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.

What is "Energy Debt"?

In this series, I tell you about recent conversations with friends and acquaintances whose tales of the wave might ring true for you, too.

Jane Craig, played by Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, is one burnt-out producer lady.

My friend (let's call her Jane Craig) and I were talking on the phone, coordinating carpool for an event we planned to attend together.

"I know I really should go to this," Jane said. "I don't want to let [PARTYTHROWER] down. But I am so, so worried and anxious. I just don't know what to do with myself."

We talked about what had been going on in her life. As an accomplished producer in her 40s, Jane kept herself busy at work. She liked to take on one project while the other was still going. The Jane Craig motto of life: "I like the chaos." 

I asked Jane what she would do the with extra free time if she missed the event. "How would you feel right now if you said no right now?" I asked. 

"Amazing. I'd have to push myself to get this other work done. But if I did it, I'd feel incredible." She paused. "On the other hand, I tend to have a lot of energy in the morning. Perhaps I should just use that energy to get the work done and go to the event as well."

Something her tired voice struck me with a lightening bolt realization. This wasn't just about this Jane Craig and this one event. This was about me, burnout, and all of the Jane Craigs in the world. This was behavior I had seen us all indulging in for way too long.

Jane Craig plus team at the station.

"I hate to break it to you Jane, but you are in serious debt right now. And on top of that you're a spendthrift. You're in ENERGY debt. Every time you get the slightest bit of energy in your hands, you run to spend it. It's time to pay back some of your debts. You don't really have a choice about this. We're talking about debt here."

Jane decided to send her regrets to the event. I told her that the only way she could truly justify missing this event is if she started to take responsibility for her own energy maintenance. She couldn't keep taking on projects as if she didn't have anxiety. The energy debt was real, and demanded accountability.

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Follow-up text from "Jane" this afternoon.

Since then, Jane has been a bit more mindful of her energy debts. I got this text from her earlier today. She was probably sitting there debating about whether to throw someone a party or bake them a cake. Perhaps she was feeling anticipatory guilt. 

I'm glad this metaphor came into her mind and helped sway her in a more thrifty direction. She needs an era of severe energy thrift. Not forever.

Just for now.

Feeling good when the energy debts are paid.

What’s Up With the Unconscious Mind?

It’s always listening.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — C.G. Jung

A couple of days ago I got into an interesting conversation with a favorite coworker in our little office kitchenette.

(As a child of the 80s, I have a strange nostalgia for office coffee machine and water cooler chats).

We were discussing the subconscious mind and how weird it is. How and why does it know things we (consciously) don’t?

He described a talk he once gave to a big group. Since he’s never had trouble with public speaking, he arrived ready to go. But his body was sending signals that something was wrong. Sweats, hot flashes, a nauseated stomach. What was going on?

Best clips from the movie Airplane

His unconscious mind knew something he didn’t about his confidence that day.

We both agreed that it’s incredibly strange our unconscious thoughts are able to exert this kind of influence on our bodies. (Remember, the seed of this project was my realization that thinking was affecting my body in extreme ways.)

The More You Know

Learning the cause of my pain was internal changed my thinking about the world around me. It made me want to understand as much as I can about the mind’s potential and use it to my (and others’) advantage.

Two people on the Slack channel were discussing British therapist and motivational speaker named Marisa Peer. (I know that the words “motivational speaker” will cause an immediate negative reaction — conscious and unconscious — in some of you, and I’m sorry for that friends, haha.)

Peer describes some of the same basic tenants that this Mayo Clinic video, “A Very Happy Brain,” does:

It all boils down to one simple fact: Our brains believe what we tell them to believe. Unlock beliefs that are causing you pain (Peer gives a bunch of examples of these types of beliefs, from as simple as “Mondays suck” to as profound as “I am not enough,”) and teach your brain to think differently.

Knowledge in Action

Back to my coworker. He didn’t believe he was nervous. What could he have done to change his unconscious mind?

1. Investigate the source of the fear (it can be deep). You know when you find it cause it’s the idea that buzzes more than the others in that quasi-painful way.

