannot imagine letting go of the ball. The ball is all you know, it’s what feels right even if it doesn’t feel good. It is unimaginably hard to let go of what you believe. It is painful to change, difficult to imagine that life can be different. Maybe you’ve been hurt before and dammit, you are not going to get hurt again.
Letting go of the ball is rarely easy, but if you don’t try you are going to drown. Someone like me can scream and plead and beg you to do it, but at the end of the day no one else can make that decision.
No one cares about your problems as much as you do. No one will do it for us.
Isn’t it time to let go of the balls? It is going to be monumentally difficult and take much more time than you thought it would but it is worth it.
Life is waiting for you.
Related articles
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The Memory Game – Living Life With A Limp
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese. That’s how the memory game begins. It’s a simple, “repeat after me” from one to ten. I will often do it with groups as an icebreaker or an anxiety enhancer. I stole it from a Johnny Carson episode. Yes I am that old.
The game can be played in two different ways, eliciting two very different responses. In the first case, take for example the time I played it with a local high school assembly. The gymnasium was packed and I asked for a volunteer, someone who thought they had a good memory, someone who wanted to challenge me to a game. I told the volunteer (senior jock with attitude) that it was “you against me and I will beat you because I never lose”. I pointed out that it was a competition and instructed the audience not to help him in any way. Other teens soon started teasing, and the tension in the room started to rise. I think the kid made it to “four limerick oysters”.
Sometimes, however, I play the game with anxiety groups or when I am doing speaking gigs for tired executives. I will introduce the game but also mention that it’s perfectly fine if others help out because it doesn’t really matter, and no one ever gets to ten anyway. We are all in this together, after all. I remind the audience more than once that there is no pressure and I will say the statements along with them in case they get confused. Most groups give up at seven or eight. It’s fun and a good laugh.
Do you see the difference between the two games?
Most of us can do quite well when things are going our way, when we feel no pressure, when we feel supported. It’s another thing all-together to be at your best when you are not feeling well, or feel singled out, or are stressed or under pressure. Change just a few variables and most of us, myself included, will run into trouble. Do that public presentation with a head cold or a Fibromyalgia flare up and what was intended to be a great opportunity becomes a waking nightmare. Add emotional or relational pressures, insecurity or abuse and it becomes harder and harder to make good decisions.
Most of us live life with a limp. We have been wounded in ways we dare not describe and have developed coping skills that worked in crisis and fear. Some of us have felt the sting of trauma and abuse and feel like something inside of us has been broken, or killed, or maimed beyond repair. People don’t understand why we do some of the things we do but they have no idea what you have endured. It’s easy, therefore, to view the world as a hostile place and trust no one. Letting someone in just brings pain. We develop masks to hide our true feelings and emotions. It is probably fair to say that we are not necessarily playing at the top of our game. I often comment that most of us, by the time we are middle-aged, have seen our fair share of trauma. There are few optimists in their forties.
Growing up many of us felt belittled or abused. We still struggle to trust anyone or let anyone in. When I am confronted I know it is difficult to stay objective – I have a little boy inside of me that is easily wounded and wants to fight back or run away or make excuses. I have spent a lifetime trying to come to terms with that little guy but it’s an ongoing issue in most of us. We walk with a limp – the constant nagging understanding of our weakness and the temptation to treat all of life with distrust. It is easy to become bitter. It is difficult to let go of the past and the dysfunctional coping methods we once used so effectively. It is hard to move on when we have to drag one leg.
Robert Frost famously penned, “Two roads diverged in a wood”, a poem (The Road Less Traveled) many of us have committed to memory. We hear it at conferences and in platitudes about choosing a life that makes a difference, about not selling out. I was reminded today that the real journey of life is not the physical or economic one, but an emotional and spiritual one. We all have choices to make, choices that will profoundly affect our lives and the lives of those we love.
A limp is not an excuse to live a bitter life.
I can still choose, in spite of my situations, my past, and my problems to endeavor to find hope and help.
I have come to realize it is a great deal easier to grow old and ugly than it is to choose wholeness.
In fact, its way easier.
