Happy 2015!

Chase Bird allowed me to make one more silly “dress-up” photo of him to wish you all a Happy New Year.

This is a time when many of us resolve to do more, be more, be different, do differently during the next year. I tend to do that, too.

But as I wrote in my journal this morning, I am going to try to remember that we have the opportunity to set new goals, to start over, every single day, every single moment. We don’t have to pressure ourselves to perfectly live up to resolutions we make on any one day.

That said, I am making some plans and setting some goals. What I’d like to share with you today is my word for 2015.

I usually focus on choosing a guiding word for myself in the new year. The word that has come to me over and over is “Quiet.”

I need and crave quiet. I need time to stop the activity, to instead meditate and think and read and learn.

I also need to take quiet to allow the clamor of my thoughts to calm down. That’s not an easy task for me. In many ways, OCD and anxious thoughts—obsessive, relentless, continuous—are more familiar to me than a quiet mindfulness of the moment.

I need quiet to stop obsessing over the past, to stop worrying about the future, and t stop generally staying stuck. I need quiet to figure out how to move forward.

Do you ever find that once you start mulling over something, you begin to find others talking and writing about the same things?

I was fortunate to recently find a wonderful On Being program called “The Last Quiet Places: Silence and the Presence of Everything.” In the program, Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist, is interviewed. The introduction to the program states that Hempton “defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise.”

Yes! That is what I want to experience. An absence of noise.

I hope 2015 will find me learning ways to experience quiet.

May 2015 be a joyful year for each of you!

It’s not all or nothing

Sunlight through oak leaves on an early morning in August.

As you know, I’ve recently taken up knitting. At first, I didn’t think I’d ever get beyond a few awkward stitches. It was a struggle for me to become comfortable with the movements of the needles and yarn.

But gradually, things changed. I kept pulling out my knitting bag and doing a little more. I recognized that I was moving my needles more quickly. I was feeling more comfortable.

And I could look at the results and see with my own eyes that I was getting better.

Another example of practice making us better at whatever we’re trying to do.

I know that practice helps. I’ve experienced it. We usually have to practice, have to keep trying, before we reach our goals, before we get to the place we want to be.

So why can’t I keep that idea—that wisdom—in mind with all my efforts?

I think an obstacle for me is the “all or nothing” thinking that goes along with my OCD and depression. With that kind of cognitive distortion, I believe that if I don’t get it right the first time, if I’m not perfect, then I’ve failed. Then it’s not good enough. Then there’s no need to keep trying.

I’ve been trying to make some changes in my daily routine. One change I’ve been attempting is to get up at the same time every day, preferably at an early hour.

All or nothing thinking has been getting in the way.

I’ve tried motivating myself with thoughts of what I’d accomplish by getting up earlier. I’ve set a regular alarm clock on the dresser in the bedroom so I’ve had to get out of bed to turn it off. I’ve charged my cell phone in the bedroom so I’d awaken to a more pleasant alarm (the phone has so many choices that sound better than a blaring alarm or even the radio).

I’ve had mixed results. I’ve gotten up, turned off the alarm, and gone right back to bed. I’ve gotten up, fed Chase Bird, and gone back to bed. I’ve gotten up and stayed up. But I don’t yet have a firm routine in place.

I’ve felt defeated. I’ve felt like a failure, a personal failure. Other people get up at the same early hour every day. Why can’t I? I’ve done it in the past. What’s wrong with me now?

But then I decided to apply the “practicing” way of thinking. Maybe I haven’t defeated my propensity to sleep “just a little more,” but that doesn’t mean I won’t get better at it. Why not just keep practicing? Why not learn from my experiences?

Why not believe that down the road, I’ll look back and see that I’ve improved? Just like I’ve improved in my knitting.

And in so many other things, if I’m honest with myself.

So I’ll keep working at this.

Name something that you have practiced to get better at.

