We need to stop listening to people who doubt us.

Self-Doubt-Lena-Yang

It’s hard enough dealing with the voices of self-doubt inside our heads; we don’t need to be around people who reinforce those thoughts.

Just because someone else hasn’t dealt with their own self-doubt doesn’t mean they get to drag us down with them.

If they’re stuck in a defeatist mentality, we need to try to avoid conversations that will lead to negative rants about their potential or ours.

In some cases, we’ll need to simply avoid these people as much as we can, just as we do the drama vampires. Every conversation turns into a negative monologue or tears us down. We can’t give them the opportunity.

Instead, we need to hang out with people who build us up, who are unabashedly self-confident, and who set an example of growth that inspires us to keep moving forward. Spending more time with people who believe in themselves is contagious. We need to give ourselves a vote of confidence.  We can’t wait for someone else to pick up the pieces and tell us that we’re enough, and “we can do this.” We have a responsibility to ourselves, as well as to others.

We need to take responsibility and tell ourselves that we’ve learned and mastered things before, and there’s no reason we can’t continue learning and mastering new things.

Think of what we’ve already accomplished, and keep telling ourselves, “There’s positive energy on the other side of fear (and I choose positive energy).”

We can do more and become more than we can probably imagine right now; we’re not limited to “the way things have always been” or to “what we’ve always known.”

We need to remind ourselves, we were made to live fully and intentionally until the moment we die. We owe that to ourselves — and to the people, we care about.  This I learned in The Art of Healing at the Center for Spirituality & Healing at the University of MN.

Remaining Calm

Buddha

Remaining calm is a constant endeavor of mine. I think it’s because of my mental health diagnosis for the most part in that I’ve experienced how easy it is to have a psychotic episode. For that reason, I’ve learned my triggers and the quickest way to chaos for me is nervous energy.

So, I took classes at the UMN’s Center for Spirituality and Healing in just about every course offering they had. Whether it was Optimal Healing Environments to Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction to Spirituality and Resilience or The Art of Healing. The common theme throughout was living in the moment and experiential journeys focused on calm centeredness.

So my workdays are filled with yoga stretches, artistic diversions, meditations, thumbing through positive quotes on Instagram, and bringing it all back to the moment. I can’t fix yesterdays, can’t control tomorrows, and so I focus on today, specifically this moment. And everything about it is geared toward serenity. I need it to stay sane. I need it to remain positive. I need it to move forward. Breathe.

Mental Wellbeing Thoughts

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1. It’s okay to go to therapy.
2. It’s okay to ask for help.
3. It’s okay to cry.
4. It’s okay if you need time away from people.
5. It’s okay to take some time to reflect.
6. The voice inside your head saying you aren’t good enough is wrong.
7. It’s okay to set boundaries for your mental health.
8. It’s okay if some days you are just simply surviving.
9. You deserve to be happy and more.
10. You’re loved more than you know.
11. You’re not a broken person.
12. You’re worthy of recovery.
13. You’re making people proud by continuing to fight.
14. It’s okay to take medication.
15. Relapses do not erase the healing you’ve done to this point.
16. You’re not defined by your illness.
17. You’ll make mistakes and that is okay.
18. It isn’t your job to please everyone.
19. It isn’t selfish to put yourself first.
20. You can do anything you put your mind to.
21. Your illness doesn’t make you unlovable.
22. Remember to celebrate your small victories.
23. It’s okay to feel lost, it won’t last forever.
24. It’s okay to feel sad over old memories, being misunderstood, if you’re going through a rough time, or just feeling sad.
25. Growth takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight.
26. Your feelings are valid.
26. It’s okay to not have everything figured out yet.
27. It’s okay to ask for advice.
28. It’s okay if you feel unmotivated.
29. It’s okay if you found today, this week, this month or this year difficult.
30. You don’t have to justify if you have changed your mind.
31. It’s okay to run into setbacks, it won’t last forever.
32. You can get through this.
33. It’s okay if you can’t figure it out yet, you will do eventually.
34. It’s okay to forgive yourself if you’ve been too hard on yourself.
35. You deserve to be here on this earth.
36. You are not a failure.
37. Recovery isn’t linear, you can start again tomorrow.
38. It’s okay if you feel like you can’t get out of bed.
39. You’re more important than your anxiety, your depression, your trauma, your mistakes, and your illnesses.
40. It’s okay to miss who you used to be.
41. You’re brave, and you’ll get through this.
42. It’s okay to pretend everything is okay.
43. It’s okay if all you did today was brush your teeth.
44. It’s okay to forgive yourself for having dark days.
45. You’re not alone in your struggle.
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46. It’s okay to enjoy the good days.
47. It is okay to forgive yourself if you think negatively.
48. You’re more than your anxious thoughts, your past trauma, your mistakes, your flaws, and your mental illness.
49. Your illness may be invisible but it doesn’t invalidate it.
50. You didn’t come this far to only come this far.
Difficult days are challenging and recovering from these is tough but there’s always tomorrow to start again. We can do this.