“People can be more forgiving than you imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what’s bitter and move on.” Bill Cosby
Related articles
- Depression: How To Feel Like A Loser (scott-williams.ca)
- You don’t need to be a soldier to suffer from the dark, heavy weight of PTSD (thesun.co.uk)
- When Intuition Is A Curse (poetryfrommymind.wordpress.com)
- Living My Life To Impress A Five Year Old (scott-williams.ca)
- Why Most Radical Change Is Bogus (scott-williams.ca)
When Intuition Is A Curse
When people come into my office and tell me, very early in a conversation, that they are ‘intuitive’ and ‘can see into people’ I often wonder if they have had trauma. The longer I do this for a living the more I realize that some of us developed our insights into humanity as a protection mechanism. We never knew, when dad or mom walked into the room, whether we were safe or in danger. We had to develop the skill for knowing how to react around instability. We constantly had our radar on. To this day, when we walk into a room, we are keenly aware of how people are feeling and reacting. We have a ‘bead’ on people and think it’s a gift. For some people a gift born out of a curse.
Trauma does weird things to people. Some other day I will talk about the link between trauma and hoarding, or people who can’t seem to finish projects, or those who go from romantic relationship to romantic relationship and consistently make bad decisions. People with trauma often repaint their house too often, or have spending or drug addictions, or have difficulty making decisions. Most trauma survivors become control freaks. Trauma has a way of twisting us emotionally and relationally, of creating fear and insecurity.
A few days ago I went to Swiss Chalet with a close friend who is a 6th Dan Master at his martial art. As we walked to the restaurant I was not worried about being jumped or attacked. I was hoping. When I’m with my martial arts buddies there is little danger of violation. My radar is turned off. The world is a safe place and I am not even remotely worried. Most people grow up in a world that is safe, and therefore have no pressing need to become discerning when they are at home or on the playground. For them the world is a safe place and they have no need for emotional radar.
A few years ago, in a trauma group I was leading, a woman shared about her afternoon and the fearful event she had endured just prior to group. She was in a McDonalds parking lot when two men in hoodies, with the hoods up, approached her in the twilight. As a victim of trauma she was keenly aware of danger and had struggled all her life to trust men, especially strangers. Some time in her past she had been attacked by men, beaten and raped. That late afternoon in the parking lot her radar came on and the meter went through the roof. As she walked across the parking lot she felt her pulse quicken, she began to sweat. She started to panic. In her mind she imagined violations galore and began to catastophize and soon found herself running to the door of the restaurant, in a state of extreme duress. She grabbed the door, threw it open, and fled into the bright lights.
From where she was in the restaurant she watched in horror as the two predators entered the restaurant, pulled down their hoodies and…
… they were ten or eleven year old boys who were completely oblivious to her presence.
One the primary characteristics of PTSD and trauma is something called ‘hyper-vigilance’.
That night in group we talked at length about her fear, born in trauma and pain. It was the beginning of a journey for her, one that takes far longer than people want to admit, filled with counseling and discomfort and setbacks. A journey to freedom. As we say in counseling – trauma trumps everything. What that means is that if you have experienced severe trauma that depression or anxiety you are feeling may not just be because you have situational issues right now that are bringing you down. You need to deal with your emotional trauma, before it ruins the rest of your life. It is a difficult journey but a necessary one. Get help. Talk to a counselor who understands trauma and doesn’t suck.
You’re worth it.
Related articles
- Why Reliving Your Trauma Only Goes So Far (psychologytoday.com)
- How Trauma Leads to Depression (everydayhealth.com)
- Depression: How To Feel Like A Loser (scott-williams.ca)
- Guest blogging for Scott WIlliams on Self Blame (and this on responsibility) (ruleofstupid.wordpress.com)
ADD And Defining Normal
When Mark Twain’s hero Huckleberry Finn was forced to study spelling for an hour every day, he said, “I couldn’t stand it much longer. It was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.” His teacher, Miss Watson, threatened him with eternal damnation if he didn’t pay attention. Huck admits it didn’t seem like such a bad alternative. “But I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewhere; all I wanted was a change, I wasn’t particular.”
