Day 31 NaBloPoMo: Last I’ll ever see of 2010- gotta let go!

There’s one habit that’s easy to give up- the previous year, meaning it’s written date. You just get used to writing it after dickering about for 3 months with 2009, relax for 9 months and then it’s time to change again! Why aren’t other habits so easy to break?

Scratching!

I think I’m well on my way to trichotillomania right now as I can’t seem to stop scratching my head! I got sunburnt about 6 weeks ago on the top of my head, making it itch and peel in tiny dandruffy flakes. Then it got burned again about 2 weeks later- and now I keep lightly scratching it. Lots of people have the “head-scratch” habit and I know mine isn’t too bad, because I scratch or rub so lightly it is a pleasant sort of tickle. Others scratch until scabs form and they scratch those off- ouchhh!!!

How to break habits, hmm…? [she says, scratching her head] Well, having a background in that sort of thing, I’d tell myself to first make doing the habit thing very noticeable. Now that wouldn’t be by scratching harder, because that would just make my scalp a gory mess! What I need to do is make the movement of my left hand up to do the scratching much more noticeable (so I say to my self “you daft bugga, that looks ridiculous, don’t do it!”). So maybe I will put a big awkward bangle or bunch of little jingle bells on my wrist?? Or maybe there is something else I can do to break the habit?

Perhaps I should force myself to type on the lappy with my left hand, so it’s occupied? That sounds good!

He hasn't got much to scratch!

OK- maybe I’ll get sick of that. I need some alternatives for when I’m off the laptop (that can’t be a lot of the day, can it??). If I’m reading a book, perhaps I should hold it with my left hand? Maybe that would work- I’ll trial it. What about when I’m in the car waiting at the lights? Hmm…can’t really do anything that would interfere with driving- I’m outta clues on that one- any help out there, guys? I think I could safely keep my drink in my left hand when hanging about with friends, but I should wear a bangle to remind me of that one. Would there be any other occasion when I’d be filling my attention with the scratching? I know I should have a few more alternatiives. Meanwhile I’ll get on with the stuff I’ve listed and maybe that will take away the habit in all the other settings just by generalising- but I wouldn’t rely on it.

It’s now 40 years since I applied this strategy to breaking a habit for the first time! I hadn’t even studied psychology at the time, but a psychologist showed me how to do it without the fancy language. And it worked!

I was getting panic attacks while I was waiting for my school matriculation results- I think we finished exams at the end of October and we had to wait until the first week in January to receive the results in the mail. I had such a build-up of free-floating anxiety that it started to break through in all sorts of situations, much to my great alarm! I thought I was having a heart attack, my heart beat so fast! Anyway, I must have started to associate it with being in situations where I felt I couldn’t get away without making a huge “scene” because I started to panic at crowded swimming pools and beaches, in lifts and large rooms I hadn’t been inside before. I even started to panic in stairwells when there were other people going up and down- thinking I might trip and fall! When I went to enrol at university, I started to panic if I didn’t sit on the end of a row in lecture theatres- I was getting into a terrible lather!

So I trotted off to see the university counsellor. It was sooo simple- he taught me progressive relaxation, so I knew how great it was to feel relaxed. Then he started walking around the campus with me to places where I might have panicked- stairwells, banks, cafes, lifts and empty lecture theatres. He got me to describe how I felt and what I thought I would do in these situations. Then he’d get me to recall the feeling of relaxation and concentrate on getting that. As I was like everyone else who learns to panic inappropriately, naturally I found it very difficult to relax when I wanted to just hop into the Tardis and disappear! The alternative he taught me was to just go with the panic and make myself stay instead of walking out. We agreed that the feelings of panic were just physical things happening in my body and that they weren’t signs of a terrible illness- they were just feelings. Therefore it was OK if my heart wanted to go at a million miles an hour for a while, or if I hyperventilated or I broke out in a huge sweat- it would eventually stop and I’d be back to normal again, relaxing with the learned technique.

To cut a long story short, I mainly relied on “staying with it”. After all, I wasn’t going to run out of my first lectures and miss everything! What a waste of waiting for those fantastic results I achieved, getting me into med school at the top of the list! I was on the road to my dreams! So I stayed in those lifts and stairwells and lecture theatres and I let my stupid heart race, my palms sweat and my lungs over-exert themselves. I told them to behave themselves and stop bothering me. I told them they couldn’t hurt me; I was far too tough! And it worked. In a few weeks I had pretty good control, although I still hated the racing heart effect, but after 3 months I “suddenly” found that all the panics had gone away! What a relief- plus it gave me a feeling of victory over the automatic but inconvenient  things my brain told my body to do on the basis of rumour!

