Thankful Thursday 2

I once heard a story...
One evening, a Cherokee elder told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside people's heads. He said, "My son, the battle is between the two 'wolves' that live inside us all. One is Unhappiness. It is fear, worry, anger, jealousy, sorrow, self pity, resentment and inferiority. The other is Happiness. It is joy, love, hope, serenity, kindness, generosity, truth and compassion." The grandson thought about it for a minute nd then asked, "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied "The one you feed."

Last Thankful Thursday, Christie from over at Ie Love, commented on my post and said "the link between gratitude and well being is something that I find really interesting".

When I wrote the post, in my mind, I didn't make the connection between gratitude and well being. I was too focussed on trying absolutely anything to try and change my perspective on the world and make myself feel a bit better. But Christie's comment got me thinking...

Then, on Monday I stumbled across an except in a magazine at my local cafe that really tied what I was trying to do with Christie's comment about the connection between gratitude and well being!

Let it be said that my local cafe has magazines older than most doctor's waiting rooms! And the excerpt that I found was in an issue of the Australian Women's Weekly from September 2008 (hence I've not been able to locate a copy of the article in online archives), but it still gave me food for thought!

The excerpt came from a book called Happy For No Reason by a lady named Marci Shimoff, and it was based around the theory that each of us has a "happiness set point", or a fixed point of happiness, that is formed both by genetics and by learning, but which we can influence and raise through a series of steps outlined in the book. In simpler terms the premise was that we can think of happiness as a skill and train our minds to be happy, by changing the way we behave and think. Like by noticing the happy things in our  lives, by tending to our relationships, and by finding passion and purpose.

All of this sounded very similar to something I wrote about here not long after I started this blog in December.

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is based on identifying and changing relationships to modes of mind that characterise and contribute to mood disorders, such as depression and unhappiness, through a combination of cognitive therapy, meditative techniques, and the cultivation of mindfulness.

Mindfulness has become a "hot topic" in modern psychology since the 1970's. The term "mindfulness" is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: "The state or quality of being mindful; attention; regard".
In the context of Buddhism, mindfulness relates to having constant presence of mind and focus in each activity performed.

Very simply put, both this book and MBCT assert that a greater level of happiness can be attained by paying closer attention to what is happening in our lives, and in ourselves in response to things happening in our lives. By having the presence of mind to identify negtive thoughts occuring, or identify things that may trigger negative thoughts, we are then giving ourselves the ability to choose to try to change our responses or thoughts, thereby retraining ourselves to override negative bias and starve our negativity by choosing to feed our positivity instead (to come back to the wolf story).

I suppose, in light of all this, my Thankful Thursdays are less about showing my gratitude (not that I'm not grateful for having good things in my life), and more about starving my negativity, feeding my positivity, and retraining myself to have more positive inclinations.

I don't expect to become a saint and for my Happiness wolf to kill off my Unhappiness wolf, never to be seen again. But I do want to try damn hard to give my Happiness wolf a bloody good head start on things, for the sake of myself, my relationship, and my baby.

Thankful Thursday aims to remind myself, and others, that although shit happens, there are still good things in life, even if they're just little things, that we can't forget to focus on.

So, without further ado, my three things to be thankful for this Thursday are:

1. My pool - I am thankful for my pool for giving me some relief from the dreafully opressive heat and humidity.
2. My pets - I am thankful for my cats and dogs for loving me unconditionally, and for the entertaining and calming influence they have on me.
3. My house - I am thankful to have a roof over my head and somewhere for my child to call home. I may complain about it's history and a lack of furniture, but it is a lot more than many people have and I am a lucky human being to have it provided for me!

What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Thursday

I had a whole post prepared for today about how sick I was of some people in my life, and how I was preparing to start culling "negative" people from mine and my baby's life.
All in all, it in itself was a very "not happy Jan" post, and quite clearly reflected the crap week I've been having, and the fact that "the black dog" has started following me around again in the couple of days.

As a result I've decided that I need to change my behaviour and take some time out each day to reflect, and make up a list of things I am thankful for, rather than wallowing in the crap that can so quickly feast on your soul.

So, every Thursday I am going to post three things from my weekly list to share with you and remind me, and hopefully others, that while shit may still happen, there are still good things in the world!

