Tag Archives: Life

Are you a Dreamer or a Realist?

Posted in Dreams, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Life, Love, Relationship Help, Self-Improvement, Self-Love by

Night Dreamer Girl
In my last post I talked about “the triple constraint” (the idea that everything we do is bound my limitations on the amount of time, money and energy we have). When you truly understand this, I believe you can have and do virtually anything. You just can’t have everything.

That got me thinking of dreams.

We all have dreams. We all have goals, and things we want out of life. So what’s the difference between someone who has dreams, and a dreamer?

I frequently hear about dreamers and realists, as if these are two contradictory concepts or opposite sides of the coin. But I don’t believe that’s right. I think you can be both. Actually I think being both is a very positive thing.

Sometimes when I hear people talk about being a dreamer, it seems people are actually using the label of “dreamer” to rationalize a lack of responsibility for their behavior. Likewise the term realist often seems used to rationalize being negative.

That’s not what they are about.

To me a dreamer is someone who is sets goals and then is willing to strive for them, no matter how realistic or unrealistic they may seem to others. Often people are ruled by fear. They are scared to try things, and scared to fail. As a result they sell themselves short, telling themselves they can’t do something. A dreamer is someone who isn’t afraid to take a chance on that dream.

But being a dreamer doesn’t mean you will do something blindly. It doesn’t mean moving forward without a plan, and it doesn’t mean you don’t understand or care about the consequences of your actions.

Being a realist doesn’t mean you see the flaws in everything. It doesn’t mean you look for reasons not to do something, or reasons why you can’t do something. That’s just negativity. Negative people talk about why things can’t be done. Realists may see those things, but they don’t use them as excuses for not doing something. They are simply things to be aware of when doing something. Instead of saying they can’t do something, a realist says “these are potential problems, and this is what we can do about them”.

So being a dreamer is not contradictory with being a realist. They are complementary.

You can do anything you want with your life. Think big, set goals for yourself, and believe in yourself. Don’t let others doubts bring you down. But ground your dreams in reality. Understand that you have limits on time, money, and energy. Understand the implications of your actions and how they affect others. Acting blindly without considering others is irresponsible. But having a plan doesn’t mean you aren’t following your dreams.

Be a dreamer, but temper it with reality.

You Can Have Anything (Just Not Everything)

Posted in Communication, Conflict, couples, Happiness, Life, Love, Marriage, Relationship Help by

i-want-it-all

I’ve mentioned before that I spend my days in the world of business and that I see parallels between what it takes to succeed in business and in relationships. One of the business concepts that I always have in the back of my head is something known as the triple constraint.

The Triple Constraint

The triple constraint is based on the idea that we are restricted in what we do by three different things; time, resources and scope. Each of these are interrelated, meaning you can’t change one without impacting the others. In the center of the triangle you see quality, indicating that the quality of what we are doing is dependent on finding a balance between these three things.

Triple-Constraint

To illustrate this concept, let’s look at building a fence.

Scope is the extent or area that something deals with. You can also think of it as the range, breadth, span or reach of something. Basically it’s “what” something is. If you want to build a fence, your scope involves a lot of things. What is the fence around? Is it your whole yard? Only once side? How many feet of fence do you need to build? How tall does it need to be? What materials do you want to use? All of these details about what you are trying to accomplish are the scope of the fence.

Time is the duration of building a fence. This isn’t the time in terms of effort, but is the amount of time from start to finish. Do you want to build it in a day? A week?

Lastly you have resources. This is what you put into building the fence in terms of both money and personal effort (your time invested).

To see how these different sides of the triple constraint are related, picture a specific fence (a fixed scope). If you want to build it yourself, your resources will be the cost of materials and your effort in building it. How fast you can build it will depend on the time you have available. If you are on holidays maybe you can build it in a few days. If you are working and have other responsibilities it will take a lot longer to complete.

If you want it built faster, you can always get friends to help or hire someone – but that means it will increase your costs. If you don’t want to increase your costs (maybe you can’t afford it) you may change the design of the fence somewhat (the scope), to reduce your costs. Likewise if you want a fancier fence, or something using different materials it will impact the costs.

At some level, we have all seen this principle at play. There is a sense of “value” behind items. For example, we understand that a burger from a fast food restaurant generally costs less than a burger at a sit down restaurant. Inherent in that cost there is a sense that a higher price indicates a better burger. Maybe it’s larger, or has better ingredients, or the restaurant has better service. Similarly we expect “fast food” to be ready in a few minutes, while at a sit down restaurant we expect to have to wait a while.

good_cheap_fast_sign

Competing Priorities

In life, it’s possible to have or do almost anything if you put in enough time and effort. We’ll do better at some things than others, but you can still do anything.

However everything we do is constrained by limits on money, energy and the number of hours in a day. We only have so much of each of them. So while it IS possible to do almost anything, we can’t have everything. Working towards one thing sometimes means we can’t work towards another thing at the same time. We have to pick what is really important to us, and focus our energies on that.

Remember, the triple constraint says the quality of something is dependent on finding a balance between scope, time and resources. When we try doing too many things at once, we lose that balance. We end up burning ourselves out and the quality of ALL the things we are trying to do will suffer.

Prioritizing Love

The triple constraint is easy to see when looking at things like building a fence, but it also applies to our relationships.

In the early days of building a relationship, you are often putting considerable time and resources (both energy and money) into the other person. You may be figuring out what the “scope” of the relationship is (are we just going out once in a while? Are we exclusive? Are we a couple?), but because of the investment of time and effort you are building a level of quality into the relationship.

So where do we go wrong with long term relationships? One of the main reasons long term relationships become stagnant is because we stop prioritizing them. We stop putting in the time and effort needed to both maintain and grow our relationships.

After a while we start to feel “safe”, and believe our partner will always be there. In many ways this is a good thing. The problem is, due to this belief that our partner will always be there, when life starts to get in the way it’s our relationship that we let slide.

We have jobs, and friendships to maintain. We have hobbies, and we want to take care of ourselves both physically and mentally. Kids come, and they become the primary focus for a long time (I’ll admit kids have to be the focus, and they take a tremendous amount of energy.

But these things become reasons to neglect the relationship. It may not happen intentionally, but it happens all the same. We may “say” that our relationship is a priority to us, but when you look at how we prioritize our time our actions often don’t back up our words.

The triple constraint says there is a relationship between time (duration), energy (resources) and scope. For committed relationships we hope to spend a lifetime together, so the duration we are looking for is pretty large –it’s the rest of our life. If our duration is fixed, then that leaves scope and resources.

When we stop focusing on our relationship by spending less time with our partners and putting less energy into the relationship, the only outcome is to impact the scope and/or the quality of the relationship. Instead of having a close loving relationship, we end up as roommates.

One day we realize that, and instead of looking at WHY, we mourn the loss of the relationship.
Some people accept this reduced scope, and largely live separate lives. Others are roommates who have sex sometimes and maybe go on the occasional trip together. And others walk away because “the relationship has failed”.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

What we get out of something is dependent on what we put into it. What is it that you put into a relationship? Think of the resources side of the triple constraint – what you put in is time and energy (effort). Well, money too I suppose. But buying your partner things as a sign of affection without putting time and effort into the relationship is meaningless.

So ask yourself, what exactly are we doing when we let our relationship slide because life has become “too busy”? When we stop making time focused on being a couple?

When we do this we are taking our relationship and our partner for granted. We may say they are important, and they probably truly are. But actions speak louder than words. If we aren’t finding a way to prioritize our partner in our life, then we aren’t showing they matter to us.

This is when resentment and apathy starts to creep in, and relationships start to break down. Usually people know they are letting their relationship slide. They realize it, but with all the other things going on in life they can’t find a balance and they can’t find a way to make time.

Think of the triple constraint. If you can’t find a balance between time, scope and resources the quality of things suffers. Maybe you are taking on too much. Maybe as much as you want to do everything, you have to let something go.

Maybe you actually need to do everything that you are currently doing. If so, maybe you can get help from your partner to reduce the load and free up more time for each other.

People often say “I can’t find the time”. When you look at the damage done to a relationship by not finding the time, I think it’s more accurate to say you can’t afford not to.

