Tag: overwhelmed

Inspiration, mental health

Busy Isn’t Cute

Alexandria Fields

How are you?

  • Things have been so busy, you?

How’s life been?

  • You know how it is, busy!

How’s the family?

  • Oh you know, busy, busy!

Do these brief conversation snippets sound familiar?

We live in a culture and time that seems to place value on productivity and outcomes more than values. Many industries even place productivity requirement and pay for performance mandates on their employees for “motivation”. We brag to one another about how much we have accomplished rather than sharing about our down time. When people ask how we are, the socially acceptable answer generally has something to do with how busy we are (as shown above). We over-enroll our children in extra curricular activities starting in preschool and we overbook ourselves at the same time. Gone are free weekends, gone are lazy Sundays, gone are snow days (hello virtual learning) and summer vacations.

I regularly see people wearing shirts that say things like:

“Hot mess express”, “I run on coffee, chaos, & curse words”, “But first, coffee”, “This is my circus, these are my monkeys”, “I can’t, busy doing mom things”, “my brain has too many tabs open”, “you must be exhausted by watching me do everything”

…and it seems that (while the shirts are good for a laugh) they tend to glamorize being overly busy and living a stressed out life. I am willing to be the bearer of bad news for you: it’s not cute. It’s not cute to overwhelm yourself, it’s not attractive to wear your physical and mental health into the ground, overbooking yourself and/or your family isn’t something to brag about, I don’t envy your lifestyle of being late and surviving on Chick-Fil-A and Starbucks.

Mindfulness is a key component to living a life that is more enjoyable and serenity; adopting a “busy” identity is not compatible with mindfulness. Being busy is the epitome of living on “auto-pilot” and living in a way that leaves you avoiding your emotions. When you are consistently running around and panicking about the logistics of your schedule, you don’t have any time for introspection or self-exploration. The result of this will likely be a very anxious baseline and perfectionistic tendencies. When you DO have free time, it will likely be uncomfortable and you will fill it with other task-oriented behaviors – rigid vacation itinerary, spring cleaning, taking on DIY home improvement project, etc. — and if you can’t do task-oriented behaviors, you will likely have an emotional breakdown of sorts because you don’t know how to handle down time.

Does this sound familiar? Do you want to live differently?

Task oriented behaviors live on one extreme —-Emotionally fueled behaviors are the other extreme. Noticing that they are two ends of a spectrum can help you see that there is a lot of grey zone in the middle! Just because you aren’t tackling things off of your to-do list doesn’t mean that you are an impulsive mess! Just because you feel overwhelmed, doesn’t mean you aren’t getting things done in your world. The grey zone is the goal. Finding ways to honor your emotional experience while also honoring your goals each week. Overly identifying with either extreme is dangerous and risky.

My challenge to you is to take a quite moment to think about how you have been living. How would you answer the first three questions in this post? What changes could you make to slow down and enjoy moments each day? Don’t start with a whole day yet, we don’t want any emotional breakdowns….you can work up to longer time frames. Some ideas might be:

  • listen to calming music
  • take a bath
  • allow yourself to sit and read
  • give yourself a manicure
  • get a massage
  • go for a walk
  • sit outside in the morning and enjoy a mug of tea
  • sit outside in the evening and enjoy a mug of tea
  • stretch

DBT, Inspiration, mental health

You ALWAYS have a choice

Your Mental Restoration

Are you living crisis to crisis? Are there particular people, places, times, areas, thoughts that continually trip you up and cause problems? DBT® reminds us first that we ALWAYS have a choice.  You always have four basic choices in every situation.

  1. Solve the problem – this is the “no brainer” that we do if we can. It is a choice and merits remembering.
  2. Feel better about the problem – you do have a choice in what interpretation you use which will change how you feel about the problem. The risk here is if you keep trying to convince yourself that “it’s not that bad” when in reality it (or he, or she, or they) ARE that bad and you need to problem solve in a different way.  This is a GREAT option if you are a pessimist and tend to see the worst in everything.
  3. Tolerate the problem – when we tolerate a problem we aren’t changing much in terms of how we see or relate to it (which actually changes our emotional attachment to the problem), rather we are accepting it as a thorn in our side and using distraction whenever it starts to bother us again. This is helpful short term but not always helpful long term.
  4. Stay miserable/make it worse – I LOVE that we have this choice. The angsty teenager in me needs to be reminded that I can always say the thing or do the thing or throw the thing or refuse to show up, etc.  I need to mentally walk down that path sometimes in order to get unstuck from my “it’s not fair” temper tantrum that I sometimes throw.  An example of this could be when you find yourself resenting an obligation to show up somewhere (ie: work).  Remind yourself that you do not have to go.  You could stay home. You might get fired and then you wouldn’t have income, but you really do have that choice.  Walking down that path can remind us that we don’t want to loose our housing, we do want to have money for food and fun…therefore we will now use strategy #2 and choose to go, but with a different mindset.  You might adopt the mental mantra of “I’m choosing to go to work so that I can choose to buy the shoes I want” …which is different and less problematic than “I have to go to work, I hate my job, this sucks”.
Uncategorized

Do you love yourself?

Your Mental Restoration

It seems that negative self talk comes around much more frequently than self praise.  Our negative thoughts can seem loud and chaotic…as if they are overcrowding our brains and drowning out any tiny positive thoughts that try to bloom.    In fact, almost all of the clients I work with (starting at a very young age) describe the habit of self deprecation.  Much like the large trees in a rain forest, the thoughts we give the most attention to will rise up and choke out other thoughts. So what can we do about it?

1. Just because you think it, doesn’t make it true. Period. Let your thoughts come and go.  Notice thoughts without attaching yourself to them.  I prefer the imagery of a train: you have the ability to watch a train roll past you without getting on it right (even if it is annoying and making you late)? Do this with your thoughts…one train car may say “I’m stupid”, another may say “I’m worthless”, another may say “I wonder what’s on TV tonight”.  These thoughts may annoy you and get in the way of productivity; however you can practice the art of letting the thoughts enter and exit your brain.  Let the thoughts roll on down the track without boarding the train and trying to prove the thoughts true.  

2. Thoughts and feelings are two different things. You may THINK that you are worthless; however you are likely FEELING sad.  You may THINK that no one likes you; you are likely FEELING anger or sadness.  You may THINK you are a terrible person; you are likely FEELING shame or guilt.  Recognize thoughts for what they are (and practice #1) and recognize feelings for what they are.  Feelings will rise and fall, they will morph and change.  Realizing that they aren’t forever can help you get unstuck.  

3. Just as you practice any skill, practicing positive self talk is a skill that can be taught, honed, and improved.  I hand out this worksheet to my clients regularly…and regularly receive blank or partially filled out pages in return.  (http://jessicamullen.com/2011/02/19/the-daily-self-love-worksheet/) Do it completely and do it often.  Post what you have written on the fridge or bathroom mirror.  Remind yourself regularly of the things that you like about yourself and your life. Practice thinking content thoughts about your life and you may be surprise by the effect it has on your outlook.  

4. Remember that the Golden Rule works both ways…just as you should treat others as you would want to be treated, you can also treat YOURSELF as you would want others to treat you.  Lets call that the “Platinum Rule”.  

Are you willing to practice these suggestions? Are you ready to let go of the suffering? Are you prepared to be patient with yourself?  I urge you to TRY it…what have you got to loose?