The ride along and thoughts on anxiety

Two weeks ago, on a Friday night into Saturday morning, I went on a ride along with a sheriff’s deputy.

One of my beats for the newspaper is the sheriff’s office. I have been covering the office for nearly five years, but I had never done what many reporters have done through the years—go out on patrol with a deputy.

I was excited about learning more about what happens behind the scene. I was a little nervous, too.

I had to sign a waiver form before the ride. I thought the form said I couldn’t get out of the car.

So I was pleased when we made our first call and the deputy asked me, “You coming with me?” She said in her experience, people riding along usually came along for the whole experience.

I knew before I ever went on the ride along that I probably don’t have the temperament to be in law enforcement. (Not that I ever seriously contemplated it. But I have always been interested in what the police and detectives do in their jobs.)

It seems to me that you have to be able to deal with a lot of uncertainty on the job. You never know what a call is really going to involve until you arrive on the scene. You never know when a shot of adrenaline is going to strike to get you through a situation.

So before the ride, I hoped I wouldn’t panic or get in the way if anything happened during the night.

And I didn’t panic. I didn’t feel especially anxious or worried. I enjoyed talking with the deputy and observing what happened.

One time I felt a shot of fear, but I remained quiet. The only change I noticed in myself was that I became more alert.

I still don’t think I was made for law enforcement. The constant state of readiness would wear me down, I think.

However, I did learn a bit more about my anxiety.

It was interesting to me that though I have a lot of anxiety, most of it centers on my thoughts and my perceptions, not on things that are actually happening in the present moment. It’s a different anxiety from what I feel in real-life situations that might be turn out to be the least bit dicey.

That realization made me more aware that the anxiety I feel on a daily basis can be helped by remembering that my thoughts are just thoughts. They don’t necessarily reflect reality.

If you’d like to read my story about the ride along and see photos, you can go HERE.

Is there a type of work that you’d like to explore more, even though you know it’s probably not work you’d ever do?

Stigma about yourself

Bring Change 2 Mind is an organization that works “to end the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness.” I believe in their mission and message, and I follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@bc2m).

I keep seeing their message about a Stigma Free Summer, which they explain on their website: “BC2M wishes its community a #StigmaFreeSummer. Let's start conversations, reserve judgment, extend empathy and end stigma.”

The definition of stigma, according to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, is “a mark of shame or discredit.”

There are people who feel like having a mental illness is like having a mark of shame or discredit. A stigma.

Stigma about mental illness sometimes is directed by people who are misinformed or careless toward people living with mental illness.

Sometimes it’s people living with mental illness who direct stigma at themselves.

Over a year ago, I wrote a post about “Depression and lingering stigma.” In that post, I wrote about my struggle to reach the point of asking for help:

“Because no matter how many times I’ve gone through these bouts of depression, I still doubt myself. I still tell myself that I should be able to deal with this depression on my own, without a doctor’s help. After all, I’m already on an antidepressant. After all, I should be able to rise above it, snap out of it.

Yes, I sometimes buy into the stigma about depression.”

I’m not feeling the same now as I did when I wrote that post. My depression is under control.

But I am experiencing a lot of anxiety and intrusive thoughts, connected to my damaged relationship with my mother.

I don’t doubt the decision I made. But I’m having trouble adjusting to it. I think I’m grieving, in a way.

And I haven’t wanted to write about it on this blog or tell others about it. I have feared that I should be able to deal with it better since I reached a decision after all the years of therapy and soul searching.

Maybe I was dwelling on it too much. Maybe I wanted to feel bad. Maybe I should just snap out of it. That’s what I’ve been thinking.

Self-stigma.

I’d like to be a part of a stigma free summer. So you may see more posts here about how I’m healing, what I’m experiencing, what I’d doing about the guilt that still plagues me emotionally, though rationally I feel OK.

Maybe I will start some conversations. Maybe I will remind someone else that he or she is not alone in having confusing feelings.

Let’s get rid of the stigma.