Convincing Myself That a Truly Headache Inducing Client isn’t Worth It

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We often push our limits even though we realize it may not be for the better. I think some clients are reacting to the dysfunction that is in all our lives during this time of the pandemic and rushing workloads to accomplish all we/they can before a possible worse scenario hits in the latter part of this year.

I’ve had clients that demand nearly all of my attention on a project of theirs that is so small in comparison to other massive works that aren’t so insistent on occupying all my focus regardless of the detail necessary in making it a success. Those larger clients don’t hover over me. I realize that everyone’s project is important to them but maniacal moments don’t help either of us. Condescension won’t get them anywhere either.

Whether the client is paying us a lot of money or is giving us a tremendous workload or if someone is paying too little with unrealistic demands we are going to end up burned out and possibly even missing other deadlines or getting frustrated down the road. Simply put, these clients are not worth it. If you’ve ever heard of the Pareto principle which states that 80% of our business will come from 20% of our clients. We just need to focus on developing that core 20% who always give us a good experience; thereby maintaining positive mental health.

Outsider in My Own Culture

whereveryougothereyouareWherever I go in public, it seems like I’m an outsider. First of all, I’m part Native American; therefore, I’ve never been considered completely “white”. Secondly, due to my lighter appearance, I’ve never been thought of as American Indian. Then there is where I live–Eden Prairie; it is a special place where I also don’t feel as if I belong. Neighboring suburbs poke fun at Eden Prairie for being too affluent, arrogant and ignorant. And, I don’t know if it is due to my mental illness; but I find myself out of place wherever I go in public, especially so in my own community which is why I take so many classes in adjacent towns like Chanhassen, Bloomington, or Minneapolis.

It makes me think of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Wherever You Go, There You Are. I’m comfortable in my own skin, just not when I’m around other people where I have to communicate my intentions or opinions. I’m at peace on my own, and very mindful, perhaps too mindful. I’m not looking for a quick fix, as I don’t believe such exist. I’m the type of person who can get too lost in a good book or basking in the moment. Looking inwards can become surreal. So how can I feel like an insider as opposed to an outsider without losing touch with reality? I guess I have to turn back to another book that I frequent, Richard Carlson’s Shortcut through Therapy, which really isn’t a quick fix as the title implies.  His simple yet profound ten steps keep me from those radical “thought tornadoes” (thinking traps) as Kathy Emerson-Marshall of the National Resiliency Resource Center refers to them. My favorites of Richard Carlson’s steps are: “know your own mood, letting go of negative mind-states, count your blessings, and now is the time to live”. Doing all of his ten things, especially counting my blessings such as the connectedness of my immediate family and support structure is what gets me from one day to the next.

Social Isolation

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Avoiding others is something that I have to constantly work at because of things like side effects and memories of bad experiences such as hearing voices in the phone and not being able to discern what was real and what was not. It became difficult to have a conversation when so many voices were going off as well as distractions from visions. My thoughts would also become jumbled during conversations due to added anxiety. That is why I need to work my hardest at staying connected to others and put aside the fear of meeting strangers in a new energy healing class, qigong seminar or self-compassion/psychological wellbeing lecture that I’m interested in…and just go with the flow.

Resilience throughout Recovery: A Memoir of My Journey through Mental Illness by Angela Grey

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Distraction can be a good thing up until the point of denial. Regarding my delusional disorder, I figured that if I wrote it off as something else (social anxiety, PTSD, or chronic depression) then I’d be more normal. Plus, my denial protected my immediate family (custody of children); but at what cost. My partition delusion and both auditory and visual hallucinations weren’t simply the result of past abuse or cultural idiosyncrasies: misconceptions by my immediate family which delayed the diagnosis for years. However, I appreciate that time I had with some of my hallucinations for they comforted me in ways that I will try to relay. In the end, it was cognition, memory, and confusion problems which led to psychosis that took me down and brought me to the emergency room, where we sat riverside trying to figure out where it all began and what was or wasn’t a cause.