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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16 Comments
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Great tips my lovely. The brain is a difficult thing to bring under control sometimes isn’t it? I try to allow myself a certain amount of time to worry, fret about or dwell on something. For instance someone said something unpleasant about me at work recently. It upset me and I found myself constantly thinking about it. I decided enough! I gave myself permission to be huffy about it for that day only. After that allocated time, I had to be over it. xx
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That’s a brilliant tip – giving yourself a time limit on feelings. I’ve done that when I’ve been sad before. I give myself a certain amount of time to feel bad about something, then I have to get over it!
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Oh yes this is very relevant to me at the moment.
Sometimes things hurt and time is needed to feel all the feels.
Then I make a decision to make the best of the situation that I am in.-
It’s so important to feel the things and then make the decision to make the best of it!
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I find there’s an awful lot of things out there in the world that are going to happen or not happen whether I worry about them or not. So I really try to not to worry about those things and just put effort into the things I can actually influence. Also, wine helps. And a classic movie like Bring it On! That makes everything better.
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Exactly! I don’t have time to worry about all the things so it’s important to realise that things happen and we don’t have a huge amount of control over them.
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I absolutely agree with not chasing the drama – sometimes I write my opinion on some facebook post, reread it and think “yeah, good, but possibly cause myself a little anxiety… have vented, now delete rather than post!”. May not be the brave life I want for myself, but as a migraine sufferer with chronic insomnia, it’s wisdom rather than bravery that gets me through the day!
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I have to do this all the time! Sometimes someone says something shit on Facebook and I’m like ‘Do I need to wade into this?’ – The answer is always no!
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So wise for one so young…x
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I’ve been raised by pretty good stock. 🙂
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Oh I needed this today! Thank you! We’ve just sold our first house and the tenant has left it in a terrible state, and we’re in QLD and hometown is southern NSW! I made some phone calls and sorted out help and decided that the cost was less important than peace of mind! But on your suggestion I am planning on smashing out the Matrix Trilogy while I crochet some more of my second Sophie’s Universe tonight – hopefully I won’t be awake at 2am fretting!!
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That kind of stuff is always so stressful and you never achieve anything by stressing more about it!
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Good tips here, I’ve wasted much more than nanoseconds over the years fretting about idiots on the internet (thankfully not recently).
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I’ve been much recently – in fact I’m kind of a gun at the moment. I’m deleting things all over the joint. Love it.
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Great Ideas! I find if I am lying in bed having ‘conversations’ in my head I try to focus on pretty images…It is very difficult to do sometimes!
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The conversations thing is great – except I often tune out and my partner will be like ‘You weren’t listening to me were you?’ 🙂
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