Random memories and thoughts

See the two red spots? Those are cardinals. That is about the best I can do with bird photos.

I was sad to learn of the passing of Maya Angelou on Wednesday. I admired her a great deal.

In thinking about her, I got out my copy of her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she wrote for and read at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration in January 1993.

I was teaching English at the time. I videotaped her reading and used it in class to aid in discussing the poem with my students.

Here’s a lovely part of that poem:

"Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree

I am yours--your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again."

From "On the Pulse of Morning," by Maya Angelou

***

It has been rainy and stormy off and on this week. I hope Larry and I will be able to be out and about a bit today.

I also need to check in more with my garden and see if there’s anything ready to eat!

***

I love my times of sitting quietly, listening to my breath and to the sounds around me. Sometimes I get uncomfortable—physically uncomfortable, bored, distracted. But in the end, I feel better after even a 10-minute meditation. It helps with intrusive thoughts and makes me feel less anxious.

***

I started updating my blog information since I’m gaining a year today (I am turning 51 today). I decided to leave my age off the About Me section. I’m not ashamed of it, but I don’t think that’s the first thing people are interested in knowing.

I found that I needed to update other pages, too, including the page about my cats. It hurt to have to change it to reflect that Larry and I don’t have two cats anymore. The last time I updated that page, Sam was still with us. I miss her, and all my babies, so much.

***

I’ve been thinking about my life (yes, I’m a thinker). I know it is in part due to my birthday. I suppose getting older makes many of us think about the past and wonder about the future.

Some of what I’ve been pondering is what I really want to say with my writing. I love to write and, I say with gratefulness, I can write well enough, though there’s plenty of room for improvement. But what do I want to say? What do I want to say?

***

And where in the world did May go?

Expectations

I’ve been thinking for months about an interview with actor Michael J. Fox that I read in the April/May issue of AARP Magazine. I also found the interview online here.

Fox has Parkinson’s disease, and he addressed its effect on his life in the following passage:

“'There's an idea I came across a few years ago that I love,' he says. 'My happiness grows in direct proportion [to] my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations. . . . That's the key for me. If I can accept the truth of “This is what I'm facing — not what can I expect but what I am experiencing now” — then I have all this freedom to do other things.'”

I’ve been pondering this passage from the interview for months. I wanted to understand it. I intuitively felt that it could be an important concept for me to grasp.

I copied and pasted it in a Word document and kept going back to it.

I didn’t understand how expectations could be hurtful. Shouldn’t we expect certain things to be a certain way? Aren’t we supposed to have expectations of others?

I finally had a realization about this one evening at home.

I was sitting at my computer, playing solitaire, feeling sad.

I had opened up my Word document earlier in the evening and read the Fox quote again.

But then I started thinking about how a person had disappointed me.

The details don’t matter. The fact is that I had expected this person to do something a certain way, and when she didn’t, I didn’t like it.

I felt terrible. I wondered what was wrong with me to cause this person to act a certain way. I wondered why things never seemed to turn out the way I wanted them to. I knew I was indulging in distorted thinking, but I just kept on and on down the negative trail.

Then the pieces came together. I realized that if I accepted the actions of this person—without judging her or myself—I felt a lot better. I could just let go of the incident.

I accepted her actions. I didn’t try to explain it to myself. I didn’t need to think about it anymore.

I just accepted it. And I couldn’t believe how better I felt. I actually felt lighter.

I create expectations based on all sorts of things, mostly on what I want. And usually the expectations are about things I cannot control.

Getting upset over things I can’t control just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Acceptance of what I can’t control, letting go of expectations—I felt it in action sitting there playing solitaire.

Now I just have to keep on accepting.

I’m still pondering this and thinking about Fox’s statement. What do you think about what he said about expectations and acceptance?

