Validating your thoughts during the lows
Hello my polar bears!!
It’s been a while since I posted. This time I wanted to talk to you all about the thoughts that come to your mind during the lows.
Usually when we are anxious or depressed, our mind is literally hijacked and the thoughts and feelings we experience are not us.
We all have faced these thoughts and the constant mind chatter that goes on. We go down the spiral of “What ifs” and “I Don’t’s “. These times are tough and we need a fool proof strategy to get out of this.
Here’s what I do when I find myself in those anxious or worrying spirals caused by depression:
Try to control your physiology by getting it into a state of calm and peace:
I know it’s a tough thing to do. But hey!, we got to give it a try. Try to do a breathing exercise.
Step 1. Take a long breath in!
Step 2. Hold the breath and take another sharp breath in.
Step 3. Release through your mouth
Do this breathing exercise for about 10 rounds. Indicating your body that you are fine.
The next step is one by one noting down the thoughts that come up.
Understanding your thoughts and feelings are important. Write them down and see what are all the things that is actually causing you this distress. Anything and everything that comes up just blindly write them down.
Now with a rational mind, think of your friend or loved one coming to you with these thoughts and what would you tell them.
Validate the thoughts, see which thoughts are phantom and see what are real. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is there any chance these thoughts would become true.
2. Are these thoughts actually real.
3. Is there something that I can do to address these thought or feelings. Asking yourself this question gives you one of the answers for a key cause of anxiety- Not doing something you think you must do.
4. Make a list of actions that you can take.
5. Give it a time line by when you will do it and stick with it.
The next step is a tough one - commit to seeing this process done over and over again every time you feel overwhelmed!! This discipline is needed in order to escape the *** you are in.
The main issue is the anxiety and depression, though causing you to go through ***, is a familiar feeling. So your mind would prefer that over anything new, even if you are trying to get out of the *** you have created for yourself. So you need the will to get better to be strong.
Let me know how it goes and please comment so that people can take a leaf from your experience and try to better their approach.
Always keep fighting my Polar warriors!
Loads of love, strength and honor!
Your Bi-Polar guide!
I experience visual hallucinations. I see a lumberjack as tall as the ceiling, and dwarf like people crouching on the kitchen countertops, and floating heads, usually of the same woman. I had antipsychotics but they were taken away, replaces with a mood stabilizer. Whatever you're feeling or seeing, yeah, it's there. Its real to you, but as long as you can distinguish it being real to others, then you're fine.
Bit of tough love here, but know you're acknowledged and cared about.
Hi @bubbleSouth1515,
I’m sorry to hear that, I’m glad you are able to differentiate between hallucinations and reality. There is a grounding exercise that you can do whenever these hallucinations become intense. Close your eyes and focus only on one thing. Maybe it’s a photo frame, someone you love, something you love to do. Just focus on that. Feel how real it was when you felt all those feelings. How it made you feel. And how comforting it was. Now think of an unpleasant experience from the past which made you feel sick and imagine the details of that experience. So these two experiences are stark differences between pleasant/normal and unpleasant feelings.
When you open your eyes, see that whatever the hallucinations make you feel will lie in between the imagined experiences during the exercise. So you need to tell yourself that if the pleasant and unpleasant things that happened in the past can make me feel in someway, these hallucinations are also possible to invoke some feelings. I need to just know the fact that these are not real, the feelings may be real, just like during the exercise. But the overall point is that it’s not happening right now. And you can chose to ignore it and focus on something that is happening right now.
Imaginary Friends help me overcome every memory of my enemies