Here are my three things for this Thankful Thursday (Please take a moment to appreciate the alliteration! LOL!):

1. I am thankful for my twice weekly stretch class to help me feel fitter and more centred.
2. I am thankful for music. Sometimes a carefully selected piece of music can be just as helpful as a therapy session!
3. I am thankful for The Man, who is my rock, my sounding board, and my best friend. He helps me keep all the pieces together.

What are you thankful for this Thursday?

Mountains and Molehills

Some days I feel like I’m totally losing my mind. I get tearful and stroppy and revolting, and I reach such a point of anxiety that I feel like I lose all perspective and can’t tell if my problems are mountains or molehills. I’ve had several entirely feral episodes over the past few months, that have left me feeling (amongst other things) isolated, angry, and generally dissatisfied with life.

On these days I find that the only solution is to completely drop my bundle, have a massive tantrum, and return to bed where, hopefully, I can fall asleep for a few hours. This technique works whether it’s 9am or 3pm. Regardless of the time of day, a tantrum and a nap seems to restore something that resembles equilibrium.

The other evening, someone that I considered a friend made a public dig at me at a social evening with other friends that angered and embarrassed me. The implication of the comments, in my view, was that I talked too much and as a result no one wanted to hang around with me and my presence at the gathering wasn’t desired.

In the end we left early as I rapidly progressed towards completely losing my shit. As we left, I swore that I never wanted to see that individual again and I had no desire to hang around with that group of people again either.

When we got home, The Man made the fatal mistake of suggesting that maybe all the baby hormones floating in my system were causing me to take the comments more personally than was intended. That was the final straw. I totally lost it and spent much of the next 24 hours in tears ruminating over what had been said and convincing myself that people didn’t like me, and then convincing myself that I was imagining problems, and then convincing myself that I was going insane… it became a vicious cycle.

In my desperation to find someone, or something to help me out of what was fast becoming a very deep and dark hole, I e-mailed a friend of mine in Sydney. She happens to be a psychologist. She is the wisest, most bright and shiny woman I know. She is the kind of friend who you may not see for months, or even years, yet when you catch up you still have the same connection and it’s as if no time has passed.

After reassuring me that I wasn’t as irrational as I had made myself feel, and disclosing that she had had similar feelings, not just during pregnancy but also through her motherhood journey, she then mentioned Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

My friend was introduced to MBCT through a seminar that she recently attended. As someone who has had her own emotional ups and downs over the years, and as a psychologist, she decided after the seminar to purchase some resources and undertake some MBCT for herself. She bought an audio book which came with some meditation cd’s and has taken to listening to her audio book in the car.

According to the MBCT website, MBCT is designed to assist people who suffer from repeating or chronic depression by combining the ideas of cognitive therapy with “meditative practices and attitudes based on the cultivation of mindfulness”. From what I can see it is part “getting in touch with your feelings” (so to speak), part behavior modification, and part anxiety and stress reduction.

In her e-mail, my friend went on to mention about the part of the audio book that she had listened to that she had listened to just that afternoon. What she had been listening to that afternoon was talking about the "doing" part of the brain - the bit that takes over and makes our mind race with problem solving ideas, and memories of the past to help to predict the future. While this may all seem rather clever, she said, it was actually a process that undermined us as, of course, no one is capable of predicting the future, and the process often caused us to dwell on negative memories of our own and others experiences.

I have to say that it sounds like the doing part of my brain has been in complete overdrive. Regardless of the reality of the problem, I do realise that trying oneself up in knots for hours on end, ruminating over how to change the past or control the future, is unfeasible and unreasonable, especially at a time when I should be focusing my energy on the little person growing inside me and how I can improve both theirs and my wellbeing.

As a result I have decided to give the MBCT a try for myself. As someone who has struggled with depression in the past, I am well aware of my risk for antenatal and postnatal depression, and I figure that giving this a shot certainly can’t hurt my, or my baby’s, wellbeing. I have downloaded a reputable e-audio book, and I will start listening to it this weekend. Hopefully it will help me find a bit more balance to my moods!

P.S. I have also enlisted the services of a local counsellor to help me check under the hood and make sure everything mental health wise gets back on track and running properly!

Has anyone else out there tried MBCT? Any tips or advice from others with similar experiences? I’d love to hear from you!