Random 5: Healing bones, the weather and a look at the moon

Happy Friday, everyone! Once again, I’m linking up with Nancy of A Rural Journal for Random 5 Friday, where, as Nancy says, “you can share 5 random facts about you, your day, your pets, your kids, whatever!”

One

I go back to my orthopedic doctor today to see how my fractured foot is healing. I broke it in February, so it has been a long journey. In June, my doctor said he expected it to be 95 percent healed by today. I hope it’s 100 percent healed.

Part of the road in the park where we ride our bikes.

Two

One question for my doctor is whether or not I can ride my bike. I have missed it. Larry and I enjoy riding in the park by the river.

He is going to get his bike adjusted so that he’s not leaning over so much. Doing that causes his leg to go numb because of a narrowing of a canal in his lower back. He was going to give up riding, but he enjoys it so much, he decided to try the adjustment.

Three

Thursday would have been a great day to go bike riding. I had to leave the house early in the morning for an assignment for the paper. The temperatures were in the 50s. Unbelievable in August, but so nice. Practically sweater weather.

This summer has been cooler and wetter than any summer I remember for a while. Look at the following two photos.

The first was taken in our backyard on June 30, 2012. The grass was brown and dry. The leaves on the ground are signs of the derecho that had recently blown through.

The second photo was taken in the backyard on July 14, 2013. The grass is so much greener and softer.

June 30, 2012

July 14, 2013

Four

Do you ever sense that you need an attitude adjustment? I’ve been holding on to a lot of irritation and resentment lately, and it has such a negative effect on how I feel. I’m finding that there are some situations that I just can’t talk about with others or I’ll get upset. But my mind keeps mulling over things.

I’m managing to get some relief by focusing on the moment—when I think about doing it.

Anyway, how do you adjust your attitude as needed?

 

August 15, 2013

Five

Larry and I went out to eat Thursday evening at about 7:30. I looked up and saw the moon already appearing in the sky, though the sun hadn’t set yet.

Now that’s something lovely to ponder instead of negative things, wouldn’t you agree?

OCD and scary thoughts and dreams

Shadows

Thoughts are powerful. I’m sure you already know that. What we mull over and dwell on in our thoughts can affect our mood and our outlook, our actions. Thoughts are that powerful.

If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder, you know that thoughts can seem especially powerful, and you attach more importance to them than they deserve.

The obsessions of OCD are uncontrolled thoughts about specific things that cause intense anxiety. They revolve around concerns about things such as harm, contamination and morality.

For example, I used to be consumed with thoughts about the safety of others, especially the safety of my loved ones. I worried and agonized over the possibility that harm would come to them, and that I would be the cause of that harm.

I acted out different compulsions to try to assuage the anxiety caused by the obsessions. I washed my hands incessantly to try to avoid passing germs to others and making them sick. I prayed the same words over and over, trying to create a magical safety net around my family. I checked light switches and stovetops repeatedly to make sure I had turned off electrical devices, because I believed if I left them on, a fire might start and hurt or kill others.

Another way thoughts can be troublesome for those of us with OCD is the way they seem to be so true. If I think that I left a lamp on at the office, then it must be true. If that thought comes along with a feeling of anxiety, then it must mean that I left the light on.

I’ve come a long way since the days when thoughts and compulsions like that consumed me. But this week, I’ve been revisited by scary thoughts.

My husband told me about a snippet of a dream he recently had. In the dream, he realized that he had died at a certain age. In real life, he turns that age next year.

After he told me, I was immediately caught up in anxiety, fear and depression.

What if it was a premonition? What if it were true? Why would he dream that? What did it mean that he dreamed it?

I couldn’t let it go. I kept thinking and thinking about it.

I thought about dreams that I had had that I felt were premonitions. I thought about the times that I had awakened from a dream and believed I had learned something.

What if that was the age that he would die? What could I do to stop it, to change it?

If I spoke about it to him, to anyone, would that mean that it would come true?

Some people believe all dreams mean something. Was that true? What did this dream mean?