Depending on what is happening in life (and especially if there are kids) I don’t think anyone is really expecting the amount of time and effort spent on the relationship that there was in the early days. That’s likely not realistic. But it’s important to recognize that your level of closeness in the relationship is like your scope. So when you have less time and effort to put into the relationship, your closeness will be impacted. That doesn’t mean you are falling out of love – it’s simply the triple constraint at work.

So think about what is truly important to you, and then look at how your time is spent. Do the two things line up?

ThinkingAboutPriorities

Sometimes it is hard to make time for your relationship, and I think both partners understand this. But the effort has to always be there. With the triple constraint quality is in the middle. You can’t control the number of hours in the day and you can’t control the amount of money you have.

But you CAN take advantage of the moments you do have to focus on each other. In the process, you may find that you are building quality and closeness back in.

Embracing the Journey

Posted in Conflict, couples, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Life, Love by

long-journey

Back when I was in high school, I was part of a test run where the school introduced a series of “advanced placement” classes. School had always come easy for me, but even still I remember feeling proud that I had been selected for a program for “smart kids” (what can I say, we all have egos).

In most of the cases I didn’t really notice a difference between the regular classes and the advanced placement ones. With one exception – math.

Math had always been one of my stronger subjects, but for some reason I started to struggle. We were dealing with concepts that I was having a hard time with, and before long I was feeling that I was in over my head. As someone who had always been able to just show up in class and do well, this was a new (and unpleasant experience). A few months (and tests) in, my math marks were suffering, and I started to worry about my grade.

Somewhere along the way though, things started to click. I finally started to understand what we were doing, and my marks improved. Even still, I worried about how my earlier struggles would impact my final grade. One day I mentioned that to the instructor, and he told me not to worry. To him, the early struggles didn’t matter. He told me that the concepts built upon each other, and even though it took me a while I had shown I had learned the concepts. Because of that he was willing to throw away the earlier marks. Normally the first half of a course is weighted for roughly half the final grade, and I had done poorly the first few months so I was ecstatic about this. Based on what he said, what I “heard” was that as long as I did well on the final, I could still finish with a good grade. To me, it was that final grade that mattered.

But I missed the point. It was never about the grade. The grade was a goal, or a destination. These goals are important as they give us something to strive towards. In many ways though that grade was just an empty number. What really mattered was the process, the journey of learning and gaining understanding.

As people, we do this all the time. We get caught up in focusing on the destination. We focus on what we want to have, or who we hope to be. And in the process we don’t appreciate the moment. We are focusing on what we feel we are missing or what we don’t have instead of focusing on what we do have, and who we are right now.

Your Highlights

Imagine a photo album of your life. What would that look like?

Chances are your albums are full of your “highlights”, or your best times. Maybe it has baby pictures, and pictures from events such as graduations, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries (all of these are both yours and those of people in your life). Each of these moments is simply a snapshot – a window into a point in time in our life. These may be some of the things we remember most, but these images don’t do a very good job of representing who we are or the life we have. They show what we want to show.

Not all of our moments are highlights. We make mistakes, do stupid things, and hurt the people we love. And the same things happen to us. People come and go from our lives. People we care about hurt us and disappoint us. Tragedy happens. Those moments are just as much a part of us as the ones that make it into our photo albums. We are the sum of our experiences, and all of these moments are part of the journey of who we are.

In fact I think it is often these harder moments, and how we deal with them that has the greatest impact on who we are. When we are going through difficult times, I have to admit, it kind of sucks. But these harder moments are important. They shape us and they are how we grow. For good or bad, we wouldn’t be who we are without them.

Who Do You Want to be

I write mostly about relationships, and the struggles that are common to long term relationships. Couples often hit a point where they are struggling, and they aren’t sure if it’s worth it anymore. Sometimes the passion is gone, or they just aren’t happy anymore (with themself, their partner, or in the relationships). They look around at other people, other couples, and think “is this it”? If you are at that point, have you communicated it to you partner? If so, what was their response?

Something to remember is that each moment is simply a snapshot, a point in time. Where you are today as an individual or in a relationships doesn’t define you. It’s simply a view of where you are or how you feel right now. Another thing to remember is that when you look at other people, you aren’t truly seeing them. You are only seeing a snapshot of their life. And chances are, you are only seeing the parts they want you to see.

Everyone has hard times, everyone has moments where they struggle. But that’s part of the journey.

i_cant_promise_i_perfect_relationship

I think that “trying” is the most important thing of all. Having a vision of what you want is a positive as it gives you a goal to strive towards. But the goal is simply a snapshot of a future state. The important part is your process for getting there. And that process is based on effort. With effort, anything is possible.

When Hope Fails

Posted in Anger, Anxiety, Communication, Conflict, Depression, Happiness, Life, Love, Marriage, Mental Health, Relationship Help, Relationships by

Feeling Alone

In the past I have talked about how it is natural for passion to wane in long term relationships. There are things couples can do to prevent it, and there are ways couples can try to rebuild passion once it has been lost. In order to rebuild a relationship you need to make it a priority again. But you also have to believe change is possible, and you have to put in effort.

I’m a cheerleader for long term relationships. I believe in them, and believe that as long as people love each other they can get through anything. I believe with a little bit of effort on both parts, each day can be better than the last. Couples can work to better understand each other and build a deep enduring love. I believe forever can be real, and couples can “grow old together” still very much in love.

Belief for me is the easy part, and part of my goal with this site has been a hope that my belief can be infectious and I can inspire others to believe when they are having a hard time doing so on their own.

But I recognize that isn’t the case for everyone. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, and hold onto hope. Sometimes you try focusing on the positive, but a little part of your brain keeps insisting that things will never get better. What if you do truly want things to get better, but you just can’t bring yourself to put in the energy or the effort?

What do you do when hope fails?

If hope has failed, it may be that your brain and heart are telling you your relationship is beyond saving. But what if it’s something else entirely?

If you look up “sense of hopelessness” you will find it is one of the major signs of anxiety and depression. In my last post I talked a little bit about mental illness. What I didn’t talk about was how mental health has a direct impact on relationships.

According to statistics, mental illness will directly impact roughly 20% of people at some point in time in their life (though some stats show this as high as 25%). Relationships involve two people, so according to my math 40%-50% of couples will deal with a mental illness at some point in time, adding an additional layer of challenge to the normal trials and tribulations relationships go through.

Impacts on Relationships

Stats from counselors indicate that more than 80% of couples who come in for counseling show signs of mental illness (predominantly in the form of anxiety or depression). This is not surprising, as the nature of mental illnesses often break down the very characteristics required for a strong, healthy relationship. They can impact a persons ability to feel love and affection, while also making it harder to cope with the regular stresses of a relationship and day to day life. This in turn puts additional stress on the relationship.

When a relationship is struggling and there is the presence of something like depression and/or anxiety, a question that can be asked is “does the mental illness contribute to the relationship issues, or do the relationship issues lead to the mental illness”. Honestly, that’s a valid question. But I would argue that the answer doesn’t really matter. Allow me to explain…

depression vs. Depression

We all have had bad days and days that we feel depressed. When you’re depressed, you’re generally feeling down, or in a funk. You probably feel listless and a bit tired, and you really don’t want to do much. Everyone has days like that, and they are usually triggered by something that has happened.

When I first heard about depression, I thought this is what people were talking about. As a result, I didn’t understand what the big deal was. After all, feeling depressed is a normal thing that everyone experiences. In my mind depressed people just needed to cheer up, and they would feel better soon enough.

The reality of depression isn’t so simple. Depression as an illness (also known as clinical depression or a major depressive episode) is different. It may start the same as the “normal” funks that people go through, and that’s probably a big part of why most people don’t get help for it. I suspect that many sufferers think it’s just something they can wait out. Or they think they are feeling “down” because of something in their life, and if they just changed that thing they would start to feel better. But as time goes by it just deepens and worsens. Clinical depression is only partially understood, but it causes changes in brain chemistry that can make it very difficult for people to get out without help.

In a similar fashion everyone experiences anxiety from time to time, but when anxiety becomes a common part of daily life then anxiety may be a disorder. I recently wrote on the impacts of stress on relationships. People with anxiety disorders are constantly dealing with elevated levels of stress. The symptoms of anxiety disorders are very similar to those of depression, and these extended periods of stress often result in anxiety disorders causing depression.

