My Metaphor for Overthinking

NASA's 36-foot Bio-Dome on the dormant volcano of Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

How I Protect My Brain By Protecting the Environment

It started with the realization I can change the climate of my mind. That awareness has grown into a deeper, ongoing feeling of responsibility: I am the steward of my brain's environment. 

For the first 39 years of my life, I was terrible to my brain. I would engage in deep, intrusive pondering, telling myself that I was working hard to "figure things out." The garbage I threw onto the ground (like Mad Men characters post-picnic) came in the form of black-and-white thoughts. Carbon emissions? For me, those were generalizations and the escalated catastrophizing I specialized in.   

A combination of reading The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living (summarized in this video about what that kind of behavior does to your brain) and mindfulness training helped me realize that the path I was on was hurting myself, my own mind, and others. As of the middle of last year, I assumed a more direct role of responsibility vis-a-vis tending to my brain.

Invisible stewarding in Kauai.

I began to visualize the environment of my brain. Instead of fixating on individual thoughts, I thought about the aggregate. I tuned in to the climate of my mind. When the weather's rough, I learned that I had the choice to take action to relax and help return the environment to a calmer, more peaceful state.

But I learned something more important over time: it's not just about trying to get to peaceful weather. It was more important to teach myself to get into the groove of good weather. First, I had  to start feeling the sun when it came out. I had to get used to returning to that feeling. I did it by leaning into the moments when I felt good. It's was like teaching myself to return to good feelings in a more automatic way.

This is the uniform I imagine myself in as steward.

These ideas are all based in cognitive behavioral therapy. For me, though, ideas are one thing—internalized behavior is another. To truly make something happen, I needed simple sentences or visualizations to return to. 

"I am the steward of my brain's environment" was the metaphor I came up with. I imagined myself cleaning up the trash and creating the environment I want to live in. Doing this incremental work while understanding intuitively what a good environment feels like many times a day is what's making the difference.

The steward doesn't look for one massive change. The steward understands it's all about consistency, and that increasingly positive changes in the brain's environment add up over time.  

Warning: you can't steward anyone else's mind, but you may notice that as your climate improves, the effect is contagious.

Originally published March 12, 2016. Updated June 21, 2018.

Riding the Wave: The Single Biggest Thing I've Learned About Anxiety

In July, 2015, I found out I had anxiety. It was like being handed the keys to my brain. Before that, I felt different than others, but wasn't sure why.

In the past year and a half, I've done a lot of digging and connecting. I've talked to others with anxiety. I've researched and talked to doctors. I've read many books. 

The single-most important thing I've learned: anxiety is a physiological response involving hormones released in the body.

Those hormones hit the system in a surge and draw back in time. They can come in one big cresting wave, or many mini waves, but they hit the body the same way a wave hits the beach.

This information has affected me deeply. When the hormones hit, I now ask myself: Can the beach fight the wave?

I know the answer: No.

I've also learned the shaky feeling many people experience after a stress response or panic attack is a sign of the hormone wave receding. It's actually a good thing! We often fear the strange shaky feeling. We should be looking forward its arrival. If we understand what the shakiness means, we can enjoy that another wave is over and our strength remains from our place on the beach.

Accepting the hormone release—navigating the triggers that set it in motion—is how I think of riding The Beautiful Voyager.

I'm not the only one to describe the wave. Barry McDonagh describes it this way in DARE:

Anxiety is nothing more than nervous energy in your body. This energy rises and falls just like waves on the ocean. Think of it as if you're bobbing around in the ocean and every now and then a wave rises up in front of you. When you resist the wave, it tosses you around and scares you, but when you move with it, you ride up and over it and eventually lose your fear of waves...Where you once resisted each and every sensation because your anxious mind thought it was the right thing to do, now you're learning to sit in friendly curiosity, allowing it to be without any desire to stop or control it. So every time you feel a wave of nervous energy, you can bob up and down with it as it rises and falls. 

Here's an incredible example from Dani Shapiro. She's writing about writing. Listen to the similarities: 

During the time devote to your writing, think of the surges of energy coursing through your body as waves. They will come, they will crash over you, and then they will go. You'll still be sitting there. Nothing terrible will have happened. Try not to run from the wave. If, at one moment, you are sitting quietly at your desk and then--fugue state alert--you are suddenly on your knees planting tulips, or perusing your favorite online shopping site, and you don't know how you got there, then the wave has won. We don't want the wave to win. We want to learn to recognize it, accept its power, and even learn to ride it. We want to learn to withstand those wild surges, because everything we need to know, everything valuable, is contained within them.

Responding to the hormone wave with curiosity, openness, and even excitement for the shakes has been my biggest learning to date.

