I was parked on the street in front of a cute little bungalow about to meet my real estate agent one fine summer afternoon. We were scouting out homes for a pending move my husband and I had decided to make in an effort to downsize. I was just swinging open the driver’s side car door when I saw a blue blur of a car race past me, ripping it right off the hinges as it went. Had I been swinging my legs to get out, they would have been gone too, along with the car door. Fortunately, that did not happen.
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The worry box technique is a simple skill used to help you manage when and how you worry. This sounds simplistic, and on its face it is. However, the results can truly help you place and pace worry better than simply allowing the random worries to crawl around in your head in the unending, unresolved circular pattern they tend to create.
Why Bother Using Coping Skills?
If you aren’t practicing coping skills you learn in therapy regularly while calm, there’s a good chance a skill such as deep belly breathing won’t be as effective as you’d like. When the nervous system dysregulates quickly to fight or flight, instantly really, that lets me know you may need to work on stretching the threshold for your fight or flight response, which requires practicing coping skills when calm.
Solo travel lets you wander. There is no schedule, other people’s expectations, or anything keeping you from a nap. It’s just you and time.
And even though I’m happily married, we let each other have this freedom, for many reasons.
If you have anxiety sensitivity, here are 10 factors that contribute to “Sticky Thoughts.” Sticky thoughts are the ones you just can’t shake loose. Sticky thoughts predispose your mind to anxiety and hyper-vigilance. They tend to keep you stuck in your own personal anxiety loop that is both unproductive and self-shaming. That is why learning to identify and talk back to them is critical to your good mental well being.
The 10 Sticky Thoughts Factors
- Sleep deprivation/insomnia
- Drinking alcohol
- [Some] OTC medications
- Steroids of any type, asthma meds
- Your genetic inheritance is a factor
- Any illness, a cold, for example
- Caffeine or sugar intake—notice what affects your body
- A natural cycle upon wakening that many feel as a sort of dread of the day, which lessens over the course of the day
- Hormone fluctuations
- Hyper-vigilance, or monitoring of the content of the mind is the most prevalent factor of all.
BONUS ROUND!!! Social Media! Devices! They are the trigger for so many of our sticky thoughts.
Isn’t it interesting that some of life’s most paradoxical challenges have simple solutions that are tough to execute? The takeaway? You are far more resilient than you think.
When you are stress and need some instant ways to connect to your immediate surroundings, test out a few of these 25 ways to get grounded fast. Grounding tips help you connect to the here-and-now when it feels like things are out of control.
Consider this quote from Men’s Health magazine about male depression:
The bro culture that dictates limited ways of interacting: fist bumping, shoulder punching, sports banter, and shrinking from talk that gets too real is hurting men. Being too sensitive with other males invites talk of “manning up”, or worse, causes others to shrink away from you as if you have a raging contagious case of the flu.
Would you agree that your mental health is inseparable from your physical health? That your mind and body cannot be divided? If so, why are there so many men stigmatized if they even breathe a hint of trouble on the mental health front?
I’m so sorry you’re in the midst of a bad depression episode, but here are some possibilities for you. I want you to know there is a future.
PAGE RUTLEDGE, LCSW, CHt | Couples Counseling
Tel: 910-777-7243
Offices at:
5006 Randall Parkway (close to UNCW)
Wilmington, NC 28403
Free parking at office