Trusting Emotions

Who are you? What makes you “you”? Some people talk about the separation between the body and the soul, and the idea is usually that the soul is the essence of what makes you who you are. It’s your thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories. These are what make us who we are, and what makes us human.

That’s a problem with changes to moods and emotions. It’s easy to see these things as “who we are”, or “how we truly feel” about things. But what if we can’t trust them?

One problem about moods, feelings and emotions is that they are affected by our mental state. At some level we know this happens. I suspect everyone would admit that they have had days where they are frustrated and irritable, and as a result inadvertently lashed out at someone (displacing anger and frustration from something else).

With mental health issues such as depression or anxiety, these “bad days” can become the norm. Moods change and emotions change.

Some of the main symptoms are irritability and bouts of anger. Difficulty sleeping (which likely contributes to irritability and emotional volatility). There’s also tiredness and a lack of energy, a feeling of hopelessness or being trapped, and issues dealing with stress.

Impacts on Relationships

Anxiety and Depression can be devastating for the person who is suffering from them. But they also take a considerable toll for both members of a relationship.

For the person who is suffering, the illness can break down feelings of love, and lead them to question whether or not they actually do love their partner. We are taught to trust our feelings. So when the “feeling” isn’t there, it’s easy to conclude that the reason is because the love has broken down. Often the affected person doesn’t understand why the feelings are gone. They may not be able to identify why they don’t feel affection any more. They may want to, and they may mourn the loss. But because of the chemical changes in their brain, they are unable to feel for their partner.

Ironically, although they find it hard to maintain feelings of long term love they are still able to feel the oxytocin fueled feelings of “new love” – which can act as “proof” or validation that something was wrong with the initial relationship. Research on depression shows that someone suffering from depression has an increased probability of having an affair, as a way of trying to fill the feelings of emptiness inside and “feel alive” again.

For the partner who isn’t suffering, it can be difficult to watch the person you love withdraw. There is a sense of walking on eggshells, as you aren’t sure what to do to help. And the relationship often becomes characterized by cycles of withdrawal and anger. It causes immense stress, and often the “healthy” partner ends up falling into a depression themselves.

There are a lot of books on depression and how it impacts people, but for a look at the ways depression can impact relationships I recommend reading Depression Fallout by Anne Sheffield. She has lived both sides of depression, and has some valuable insights into it.

Making Decisions

Earlier I said it didn’t matter whether a relationship is damaged by a mental illness or the whether the depression was caused by relationship issues. This is because most literature on illnesses like depression say that you should never make significant life choices (such as changes in jobs and relationships) while depressed because of the way illnesses can impact feelings of love and closeness.

When feelings and emotions are impaired, making significant decisions is similar to getting behind the wheel of a car while drunk. You may “get by” safely. But you may also do significant damage, to both yourself, your loved ones and your future. It’s important to try to address the illness first.

Mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety can be treated effectively, but unfortunately only around half of the people dealing with a mental illness ever seek help.

If you are having problems in your relationship, and struggling with putting in the effort needed to turn things around because you believe things will never get better, keep in mind that it may not just be an issue with the relationship. Especially if you are having a hard time pinpointing what is “wrong” with the relationship, it may be a sign of something else.

If so, talk to your doctor and tell them exactly how you are feeling. You might just be able to save your relationship, or prevent it from breaking down unnecessarily.

Mental Health Week

Posted in Anxiety, Depression, Happiness, Life, Mental Health, Mental Health Week by

mentalhealth_blocks

This week is National Mental Health Week in Canada, and in honor of it I wanted to do my part to raise awareness about Mental Health.

Mental health is something we don’t talk about enough. Kind of like religion, politics and our sex lives, mental health is treated as a taboo topic by most. But it shouldn’t be.

As people we have physical bodies, and at any point in time our physical body can be in different states of health. Usually we take our bodies for granted. They do what we tell them to. They work. It’s only when they stop working correctly (which could be due to injury, disease or just regular wear and tear) that we really think of the “health” of our bodies.

Mental health is similar, and it affects ALL of us. You, me, and all the people we interact with on a day to day basis. Just as your body has a general level of health even when you aren’t suffering an injury, we all have a state of mental health. As described by the Canadian Mental Health Association, mental health is:

It’s a state of well-being in which you realize your own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work and study productively and are able to make a contribution to your family and community.

Just as our bodies are susceptible to illnesses, we are all susceptible to mental illnesses. Today I hope to shed some myths, and provide at least a bit of understanding about the grouping of conditions that are commonly referred to as mental illness.

Mental Health is a sensitive topic, and I’m not a doctor. I’m just a regular guy who wanted to understand mental health a bit better. What is here is based on “my” understanding, but I believe/hope it’s accurate.

The Stigma of Mental Illness

I mentioned above that mental health is treated as a taboo subject. Mental health and illness is very poorly understood, and I think this lack of understanding leads to considerable stigma.

It used to be that when I heard the term mental illness, the first things that came to mind was the word “crazy”, or the idea that someone has “snapped”. I pictured straight-jackets, and people who talk to themselves or go on random shooting sprees. But most mental illness isn’t like that.

What most people don’t understand is that mental illness occurs on a spectrum. It is a generic term used to categorize a number of different issues, such as mood disorders, depression and bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, personality disorders, eating disorders and even dementia. All of these fall under the umbrella of “Mental Illness”. And like any other disorder or condition, there are varying degrees of severity for each of them.

The main commonality between them is that they are:

Disturbances in cognition and emotional responsiveness resulting in problems in thinking and behavior.

When most people hear about mental illness in the news, they are hearing about the cases that are on the extreme end of the spectrum (crazy with a capital “C”). It’s no wonder people don’t even want to hear the term “mental illness” applied to themselves or someone they love. We don’t understand it.

Hearing the term mental illness used to describe someone you care about and then making the mental jump to “they’re crazy” is like thinking that because someone played “the tree” in a primary school Christmas concert they are destined for a career in Hollywood. Or like saying because I play basketball I’m like Michael Jordan.

Just as Michael Jordan was not an average example of a basketball player, the people who hit the news are by no means representative of mental illness.

It may be more accurate to say that having a mental illness means the person affected likely has some issues with their coping mechanisms, which may or may not be significant in their day to day life.

Most people with mental illnesses are able to live regular lives. I have a few buddies who are “affected” by mental illness. And while they acknowledge that their issues affect them, they are regular people just like anyone else. In fact I hate to even use the term mental illness in reference to them because of the stigma associated with the term.

Some Stats

In order to reduce some stigma about mental illness, I think it’s first important to look at a few statistics (courtesy of the Canadian Mental Health Association):

  • 20% of all Canadians will personally experience a mental illness in their lifetime
  • Mental illness indirectly affects all Canadians at some time through a family member, friend or colleague
  • Mental illness affects people of all ages, educational and income levels, and cultures
  • Almost ½ of those who suffer have never gone to see a doctor about this problem
  • Stigma or discrimination attached to mental illnesses present a serious barrier to diagnosis, treatment and acceptance in the community
  • Most mental illnesses can be treated effectively

These stats come from the Canadian Mental Health Association, but they are fairly representative of global numbers. Let’s take a look at those stats for a moment.

20% of people are affected directly in their lifetime. Think about that for a moment. That’s 1 in 5 people. How big is your family? How many friends do you have? Chances are someone you know will be affected by a mental illness at some point. And it won’t just be someone you know, but it will be someone close to you.

Most people never realize there is something wrong, and as a result they never see a doctor about it or deal with it appropriately. In many other cases people realize that “something” is wrong, but they attribute it to something else in their life.
In most cases it can be treated, but sadly, most people suffer in silence.

Multiple Sclerosis

Are you familiar with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)? Most people at least know the name, and probably many are familiar with the disease.

Our brain is the engine that powers our bodies, and our body control is largely a result of our brain sending messages to our body. When we want to walk, our brain sends the signals down to our legs telling them to move. We don’t even have to really think about things, we just do them.

MS is a neurological disorder where something has gone wrong with the signals that are sent from the brain to the rest of the body. Science doesn’t understand why MS strikes, but it does understand how it works.

Our brain sends messages to the different parts of our body through our nerves, which are covered in a fatty substance called the myelin sheath. The myelin sheath acts as an insulator, similar to the plastic coating covering wires and cables.