I work so hard on this project. Sometimes I ask myself, "Why are you doing this?"

My answer: "This is how I learned about the wave. It's not how everyone does, but it's how I did. It's worth it."

Originally published Feb 08, 2016. Updated November 25, 2017.

Anxiety Does Not Make You Better At Work

It’s time to dismantle one of anxiety’s biggest myths.

An argument I hear frequently from friends: “Anxiety helps me. It helps me get things done on time. It helps me get the house clean. It helps me be good at my job.”

I say to them what I’m saying to you now: fear of fear — excess cortisol and adrenaline surging through your body — does not help you to be better at your job or family life. The campaigns you’ve mounted to avoid hormonal physical punishment may lead you to believe that you are better and stronger as a result of your struggles. But the truth is that’s just YOUR STRENGTH shining out despite impediment. That’s not anxiety’s good work.

Why accepting this truth is important.

It’s the first step toward superpower activation. If you have anxiety or you’re a perfectionist, like I am, you already spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to “fix” things. But in order to find the change you seek, it’s your relationship with anxiety that needs to change.

I cannot stress enough how difficult it can be for those of us with generalized anxiety to believe this is true. We have justified and internalized our own thought patterns for so long that changing them can feel as awkward as practicing a foreign language aloud. But believing this core truth about anxiety — that it is not helping you out in any way — is a crucial first step.

It does help you in one way, though.

If anxiety isn’t helping me in the way I thought it was, can I learn anything from it? Here’s how I think of it: instead of fighting against the cortisol and adrenaline surges, I try listening to them and allowing them to come and go. These hormone surges can be an incredible insightful tool. Once I learned to tune in to them, boundless wisdom awaited me. “Don’t take that job!” “Don’t hang out with that person anymore!” The absence of the surge also held great information: “You are happy in this place.” “You can see how others are reacting based on their own fears.” “You can approach things differently.”

It’s time to break up.

To get to the place of tuning in, you have to give up your old co-dependent relationship with your buddy anxiety. If you’re keeping it in a tightly wedged fixed place where it’s an obstacle to overcome, you might be keeping yourself from claiming the insight you deserve (you’ve worked hard for it, after all).

Originally posted Feb 9, 2016. Updated August 16, 2017  

Gawky is a State of Mind

It might not be a bad one, either.

My early days of creating this site were truly awkward. I began with the worst names. The first was The GAD Owner’s Manual. Yes, the url was equally long and ridiculous. Ha!

I “graduated” to Blind Elephant. Haha! This was the type of imagery I used for Blind Elephant, the site for overthinkers.

Beautiful, but odd for a stress website?

My first days of writing were equally stilted. I remember sharing my early posts and wanting people to read them, yet being terrified they would.

“Look at this! Not too closely! Wait, yes, do look!”

It was all…gawky.

No such thing as a gawky elephant, but an elephant in the room is pretty awkward.

It reminds me of the message in a bottle bobbling off the coast of Oregon on our Beautiful Voyager Map. That message has these words of advice for future travelers:

“You gotta go through gawky to get to graceful.”

Gawky is an unavoidable part of the journey. Thinking you can skip over gawky is like thinking you can go from being a child to being an adult without living through perms and braces: it just isn't going to happen.

I can't pretend to have achieved graceful yet. I can, however, finally see it on the horizon.

Damn does it look appealing.

I can see why so many want people to skip gawky to get there.

And yet…Having lived gawky for a few years now, I’ll share what artists and comedians have known since time began:

If you can build the stamina, sharing the gawky is what transforms you.

“Fake it til you make it” never worked for me.

In part, this is because no one wants to do it. It takes strength and courage to get out there and reveal your true gawky self. But this is exactly why we need to do it.

I’m in the middle of Roxane Gay’s new book, Hunger, right now. It’s a pretty powerful testament to the power of revealing the awkward…the gawky…the unseemly…without apologies. The sheer strength of it is undeniable. This is the birthplace of true grace.

So bring on the gawky, everyone. Let’s see it, in all of its absurd, funny, awful, painful, true, beauty.

love, Meredith

How Thinking Can Be Like Moonwalking

Something my husband said sparked the insight. 

It happened in the middle of a difficult conversation. Not a fight. More of a How-do-I-make-you-understand-me talk. I was stuck, fixating on the details of how one thought led to another. Then suddenly, something he said unstuck me.

"Remember the story Forever Overhead by David Foster Wallace?" he asked. "Remember how the whole thing took place in just two minutes?"

(I did remember. It's a great story from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. You can hear DFW read it himself here.)

My husband continued,

A person can fill any amount of time with an unlimited amount of thoughts.

That's when the insight struck in a felt way. The difference between The Stuckness and The Glide.

