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My Brain: There\u2019s something wrong with you. You probably have cancer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Me: I have a headache. It\u2019s a migraine. I\u2019ve been getting them for years. I\u2019ll just took a med and I\u2019ll take it easy<\/em> and be fine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n My Brain: Ya, but what causes it. No one else in your family gets migraines. Not like you do. It\u2019s probably a brain tumour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Me: It\u2019s a hormonal migraine. I get them every single month around this time. It\u2019s annoying and yea, I wish I didn\u2019t deal with them but with meds, it\u2019s manageable.<\/em> Relax!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You have no idea if it\u2019s a tumour or not. It\u2019s not like you can see inside your head or like you have a diagnostic tool you can easily access. You could have one growing and have no idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not a tumour<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You got dizzy when you stood up from bed this morning and your hand was going tingly and numb. You even felt nauseous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have always felt dizzy when I stand up too fast, that\u2019s nothing new. Thank you, POTS<\/a>. My hand was numb because I was sleeping on it. And I only felt like I was going to puke, when I was brushing my teeth. Stupid gag reflex from being sick during my whole pregnancies. There is nothing new to be worried about.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that you are downplaying all of this means that when you finally take things seriously, it\u2019s going to be too late. It\u2019s probably already too late. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Me: I\u2019m fine. You really need to stop this. It\u2019s not helping. There\u2019s nothing wrong and you know it. This is your brain lying to you. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Also Me: Ya, but what if that\u2019s right? If I discount my worries then how will I know if there is a problem. I\u2019ll just tell myself to ignore my intuition and end up not being able to be treated before it\u2019s too late.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My Brain: If it\u2019s a brain tumour it\u2019s too late anyway. Not like you\u2019re beating that. It\u2019s probably skin cancer that has metastasized into your brain. You\u2019re totally screwed. You have way too many freckles and moles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me: Are you kidding? How can I possibly be having this conversation with myself? I\u2019m crazy. I\u2019m absolutely crazy. I\u2019m bullying myself and I can\u2019t possibly \u201cout-think\u201d myself. This is ridiculous.<\/em> How can I make this stop?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This type of conversation with myself could and would happen for 18+ hours a day. While I\u2019m making breakfast or dinner, taking kids to school, folding laundry, watching TV, driving to an appt\u2026..it just loops and loops and loops. When it\u2019s really bad, I can\u2019t seem to stop the conversation or thoughts. It keeps me awake at night thinking through worst case scenarios. It wakes me up, if I do get to sleep; and it\u2019s really difficult to find something that distracts me from the rumination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, I don\u2019t actually hear voices and it\u2019s all me; but I have felt like I\u2019m warring against myself for as long as I can remember. It\u2019s traumatic. Imagine feeling like you are in a battle or war for years and years and years. Imagine the mental gymnastics when you contemplate that it\u2019s yourself that you are fighting against. How do you protect yourself from yourself? Is it even possible to do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The ruminating could be about a conversation that I had with someone and parts of me are trying to convince me that I messed up and the other person thinks I\u2019m awful. It could be about any health issue imaginable. It could be that one of my kids is sick. (That particular one is hard because one of my kids did get life threateningly sick and so I know that it\u2019s a real possibility and not just an imaginary thought.<\/em>) It could be that a neighbour is annoyed with us for some weird reason like my kid was too loud. Most of the things I worry about are either health or socially related. Once in a blue moon, I might have a bizarre thought, like the wheels of my car might all come off at once while I\u2019m driving; but that\u2019s ludicrous enough that I can laugh it off. The ones that are hardest to deal with are the ones with a tinge of truth or possibly reality to them. Those are particularly difficult to shake. I can\u2019t just \u201clogic\u201d myself to not worry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s exhausting. It\u2019s like the alarm system in my brain is set to a hair trigger release and it fires at the slightest issue. Once it gets going, it\u2019s so difficult to get it turned off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m fortunate enough to currently be in a good space. I have the right meds on board. I\u2019m fairly balanced and stable. I\u2019m not currently in a state of rumination but, it also seems to cycle. Winters and our rainy season are particularly hard on my mental health but summers have been tough, too. I\u2019ve had a number of summers where I seriously contemplated checking myself into a hospital because I could not get my mind to settle and it was so overwhelming that I could hardly cope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing that summers have been tough and knowing that summer is coming, I\u2019m preparing as best I can. I\u2019m doing as many \u201cright things\u201d as I can. Not in a frantic or panicked way, I\u2019m just trying to make good choices. Eating better, getting enough sleep, exercise, journaling, therapy, medication, getting outside, practicing gratitude and staying present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I wouldn\u2019t say that any one thing is my magic elixir that makes everything all better; but each thing layers on top of an other and together they are more effective than any one thing on their own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Part 3 tomorrow\u2026don\u2019t hesitate to ask if you have any questions! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where were we? Oh yes, in hell. Sounds dramatic, doesn\u2019t it? Are you ready for a story? It\u2019s a scary story. Ok, it\u2019s not horrifying but it\u2019s my reality and it\u2019s exhausting and when I get overwhelmed by anxiety, it\u2019s really, really hard to deal with. My Brain: There\u2019s something wrong with you. You probably … Continue reading “Why the Focus on Gratitude? (Part 2)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[57,33,5,16,63],"tags":[203,200,87,204,183,182,86,88,202,201,150],"class_list":["post-9139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety","category-deep-thoughts","category-life","category-me","category-mental-health","tag-anxiety","tag-beauty","tag-choose-joy","tag-gratitude","tag-happiness","tag-mental-health","tag-practise-gratitude","tag-rewire-your-brain","tag-rumination","tag-see-the-good","tag-thankfulness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9139"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9142,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9139\/revisions\/9142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/img_4746-1.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1\")