For people with MS the myelin sheath has started to break down resulting in disturbances to the signals being sent from the brain.

multiple-sclerosis-neurological-disorder-2

MS is a difficult disease to diagnose and treat because the symptoms of it can be quite diverse. The symptoms include:

  • Numbness or weakness in limbs, possibly accompanied by tingling or pain
  • Problems or pain with vision
  • Tremors or lack of coordination
  • Problems with speech
  • Fatigue or dizziness

The symptoms depend on which nerves are impacted and the degree of degradation of the myelin sheath, and they aren’t constant. There may be problem periods followed by quiet periods of months or even years (kind of like faulty wiring that occasionally shorts out). But MS is usually a progressive disease, with symptoms worsening over time.

In summary, MS is a disease where brain functioning is working correctly but something is going wrong with the messages being sent to the rest of the body. It comes and goes, and it strikes different people differently.

What is Mental Illness?

In many ways, I see parallels between mental illness and MS. In MS the brains messages are misfiring when they are sent to the body. Mental illness however deals with cognitive and emotional recognition and responsiveness.

Often we think of a separation between the head and the heart. The brain is thought of as your intellectual core (and center of logic and reason); while the heart is seen as the source of feelings and emotions. In reality, all of the things that make us “us” come from the brain – thinking, reasoning, logic, feelings and emotions. The heart? Sorry, it just pumps blood.

The brain allows us to interact with our world, and feelings and emotions are often responses to our experiences. “Mental illness” is a term describing when something has gone wrong with the messages being sent and received by the brain (similar to MS), causing feelings and emotions to not line up with our experiences.

In MS symptoms vary depending on which nerves are impacted. Less is known about mental illness, but there are different types each with different symptoms (though there is some overlap).

Types of mental illness include:

  • Mood disorders – involve changes and disruptions in mood and emotions. Depression and bipolar disorder are the most commonly known examples
  • Anxiety disorders – the most common type, causing people to be overly anxious and afraid of situations or event most people consider normal. There are many different types, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety is different from depression, but often leads to it
  • Schizophrenia – involves losing the ability to know what’s real and what isn’t
  • Eating Disorders – involves a distorted body image along with serious and potentially life threatening behaviors to manage food and weight.
  • Personality Disorders – affects the way a person acts, feels and gets along with others. Can also manifest in impulsive behavior
  • Dementia – involves loss of memory, judgment and reasoning along with changes in mood, behavior and communication. Alzheimer’s is the most common form

MentalHealth

Symptoms of Mental Illness

Although there are different types of mental illnesses, there symptoms tend to be similar. Here are some of the different signs that your mental health may need a bit more care:

Physical

  • Difficulty sleeping
  • Significant tiredness, or low energy
  • Rapid weight loss or gain

Emotional

  • Feeling irritable
  • Feeling sad or down
  • Feeling trapped
  • Feeling incompetent
  • Inability to cope with daily problems or stress
  • Sex drive changes

Intellectual

  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Procrastinating
  • Excessive worrying

Personal well-being

  • Withdrawal from friends, family and activities
  • Excessive busyness
  • Loss of sense of humor

When I look at this list, one of the things that stands out to me is we ALL have these symptoms from time to time. We all have good and bad days, and in our bad days many of those symptoms appear.

It’s only when they are pervasive, generally lasting for at least six months (without at least one month free of symptoms) then they move from just being a “funk” to being a cause for alarm.

One problem is these symptoms generally come on gradually and worsen over time. For a sufferer, there are often understandable reasons for them. “Oh, I’m feeling this way because of X”. Eventually the funk can become a persons “new normal”, but because it’s been a gradual process the person suffering these symptoms may not even see what is happening or how much their moods have changed.

This gradual decline was described to me as follow:

People that I barely knew were noticing that I wasn’t myself, and that told me that I really needed to do something. I truly felt like I could just disappear into a hole and never come out, that really scared me and I couldn’t do that to those around me. (I was lucky enough to still have the mindset to care how this affected them, some people are not.)

You really can’t understand when you’re not there yourself. I don’t even understand myself. On one hand, I feel truly blessed with the great family and friends that I have and it actually pisses me off that I know this and still it doesn’t change how “dark” I feel. It makes me feel very selfish that I have all that I do and I still feel this way. I want to be the person that is happy and loving life, but it’s something I continue to struggle with. I can “fake” it around a lot of people when I feel that I “have” to.

Causes of Mental Illness

One of the big questions is, what causes mental illness? Unfortunately the answer is not known. It seems that it can be caused by a number of different things (and perhaps combinations of them).

There is some evidence of biological or genetic predispositions, and it is something that can also be triggered by injuries, hormonal changes, or environmental factors such as stressful traumatic events or even just extended periods of high stress.

Although the causes aren’t very well understood, it’s important to remember that the existence of a mental illness is not a reflection on a person. It’s not a character defect, or a sign that someone isn’t “strong enough”. Just as an MS patient isn’t responsible for having MS, people dealing with mental illnesses aren’t to blame.

Getting Help

One stat on mental illness that stands out is the fact that only around half of the people dealing with a mental illness ever seek help.

Maybe it’s because the symptoms are things people commonly experience and they think they can just “figure it out” on their own. Maybe they don’t notice how much they have changed due to a gradual decline, or maybe there is a fear or the stigma associated with mental illness. I don’t know.

But the fact remains, most mental illnesses can be treated effectively. There is no reason to suffer in silence.

So if you or someone you know is having a hard time coping, go talk to a doctor. Be honest about what is going on and how you are feeling.

The first step to getting better starts with you.

Who’s Responsibility is Love?

Posted in Communication, Conflict, couples, Love, Marriage, Relationship Help, Relationships by

Holding-on-to-a-Relationship

Recently I’ve talked a bit about losing the spark. Losing the spark is all too common in long term relationships. Due to any number of reasons, over time many couples get to a point where they still love the person, but they are no longer IN love.

I recently read a blog written by a woman who “lost the spark” in her marriage. She ended up having an affair, and was in the process of a divorce. Interestingly her husband still wanted things to work out, but she didn’t. She had an affair. To her this act was proof that something was wrong in her relationship, and after that her heart wasn’t in her marriage anymore. She wasn’t interested in rebuilding.

Now, I don’t know anything about her situation other than what she wrote. Maybe the relationship was terrible. Maybe she didn’t understand what love really is, and as a result was disappointed in her marriage. Maybe there were other issues such as addictions, mental health or abuse. Who knows.

The only thing I do know is that if her heart wasn’t in rebuilding, then any efforts to rebuild were doomed to failure before they even began. Relationships require effort. If you don’t truly WANT it, you will never be willing to compromise and put in the effort required to be happy. As they say, garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t put effort in, then you shouldn’t be surprised if things don’t work out very well.

But this story and others like it got me thinking:

Who’s responsibility is it to maintain feelings of love? And what do you do if those feelings fade?

Holding On To Love

One of the mistakes I think many people make is the belief that love is something you “feel”. Something that’s either there, or it’s not. Seen this way, love is a passive thing, or something you receive.

I don’t think love should ever be passive. And the feeling of being “in love” is only a small part of love. When you think of love as a feeling or something you just receive, you all but ensure that love will fail. You need to actively work to maintain love, or over time that “feeling” goes away.

Maintaining these feelings of being in love is the responsibility of each of us. Love requires effort on the part of both people. It is not your partners responsibility to keep you feeling “in love”.

Yes, your partner should treat you well. They should show you affection and make you feel valued and loved. And those actions make you more likely to return gestures of love and affection, after all, we all like to feel valued and appreciated.

But love isn’t just something you receive. Ultimately your feelings for your partner are YOUR responsibility. And in order to maintain love, these feelings need to be nurtured.

It is up to you to make your partner a priority in your thoughts and in your life. It is up to you to value and appreciate your partner. It’s up to you to focus on the positives in your life together instead of the negatives.

If you don’t and the feelings of being “in love” start to fade? Well, that’s as much your fault as it is your partners (probably more actually).

holdingOnIsTough

Focus on Each Other

To keep love strong you have to focus on each other, and focus on the positives.

I’m not suggesting you ignore the negatives. Perfection doesn’t exist. Everyone has flaws, and everyone makes mistakes. It’s important to ensure you are communicating about those and not ignoring them, but you also need to accept them and not allow anger or resentment to poison your relationship.