2. Stay with the fear through meditation or simply conscious awareness.

3. Create a sentence to unearth it and redirect it in more positive way. The example Peer gives is, “I am enough.”

4. Then see if the sweats/stomach pain/headaches are still around the way they were before.

Let me know if it worked!

Love, Meredith

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This post first appeared in the Beautiful Voyager newsletter. Subscribe here.

A credo! A credo, I say!

Ships Lighting the Path for Each Other by Ricardo Paes

If you’re like me — an overthinker with physical symptoms like neck and shoulder pain, stomachaches, or headaches — you’ve most likely spent years and hundreds of dollars trying to feel better. Perhaps, like me, you’ve approached your doctor, acupuncturist, chiropractor, homeopath, or naturopath appointments with ever-dwindling hope: “This will be the time I start to feel better.”

I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that what I was looking for all along was not a single solution, but a pervasive feeling of control. If only I had known then that nothing from the outside could bestow a sense of control upon me.

"Nothing from the outside could bestow a sense of control upon me." Sound familiar?

In the middle of last year, I was forced to stop looking for my answer from external sources. I was forced to reckon with myself and figure out a new approach.

It started with the realization that my needs were not the same as anyone else’s. I had my own thumbprint of anxiety. As a result, I would need to build my own personal toolkit of tactics to figure out how to feel better.

I wanted a serious toolkit, of course, like this one.

“But you’ve tried to feel better before,” I reasoned with myself. “How can you know what tools should be in your toolkit now?”

That had to change too. To be able to evaluate a tactic, I changed how I approached them. Instead of thinking that the answer would be bestowed upon me from an outside source, I faced reality. The answer I was looking for really was inside of me (and no, I’m not from Kansas, though my husband is).

I needed to learn how to tune in to my physical response to the world and listen to the anxiety-driven cortisol and adrenaline rushes I had always run from. Though I’d spent years thinking about what’s wrong, this was an entirely new process.

Riding the wave.

I learned a new trick I now call riding the wave. The wave is the hormone rush you get when you experience anxiety. Riding it involves accepting that our minds and bodies have information to offer us if we can learn how to listen to them. For me, this was a crucial step. In the past, when a therapist asked “How do you feel?” I had no clue what the answer was. All I felt was pressure to perform. This is the reason I wasn’t diagnosed with anxiety until I was 39 years old and an experienced neurologist spotted the symptoms at a migraine appointment.

I learned that any destressing tactic — even something as simple as going for a walk to distract myself —wouldn’t work unless I was using my own inner compass. I needed to be able to receive basic feedback to know whether the relaxation method I tried was actually working. Since I never knew how to do that in the past, I was always stuck in my head. Closing the feedback loop is what allowed me to finally add tools that actually worked to my own unique toolkit.

So where does the credo come in? Here it is! It’s why I feel The Beautiful Voyager is different than anything else I’ve seen. Why I feel I need to keep creating it. Why I want other ships to join me and light the path:

Beautiful Voyagers help each other.

We believe that lighting the path begins by sharing toolkits, tactics, and tales of the wave.

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Take a Listen to a Discussion About This Post! You'll hear my voice first.

Feelings Come and Go

Sonia Evers of The Not Vanilla has written a great piece about a specific form of anxiety-targeted mindfulness meditation for Refinery29. The whole piece is really worth reading, but here are some of the key takeaways that make the piece stand out.

According to Harvard psychotherapist Ronald D. Siegel, PsyD, trying to get rid of anxiety is exactly where I, and many others suffering from it, go wrong. In his mindfulness meditation practice, Stepping into Fear, Dr. Siegel encourages his students to turn their attention toward, and even befriend, their anxiety, rather than resist it and try to make it go away...[It] begins like any other meditation, focusing on the breath and quieting the mind. But it quickly takes a turn when Dr. Siegel asks you, the listener, to think of something that makes them anxious. Once you have a clear idea of what that is, he asks you to increase your anxiety by thinking of a scenario that’s even worse. After that, a scenario even worse. This goes on for about 20 minutes, until he brings the focus back to the breath and the body. The theory behind it is that the more comfortable we get with the sensations that come with anxiety — panic, fear, and accelerated heartbeat — the more we will discover that the emotions associated with these sensations come and go, like everything else.  