I finally realized that my thoughts were a manifestation of my OCD. I realized that my fears about the importance of Larry’s dream were very similar to my fears about the importance of my thoughts.

My therapist taught me a lot about my thoughts. He taught me that the brain produces thoughts constantly, many without my intention or permission. Just because I have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true or will come true. It doesn’t mean that I wanted to think it.

And just because I feel anxiety doesn’t mean that there’s a logical reason for it or that I really have something to fear.

Perhaps that is the way I should view Larry’s dream. It’s a dream, produced by some combination of thoughts, emotions, memories and who knows what. I’ll never arrive at an answer for what it means.

And as Larry told me, in trying to comfort me when I expressed concern, no one knows when he or she will die except God.

My thoughts about it, my fear, will not change anything. I will have to do what I have to do with every OCD episode: live with the anxiety until it goes away, focus on other things, and recognize for yet another time that I have to live with uncertainty.

Have you ever been haunted by a dream that you or someone else had? How do you deal with fears about the future?

Background noise: cicadas and thoughts

After being in the ground for years, the cicadas have emerged. They have reached my area of Virginia, and they are loudly announcing their arrival.

Physical evidence of their existence is mostly made up of empty shells lying around outside or still clinging to branches of bushes.

Another sign of the presence of cicadas is the sound they make.

The sound they make in the woods behind our house seems otherworldly. I’ve never heard the arrival of a space craft (except in a movie), but I imagine that an approaching hover craft would sound like cicadas.

Usually I can hear them only when I’m outside. But lately, if the house if pretty quiet, I can hear their insect roar through the walls.

I don’t like a lot of noise. If I concentrate on the sound of the cicadas, I get a bit anxious, and I just want it to stop. It’s like an irritant.

But what if I compare the whine of the cicadas to the presence of intrusive thoughts?

Angry, fearful thoughts sometimes crowd in, especially when I’m lying down at night trying to go to sleep.

But if I use the river of thoughts strategy, I can practice watching those angry and fearful thoughts float on by without engaging with them.

With the cicadas, I can get busy doing something or focus on a more pleasant sound, and soon I’ve forgotten about their song. I’m no longer engaged in the sound.

Last week, I took some photos of the cicadas in our yard. I might as well make friends with the singers.

Do you have cicadas in your area? How do you handle noise that you have no control over?

Let the wind take those thoughts away

“Let’s fix some sandwiches and go down to the park for a picnic.”

Larry didn’t hesitate. He hears “go” in a sentence, and he’s ready.

So we fixed some sandwiches and chips, added some drinks and drove to the park. Our town has several parks, but we always visit the one by the Staunton River.

It was a cold and windy Sunday. The temperatures were in the 50s, but the wind made it pretty chilly.

That didn’t stop us. We just put on our jackets, sat close together on the bench by the river, and ate our food.

Larry likes to go. Me? Less so. But on Sunday, I needed to go.

Some things are happening that have upset both Larry and me. The things don’t affect Larry and me directly, but they might affect our community. We’ve both felt a lot of shock and anger.

I can’t be specific about it here. And the specifics don’t change the effects on me.

When things upset me, it’s hard for me to let go. Whether it’s my OCD or depression or the generalized anxiety, negative thoughts lead to more negative thoughts, going around and around.

Thoughts about the situation followed me Friday night into Saturday morning. I woke up often, and every time I did, my thoughts went back to the anger.

I played the “what if” game. I imagined scenarios that only made me angrier.

I felt jumpy and irritable. The symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome flared.

Worst of all, I felt the beginnings of hopelessness, which scares me particularly because it’s a hallmark of my depression.

That got my attention.

I will not let what others choose to do or say affect my mental health.

So I’ve tried different things to counteract the anxiety.

I’ve prayed the Serenity Prayer. I’ve reminded myself of things I can do nothing about.

I’ve also concentrated on what’s most important to me: God, Larry, my cats and my writing. I’ve used visualization as I’ve thought of them.