The times I've been happiest, my thinking glides. I'm not overly-self conscious in those moment. I don't try to track every thought. I'm not living in the DFW story.

I know what the glide feels like.  

I realize now: everyone can get hung up in stuckness. It comes and goes.

Getting stuck in your thoughts does not make you unusual.  

The key is to focus on the glide. Remember what it feels like. Look for it again, and reinforce it when it happens. 

Build on the glide, and you'll be good. 

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This was originally published on Oct 16, 2016 in the Bevoya newsletter. Subscribe here. I'm publishing it on the blog in response to a post I just read on Medium that reminded me about this insight. How quickly we forget!

All About Mindfulness

By Alice Arthur, age 7

Mindfulness is fun. It is paying attention to the minute. Be aware of your feelings because if you are mad or sad you could act like hitting or yelling at he or she but if you take it

pictured: the hitting person who isn’t aware of their feelings

slow you will feel better. Just tell he or she or say please stop. A good way to do it is sitting down in a quiet spot and listen to what is around you.

pictured: tears of telling someone to please stop, someone who is laughing

Riddle. Mind full or mindful?

But mindfulness is not just sitting. You could be mindful walking, eating, breathing, reading, or even playing! All you have to do to be mindful is pay attention to the minute.

pictured: girl and dog. girl is being mindful, aware of the moment she is in.

Instructions. Pick from 1.

Find chocolate chips. Put them 1 at a time in your mouth. Let them melt in your mouth before you swallow.

Instructions.

Put glitter in a jar. Shake it up. Pretend your mind is the glitter. When it is crazy your mind is crazy.

Collect them all!

Books by Alice

All About Pets. All About Spatula Fights. All About Birds. All About Dogs and Cats. All About Ninjas. How to Make Friends.

About the Author

Alice Arthur lives with her mom and dad in San Francisco, California. She loves to rock climb, dress up in costumes, and make funny faces.

Watch Out! Your Brain is Listening.

When you say things like,

"This sucks."
"I don't think I can do this."
"If only life were different in this way."
"I hate this."
"Everyone always does this."
"I don't want to do this project/work/school."
"I'm not in the mood."
"I can't."

Your brain is taking notes. 

That's why it's important to keep an ear on how you talk to yourself.

Keep the cortisol out of your system. Reform positive neural pathways. Watch your words.

We are only now beginning to understand the impact of language in forming cognition (and emotion). Here's a line from an insightful piece on combatting stereotypes:

"It is the form of the sentence, not exactly what it says, that matters to young children."

 When my daughter says, "I don't want to go to school today. I don't like school." or "I can't read this book. I can't do it," I always say to her, "Watch out! Your brain is listening!"

"This isn't so bad.."
"I think I can do this."
"There's no such thing as 'if only.' There's only what is."
"I'm not comfortable with this. Might be a good idea to meditate before I do it."
"Sometimes people do this."
"Let's see what happens today in this project/school/work."
"I'll try."
"I can."

How I’m Learning to Avoid the Second Arrow

“You’re scared.”

Have you ever heard the Buddhist parable of the second arrow? We refer to it a lot in our house. The lesson is: If you’re hit by an arrow (or something bad happens), don’t multiply the pain with negative rumination and blame (and hit yourself with a second arrow).

My Second Arrows Have Themes

This past year has seen a sharp increase in the number of first arrows for those of us who keep an eye on national U.S. politics.

(cough cough, understatement)

As first arrows hit, I found myself secretly stockpiling second arrows. If something bothered me, but I couldn’t quite name it, I started poking myself with these arrows, aloud or internally.

(whispering) “I don’t agree with this UX concept but I can’t put my finger on why. It smacks of something crucial and intuitive, something men have been suppressing in women for a long, long time.”

This absurdly misplaced second arrow behavior got to the point where, if I was tired or emotional, you could rest assured the word “patriarchy” would appear like clockwork.

The same thing, over and over and over and over.

What the Arrows Teach

Our tendency is to get lost in a cycle of reactivity. — Tara Brach

I don’t want to be in a groundhog day loop, so I use my second arrow awareness to teach me to avoid it. The first arrow already hurts when it hits. Adding more headaches, stomachaches, and neck pain into the mix isn’t helping anyone.

My goal is to accept the first arrow, avoid the second, and to take action to help others (a selfish act, causing helping others helps me) as I can.

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3 Questions to Help You Find Your Secret Second Arrow Stock

1. Do you find yourself repeating similar global complaints when you get frustrated?
2. Have you been told by others that you “always” talk about certain topics that seem to haunt you?
3. Do you ever feel like Bill Murray and Saint Sebastian at the same time?

Love, Meredith