Letting Your Past Experiences Rest in Peace

I was watching How I Met Your Mother tonight and one of the lines really hit me. One character, Ted, has a crush on another character, Robin, from the beginning of the show. Later in the series, Ted is forced to repress his feelings for her, and when they eventually resurface, someone suggests that the feelings had been 'buried in a shallow grave'.

Bare with me, the post ahead is rather abstract!

The line brought up images of our past feelings, thoughts and events living underground, buried in whichever way we choose to bury them. Whether it's in a shallow way through temporary means of burial, or deep underground, dispersed and digested to reduce their emotional blow.

Obviously the way we deal with our past experiences has a big effect on us. Traumas might be far from laid to rest. They could be buried so shallowly that their tentacles reach up above ground and affect our every decision.

Being deeply buried doesn't mean refusing to let it enter our lives. It might seem that saying things like 'no I don't care about that anymore. It means nothing to me' moves the experience so far away that it can't 'get you'. But really, in a traditional rom-com sense, 'I don't care', can mean the exact opposite. It's like trying to put a plaster on something that needs stitches.

So I've put together my thoughts on how a trauma we want to bury can be best put to rest:

• Feel the feelings.
  
  Sad? Try sitting with the sadness for an evening. Journal about it. Talk about it. Think about it. Cry about it. Drinking it away or eating food or sleeping a lot will only delay the feelings until later, when they inevitably resurface in perhaps in a more indirect way.
  
• Grieve.
  
  Bear with yourself. Grief is a long process which can take a long time. And your emotional needs don't just include grieving when someone passes away. Leaving your job is still a loss, even if you hated it! Changes require us to process them, and allowing yourself to do just that will stop the feelings being delayed or coming out sideways. See my post about grief here.
  
  It might take a long time, and going through the stages can feel never-ending, but when you get to the end and you are able to gently and acceptingly reflect on your experiences it is really rewarding.
  
• Be kind to yourself.
  
  There is no 'correct' way to deal with traumas, despite the things I've written here. It's different for everyone. On a wider scale, in some areas of the world grieving involves dancing and wailing. The only thing I think is 'right' is to be kind to yourself. Going on a night out and ending up crying to your friend at 1am eating chicken nuggets might not feel ideal, but try to be accepting of your behaviours. 

If you can keep yourself safe, be accepting of your feelings and sit with them, I believe that is the route to a deep burial of your difficult past experiences. The kind where they do not creep up on you and come out sideways. The peaceful kind.

Image from here

Myths About Diabetes External Article

http://thetab.com/uk/kent/2016/10/08/its-reversible-and-all-the-other-myths-surrounding-diabetes-9230

I wanted to share with my readers an article I wrote about Diabetes and the myths surrounding it so here's the link :) Feel great about my writing being published :)

How Our Inner Critics are Faulty: A Logical Exercise

For those of you who don't know, I am studying for a philosophy degree at the moment. This year I'm taking a logic module, which involves picking arguments apart. It's quite complicated sometimes, but useful, and on Friday I had a little break-through in analysing my own thoughts.

So in my logic seminar on Friday we were looking at the structure of arguments. I'll give an easy example:

• If I work at Tesco I park in the Tesco car park sometimes.
• I park in the Tesco car park sometimes.
• Therefore, I work at Tesco.

Just looking at this argument, it's clear that there's something wrong with it. There could be loads of reasons why I park in the Tesco car park sometimes - it might just be to do my shopping - it doesn't have to mean that I work there! 

But it's not always so obvious. This particular argument example can be separated into algebraic parts. Bear with me if you hate maths!

So I'm going to take the argument apart now and assign each part a letter:

• A - I work at tesco
• B - I park in the Tesco car park sometimes

So the argument above can be restructured like this (look back at the original argument to work it out):

• If I work at Tesco I park in the Tesco car park sometimes (if A, then B).
• I park in the Tesco car park sometimes (B). 
• Therefore, I work at Tesco (therefore A). 

The academic part will shortly be over and I will relate this to thinking! But basically, the letters can be replaced with other sentences, for example:

• If it is raining then it is cloudy (if A then B)
• It is cloudy (B)
• Therefore it is raining (therefore A)

This argument (the raining/cloudy argument) is said to have the same logical form as the Tesco argument, because the letters are the same. This lettering order is said to be invalid because you can replace the letters with any sentence and the argument still won't 'work'. If you understand this, you'll understand the next bit!

