Can't calm down

[Anonymous]

Everyone tells me to just calm down. But the minute I push the negative thoughts out of my head, more of the same rush in to take it’s place. It’s a vicious circle, leading me to vent my frustration in unhealthy manners. How do you stop the circle? How do you lock the crud out? I am so tired of feeling anxious, hurt and miserable.

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[kc5jck]

One day when I was perhaps fifteen years old, I was somewhat upset and worried about something. I don’t remember what. Probably something to do with school or relationships, the usual for that age.

I realized that in a year, it would be totally forgotten and irrelevant, just as the things which may have had me upset in the past had been. I then decided that most things were not worth obsessing and worrying over. “This too, shall pass.”

I am not the general manager of the world, nor do I feel like I need to be. I do the best I can and get on with life. Worry is counter productive and impedes working toward a resolution of the problem. It’s not that I never worry. Sometimes things happen or words are said that I cannot let pass immediately. But for the most part, I just try not to get caught up in it. Perhaps it’s a benefit of my ADD.

It’s unfortunate that my wife is not more like I am in that respect. One time our daughter said something like, “I know that opposites attract but you guys are pushing the limit.”

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[Anonymous]

The more you try to push thoughts or emotions away, the harder they push back, eventually, in my experience (meltdown last spring over unresolved grief). Gameguy, are you seeing a psychotherapist at all? Ours gave us practices (including a wide range of meditation techniques) that he calls “tools”, at least one of them will work to interrupt the BELIEF in our thoughts. Other practices help us sit with the difficult thoughts or emotions without trying to repress them or dump them. I’ve never done formal therapy so I can’t attest to how that works, ours is a blend of therapy and meditation training, and although it’s hard work it has had a noticeable effect on my ability to control the rapid progress from simmer to boil. I actually came home the other night and the pattern that came up never exploded, I knew it was there but I was able to work with it and tell my husband what was going on in a way that didn’t cause either of us to explode.

You can’t completely get rid of the thoughts (which ride on the emotions, which are harder to control at their more subtle level as they arise), but you don’t have to believe them. And with practice and appropriate techniques, you can learn to ride them like a wave (they have a beginning, a middle, and an end). Sometimes the wave can be like a tsunami, other times, a gentle lapping wave on the beach. Practicing to work with these when you’re not in a difficult situation helps you to be able to use the tools when you are.

My teacher’s teacher apparently has homicidal thoughts every day, but he doesn’t act on them. Imagine that!

I’m getting better at it. These days are tsunami-style for me, but I’m managing to stay afloat.

It’s a good sign in practice that you are becoming aware of your thoughts since that’s the first step in learning how to work with them.

I’m learning that it’s ok and a good idea to ask for help when you need it.

As an example of not believing your thoughts and learning how to disengage from them, maybe check out Byron Katie’s book about “The Work”. Our teacher gave us an exercise from it that was helpful, you basically ask certain questions about the situation and it helps you to see it from a different perspective. Although it says it’s a spiritual practice, it’s not religious. Spiritual practices these days really just mean working on yourself mentally and emotionally. I don’t practice in this way, but one group member said it was extremely helpful for her. Here’s a link to her website http://thework.com/thework.php

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[billd]

kc that is so funny…… what your daughter said.

gameguy – don’t take this wrong, it’s meant to be a helpful suggestion, please find someone who will sit and talk this out.

This may be a case where a family doctor WILL help. If you are in school, see the school counselor. If you are low or no income, there’s often help for basic counseling.

I know what you are talking about. I really do. I’ve been there. Lucky for me, it’s not constant, but it’s enough that some days are a total waste.

Dunno if it will help, but after 54 (almost 55) years, I’ve found finally that it will all pass. We’ll all survive.

All 3 of my wives (not all at once mine, you one at a time) have said I was the most negative person they ever knew. In fact number 3 told me that this AM. I don’t know if that’s the ADD, or what’s happened to me because of the ADD – but please do not let it happen to you!

I feel positive about you because you actually recognized it and came here asking! Wow, what a huge step. It takes guts and the real desire for self-improvement.

I wish you the best and really hope someone here much smarter than I has a MUCH better answer or tips than I do – what I said seems pretty lame. Maybe someone here can blow my suggestions out of the water with something far better.

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[Anonymous]

Opps….damn it, pushed the wrong button DOH…….sorry, my bad!!!

Toofat

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[billd]

having an ADD moment?

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[memzak]

Before I found out that I have ADD I heard that one way to stop the negative loop where a thought goes round and round and builds on itself was to do something silly; things like flap your arms or make a silly noise or both. The point of this exercise was to do something so silly and/or outrageous as to make yourself laugh. Laughing breaks a negative loop. Once you break the loop you can look at the negative thought and decide if it is true or not. Not true can be dismissed, true plan a course of action to take care of it. It doesn’t always work the first time you try it but I have used this technique myself and had much success with it before I found out why I got into the loops in the first place. I now can break most negative loops without actually making a noise although occasionally I still have to do something silly.