If that had happened today, Huck would have been diagnosed as ADD, put on Adderall, and forced to attend school, while the book about his adventures would never have been written.
The American Psychiatric Association invented the term ADD in 1980 to give kids with hyperactivity, impulsivity, short attention span and easy distractibility a diagnosis. Who would have thought that 28 years later, the National Center for Health Statistics would report that over 5 million American kids (8%) between the ages of 3-17 would receive this diagnosis. That’s 1 out of 12, with about half of those on medication.
William Evans, PhD, with the Journal of Health Economics found that a huge predictor for the diagnosis of ADD was the age of the child with respect to their grade. In other words, younger children in a given grade, have more ADD symptoms than older ones.
No surprise there – younger kids clearly are more restless and less able to concentrate on a topic, or sit quietly in a classroom all day long. According to his research, “approximately 1.1 million children received an inappropriate diagnosis and over 800,000 received stimulant medication due only to relative maturity.”
Let me quickly point out, that I’m not opposed to medication to treat those with severe symptoms, but do 1 out of every 12 kids really have ADD?
I wish this was just about ADD, and though that clearly is the most grievous example; bipolar disorder, OCD, generalized anxiety, social anxiety and other diagnoses also illustrate the over-diagnosing, over-treating and over-medicating of psychiatric problems throughout America. The first psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM-I, in 1952 had 106 disorders listed. The revised DSM- IV in 2000 had 365!
The National Institute of Mental Health has found that 26 percent of Americans (1 in 4) have a diagnosable psychiatric illness. The only word for that is “ludicrous”. A disorder of any kind is by definition something wrong, screwed up, malfunctioning.
A mental disorder is an irregularity in the functioning of the brain. If the brains of one quarter of the U.S. population are disordered then something is very, very wrong with the human mind. Or with our mental health system.
In a Wired magazine interview in January 2011, Allen Frances (lead editor of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental disorders –IV) blamed the DSM-IV itself. “We made mistakes that had terrible consequences,” says Frances. One of these consequences, the article notes, is that diagnoses of ADD have skyrocketed.
“Frances thinks his manual inadvertently facilitated these epidemics— and, in the bargain, fostered an increasing tendency to chalk up life’s difficulties to mental illness and then treat them with psychiatric drugs.”
Here’s the problem: The profession of psychiatry has taken on the role of defining ‘normal’ in our society. Even Webster’s dictionary defines normal as being, “free from a mental disorder”. As we purposely shrink the box called normal and it gets smaller and smaller, the abnormal universe expands to include almost everyone. But we say, “don’t worry, we can fix that with a pill and make you normal just like everyone else”.
My profession has not only redefined mental health by over-diagnosing and over-medicating an ever-expanding number of diagnoses, we are also taking away the hope of human nature by telling our patients that they are inherently “abnormal” and need to be fixed.
The psychiatrist’s office has gone from being the place no one would be caught dead visiting…to the place where a pill could fix anything. And psychiatry itself has gone from being stigmatized to glamorized.
Psychiatric conditions don’t come with an on/off switch, but rather occur along a continuum. High levels of any given trait may represent a severe psychiatric diagnosis requiring medication, BUT in small to medium doses, these very same traits can represent your greatest strengths.
On a scale of 1-10, what separates an ADD 7 from an ADD 10? Who gets medicated…..and why? How could one person use a set of “symptoms” as a springboard for success while another with the exact same symptoms needs meds and therapy?
How are CEO’s like Richard Branson (Virgin Airlines), John Chambers (Cisco), and Charles Schwab able to parlay their ADD into tremendously successful careers, while others are searching for a magic pill and a cure?
David Neeleman, founder of Jet Blue has said that if he found a magic pill to make his ADD go away, he wouldn’t take it. Creativity and innovation are hallmarks of those with ADD.
When a child first presents with symptoms, why aren’t we telling them that they are three times more likely to form their own business, will thrive in disruptive situations, will embrace adventure and are adept at multi-tasking, as opposed to giving them a diagnosis and a pill?
