The Kindness Shift: How to Stop Fighting Your Own Brain
Living with anxiety and depression is becoming more common as the traumas and “unprecedented” life experiences pile up. With the ongoing stigma of mental health challenges, it’s often my own mind that makes my challenges into struggles.
Typical shitty internal messages include “I just want to be ‘normal’” and “why haven’t I been fixed yet?”
When I’m not struggling with my depression or anxiety, I put it in my Denial Box and chose to believe that I am ‘fixed’ and the symptoms are never coming back. Sweet Baby Yoda that causes even more upset when the cycle comes back around because then I’m also adding the disappointment of unmet expectations to the simmering cauldron of ick.
So what can you and I do to avoid this frustrating cycle of allowing our own brains to beat us up?
We can start by changing how we talk to ourselves—and that starts with acceptance, not warfare.
Accept Your Feelings
In spite of messages that we receive or internalize, anxiety, depression, triggered trauma etc. are morally neutral. They are things we experience, but aren’t good or bad until we assign our own judgement to them (or accept the judgement of others). The more we fight the things we’re experiencing and the feelings they cause - asking questions of ourselves like “why do I feel this way,” or “why does this keep happening to me” or telling ourselves “I can’t do this any more” or “I hate feeling this way” - the more we’re feeding the very thing we’re trying to overcome. Instead we need to practice acceptance of our feelings. They exist in this moment, we’re experiencing them in this moment, and that’s okay.
You are not Your Diagnosis
Accepting our feelings doesn’t mean being defined by them. We can accept that we feel depression, anger, anxiety, panic, etc and still know that we are not defined by those feelings. The feelings come and go independently from our existence. We may have an anxiety disorder and experience anxiety, but that isn’t all we feel even if in this moment it’s all there is. We’re complex, incredible individuals and our mental health challenges are only a part of what makes up the whole.
Practice Mindfulness & Meditation (or, you know, breathe)
Mindfulness practices give us an action we can take to bring acceptance and non-identification. We practice integrating our mental and physical sensations and meeting them with acceptance allowing ourselves to avoid making the situation worse with the self-inflicted anxiety about anxiety. We practice embracing that just because something feels bad, doesn’t mean it dangerous to us. It builds resilience and tolerance that can be translated to other experiences - like those times when you want to do something that you know is good for you. But doing something new feels scary or bad. Guess what, you know you can handle it because you’ve practiced accepting that you don’t have to treat all things that feel bad like they’re a threat or dangerous.
Be Patient with Yourself
I referenced above how much I’ve struggled with wanting to be “fixed.” I want to see the payoff of all the internal work, therapy, medication management, etc. and I want it to look like what I think it should look like. Sadly, what I think it should look like doesn’t exist in the same realm as reality. We live in a microwave society and mental health is frequently a Crock-pot situation. A suggestion I received years ago to help with one of my children has proven to be one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received from a mental health professional. Make a note of the less than stellar days so you can start to see the increase in between them. Or, to reframe it as a positive, recognize what’s going right in your life. Put a check-mark on your calendar every day you have a neutral to good day. Jot it down when something positive happens, even if it was 30 seconds out of an otherwise crappy day.
These mindset shifts—accepting your feelings, separating yourself from your diagnosis, practicing mindfulness, and being patient with progress—are the foundation. They won’t make depression or anxiety disappear, but they can stop you from making it worse by fighting yourself.
Next, we’ll look at the unglamorous basics: the executive function stuff that keeps you afloat when everything feels hard. Because sometimes the best thing you can do for your brain is feed it, sleep, and get some damn sunlight.
This is part 1 of a 3-part series on getting through depression and anxiety cycles.
Coming next: the survival basics that actually matter.
