All done except for the plackets, buttons and buttonholes, and weaving the ends!
When I’m riding the tractor, my mind wanders from topic to topic. I try to be mindful and present and actually…you know…mow. With all the feelings and smells and sounds and techniques that come with that. Sometime’s I’m successful at that. Other times…not so much. Yesterday was one of those days. I did manage to keep in the moment when I was mowing the little tiny rises along the road and out by the circular drive because the grass was still a little damp and the tires on this tractor can get a little slippery. But as soon as I had that done, I was off somewhere else.
You and I have talked a lot here about anxiety and depression and grief and PTSD. I’ve been doing a lot better with those since I had the second parathyroid surgery and my calcium has come back down into the normal range. I’ve used so many things over my lifetime to try to calm my poor brain…lots of prayer, therapy, medication, EMDR, meditation, exercise, diet, better sleep hygiene. Overall, it’s much better. But, from time to time, it still rears its ugly head and it is so disheartening. I know it’s not something I’m liable to be rid of completely, but I am always looking for something that will help.
Because of the nature of my writing, anytime I use a hashtag on my blog on Facebook, I start seeing sponsored ads for things. Usually I just scroll by and pay them no mind. But, yesterday’s gave me pause and I paid attention. My particular flavor of anxiety is usually anticipatory…usually surrounding an event that’s coming up and my mind takes me in every possible direction trying to plan it all out so I am not surprised by anything. I hop from one unlikely scenario to another till my palms are sweaty and my neck is tight. My tummy gets tied up in knots and my breathing picks up. It’s crazy…absolutely crazy.
The human mind is an amazing computer that prepares us for anything. The second you feel threatened, it sends out a great big dose of cortisol and adrenalin to get you ready to either stay and fight or run away as fast as your little legs can carry you. But here’s something I didn’t know…and I learned it yesterday. When we have that particular variety of anxiety, we have trained out brains to be on guard at all times…to scout out danger and let the brain and body know right away…whether there is something actually happening in real time or if it’s just something you thought up in your little monkey brain. It sucks.
But, here’s the good news. Just like you trained your brain to look for danger, you can also train it to look for the light and the good stuff. What a concept! This new app…Mood Mint…gives you little two minute exercises. It shows you four pictures and you look for and choose the happy picture…the good-for-you picture. Like three of the faces may be grumpy or judgy and the fourth is a person smiling. Or maybe it’s faces and fatty foods or exercising. Good for you things. The goal is to select as many of the happy images as you can in a certain about of time. Then it gives you a point to ponder some mental health tip and you’re reading it while you are priming your brain to “happy”. Then you go back to more photo choices. The next thing is word search puzzle with four absolutely positive words to think about as you repeat it in your head because you’re actively searching for it. Once you solve that puzzle, if there is still time, you get more photos to choose from. The last thing is a guided inhale and exhale. The whole thing is fast and easy and they suggest you do at least ten minutes of these every day. Ostensibly, in a couple of weeks, you have retrained your brain to stop looking for threats everywhere you go.
I used the app three times yesterday. And I have to tell you, I don’t know if it was the power of suggestion or placebo effect, but I did feel less anxious. We are leaving for a road trip to pick up Little this week and, while I absolutely adore that child, I worry about all the what-ifs that could happen on my watch. Sorry…it’s just how my brain is wired. And it takes a crap-ton of the delicious anticipation and fun out of it for me when I’m fighting to ward off anxiety. The app cost a couple of bucks, and I’m hoping it might be a good tool to have in my mental health tool box.
I have to add in here…God uses the bad things that happen to us and turns them around for our good and for His glory. Heaven knows the last couple of years have been really difficult with the pandemic and all the upheaval in the world. One of the only good things I’ve seen that has come out of that is an embrace of mental health issues. We are having the conversations we should have been having for decades. I see evidence of people perhaps being less ostracized for their mental health struggles because, let’s face it…it’s a lot more mainstream now.
Change can be hard to come by…but it can be really good for us all. Let’s keep our minds open for changes. We cannot all have everything we want…but we can meet in the middle and that’s worth working for.
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“for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
2 Timothy 1:7 ESV