We must stop thinking how to give the “patient” what they think they want and start taking a look at what’s good about what they have. We must empower individuals to think it’s ok to be “not normal” and change the mindset that everything can be “fixed” with a pill or a few therapy sessions. We must help them understand that what they perceive as their worst trait, may in reality be their best.
“It’s time for a new order of business in mental health, based on the premise that when you try to conform to a perceived “normal,” you lose your uniqueness—which is the foundation for your greatness.”
Orgasms – Finally An Anxiety Medication I Can Fully Endorse
Forget Clonazepam – when you’re in the mood, it just might help your health. How does a juicy sex life do a body good? Let’s count the ways. Here are 10 health benefits of sex — backed up by science.
1. Less Stress, Better Blood Pressure
Having sex could lower your stress, and your blood pressure. That finding comes from a Scottish study of 24 women and 22 men who kept records of their sexual activity. The researchers put them in stressful situations, such as speaking in public and doing math out loud, and checked their blood pressure.
People who had had intercourse responded better to stress than those who engaged in other sexual behaviors or abstained.
Another study published in the same journal found that diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of your blood pressure) tends to be lower in people who live together and often have sex. And yet another study found that women who get lots of hugs from their partner tend to have better blood pressure.
2. Sex Boosts Immunity
Having sex once or twice a week has been linked with higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A or IgA, which can protect you from getting colds and other infections.
So say scientists at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. They studied 112 college students who kept records of how often they had sex and also provided saliva samples for the study. Those who had sex once or twice a week had higher levels of IgA, an antibody that could help you avoid a cold or other infections, than other students.
3. Sex Burns Calories
Thirty minutes of sex burns 85 calories or more. It may not sound like much, but it adds up: 42 half-hour sessions will burn 3,570 calories, more than enough to lose a pound. Doubling up, you could drop that pound in 21 hour-long sessions.
“Sex is a great mode of exercise,” says Patti Britton, PhD, a Los Angeles sexologist. It takes work, from both a physical and psychological perspective, to do it well, she says.
4. Sex Improves Heart Health
Having sex may be good for your heart. A 20-year-long British study shows that men who had sex twice or more a week were half as likely to have a fatal heart attack than men who had sex less than once a month.
And although some older folks may worry that the sex could cause a stroke, that study found no link between how often men had sex and how likely they were to have a stroke.
5. Better Self-Esteem
Boosting self-esteem was one of 237 reasons people have sex, collected by University of Texas researchers and published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
That finding makes sense to Gina Ogden, PhD, a sex therapist and marriage and family therapist in Cambridge, Mass., although she finds that those who already have self-esteem say they sometimes have sex to feel even better.
“One of the reasons people say they have sex is to feel good about themselves,” she says. “Great sex begins with self-esteem. … If the sex is loving, connected, and what you want, it raises it.”
Of course, you don’t have to have lots of sex to feel good about yourself. Your self-esteem is all about you — not someone else. But if you’re already feeling good about yourself, a great sex life may help you feel even better.
6. Deeper Intimacy
Having sex and orgasms boosts levels of the hormone oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, which helps people bond and build trust.
In a study of 59 women, researchers checked their oxytocin levels before and after the women hugged their partners. The women had higher oxytocin levels if they had more of that physical contact with their partner.
Higher oxytocin levels have also been linked with a feeling of generosity. So snuggle up — it might help you feel more generous toward your partner.
7. Sex May Turn Down Pain
Here’s another thing the love hormone, oxytocin, does: It boosts your body’s painkillers, called endorphins. So if your headache, arthritis pain, or PMS symptoms seem to improve after sex, that may be why.
In one study, 48 people inhaled oxytocin vapor and then had their fingers pricked. The oxytocin cut their pain threshold by more than half.
8. More Ejaculations May Make Prostate Cancer Less Likely
Frequent ejaculations, especially in 20-something men, may lower the risk of getting prostate cancer later in life, some research shows.
For instance, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that men who had 21 or more ejaculations a month, were less likely to get prostate cancer than those who had four to seven ejaculations per month.
Of course, that study doesn’t prove that ejaculations were the only factor that mattered. Many things affect a person’s odds of developing cancer. The researchers did take that into consideration, and the findings still held.
