In my experience, one thing is for certain when it comes to a person's well being, mental or otherwise--taking too many hits (figurative or literal) is a surefire way to find yourself driving the spiral.
No, I'm not about to launch into a flowery explanation of football-tossing fundamentals. This will not be a point-by-point guide on how to add yards and zing to your throws. Sorry. Allow me to explain.
By spiral, I mean that ever-accelerating downward vortex of shame and self-doubt that swallows us up when we're at our worst. By driving, I mean that you're embracing the negativity and actively making it worse.
I caught myself doing this in the last week. Over and over again, I found myself tallying all the bad things in my life--every downer, every gut-punch, every kick to the crotch the past couple years have thrown my way. Conveniently, the good is entirely forgotten in times like this. Despite all our many blessings, only the rotten pieces of life catch our attention, their foulness obscuring the sweeter smells of our intermittent successes.
To escape this dangerous rut of dour thinking and sour emotion, it's important first to recognize that you can't do anything about your bad breaks. The damage is done; you've absorbed it. Bottom line, account balanced. The headspace is the only thing you can change, and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, only you can change it. Some people can hold your hand and ease your path, but ultimately it's all on you to find your less-unhappy place.
Gratitude goes a long way. Going so far as to keep a gratitude journal might help. But I find it's hard to immediately go from hateful to grateful. For me, I've found some success focusing first on the tolerable bits of life (most all of it, really) and using that to distract from the parts I find sub-optimal. The next step I usually take is trying to get to a place of perspective. Tons of people out there probably have it worse than you. Think about them. Think about some problem bigger than yours, and think hard on how you might go about fixing it. Giving money, lending a hand in service--those are well and good, but they're also easy outs, and might end up hindering more than they help, provided they aren't done the right way. Challenge yourself to think in broad terms about what you can do to better the world, and if that proves too difficult, tighten the scope until it feels manageable. It shouldn't ever feel comfortable, because our world has a lot we could improve, and there's constant danger that you'll find yourself consumed by the pessimism that always accompanies impossible tasks. That's why it's important to focus on your part to play, and what you might do. Keep the scale small on that front, so you can isolate your gifts and talents--the best you have to offer.
Because, you see, that's what we're looking for in the first place. That's what we're ignoring in our own lives. Now, I'd like to emphasize this isn't a fix. Ostensibly, if you're reading this, you're human, and there's no fixing that. You'll still have moments of weakness. You'll still endure bouts of spiraling. And I'm not saying you have to pull a bait and switch exactly like this to trick your brain into seeing the good in your life. It's just one kind of workaround that I've had some success with.
But you owe it to yourself and the people who care about you to find some way to break the cycle. Because if you don't, as I'm becoming increasingly aware, no one will do it for you. You'll keep driving the spiral until you hit the bottom. And no one will want to be down there with you.
No, I'm not about to launch into a flowery explanation of football-tossing fundamentals. This will not be a point-by-point guide on how to add yards and zing to your throws. Sorry. Allow me to explain.
By spiral, I mean that ever-accelerating downward vortex of shame and self-doubt that swallows us up when we're at our worst. By driving, I mean that you're embracing the negativity and actively making it worse.
I caught myself doing this in the last week. Over and over again, I found myself tallying all the bad things in my life--every downer, every gut-punch, every kick to the crotch the past couple years have thrown my way. Conveniently, the good is entirely forgotten in times like this. Despite all our many blessings, only the rotten pieces of life catch our attention, their foulness obscuring the sweeter smells of our intermittent successes.
To escape this dangerous rut of dour thinking and sour emotion, it's important first to recognize that you can't do anything about your bad breaks. The damage is done; you've absorbed it. Bottom line, account balanced. The headspace is the only thing you can change, and unfortunately, as far as I can tell, only you can change it. Some people can hold your hand and ease your path, but ultimately it's all on you to find your less-unhappy place.
Gratitude goes a long way. Going so far as to keep a gratitude journal might help. But I find it's hard to immediately go from hateful to grateful. For me, I've found some success focusing first on the tolerable bits of life (most all of it, really) and using that to distract from the parts I find sub-optimal. The next step I usually take is trying to get to a place of perspective. Tons of people out there probably have it worse than you. Think about them. Think about some problem bigger than yours, and think hard on how you might go about fixing it. Giving money, lending a hand in service--those are well and good, but they're also easy outs, and might end up hindering more than they help, provided they aren't done the right way. Challenge yourself to think in broad terms about what you can do to better the world, and if that proves too difficult, tighten the scope until it feels manageable. It shouldn't ever feel comfortable, because our world has a lot we could improve, and there's constant danger that you'll find yourself consumed by the pessimism that always accompanies impossible tasks. That's why it's important to focus on your part to play, and what you might do. Keep the scale small on that front, so you can isolate your gifts and talents--the best you have to offer.
Because, you see, that's what we're looking for in the first place. That's what we're ignoring in our own lives. Now, I'd like to emphasize this isn't a fix. Ostensibly, if you're reading this, you're human, and there's no fixing that. You'll still have moments of weakness. You'll still endure bouts of spiraling. And I'm not saying you have to pull a bait and switch exactly like this to trick your brain into seeing the good in your life. It's just one kind of workaround that I've had some success with.
But you owe it to yourself and the people who care about you to find some way to break the cycle. Because if you don't, as I'm becoming increasingly aware, no one will do it for you. You'll keep driving the spiral until you hit the bottom. And no one will want to be down there with you.
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