This is definitely in keeping with Barry McDonagh's DARE approach, and it's something I ascribe to as well. Getting our bodies accustomed to the physical sensations of anxiety--the cortisol and adrenaline pumping through our systems--while allowing our minds to understand that the wave will pass is core to recovery.

Feel the surge. Use the surge.

I loved that Sonia said: 

Over the course of the 20-minute meditation, which brought forth everything from increased heart rate to full blown tears, I discovered that my mind actually started to wander away from the things that I’m constantly anxious or worried about. And unlike in other meditations, where a distracted mind is something to combat, this mental meandering was a breath of relief that not only informed me that anxiety passes, but that whatever I am afraid of or avoiding is only as big a deal as I make it. It’s here now, but it’s just as likely to be gone in a moment.

This is understanding the wave. Once you see that the wave will pass, the next time it hits, you are more likely to be able to move with it.

Sonia's final words are powerful, and so, so true:

Breathe into  it.  it'll make you feel better.

No Matter How Rigid, Everything Can Bend

I came across this post about Spanish sculptor José Manuel Castro López and was blown away by what I saw. López carves his sculptures from quartz and granite, incorporating wood and other natural textures as needed.

The feeling it created in me, of transformation in the face of the immoveable, of waves of movement within the rigid, seemed like an incredible metaphor for The Beautiful Voyager.

It brings a smile to my face that López describes himself as "more of a druid than a sculptor."

Sensitivity -> Superpower: Step One

Anxiety robs us of our intuition.

Whether a small decision like choosing what to wear, or a big one like a career pivot, anxiety drowns out our instincts. 

Why, thank you officer. Very soothing.

My theory: Anxiety is a hyper-sensitivity. If we can tune in to that sensitivity and use it as a strength, it becomes our super power. But in order to do it, we have to turn down the volume on our self-questioning, and turn it up on our self-understanding. 

Trying to figure out which is instinct and which is anxiety. Seems so "devil on a shoulder." Despite the paucity of two volume knob photos to illustrate the concept, I'm not assuming that you have an angelic instinct.

We each work on turning down the anxiety volume in our own individual ways (here are some places to start if you need them). But what about turning up the instinct dial?  

A place to start is with these two questions:

What motivates you? What comforts you?

Motivation, when tapped into, can be an incredible source of energy and power. It's your engine. Being disconnected from what motivates you is like being in a car with a dead battery.

A little over a year ago, a close friend told me that I am a creator. "You need to be creative," she said. "Without it, you get stuck." It was an incredible clue about my motivation. Recently my husband gave me another one: "You want to understand the world for the joy of discovery. You like to solve puzzles and understand things for their own intrinsic value, not for business. In this, you're more like an artist."  For years, I wouldn't create anything because I wasn't a designer (having worked with designers, I know that they are amazing). I wouldn't write because having worked with incredible writers, I didn't feel I could compare. I now realize, though, that I was unplugging my own battery. I'm motivated by surprise, discovery, and clarity.

When I feel confused, I try to come back to that realization and turn the self-awareness volume up.

What motivates you? 

Being comforted is a feeling that many of us with anxiety seek out. We want to stop bad feelings and replace them with good ones. For this reason, figuring out how what comforts you in a healthy way can be an important first step to getting back in touch with your own instincts.

I've always been comforted by the the feeling of being understood. It's the good friend I described knowing me better than I knew myself. It's my husband helping me get plugged back in. [It's little, dumb things: someone who gets that I prefer Bojack Horseman to Game of Thrones (sorry).]

But what comforts us can be also be problematic. If I feel misunderstood at the wrong moment (violent tv shows are pretty common, and most people like them) I can quickly slip back into generalizations, black-and-white thinking, and catastrophizing.

It seems as though what comforts us can help with our self-understanding, but it can accidentally hit the anxiety volume knob as well. 

Knowing what comforts you and giving it context can help you to stay healthy. "Though I desire to be understood, I know that it's not something I can experience all the time. I'll enjoy and appreciate it when it happens."

Superpower activate!