few years ago on twitter, a random person retweeted an article of mine saying I was ‘full of shit’ because I said that exercise is good for my mental health. This person was a complete weirdo and replied to every one of my considered and re-searched replies with badly constructed abuse. I felt like crap for almost a full day over this. My mind just kept running back to these awful tweets and I had that horrible constricted feeling in my chest like I’d just been called to the principal’s office. I wasted a whole afternoon fretting about this incident and when I woke up the following day with fresh eyes I couldn’t believe I’d wasted more than a nano second thinking about it. I promised myself that if I found my brain all cluttered up with horrible things, I’d do everything I could to clear it and move on before I spent the whole afternoon emotionally exhausted on the couch because some random unhappy person wanted to yell at me on my least favourite social media platform. Here are a few things I do to get rid of my head demons when my thoughts are weighing me down.
Focus on the future
Think back to when you were in year 12 and you got a terrible mark for an essay you worked really hard on and you were devastated for days. It’s probably the first time you’ve thought about it since then right? I often look back to things that happened years ago – fights with friends, less than amazing university results, failed job interviews – that seemed like the biggest deal in the world and now I don’t even think about them. If you’ve just been fired or you’ve ended a relationship with someone and your head is full of all that stuff, just think about how you’ll feel about it in a few years time. It probably won’t even be on your radar, so stop letting it destroy you now when you won’t even care about it tomorrow.
Ask yourself if worrying is helping you
Hint: the answer is always no. Worrying is literally betting against yourself. There’s no better way to set yourself up for losing the plot than by telling yourself you’re going to lose the plot. I struggle a lot with this – you’d think worrying was my favourite thing in the world, I do it so damn often. Whenever I’m wasting time worrying about something I always tell myself how useless it is. It usually helps, at least a little. Worrying won’t help your kid have a better day at school today, it won’t help your house sell for its asking price and it certainly won’t help you get that job you just applied for. So don’t do it… or try your very best not to.
Crowd it out
Your brain can only fit so much in it at a time and if you’re struggling to get bad thoughts out of your head, you could try crowding them out. Find an activity that uses up as much of your brain as possible like exercising, playing a difficult game or solving a puzzle. If you fill your brain with other activity there will be less room for mental clutter. I find watching action or thriller movies sometimes helps. Anything that occupies that part of your brain that keeps replaying the awful thing that happened today.
Don’t fill your brain in the first place
I worked with a guy a few years ago that I would describe as a low level internet troll. His favourite thing to do was comment on big Facebook pages when they shared controversial articles. He’d then spend all day fighting with people on the internet. As in the whole day to the point where he wouldn’t get his work done. If I can see that a situation is going to end badly, I remove myself from it. If I get a comment on an old post on Smaggle that starts with ‘The author of this article should be shot…’ I delete the comment immediately and I don’t bother reading the rest of it. I often unsubscribe from replies to posts I’ve written on Facebook because I don’t need to hear that I’m a dumb bitch from a male rights supporter when I make a comment about violence against women in Australia. Who needs that? I do believe we are all capable of chasing drama and sometimes awful things happen to us that we could have avoided. If you see a situation escalating, tap out of there. No one needs to chase drama.
Make a decision
If you’re waiting for news and your brain is full of all the anxiety that comes from feeling totally out of control, make a decision for each scenario. If you put in an offer on a house and you’re twisting yourself in knots waiting to see if you got it just calmly figure out what you’re going to do if you get it and what you’re going to do if you don’t get it. Uncertainty is torture so make as many decisions as you can. Hint: minimise small decisions as much as possible. Fretting over whether or not you should have beef or chicken for lunch isn’t a good use of your brain power when you’re going through a stressful time.
How do you cope with yucky brain feelings? Are you awesome at it? Or do you need a bit of guidance to get yourself through it?
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