Look at the good things both in your life together and about your partner them self. What are the thing that make them who they are to you? What are the traits that you love? Personality, intelligence, compassion, quirks. Whatever they are make sure they are about your partner as a person.

From a guys perspective, the absolute LAST thing you want to hear is about how great a provider you are, or how great a father you are to the kids. If that’s all you can think of you may as well just ask us to stand up and then repeatedly kick us in the groin – because that’s how it feels. Yeah, it’s important that we are good at those things. But that’s not what we want.

There’s a stereotype of (shallow) guys wanting a woman because she’s young and hot; and (shallow) women being gold diggers and wanting men for their bank account. Women don’t want to feel like a receptacle for sperm? Well men don’t want to feel like you are only there for the utility we provide.

We ALL want to feel valued for who we are.

Always Do Your Best

In the blog I read, the woman gave up on her marriage. When a relationship has negative momentum, it is easy to get caught up in that negativity and feel that things will never get better.

I’m a cheerleader for long-term relationships, and I think that short of abusive situations most relationship can be not only saved, but can be amazing. Yes people change, but part of relationships is growing and changing together.

There is no “magic person” out there who everything would be perfect with. Love isn’t just received. The success or failure of a relationship is up to both people and what they put in to the relationship – not just what they are getting out of it.

Sometimes things don’t work out though, and that’s fine. At the end of the day the most important thing is to be able to truly tell yourself that you tried. That you put yourself 100% into it and you did your best.

TryYourBest

Losing the Spark

Posted in Communication, Conflict, couples, Depression, Family, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Marriage, Passion, Relationship Help, Relationships, Romance by

dimmingflame

I spend my days in the world of business, and increasingly I see parallels between what it takes to succeed in business and what it takes to succeed in long term relationships (and life in general actually).

Two of the central concepts in business are Operations and Projects. Any business has *something* that they do, and the operational side of a business is the day to day tasks that allow the business to function in the here and now. This is the stuff that keeps money coming in, and sometimes you’ll hear this referred to as the things a business needs to do to “keep the lights on”.

A business can’t only worry about today though. They also need to keep their eye on the future and plan where they want to be tomorrow. See, even if they have a great business, markets change. New products appear (potentially reducing interest in existing ones) and new competitors appear with fresh ideas and approaches.

In addition to worrying about today, businesses have at least part of their energy and resources dedicated to ensuring there is a tomorrow. At the very least, they need to monitor the ongoing health of the business. This side of business where there is long term visioning is referred to as projects.

Operations may keep a business running and alive today, but the future still matters. A business needs to grow, or at least ensure that they aren’t becoming obsolete. It can be tough balancing both of these things, but it’s necessary to stay alive.

Those who don’t balance the present and the future tend to fail.

The Operations of Relationships

Think of the progression of a relationship.

The early days of relationships are all about building. You meet, and spend time together learning each other. It’s exciting, and it’s new. When you get together it’s an event. Even if all you do is rent a movie or watch some TV, you still made plans to get together. Think of this as your “business start-up”.

Then the relationship gets to another level, and you move in together or get married (and then move in together). What happens? We are no longer building the relationship, we have already built it. We know each other, and although there is still more to learn the pace at which this happens slows considerably.

We now start worrying about day to day life. Our “planned” time together gets taken up with things like grocery shopping, laundry and dishes. Then maybe we have kids, and for a number of years they become the priority. Life becomes all about feeing and changing the baby. It’s about teaching them, raising them. Helping with homework, and shipping the kids off to various events.

These things are all important, and we have to do them. And hey, maybe we even enjoy doing them. But all the while the energy we were once expending on our partner and our relationship is slowly diminishing.

If you talk to couples who are having problems, one of the biggest issues they face is they get to a point where they feel they have lost “the spark”. When this happens, couples will often say things like “they feel like roommates”, or “they feel taken for granted”.

I think this is the biggest killer of relationship, but what exactly is it that has happened here?

The couple has gotten caught up in “operations”. They have lost sight of the future (the fact that they need to have one). They aren’t monitoring the health of the relationship.

Instead, they are simply living life day to day, doing the things to keep the lights on. They haven’t focused on each other enough and spent enough time growing the relationships – or even just ensuring that they aren’t falling apart.

Part of it is “comfort”. Life gets busy, and when you *know* that the other person will be there it’s easy to let them slide. After all, when all the chores are done and the kids have been put to bed both of you are often tired. But over time this takes a considerable toll.

Some couples wake up one day and realize they no longer know the person sleeping next to them. And chances are both of them have a bit of resentment and a sense of loss for where they once were, and what they have become.

Look at your interactions with your partner. Look at the hours you spend together. How much of it is actually focused on them? How much time are you investing in being a couple? Now look at how much of it is time where you simply happen to be occupying the same space, but you are really focused on the kids, the chores, whatever.

Yes, all the “stuff” of day to day life has to happen. But you need to nurture the relationship too.

Signs of Distress

In long term relationships, I think all couples go through some sort of variation on “losing the spark”. Eventually we realize we have got caught up in running a household and raising a family (the world of operations), and we have lost sight of each other as a couple.

What matters is how far things are gone before we really notice, and what we do about it.

People talk about how communication forms the foundation for any relationship, and that becomes especially true when we recognize problems. People are different, so often one person will be the first to really notice “a problem”.

When this happens the biggest mistake people can make is to do nothing.

From reading books and other blogs, often women are the first to get the sense that something has gone wrong (us guys tend to be oblivious). It’s not always women noticing first, and the relationship may not even be a woman and a man – but let’s assume it is for this example.

She notices *something* has gone wrong by realizing that she isn’t really happy.

Maybe she says something to her partner, but he doesn’t get it. He hears her, but doesn’t understand. He thinks, “I love you, I’m providing for my family and I’m a good parent, I don’t understand what the problem is. I’m being a good partner here.”

He is stuck in the world of operations. Those things are important for keeping the relationship going, but not for keeping it ALIVE.

When she says something another response is to get defensive. Having his partner say “I’m not happy here” become misinterpreted, and in his head it becomes “you aren’t a good partner” causing him to start to withdraw (hey, we are emotional creatures and can be a bit sensitive sometimes).

A worse situation is when she doesn’t say anything at all. Rather, she pretends she’s happy and tries figuring out what is wrong on her own. All the while resentment towards her partner is growing, and he doesn’t even know anything is wrong.

Actually guys may be dumb, but we’re not stupid (mostly). So he has picked up on the fact that something is wrong, but he thinks it’s just a phase that will pass, or he completely misreads the severity of things. After all, they’re a couple and they’re committed to a life together, right?

Hah. Unfortunately life isn’t that simple.

Accepting a Problem

When it comes to relationships people REALLY don’t like to accept the existence of problems, so they deny it for as long as they possibly can. People are stubborn, and our natural response to things is to look for things to blame reasons, and we really don’t like change.

Eventually though, we accept that there’s some kind of problem.

I once read that most couples get to a counselor about 2 years later than they should have, and I believe it.

For the person who “caught on” late, they’re hurt and a little scared, so they do what they can to try and make things better. But by now the relationship is caught up in the resentment that comes with negative momentum, so there is a risk that the partner who noticed things first has withdrawn from the relationship, and ignores the efforts to improve things. They think it feels forced, and not genuine.

The couple is now in a downward spiral that does not have a happy ending unless they can both buy in that they want things to improve. And if they do, they need to realize that yeah, things will seem a bit forced at first – but that doesn’t make it any less real.

Digging Out

A LOT of relationships fail at this point. And a lot more stay together, accepting the “truth” that this is normal and long term relationships are simply doomed to a loss of love. Some are fine with a somewhat happy existence, and others stay together in name only – basically living separate lives.

I think there’s more to life than that. I think your relationship should be a source of joy. You should WANT to spent time with your partner whenever you can. After a long day at work, you should look forward to getting home and seeing their face. You should want to share experiences with them. And no matter how long you have been together, nothing should feel as good as being with your partner, holding each other and knowing you’ll never let each other go.

To get back to that spot, you need to focus on the relationship. Day to day life will always be there, but that can’t be your only interactions. You can’t use that as an excuse to not nurture the relationship.