9. Stronger Pelvic Floor Muscles
For women, doing pelvic floor muscle exercises called Kegels may mean will enjoy more pleasure — and, as a perk, less chance of incontinence later in life.
To do a basic Kegel exercise, tighten the muscles of your pelvic floor, as if you’re trying to stop the flow of urine. Count to three, then release.
10. Better Sleep
The oxytocin released during orgasm also promotes sleep, research shows.
Getting enough sleep has also been linked with a host of other health perks, such as a healthy weight and better blood pressure. Something to think about, especially if you’ve been wondering why your guy can be active one minute and snoring the next.
Related articles
- 10 Surprising Health Benefits of Sex (webmd.com)
- The Best Reason to Have Sex (mensjournal.com)
Guest Blogger Wednesday: When Chronic Pain Steals Your Life
Wednesdays I host a guest blogger – professionals, clients, friends, strangers; stories of success and failure, people who are suffering, some who are opinionated, all of whom are a work in progress. These are struggles about real life issues. If you are interested in telling your story email me at info@scott-williams.ca.
Here’s one that maybe you can relate to:
When Scott asked me to do a guest blog he sent me the following message over Facebook: “you should guest blog about how your life got screwed by your medical problems.” Far from being the most offensive thing he’s ever said, I think it’s still apparent that the average person would probably have worded it more politely. Scott is not the average person. Neither am I. To know me is to understand that if what you say is intentionally horrible I will probably laugh at it, especially if I know you. If you’ve ever heard of “dead baby” jokes you’ll understand my humor.
That sense of humor sometimes quite literally keeps me going.
I’ll preface my medical story by saying that by no means do I believe that mine is more horrible than others. I know that I’m damn lucky compared to most people on this Earth.
In my glory days I was active and spontaneous and embarrassingly unembarrassable. In what I think was the summer of ’07 I was visiting someone when, at dinner, I suddenly got a muscle cramp in my leg. It was the worst pain that I’ve ever felt and I’ve broken both of my arms. I recovered quickly, but never forgot that moment and I’ve feared that pain ever since.
A few months later I was walking home from work when a twitch and a strange sensation went down that same leg. I thought for sure that it was happening again and panicked, but the cramp never came. Since then the twitching and strange sensation has coupled with aching, tingling and weakness in both legs and it’s never gone away.
Soaking in the fear that at any time I was about to have a rematch with the worst pain of my life, and living with the aforementioned symptoms for four and a half years without a diagnosis (not even a hint), I developed a nasty little anxiety problem with tendencies toward agoraphobia and hypochondria. But not knowing what was wrong was the worst part. The more anxiety I got, the more I obsessed over what I might have. Was I dying? Was I delusional?
After my legs went, so went my belief in God, followed by who, at the time, I thought was the love of my life. Disabled, alone and feeling very defeated I moved home. If Scott dares have me back after this then perhaps I’ll tell about leaving my religion.
Suffice it to say, I lost a lot of friends. I not only pushed them away, but I also felt unable physically to be with them. Very few have remained. I became inactive. In my own eyes I became useless. For two or so years I fell into a depression. One night I went outside to cry so as to not wake my family. I sat there and decided that jumping off of a bridge would be the best way to go. The next day, due to some fluke of hormones or sunlight, I was feeling better, stronger. I went for a walk to try to keep my legs strong (which is often physically painful). I told myself then that I was going to university. If I could not make use of my body then I would make use of my mind. I acknowledged that if I failed in this that I would likely end up looking over the railing of a bridge getting ready to use my defective legs for one last jump. University would not be easy, it would indeed be painful, and with my anxiety it would also be scary, but I considered it my only option.
