No Peep Show quote this week, but hopefully you'll see how this one ties in as we go.
I'm writing this one on the train to London having popped a few pills to try and take the edge of the symptoms of a tension headache that somehow seems to have gotten worse overnight. The symptoms for me are what I imagine it feels like having a kitchen knife stuck in your temple, with the added discomfort of that sensation coming right down your neck too. Happy Wednesday!
Week three of StressControl is focused on the mind - specifically controlling your thoughts. They'd mentioned last week that this session was one that many people find helpful, and I think that was generally the case for me, though it left me with a few unanswered questions I probably need to focus on. Something I neglected to mention last week was the brief discussion of General Anxiety Disorder - a condition that causes people to feel anxious about a wide range of situations and issues rather than one specific thing. I bring this up now as it may also be relevant later...
Theory
As ever, the afternoon was split into theory and practice, but with a greater focus on practice this week. We talked about about worry and rumination and that worry is a preoccupation with the future ("what if...?") and rumination is a preoccupation with the past ("if only..."). I think the former is more like me generally speaking, but I know I've over-analysed every word I've said to people in certain situations in the past so definitely a lot for me this week.
My main takeaway from the theory was that stress can affect how we think, which in turn can cause more stress or anxiety creating a fairly viscious circle. The flip side of this is that if you can identify some of those thoughts and control them, you can control or limit how stress impacts you. I think that's a fairly common theme (and where this week's image comes into play) - it's not about eliminating stress or anxiety, but being able to reduce, manage and mitiage some the impacts it has. Rather than dealing in the absolutes of being totally stressed or completely stress free, it's learning to find the comfortable zone in the middle of a fairly vast spectrum.
The other part of the theory that I really identified with was this idea of a grasshopper as an illustration of how thoughts can escalate quickly (i.e. grasshoppers jump quickly from place to place, and we can do that in our own minds too). An example is to consider someone who doesn't like public speaking. Being in that situation gives them some of the physical symptoms (see session two), but also means that this impacts their thoughts. Catching someone yawning while they're presenting could mean a thought pattern along the lines of:
- that person's bored
- everyone's bored
- I'm boring
- I'm no good at this
- I'm useless
- that person's bored
- everyone's bored
- I'm boring
- I'm no good at this
- I'm useless
Of course there could be a dozen reasons why someone is yawning, such as being tired or too warm, but the mental impact of the stress is to jump to that final conclusion of being useless really quickly. Side note - I was yawning while they talked through this bit because the room was really warm and I felt very self conscious about it.
I definitely related to that a lot - it felt very real for some situations I find (or put myself) in. I think what I still find amazing is that this genuinely isn't how everyone approaches things. I was talking to my wife about how this kind of stuff manifests itself when I travel for work (train is delayed, I'll miss my connection, I won't get a seat, I'll be late, I'll look disorganised and unprofessional, people will think I don't care) and she shrugged and said "I just think I'll get the next train and it'll be fine".
Practice
So the practice was broken down into a three different aspects, but I'll focus on the first two here. The first was basically a mini mantra - Stand back, remove the blinkers, wait a minute. The premise is really to not immediately react and have your thoughts escalate, tell yourself to focus on the potential wider factors and take a moment before reacting. So in the above example, just beause someone is yawning doesn't mean you're useless, peeling back the blinkers means you give yourself time to see the wider possibilities like somone being tired or being in a warm room. This is 'laying the foundation' for some of the other tools.
Again, it's not about absolutes and removing the anxiety completely, but more focused on the idea of giving the conscious/rational voice the chance to dominate the stress voice in your head.
The other main tool we went through is called the Big 5 Challenges and is a set of questions or challenges to put to ourselves when we start to encounter stressful thoughts to try and give the conscious voice a chance to dominate the stress voice.
The Big 5 Challenges (with a short example) are:
- What's the worst thing...? If this thing I'm worrying about does happen - what's the actual worst outcome I could encounter, and is this the same as I'm actually worrying about right now?
- What are the chances...? I might be worrying about something happening, but how likely is it? Have I been in this situation before and my worry has been for nothing
- What is this worth....? Am I spending time worrying about something that is fairly trivial? Is life too short to be giving up time to this situation?
- Weighing the evidence (The Court Case) I might be worrying about something, but am I missing some evidence? I'm worried I look silly but everyone's just getting on with things around me so maybe I'm wrong
- The five year rule If I look back on this moment in five years (or five months or five weeks) will it really matter? Am I putting too much emphasis on this now when it doesn't matter?
It's not about using all of these for every situation, but about understanding that one or more of them will be appropriate for a particular situation. This is definitely helpful for me, and looking at them, I know I've done a couple of these more recently, so it's good to know I'm on the right track.
What's clear is that all of this takes time and it's definitely a longer journey to carry on after the course finishes. I think that'll be the challenge, because with diabetes it's always a physical thing to understand and treat, whereas with stress, worry and anxiety it's sometimes harder to pin down.
So let's try and tie this together with a rough kind of bow on top. I talked about unanswered questions at the start, alongside the familiar sharp pain of a tension headache, and I think this is where the difficulty lies. I understand that the headache is a physical symptom of something and so I can use some of the breathing/relaxation techniques (alongside codeine and paracetamol), but I'm not really sure what's driving that physical symptom - I can't pinpoint a specific thought or feeling that's making me feel particularly anxious, yet here we are. I'm definitely not diagnosing myself with General Anxiety Disorder, but I think the hard work is going to be in trying to isolate some of these things that might be in my subconscious.
Next week is about controlling our actions. It's been a long post this week, so give yourself a pat on the back if you made it this far - we should all be doing that for ourselves more often.
Diabetes UK are running a hugely important campaign about improving the provision of and access to a variety of emotional support services. People with diabetes are twice as likely to suffer from burnout or difficulties with their own mental health compared to those without the condition. Some estimates suggest that one in ten people with diabetes are clinically depressed. You can read more about the vital It's Missing campaign by following the link. My story is just my story. If you need to talk to someone about how diabetes is making you feel, you can ring the Diabetes UK Helpline on 0345 123 2399 or you can ring Samaritans 24 hours a day on 116 123
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