Like a business that monitors it’s day to day health while having a plan for the future, the relationship HAS to become a priority. You need time focused on each other. You need to not only maintain the relationship, but build it.

Do things together.

I don’t think couples intentionally take each other for granted. Most couples will SAY “of course the relationship is a priority. Of course my partner is a priority”.

But actions speak louder than words.

Think back to my earlier question:

Look at your interactions with your partner. Look at the hours you spend together. How much of it is actually focused on them? How much time are you investing in being a couple?

Now ask yourself how much time you think you should be spending on being a couple. Everything needs some sort of sustenance and maintenance to survive, and relationships are no different in this regard.

If you feel the spark has been lost, rest assured that you aren’t alone. Many, many couples go through the same thing. But as long as there is still a flicker, no matter how faint, you can rebuild a flame.

But it’s up to you to do it. If your relationship is a priority, don’t let that only be in words. Back your words with action, and focus on it again. And this time, don’t let it go.

Making Changes

Posted in Anger, Anxiety, Avoidance, Communication, Conflict, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Individuality, Relationship Help, Self-Improvement, Self-Love by

change_banner

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of basketball. Well I’ll let you in on a little secret – I can’t shoot. I’ve had days that I will hit 10 in a row, but those are rare, and tend to be followed by stretches where I won’t hit at all. If you meet me on a day that I happen to be hitting you may think I’m a good shooter. However if you play with me for long enough, it becomes apparent that I can’t.

Shooting is only part of the game and I would like to think I can get by with some of the other things that I do well (or at least better). But still, it would help my team if I was able to hit shots more consistently.

I have never been coached. As an uncoordinated youth, I started playing late and learned basketball largely through observation, then by trying to recreate what I saw. In the process I came up with a shooting mechanic that “worked for me”. Through the years I’ve recognized that my shot is a weakness in my game, so I try to listen to other people and get pointers when I can. I’ve made some adjustments over the years, but the only consistent thing about my shot is its inconsistency.

Last summer my son was at a basketball camp and there was a “shot doctor” who came in and taught the kids the proper mechanics of shooting. I’ve read books, watched videos etc, but this was the first time I had ever had someone really break down the mechanics of a shot into their components. As he taught the kids, I listened intently.

After the camp, when I came home from work I tried to put what I had learned into practice.

My “old” shot had been internalized. It was reactive, meaning I didn’t have to think about it. And that made it really hard to change. Here’s the thing, when you have YEARS of “bad habits” built up, it becomes really hard to change them.

To make changes you need to really slow down, think about what you are doing, and go back to the basics. It took me a while to get the feel for the “new” shot mechanic, but once I did it was amazing. I was hitting shots at a much higher rate, and more importantly with greater consistency over time.

slow-changes

This improvement had me looking forward to the start of my mens league season, and I believed that this year I would have more confidence in my shooting.

The season started, and guess what – the speed of an actual game is quite a bit different from shooting on your driveway with no defender. I didn’t have time to think about the shot mechanics, and in the pressure of the moment I found myself reverting to my “old” (you can also read that as bad) form.

You see, its one thing to understand what you have to do to change. It’s something entirely different to put it into practice on a regular basis and in a “real life” situation.

Putting in Effort

For me basketball is just a pastime. I love it, but it’s really not that important to my life. So I haven’t put in the hours needed to really internalize the improved mechanics so I can use them in a “real life” situation. I realize that true change takes effort, and that applies to any changes in life.

In a recent post my buddy Gandalf talked about changing his life. As he said:

One item needed for this is dedication. Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to see this through and continuously try to improve every week. I needed to put lots of effort into getting better, which is where hitting rock bottom helped. I knew the problem was me, and only I could make myself better.

Learning to Cope

Over our lifetime we develop coping mechanisms for getting by in life. Similar to how I learned to shoot in basketball, we find something that “works for us”, no matter how broken or ineffective these coping mechanisms may be. As long as we are able to get by, that’s good enough for us.

When times are good it’s not a problem. But life isn’t always easy, and times aren’t always good.

How do you react when life gets tough? My buddy’s approach was to run away. Well, not literally. But his avoidance was such that his way of dealing with things was to not deal with them at all. He would withdraw, not make decisions, and retreat into his comfort zone. And it worked for him – kind of. Unfortunately he wasn’t happy. In fact, he was miserable, and he hated himself. For years he blamed his unhappiness on external things. The reality was, his coping mechanisms were broken and they were causing him to spiral further and further down into unhappiness.

Even though his coping mechanisms were at the root of his problems, they were still safe, and they were what he knew.

It’s unfortunate that people seem to need to hit rock bottom before they can get better. But I guess until they do, their coping mechanisms are still “working” for them, no matter how much damage they are doing. It’s only when they fail completely that someone is forced to face themselves, and see the need for change.

It’s only then that someone will WANT change badly enough to make it happen.

The Need For Change

I think maybe rock bottom is needed because until then, people don’t NEED change. They may want it, and they may realize at an intellectual level that it would benefit them. But change is scary.

Until someone has hit rock bottom, they don’t want change badly enough to dedicate themselves to it. So they say they are trying, but their attempts are half-hearted. Because the effort isn’t truly there, the change doesn’t work or is ineffective, so they revert back to their old ways.

Then they can tell themselves “hey, I tried”. But in reality all they ever did was set themselves up for failure.

When you look around, it’s amazing how much effort people actually seem to put into avoiding change. I think it’s due to fear. People fear change, and so even when they know change is needed, they will half-heartedly attempt it. Then when it doesn’t work, they retreat back to the old ways. But giving up on change causes it to fail before it even has a chance. And this failure becomes proof that they didn’t really need to change after all, allowing someone to slip back into the comfort of their broken coping mechanisms.

It’s kind of like when I tried adapting my new basketball shooting mechanic in a game situation. I hadn’t put enough effort in to make the change sustainable, and the stress of a real game caused me to retreat back to my old form.

Baby Steps

My buddy Gandalf had a lot of changes he needed to make. And looking at all those changes was daunting. So to move forward, he had to do it gradually.

With his doctor, he identified different levels of change, and he started with the easy changes and steadily progressed forward. There was a vision of where they wanted to be at the end, and they made a plan to get there.

Big changes are always made up of a number of smaller steps. But even for small changes, the desire and the effort has to be there. There has to be momentum. You have to WANT it, and you have to be willing to work at it.

make-big-changes-in-small-steps

Take a look at your coping mechanisms and ask yourself, are they really working? Or are you just “getting by”? If you tell yourself “that’s just the way I am”, guess what – you’re just like my buddy Gandalf used to be. That’s what he told himself. He expected other people to conform to him, after all, *he* couldn’t change.

As a result, he hit what for him was rock bottom. There’s a problem with rock bottom though. Depending on how far you have to fall, sometimes the climb back up is really hard. And sometimes you need to find a new path, because you’ve destroyed your old one in the process.

So ask yourself, are your coping mechanisms actually working? Or are you just getting by?

Change is hard, and it can be scary. But sometimes it’s needed for a happier future.

Learning to Love yourself

Posted in Anxiety, Avoidance, Depression, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Individuality, Life, Love, Relationship Help, Self-Improvement, Self-Love by

meditation-leaf

Of all the things you can do, loving yourself is perhaps the most important. It is probably THE key to happiness, affecting both personal happiness and happiness in a relationship. Unfortunately we don’t all love ourselves.

Over the last few posts I have been examining a lack of self-love, anxiety and depression with the help of my buddy Gandalf who has been down the rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and self-loathing. He struggled for years with self-love, and found that anxiety was central to his problem (as anxiety disorders break down the very fabric of what is needed for loving both yourself and those around you).

One important note about my buddy’s situation is that at the time he didn’t know he had a problem. For him, this was just how he was, how he behaved and how he viewed the world. It was horribly broken and unhealthy, but it wasn’t until he hit rock bottom and was able to get better that he was able to look back and see how much damage he was doing to both himself and those around him.

Over the last few posts I have talked about where my buddy’s lack of self love came from, and then how it affected him in day to day life. He was in a bad place emotionally and mentally, and had a number of negative and self-defeating mindsets.
Hopefully other people in a similar boat can learn from his situation and learn to love themselves either again or for the first time.