Since that time I have been able to remain calm in most unexpected situations. When shit happens- eg. the photocopier catches fire or someone collapses, I just barge in and deal with it. I don’t hang about waiting to see how I feel about the situation- my feelings don’t matter to a fire or a person who has keeled over- I JUST DO IT!

So- I have to apply this knowledge to my head scratching behaviour. I may hit some obstacles when I try, but I know how to put extra strategies in place to overcome those. Right after this blog post, I will put something very noticeable on my left wrist and go for it!!

Pity I hadn’t learnt how to START a new GOOD habit all that time ago- I’m still struggling with myself about starting a regular exercise program. I’ve started and “failed” many times and I’m at a loss on what strategy to try next, except have someone else hold me accountable. But that involves a whole public health program, so it’s a little way off just yet! LOL!

NB. I am NOT a professional. There is some professional advice here.

Day 16 NaBloPoMo: Dealing with Xmas emotions

Several people I know have talked about Dialectical Behaviour Therapy recently. It doesn’t really matter what the technique is, only that it is designed to help those who have strong emotional reactions to situations which leave them hurt and upset for a long time afterwards.

 

Christmas is traditionally a bad time for people with mental illness or emotional and personality disturbances. This is usually because Christmas has been the time when families are meant to get together as a whole to try to demonstrate to each other that are a loving unit. Many of us are brought up to think that harmony is the norm and we feel guilty or disappointed when our get-togethers are less than satisfying. Other people think that Christmas OWES them something, somehow and when it isn’t all cupcakes and sparkles they are hurt and let down that “they” didn’t make them happy.

 

I remember Christmas as a pretty mild occasion- as the only child of older parents with no other family for hundreds of kilometres. We usually had a tree collected from the bush- a she-oak was the most common. We decorated it and I made decorations for it as I got older. Under the tree was a small pile of presents and my only complaint was that I never really got what I wanted and nothing seemed to be “grand” enough- I’m still rather greedy!! My parents were actually trying to keep the “tall poppy” down to size by not giving me a huge pile of presents like the streotyped “spoiled only child”. This didn;’t help me at the time and I still like to get a small pile of presents now!

 

However, Christmas was not a time of conflict and high emotion. It was predictable and calm and we got to eat yummy things. Mum made fantastic Christmas cakes and home-made icecreams and we always bought some expensive stone fruit to eat which was off the menu the rest of the year. There were no special rituals in which I had to participate under threat of death or worse- like the kids over the road had to go to Midnight Mass or whatever, even though the whole family was non-practising Catholics! There were so many yelling matches as the kids got older, trying to get out of going to church! My father was a church-goer, but he never insisted we go on Christmas Day, but sometimes we did for the nice singing and the lovely decorations in the church. For the kids over the road and some of my current friends, Christmas is a FORCED social confinement with people they would rather not spend time with.

 

So the setting for Christmas emotional difficulties comes from early childhood and people continue to repeat those patterns because they are tied to “tradition”. They seem to be blackmailed by the other members of the family’s expectations and are unable to break the cycle. Cooped up together every Christmas for years and years, emotions become more focused and magnified, until some families come to blows- or even shots! When they talk to each other they inevitably go over the same old ground which provoked trouble the previous year, the emotion racks up in the closed environment and under the influence of alcohol and insufficient sleep. Younger members of the family are added each year and usually include babies and toddlers who are naturally unable to control their emotions. This sets the adults off as well until there are three-ring circuses wherever you look (or hear, if you are neighbours!).

 

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy lets people address the different aspects of themselves and their social situations within their families, making it more obvious how futile and over-the-top certain reactions are. People can then learn to reconstruct the habitual “conversations” they get caught up in and go in different directions that they can choose. It is amazing how differently you can interact with your family members if you just don’t “take the bait” which set you off into a mad rant last year. With experience and skill you may come to choose NOT to mix with certain people at Christmas, or to see them in small chunks that you can control, eg. having a picnic away from the household with just your brothers and sisters. Eventually you can use your emotions constructively and regulate how much you react when “baited” topics come up. When you truly “own” your reactions and stop blaming them on others (they are inside your head), you can be the best social engineer in your family. It’s interesting to see whether anyone notices – maybe years later- and attributes the change to you.

 

NB. I am NOT a therapist and have little knowledge of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in practice. If I am grossly out of line, please educate me. I am merely relating my interpretation of what people have told me about their experiences in DBT.