On Saturday, Larry had a day-long class, so I was home alone. I did some chores, looked after the kitties, took a nap.

I had another spell of anxiety in the evening. I wanted to go outside and run, or at least walk really fast.

I couldn’t do that. But I wanted to do something. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to get away from myself.

The picnic helped tremendously. After we ate, we walked around the area, taking photos. We rode back into the newly developed area of the park so I could get some shots of the railroad trestle and some other interesting sights.

Despite the chilliness, the wind felt good. It metaphorically blew away the negative thoughts and replaced them with fun, the beauty of nature and the joy of being with Larry.

And then we went for ice cream.

This will not be an easy week. But when the thoughts creep in again, I’m going to imagine being in the park by the river with Larry, in the wind and the coolness, among the green grasses and the wildflowers. I will imagine the wind lifting me above those thoughts.

What do you do when you can’t get your mind off of a worrisome subject?

Absentmindedness

“You need to pay more attention to me,” said my husband as he walked into the room.

“What?” I asked as I looked up from my book.

I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about.

“You need to tell me when I have food on the front of my shirt,” he said.

Then he began laughing as he told me he had found dried salsa on the front of the shirt he had been wearing all morning. Evidently, he had spilled it the night before, and neither one of us had noticed.

Of course, Larry was teasing me, and he hadn’t gone out in public with the dirty shirt.

But I was reminded once again: I’m very absentminded.

***

The American Heritage Dictionary defines absentminded as, “Deep in thought and heedless of present circumstances or activities; preoccupied.”

***

“Deep in thought” sounds nice—rather cerebral, refined. But for me, deep in thought has often meant I’m mulling over something I did or didn’t do or that I need to do, thoughts that stir up anxiety, obsessions that lead to compulsions.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder can keep those of us with the disorder in our heads, obsessing about harm or cleanliness or morality, reviewing compulsions we’ve done to determine if we’ve done them right.

OCD takes up time. But there are also the lost conversations, the lost movies, the lost sunset, the lost smile—all the things “out there” that we’ve lost because we’ve been deep in OCD thoughts.

***

When I was in college, my mother took me to an ear, nose and throat doctor to have my hearing checked. She said I asked others to repeat themselves too often. “Huh?” and “What?” were too standard for me.

The doctor checked my hearing and said I could “hear grass grow.” He said I needed to start paying attention to people when they talked to me.

***

I think some of my absentmindedness is also related to my introversion. I’m quiet. I often feel more comfortable listening and watching than I do talking. I can easily float away on my imagination, on a story I’ve made up in my thoughts as I people watch.

I forget where I am. I can take a 20-minute shower, walk out in front of cars in the parking lot, forget what I was going to say, walk into a room and not remember why—because I’ve gotten lost in my imagination or memories.

During dinner recently, my husband tried to tell me something, and when I asked “What did you say?” for the third time, he stopped talking until I looked up and paid attention.

***

So I have been brainstorming ways to help me focus better and be less absentminded:

*Do one thing at a time.

*Be intentionally mindful of the moment: notice the sounds, the smells, the sights around me.

*Look at people when they talk to me.

*Remember the river of thoughts and let troublesome thoughts float on by.

*Designate times to daydream and ponder.

I think I’ll always be somewhat absentminded. But maybe next time I’ll be the first to notice the salsa on my husband’s shirt.

Are you absentminded? How do you focus your attention where it needs to be?

Anxiety, depression and a way to live with the river of thoughts



The Staunton River, running along the edge of Altavista, Virginia.



How sly they can be. How quietly they slip amongst the other thoughts, seeming to fit in at first. It’s only after they’ve taken a foothold that you realize what they are: the negative thoughts. The old, familiar negative thoughts.

I’m stupid. I’m useless. I’m a waste of time. I can’t do anything right.

They are the kind of thoughts that used to run through my mind with abandon. I thought they were normal. I thought they were true.