I have a tendency to beat myself up for stupid things I had done in the past. Using this technique has helped me realize that the past is in the past, realize what I learned from the mistake and put the memory in the past. Once I learned about my ADD this became even easier because I found out why I did the “stupid” thing in the first place and could forgive myself for it and then watch for similar situations to prevent it from happening again.

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[Anonymous]

Finding the right therapist is a challenge. Insurance problems kept me from seeing one until last week and I didn’t like the way that I felt worse after the session than before. I’m seeing a new one tomorrow. I hope this one gives me a better vibe. I feel like I’ve been on the phone with EAP (Employee Assistance Program) just about every other day as I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this. Usually they are helpful, but sometimes they are not. The operator always seems to think I need to talk to a suicide prevention counselor and when I explain that I’m not THERE yet, they seem to be less interested in helping me.

I think I was better before this. I could take pleasure in things. Now all I want to do is avoid all feeling so I can function. Why am I such a mess now?

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[sdwa]

Well, I don’t know. For me, talk therapy tended to magnify rather than alleviate my problems…because what I put my attention on grows larger. I’d often leave feeling terrible because of the feelings brought up by the session, and it would take hours for me to return to Earth and normal functioning.

I struggle with intense moods and not being able to shift out of them. If I get upset, it can ruin a day, a week – however long it takes for me to get into a different frame of mind. I used to take long walks to burn off some of the tension. Sometimes it helps to go to an art gallery and feed my mind with images that get me thinking, or to a park where I can look at trees, flowers, water, the sky, etc and get away from urban energies. It can also help to watch a movie, preferably a comedy. I am extremely visual, so looking at pretty things helps, doing visualization exercises, carrying a picture of something that comforts me and serves as an emotional anchor. Sometimes I also pray, and I think prayer can work even if you don’t believe in God – the point is to access a sense of what is timeless or eternal, “the numinous,” or that quiet inner core we all have when we feel peaceful and clear, and listen to that voice. My problems are too big for me, so I appeal to a power greater than myself, the life force, the universe, the Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes it helps to draw pictures.

One-on-one therapy didn’t help me that much – I learned some things (one of which is unfortunately that a lot of therapists are bad at their jobs), but have found it more helpful, more “normalizing” and balancing, to participate in support groups with others who have similar experiences and challenges, and I like seeing the same group of people for a period of weeks, it kind of sets up a rhythm and continuity for me, which is nice because I tend not to be very socially active in my daily life.

It’s good if you can find someone to work with who knows about ADD/ADHD and has studied it, perhaps specializes in working with us. With my HMO insurance program, I didn’t feel like the counselors they employed were exactly Top Drawer, whether due to lack of training or to general burn-out or simply having been folks who should have gone into another line of work. And I couldn’t pay a therapist $300 an hour to go outside of that system. For me, learning more about ADHD helped me appreciate what it is exactly that I am dealing with, so I recommend reading about it, if you are a reader, and if not, a former coach of mine, Jeff Copper of DIG Coaching, has a weekly radio program on BlogTalk Radio, I think called Attention Talk Radio. You can probably Google him.

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[billd]

memzak that’s very good.

The one doc I saw said to keep a journal, and to do it at night before bed. She said writing things down was sort of like taking action. If there were mistakes in the day that bothered me, then to write them down, and create a list or action plan for the next day.

gameguy -why are you such a mess now? Are you really? You sound really on top of it to me. Are you being too hard on yourself?

We tend to be our own worst critics. I see a person who is actually level-headed, knows the problem, is seeking and asking for assistance, and is being quite logical and calm about it.

I’ve BEEN there. After my first marriage fell apart – I was quite a basket case. I kept the phone numbers of the counselors in my pocket at all times. Our first breakup made me literally physically ill, I took it so hard. Yet here I am. Happy, doing well, successful, employed, married, good kids out in the world (one of them somewhere………) and here with a lot of friends.

I guess as I”ve gotten older, I realize each step, good or bad, was necessary to get me to where I am today. Even the painful ones I’m thankful for. (at least now I am – didn’t seem so at that time!)

Because I actually see a glimmer of positive attitude in there, and an indicator of a strong desire to improve and move on – I predict success. I won’t lie and say it will be painless, I don’t know. It might be, but it will improve.

Ya know what helps me? A really action-packed movie that demands my full attention of all senses……… you can’t possibly think through such a thing. I like to imagine myself in one of those places.

I love Star Trek for this – man, how I’d LOVE to move through our multiverse at such speeds and see all the wonders. Takes my mind off almost everything.

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[Anonymous]

memzak, I like your arm flapping technique! I will try something like that next time.

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[Author]

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