I started school the following winter. My main interests are psychology and philosophy and without conceit I can tell you, I’m damn good. Maybe it’s my passion for the subjects, or the threat of death, but I’ve been very motivated to succeed. For four consecutive semesters I dealt with the anxiety of leaving my house, speaking to strangers, taking a bus to school, wearing out my legs causing pain, cramps and twitching on top of the usual stress of school itself. By the end of the fourth I had beaten that anxiety nearly to dust. I no longer needed the Xanax that my doctor had prescribed. I was studying like a dead baby (because I had no life!) and I was getting ready for my next set of final exams. Two days before the first one something new happened. I don’t know how it works with others that suffer from anxiety, but to me something new was terrifying. Suddenly and for seemingly no reason I felt swelling in my throat. Of course I knew that this was the end. I’d be dead any minute, choking to death. That was not my ideal way to go. My anxiety shot through the roof and although my throat never closed up (I was never in any real danger of that happening) I just knew that it was about to happen at any second.
The swelling never went away. I got 60% on my final exam in Philosophy 100, my favourite class. I’d been getting above 90% until then. My anxiety was back with a vengeance, stronger than ever before. Before I had leg pain to worry about. Now I had nausea and choking and cancer and a million other mysteries to fear.
Ironically the problem with my legs was diagnosed soon after – Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. All I ever wanted was a diagnosis. But now that I have one, I can’t enjoy it. Life’s funny like that. It’s been five months since then. There was a point about a month ago when I went in to my doctor to get the results of two separate tests. These would tell me whether the problem in my throat was hypothyroidism or thyroid cancer. I was almost praying for hypothyroidism, but even if it was cancer, at least then I would know. I got what I perceived to be the worst news possible. Both tests came back negative. I was back to the beginning, the not knowing, the fear, the helplessness and hopelessness. Depression started coming back. I dropped my classes for this Fall semester. I could barely leave my room never mind go to school. It was obvious that I needed help. So, I’ve started seeing a psychologist (one that doesn’t suck). She’s taught me some meditation, encouraged me to exercise, and taught me how to argue with myself, tell myself that I’m being irrational when I obsess over my health.
I still don’t know what’s wrong with my throat. I don’t know what the future holds. I’m not particularly hopeful about it either. But I’m also not hopeless. Who knows? There’s still a chance for me. I can beat this anxiety crap. I’ve nearly done it once before, and now I’ve got backup. And as long as I have the ability to laugh at the absurdity of my own horror, I’ll be able to hold on.
Coming tomorrow: Dealing With Your Addiction: Why A 12 Step Program May Not Be Enough
Related articles
- What Is Anticipatory Anxiety? (everydayhealth.com)
Beating Anxiety And Depression Is Possible, But It May Be More Work Than You Are Prepared To Do
Anxiety and depression are plaguing 21st Century culture. It’s an epidemic.
We have never had better medications to provide relief, never had better therapies available. Health care, thorough physicians, EAP programs for free counseling, nurses, and other professionals has never been as accessible.There is no world war, most of us do not have a terminal illness. Employment is at an all time low. So what is the problem? Is there any hope?
Day after day people tell me in counseling that they have been dealing with anxiety and depression for years, even decades. They have been on antidepressants literally for generations. They believe that they have a biological issue, some sort of genetic flaw, though no one can identify when or how they were tested to confirm the neurochemical prognosis. Many people, at least in my part of the world have seen a psychiatrist who, after ten or twenty minutes, has diagnosed them (without any evidence-based analysis) as having a depressive or anxiety disorder. I have asked these individual what tests were run, what scale was used; did you even fill out a Burns Depression Questionnaire, or a PHQ-9, or a HAM-A/D, a GAD-7? Anything? Did you share the story of your past few years, describe the emotional and psychological stressors?
Twenty minutes every month and a prescription for an antidepressant, a benzodiazepine, and a sleeping medication. Many, many of my patients have been taking these same medications for a decade or more and have no idea if they do anything substantive.
The hard truth is that taking medication for a generalized anxiety or depressive disorder is only a small part of the solution (though perhaps necessary); and by themselves do little to address the important questions. Dealing with anxiety and depression requires actually dealing with the key causes, issues and effects, and takes a tremendous amount of learning, transition, and vigilance.
I tell patients that the tools they need to address these issues are incredibly simple to learn and very very difficult to master. This requires a level of humility and dedication most people are not willing to give. If you have a major issue with anxiety or depression it is going to take major work. But with the right tools, a counselor that doesn’t suck, and a dedication to do ‘whatever it takes’, you can experience significant change in just a few months.