Everybody hates me. God hates me. I hate myself.

Even after therapy, medication for the OCD and depression, self-help books, getting older, meditation, prayer, faith—all the things that have helped me through the years—it’s still possible for me to get caught up in negative thinking. The kind of thinking that makes me feel hopeless and helpless and depressed.

I’m a failure. Things will never get better.

What all the treatment has done for me, though, is to help me recognize what I’m doing and stop it.

What I’ve learned helps me to talk back to the thoughts, to engage new, more positive thoughts. It helps me to realize that a thought is just a thought.

Just because I think it doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because I think it doesn’t mean that I wanted to think it. Just because I think it doesn’t mean it’s any more important than any other thought floating down that river.

I learned that water imagery from my therapist.

He showed me a photograph of a river with a bridge arching over it. He told me to imagine that the river was the flow of my thoughts. I was to imagine that I was on the bridge, looking down on the river, on the thoughts.

In the same way, I could distance myself from my thoughts and observe them: the words, the feelings, the images.

I didn’t have to engage with them.

I didn’t have to believe them.

I could just observe them, from afar, from high up on the bridge.

Just because I think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

What do you do when negative thoughts creep in?

The power of the thoughts we choose

It was early morning, a Sunday, and I didn’t have to get up at any particular time. It was still dark outside. Larry had fed the cats, so they were full and ready to go back to sleep. The blankets had settled just so over me, and I was warm. It was quiet.

I love mornings like that, when it’s still dark and quiet.

I kept saying those words to myself. Dark and quiet. Dark and quiet.

I waited to drift off to sleep again.

But then the thoughts came. Intrusive thoughts. Thoughts about the past, about situations that hadn’t turned out the way I wanted. Thoughts about people who had said things that hurt me. Thoughts about all the things I needed to get done.

“You don’t have to think about these things,” I told myself.

Then I decided to change my wording.

“I don’t have to think about these things,” I said to myself.

I imagined that thought overlaying the other, painful thoughts.

“I don’t have to think about those people who hurt me. I don’t have to think about anger right now. I don’t have to worry now. It’s dark and it’s quiet.”

I believed that my conscious thoughts, what I was telling myself, could drown out the intrusive thoughts. I believed they could be stronger than the thoughts that made my heart beat faster and brought on the anxiety.

Thoughts come and go. I could choose the ones to pay attention to.

“I don’t have to think about these things.”

And I concentrated on the darkness and the quiet that surrounded me. I concentrated on the sounds I could hear. The clock ticking. What sounded like Chase Bird having another bite to eat. The almost-silence of the morning.

And I fell asleep.

How do you cope with unwanted thoughts?

What am I thinking now? Becoming more aware of my thoughts

It’s becoming increasingly important to me to be aware of my thought patterns because I’m recognizing the ways they can affect how I feel.

I may not be able to stop or control my thoughts, but I can add new ones and guide myself to dwell on the helpful ones, like I did in the “prove it” exercise I wrote about in my last post.

I still have a lot of confusion about the importance of/lack of importance of thoughts. But I’ve been doing some interesting reading that I thought I would share with you.

According to Jonathan Grayson, Ph.D., in his Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Recovery Program for Living with Uncertainty, one common OCD cognitive distortion is the over-importance of thoughts, also known as thought-action fusion (TAF): “If this disorder is part of your OCD, then you tend to consider thoughts equivalent to action. You spend your time trying to figure out why you are having such an awful thought and whether or not it means something terrible about you” (p. 99).

If you have TAF, you may have been “thinking that the goal of treatment is either to stop the thoughts or to know that they mean nothing of importance” (p. 99). But that’s not the goal of treatment. Rather, that “goal of treatment is to learn to accept the possibility of all these meanings—even the possibilities of the worst ones” (p. 99).