Facing the Mirror

One of the hardest parts of learning to love yourself is taking ownership of your issues. It’s very easy to blame other people or situations, and it’s easy to rationalize behavior. And when someone doesn’t love themselves, self-defeating mindsets are frequently the norm. It can be very difficult to turn things around, so I asked my buddy what his secret was.

That is an easy answer in theory, but DAMN difficult to put into practice. Simply put, I had to realize:

  1. there was a problem, and more importantly
  2. *I* was the problem.

Once you realize *you* are the problem, you now have nobody to blame but yourself. All the excuses, all the lies, all the daydreams and fantasies you comfort yourself with, the avoidance and coping mechanisms, all of it no longer works. And that is when you start on the path to recovery.

Hmmm, so no real shortcuts then?

No.

I want to clarify one item, and that is why I didn’t realize *I* was the problem. For me, I have always felt the hyper-active arousal and the anxiety that comes with it, so I thought that this is how I should normally feel and this is how other people feel too. After all, I’ve never felt anything else other than this, so I didn’t have a different state to compare it to. I didn’t know how I should really feel and I didn’t know what normal was, except that this was normal for me. So the connection between my behaviors and my anxiety never occurred to me until I was forced to confront these destructive behaviors and solve the root cause instead of using my coping mechanisms.

Sounds a lot like my buddy with sleep apnea, who is always exhausted but insists he is fine and that he isn’t tired (even while he’s nodding off when he’s supposed to be navigating). His point of reference is so messed up that he doesn’t know what it’s like to not be tired.

Yeah, it’s exactly like that. Being anxious had become my norm, so I didn’t realize how much damage I was doing to myself and the people around me that I cared about.

So your “secret” to getting better was to have all of your coping mechanisms fail? You’re saying you had to hit rock bottom before you would accept that you were your own problem, and it’s not until then that you stopped blaming your issues on others? You know, as secrets go, that kind of sucks.

Originally, I thought that I had lost everything when I got to this point, but that is not correct. That was the effect of what happened, not the cause. Being forced to abandon your comfort zone and forced to deal with reality on your own with no possibility of retreat caused me to confront the problem head on. I could no longer deny the problem; pretend it did not exist, or lie to myself thinking that it was somebody else’s fault. In essence, the coping mechanisms failed and I had to deal with the root cause.

Until this point, I had thought that it was everybody else’s problem rather than mine. This was a very logical conclusion because:

  1. hyper-arousal was normal for me
  2. I was scared of anything new
  3. I was self-centered (Narcissistic)
  4. I had a negative viewpoint of life

To me, I expected others to conform to my wishes and desires without having to conform to theirs. Yes, this is where entitlement came for me. I don’t know exactly where it came in, but eventually, I just had this mindset that others should conform to me instead of the other way around.

Because I was so scared of the real world, I ended up in my own fantasy world which I built up to be a comfort zone from reality. I won’t go into the details, as that’s irrelevant to the topic, but the point that I want to make is that this retreat into a fantasy world is normal for anxiety sufferers. The inability to deal with reality causes this retreat. For me, my retreat was into videogames.

I don’t advocate the use of coping mechanisms as I think they hurt more than help. This includes not only games and fantasies, but smoking and alcohol as well. Both have been shown to reduce anxiety temporarily, but the underlying root issues are still there, and the person hasn’t learned how to deal and confront them. It just prolongs the suffering, as games did for me.

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Changing Mindsets

Once you accept that change is needed, and that it is in fact “you” that needs to change, the question becomes WHAT? What is it that needs to change?

Alright, remember how I said that there’s no secret to getting better? Well that’s not entirely true. Here’s the real secret:

Loving yourself is not about your weight, clothes, fitness level, job, relationship, or anything like that.

Sure, making improvements in all of those areas may help, but at their core those are all external items.

It’s like the saying about putting lipstick on a pig – changing those things may make someone feel better temporarily, but it doesn’t change the underlying issue. The temporary high will fade, and you won’t be any happier.

Real change needs to begin within.

love-yourself-15

A lack of self-love if normally accompanied by a number of negative mindsets, and it is those that need to change. Some of the most common are avoidance, all or nothing thinking and rumination (dwelling on the past):

For my buddy Gandalf, learning to love himself was all about changing mindsets.

Once I started seeing a psychologist we worked on three items simultaneously – self-esteem, anxiety, and negativity. Working on all three simultaneously really helped as each one is interlinked and I couldn’t just work on one and not the others.

When I worked on my self-esteem, I had to look at myself with my view, and then from other people’s view. After several sessions, it started to dawn on me that my negativity led to a distorted view of who I was. It also lead to the discovery of “The Critic”, or the little voice in my head that was always telling me that I was no good, or bad, or awful in everything that I tried to do. Once you discover that, you can now start to silence that voice and eventually, eliminate it.

I worked on negativity by writing down the first thought that came into my head about a situation and then examining why I thought like that. These are the automatic thoughts an anxiety suffer has. For example, when I sent an email, I’d expect to receive a reply within 15 minutes, and if I didn’t, I’d get anxious. I found out I had an automatic thought that if I didn’t get an email within 15 minutes, then the other person didn’t like me. What I didn’t realize at first is that this is only the first automatic thought in a series of thoughts that cascade down. I would then think that if that other person didn’t like me, then nobody likes me and that I will never be liked by anybody. This is the “All or nothing” cognitive distortion that anxiety suffers have.

There are others as well, and getting to the heart of them is like peeling the layer off of an onion. To deal with these cognitive distortions, I had to analyze each one and logically determine why it was not true. Once I did this, the automatic thoughts became less frequent and eventually stopped altogether. This also helped with silencing “The Critic” and with my anxiety.

Anxiety was the easiest and most difficult, to deal with. The cure is simple, I just had to face my fears. The problem was *everything* was scary. My psychologist had me expose myself to something I found scary, but not *that* scary. We made a list and evaluated items from 1 to 10 as to how scary it was to me and we started off at the low end of the scale (1 and 2) and then work my way up to the 9s and 10s. Every week I had to go and do at least one of them. The next week, we would talk about why I was scared and if my fears matched reality. It was this talking that helped reduce and eliminate the anxiety, because it lead to the method of logically analyzing and assessing how scared I should be in situations, and the same process used for negativity was used here too as the same automatic thoughts came up again.

There are situations I should still be scared of (like a bear chasing me), but most situations I shouldn’t be (like thinking about being chased by a bear in an upcoming camping trip). The realization that anxiety is all about future items that usually won’t come to pass significant diminished the power anxiety had over me.

One item needed for this is dedication. Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to see this through and continuously try to improve every week. I needed to put lots of effort into getting better, which is where hitting rock bottom helped. I knew the problem was me, and only I could make myself better.

I learned strategies to combat my anxiety instead of just coping with it. I needed to get to the root of my anxiety and fight it instead of cope with it by avoiding or controlling it.

Everything else fell into place after learning these simple strategies, like dominoes. The rest became easy, but still took effort. Things like exercising, eating healthy, sleeping for 7 to 8 hours a night, being more assertive, outgoing, and empathic to others was easier to accomplish once the foundation was built.

One last item is that mindfulness really helped quite the thoughts in my head, and it was the last piece of the puzzle. With that, I can now quiet the thoughts in my mind and relax almost on demand, which I thought was impossible just a short time ago.

So there you have it. The “secret” to love yourself you have to start to learn which behaviors and thinking patterns are toxic to you, so that you can recognize them and start to fight back against them. But secret doesn’t mean shortcut, and none of these things are easy. But they ARE worth it. No matter who you are, YOU are worth it.

self love

Life Without Self-Love – Part 2

Posted in Anger, Anxiety, Avoidance, Blaming, Depression, Happiness, Hope, Identity, Learned Helplessness, Love, Narcissism, Relationship Help, Relationships, Self-Improvement, Self-Love by

inner-peace

Of all the things you can do, loving yourself is perhaps the most important. It is probably THE key to happiness, affecting both personal happiness and happiness in a relationship. Unfortunately we don’t all love ourselves.

Over the next few posts I will be examining a lack of self-love, anxiety and depression with the help of my buddy Gandalf who has been down the rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and self-loathing. He struggled for years with self-love, and found that anxiety was central to his problem (as anxiety disorders break down the very fabric of what is needed for loving both yourself and those around you).