But you need the right tools. If you go to a counselor and they tell you that you need to begin by changing your lifestyle (like the doctor who tells you to fight depression by going for a long walk every morning) then fire that therapist. Real change begins with changing your mind, not your activities or emotions. A counselor who knows what they are doing will challenge you to deal with your thoughts, show you how to practice taking back control of your impulses, and help you learn to address your dysfunctional coping skills and cognitive distortions.
With depression, for example, if you could go for a long walk every morning you probably wouldn’t be talking to your doctor. A person who is seriously depressed is usually unable to find the energy or motivation to open the curtains, let alone go for long hikes. So once again you are a failure, only further entrenching your despondency. A good counselor will help you find hope, not set you up for more failure.
Depressed people can get better. Every day I teach people the tools they need to find hope. The problem is that not everyone is prepared for the relentless battle that is necessary to drag your emotions and garbage, kicking and screaming, back into your control. You will have to fight your own dysfunctional thinking and learn to get control of your mind, battle your obsessions, say no to your desires, and question your own beliefs. This is a great deal of work and pain but the reward is sanity, hope, and a shot at a happy life.
I love what Tony Campolo once said, “As children we were taught to pray the prayer, ‘If I should die before I wake’. Most of us should be praying, ‘If I should wake before I die’.” Many of us have been walking around most of our lives half asleep, half alive. Isn’t it time we woke up? Anxiety is not a terminal illness. Panic attacks can be beaten. Depressed people find hope.
Don’t give up, you’re worth it.
Related articles
- The Panic Attack (scott-williams.ca)
- The Worry Cure (psychologytoday.com)
The Panic Attack
I met Kate (not her real name) one morning during my turn at Intake. She came to me after having a panic attack in the local mall. She was walking by a kiosk and the next thing Kate knew she was on the ground in the fetal position. She asked her doctor what she should do and he gave her an anxiety medication, a sleeping med, something for depression, and a benzodiazepine for her panic attacks. She was medicated and ready to go.
But she kept having panic attacks.
She went to her psychiatrist who adjusted her medications (perhaps a stronger dosage would do the trick) and sent her on the way.
She came to see me – frustrated, despondent, defeated and deflated. A couple of weeks later she dumped most of the meds and surprise, she wasn’t having panic attacks anymore. So what happened?
I know I’m not that good. I am constantly surprised that people have amazing turnarounds after a few months of counseling. Nothing on the outside may have changed much, so why the turnaround?
When people get depressed or are battling anxiety they are usually told to go out and do a bunch of things – go for walks, work out, cut out caffeine, take medications, socialize more, etc. While these are good ideas and may eventually help, have you ever tried to ask a depressed person to go for a regular walk? They came into that office feeling depressed and a few days later, after being unable to get out of bed and go for the magical exercise routine, they are still depressed and now can point to yet another failure.
The secret is – it’s not just about what you do. It’s about changing your mind, not just your routine. The bible says -“As a person thinks, so they are” (I take truth wherever I find it). Cognitive Behavioural Therapy says it this way, ‘change your mind and your ass will follow‘ (ok, maybe it’s just me that says it that way).
It’s not about going for a walk, as good an idea as that may be. It’s about changing the way you think, addressing your own cognitive distortions about life (calling your own bullshit), and learning how take control of your thoughts and emotions.
So we talked about her panic attack. We figured out the “window of opportunity” for dealing with her oncoming attack. She learned what panic attacks were, and how her subconscious was directing her. We talked about a few options that seemed incredibly simple to learn. She practiced… and practiced. She documented her attacks and we talked again.
And things changed.
Panic attacks are not incurable. Neither is depression or anxiety. They just may take a great deal of work to conquer.
I’ll be dealing with this issue in further posts and with specifics for my email subscribers. Watch for my upcoming post, “Anxiety is curable, but it’s probably more work than you are prepared to do.”
And oh ya, hire a counselor that doesn’t suck… (I can also tell you how to find that person).
scott-williams.ca 