Another common OCD cognitive distortion is excessive concern about the importance of controlling your thoughts. The focus is “on the belief that you should be able to control your thoughts or avoid having certain thoughts” (p. 99). This belief doesn’t have any support, though: “Such thought control is not possible for anyone to achieve. Any and all thoughts that come into your mind, no matter how evil, twisted, or perverse they may seem, are normal” (p. 99).

Therefore, “the goal of treatment is not to stop these thoughts, but to learn to allow them to be on your mind without being upset about them” (p. 100).

For me, that’s where mindfulness comes in. In his book Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present Moment—and Your Life, Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness in the following way: “Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (p. 1).

Awareness of your thoughts is one aspect of mindfulness. Kabat-Zinn says, “We see that thoughts, when brought into and held in awareness in this way, readily lose their power to dominate and dictate our responses to life, no matter what their content and emotional charge. They then become workable rather than imprisoning” (p. 38).

When I become aware of my thoughts, whether it’s through mindfulness meditation, a writing exercise, a discussion with a therapist or friend, or some other way, I needn’t be alarmed or afraid. They are just thoughts.

How I respond to them is still my choice.

What are some things you’ve discovered when you started paying attention to your thoughts?

Fighting hopelessness

Thank you for all your wonderful comments that you left on my last post. Words cannot adequately express how touched I was by all the good thoughts that you sent my way.

I am slowly coming out of the hopelessness I have been feeling, and I feel blessed for that.

My down period, I believe, came from a series of circumstances and my responses to them.

And I think it came in part from a change in medication. I think the change is ultimately good, but my body had to adjust to no longer receiving a medication it had been getting for at least two years.

One of the things I’ve done to try to help myself is to learn a little more about hopelessness.

I turned to The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step by Step Program, 2^nd Edition, by William J. Knaus, Ed.D.

He writes that in some instances, hopelessness is the reality. An example he gives is the fact that we all age. “But you don’t have to feel miserable about this reality. Even when one situation is hopeless, you can find other opportunities” (p. 144).

Hopelessness thinking is different from the real hopeless situations: “Hopelessness thinking includes overly generalized beliefs such as these: ‘My future looks dismal’; “Nothing will ever work out’; ‘Whatever I do will be futile’; ‘I will never get better’; ‘This is the way I am. I always feel miserable’” (p. 144).

As Knaus says, “unfortunate events happen, but the fatalistic resignation of hopelessness thinking is optional” (p. 145).

An example he gives is that someone may have lost his or her job, but that doesn’t mean he or she will never work again.

I appreciated being reminded that there are some hopeless situations in life. But how we react to them is so important. Giving in to hopelessness thinking is a choice. It’s a choice that’s difficult to pull out of, but it can be done.

One of the techniques Knaus gives for fighting hopelessness is what he calls the “prove it” technique. You write down your hopeless thoughts, give examples of such thoughts, and then write down alternatives.

I tried this exercise. Here’s one of my outcomes:

Hopeless thought: I’m never going to feel better; I’ll never be happy.

Example of this thought: I’ve felt bad for many years.

Alternative: I’ve felt good, too, and I can’t predict for sure that I’ll always feel bad.

And here’s another outcome:

Hopeless thought: I’ll never be able to do what I want.

Example of this thought: I’m 49 and still not doing what I want.

Alternative: That’s not true. I am doing many things that I want to do and that can grow.

This exercise helped me. Writing down my thoughts gave me something to look at and work with. And writing out my reasons for believing the hopeless thought made me see the problems with it. With the alternatives, I could argue with myself, show myself that the hopeless thought wasn’t true.

It’s more work to sit and write down my thoughts than to wallow in the hopeless thoughts, but it was worth it in my case. I began to feel like I had more control over how I felt and how I responded to things.

I plan to keep trying this exercise when I get caught up in the hopelessness thinking.

So, dear readers, I feel like I am on my way back. Thank you again for your support and caring.

Have you ever worked on negative thinking patterns in a systematic way? If so, what did you do? Does it help you to write out your thoughts?