One important note about my buddy’s situation is that at the time he didn’t know he had a problem. For him, this was just how he was, how he behaved and how he viewed the world. It was horribly broken and unhealthy, but it wasn’t until he hit rock bottom and was able to get better that he was able to look back and see how much damage he was doing to both himself and those around him.

In my last post I talked about how the breakdown of self-love impacts day to day life. In this post, I want to focus on how it impacts relationships (like my last post, Gandalf’s thoughts and comments are in blue).

Selfish Love

In relationships, we all start out with a selfish approach. There is always something (or multiple things) we are hoping to get out of the relationship, and when looking for a prospective partner we are interested in finding someone who will meet our needs.

Over time though, for the relationship to succeed and/or flourish, it has to stop being about our own needs and wants. Although our partners are separate and distinct from us, their needs and wants have to be just as important as our own. We need to shift from thinking in terms of “me”, to “we”.

When someone doesn’t love themself this mental shift becomes a challenge, and often love continues to be all about you.

It was early in my therapy and my psychologist had me list out what I thought was the perfect partner. After going through that list with him he said one word that I’ll never forget. It was “selfish”.

My mindset at the time was that I wanted and needed loving, but I didn’t think that I needed to give any love back. It never even occurred to me that I should even give any love back. To me, my thinking was that it was their duty to give me love and that I didn’t have to return anything back because just the act of loving me should be enough for them.

There was no empathy for anybody else. My mind only focused on me. It is known as the Narcissus Paradox, where it appears that I would be thinking of others, but really, my mindset was only focused on me and my needs. I was nice only to the point of where I could get other people to show me affection. My thinking was only on how to get other people to show me love, and not on how to love other people.

This leads to passive aggressive behavior and giving people the silent treatment because I didn’t understand how to deal with conflict or how to get what I wanted from other people.

This focus on “me” is described by Daniel Smith (Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety) as follows:

An anxiety sufferer can feel as if he too is imprisoned in his own mind, but with the demonic twist that his mind can think of nothing but itself. Anxious thoughts are radically personal thoughts. Their central concern is what affects you, what threatens you, what you need, you regret, you dread, you fear.

Anxiety is a condition of near-total self-absorption, made only worse by the fact that the sufferer typically realizes that he is being self-absorbed and grieves over his sad inability to see past himself.

Relationship Impacts

For my buddy Gandalf, anxiety and a lack of self-love prevented him from being in any romantic relationships for a long time. He’s now in a much better place now, and is in the first real serious relationship of his life. While talking about relationships I asked if he knew “why” he had never been able to be in a relationship. I think his response speaks volumes on how anxiety and a lack of self-love can damage relationships.

For me, there were several factors that prevented me from getting into a romantic relationship:

  1. Fantasies. I didn’t know what being normal was, and that goes for relationships too. My expectations and reality were very far apart. There was no way that reality could match my fantasy, so I would always be disappointed
  2. Avoidance. I avoided anything that was scary, so I’d avoid talking to people. I couldn’t talk to others, unless it was about my interests, in which you just couldn’t shut me up. This all or nothing type of talking really turns people off of talking to you. I would never ask how the other person is doing. Basically I had no empathy for another person
  3. Expectations. I expected that I had to do nothing in a relationship, so I’d do no work in the relationship. Even if there was a woman that I was interested in, I expected her to do all the work, like introducing herself to me and, well, everything else in the relationship. I expected that she do all the work and that I had to do nothing. This came from the avoidance and learned helplessness behaviors, plus my sense of entitlement
  4. Negativity. Not much to say about this except that a negative perspective is not conducive to building a long term and lasting relationship. Also, the constant doubt and insecurity from the negativity didn’t help either
  5. Empathy. When trying to engage a woman in conversation, there was no emotional connection, or empathy, between myself and the woman. It would be just a complete and total physical attraction and the arousal response would take over.
  6. I was also always scanning the other person for emotional displays, but I would only focus on the ones that affected me and I’d usually place negative meanings to it (e.g. “She just yawned, therefore I must be boring her.”)

The end result is the lady would need to do all the work to start the relationship and keep it going. This is not only unrealistic, but the real question is why (would she)? Why would any lady put the time and effort into a guy who didn’t show affection back? This is where I was and why I never had success in relationships.

Even for friends and family relationships, some of the above played into those relationships too. Except I didn’t have the sexual fantasy, and without that, the other items became bearable enough to suppress my anxiety and actually form a friendship. Even then, it was hard.

I would never show who I really was because I hated, or loathed, myself. So I always changed and became what my friends wanted. It was not so much as showing facets of a diamond but burying the diamond in the ground and showing an amethyst instead.

I so desperately wanted to be accepted, receive affection, and be with others that I would suppress who I truly was. The real fear that I had was that if they saw the real me, they would reject me and I’d lose them. So, yeah, it was mostly fear of rejection and loss, and I felt this all the time.

I recently read that people who suffer from anxiety disorders cannot engage the pre-frontal cortex part of their brain, which is where the higher processing functions are (empathy, emotional regulation, etc.) This makes complete sense to me as this is what I felt.

Being with a friend or lover must feel comfortable, safe, secure, welcoming, and relaxed. When I was suffering from anxiety, I felt threatened, insecure, rejected, and stressed when I was with another person. This was all in my mind, as I was the one who made being with another person like this.

Once I changed my perception of being with people to be non-threatening and reduce my anxiety, then I was able to relax, feel comfortable around people and enjoy their presence.

I’m now thinking that anxiety and the related disorders are the number one killer of relationships. I have no proof, but anxiety is completely counter to the personality qualities needed for a long term stable relationship.

Reduction of Intimacy

One of the ways anxiety damages relationships is through the erosion of intimacy.

I found a great article describing how anxiety damages a person’s sex drive. The article states:

when you have anxiety, it’s not uncommon to also have a low libido. Your sex drive is directly affected by the way you feel, and anxiety is the type of condition that can make it hard to find your partner or the idea of lovemaking to be arousing.

Intimacy is one of the things that defines a relationship, so when sexual issues arise they tend to cause tension in other areas of the relationship. When you combine this with avoidance, you have an issue that can quickly grow out of hand, resulting in a growing dissatisfaction with the relationship.

If the anxious person doesn’t recognize that the sexual issues are a direct result of the anxiety, the anxious mind can read meaning into this that can lead to doubts about the relationship itself.

“I don’t feel attractive or attracted to my partner, what does that mean? Does that mean I don’t love him/her? Does that mean there is something wrong with the relationship?”

The Four Step Dance

My buddy Gandalf didn’t have experience with relationships until after he learned to address his anxiety and love himself, so instead of him I will turn to Daniel Smith to describes this pattern of how anxious thought damages relationships.

He describes this as follows:

  1. Mounting Uncertainty. Anxiety leads someone to question the feelings they have for their partner. Maybe it’s not actually love. Maybe it was just infatuation, desperation or loneliness. Maybe this relationships is not what they really want
  2. Withdrawl. Due to doubts about the relationship, you withdraw from the relationship emotionally, and stop putting any effort in. Or worse, you may become outright neglectful or hostile in a passive aggressive way of expressing unhappiness in the relationship.
  3. Blowback. The behavior displayed while withdrawing causes the relationship to start to break down. Arguments start, and the environment starts to become toxic for both partners
  4. Retreat. Realizing the damage that is being done, the anxious partner starts trying to repair the damage.

This process repeats, as the anxiety leads the relationship to continually go through cycles that do more and more damage to the relationships each time.

Healthy Love

My buddy Gandalf had it right when he said:

Being with a friend or lover must feel comfortable, safe, secure, welcoming, and relaxed.

Your relationship should be a safe haven. Sure, you will have your squabbles and your issues – nothing is ever perfect. But if you are in a committed relationship you should know that you will always be there for each other. You should know that your needs and wants in life are important to your partner (as theirs are to you), and that you will always work to get through things together. There is a level of peace and comfort that comes with knowing those things.

Anxiety and a lack of self-love breaks that down. Life becomes living with stress and doubting yourself constantly. Even the strongest of relationships will be challenged by anxiety and a lack of self-love. After all, how can you ever truly let go and love someone else when you don’t even love yourself?

Next up, how my buddy turned his life around and was able to move forward with a healthy sense of self (and in turn be able to build a healthy relationship).