So in last week's seminar, a nice girl sat next to me and we chatted quite a lot. This week I walked in and sat down. She came in after me and took a seat at the front away from me. At that moment I had a negative automatic thought (types of thoughts I'll look at in another blog post):

• If she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week she wouldn't sit next to me this week. 
• She didn't sit next to me this week.
• Therefore, she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week.

You might notice, this argument has the same lettering structure as both the Tesco and the clouds argument:

• If she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week she wouldn't sit next to me this week. (if A then B)
• She didn't sit next to me this week. (B)
• Therefore, she didn't enjoy sitting next to me last week. (A)

Of course the argument came out from my inner critic in a rather convoluted way, like most arguments, but the basic structure is invalid. Even though thoughts from our inner critic are usually quite believable, when looked at closely like in CBT, they are often completely invalid. 

There could've been a different reason she chose not to sit next to me. And as it turned out, there was - she had to be at the front to do her presentation this week! 

The take away message from what I'm saying is that being aware of your negative thoughts means you can unpick them, analyse them and usually discover that they're complete rubbish! 

Image from here

The Myth of Laziness

Have you ever heard someone judgementally label someone as 'lazy'? It's a label often applied to young people, especially 'lazy students' who are only in uni a few hours a week. Personally I believe that these sweeping judgements are ill-informed, assuming and most of the time, completely false!

With the help of this article in Psychology Today, I'm going to unravel the term 'lazy' and look at exactly why we feel the need to procrastinate, and how we can help ourselves more. So what is laziness, according to the dictionary? A search on Google showed laziness as: 

"The quality of being unwilling to work or use energy"

Ok, so yes lots of young people and older people ARE unwilling to work or use energy sometimes, or a lot of the time. So according to the definition, yes, they are lazy. But when we're looking at why someone with Parkinson's Disease can't do up fiddly buttons, we focus on the cause, or root. Not the inability. So this is what I'm interested in with laziness. Why are we "unwilling"?

When we need to do something, all we need to start is some motivation. However, I believe that when people are lazy or procrastinate, this motivation is not there, or it's interfered with. So what can interfere with this motivation?

• Lacking interest in whatever we're trying to do.
  It's not our fault if we're not interested in the project. But if we're not interested, we're not exactly going to be excited about its completion, and when we're not excited we're not motivated. 
• Lack of self confidence.
  Sometimes we grow up to have a limited view of what we can do. It might be because we've always been told that we can't do things (by friends, family or even the media), and that message 'I wouldn't be able to do that' is a negative automatic thought circling in our mind. 
• Fear of failing.
  It's really common to be afraid of starting something in case it doesn't go to plan and you end up failing. Even if you complete the project successfully, that self doubt in your mind can still come back to haunt you in later projects - it is not quietened by success. 
• Fear of rejection.
  You might also be worried that the person you're completing the project for will not be pleased with the outcome of your hard work. This is usually due to a need for appraisal from others - that person's opinion will likely hold a very high value for you - higher than your own.

These are only four reasons why someone might be lacking motivation - there are plenty more! So with all these, I think it's pretty clear that it's less simple than a 'she's lazy' label. So here I redefine laziness:

A state of being frozen and unable to complete essential tasks due to mental blocks often undetectable to the outside world.

So how can laziness be tackled?

1. Break it down.
   .
   I put in this second image because it is a perfect illustration of the value of little steps. Starting something you need to do is a lot easier when you focus on little things. Breaking down an essay into researching, drafting, final drafting, e.t.c. makes it seem more manageable than thinking about what you'll have as the end product.
   .
2. Catch negative automatic thoughts.
   .
   Often these thoughts go unnoticed. 'I'll never do it', 'I'm such an idiot', 'why did I do that?' etc, slip through our full consciousness and go partially undetected. But they do damage and change our behaviour, putting more and more limitations on what we do and don't do.
   .
   Get a journal and write down every time you have a negative thought. Write down the situation in one column, your thought in another and your feelings in another. The more aware you are the more you can refute them and think about the truth. You are not stupid, for example.
   .
3. Believe in yourself.
   .
   Print out a list of affirmations. Cut them up and stick them on your mirror, fold them up and put them in a box, put them wherever you find best to store them, then read one aloud every day. Think about it throughout the door. This link has a lot of great affirmations, and you can write your own - I did a post about this a while ago (link here). 

See how you get on and let me know any thoughts/feedback :)

Image 1 from here

Image 2 from here