You gotta authenticate the positive
It struck me that my blogjune posts so far sound a little skewed towards the negative:
- I don’t know what to write
- Confessions of a reluctant blogger
- High anxiety that I thought it’s time to to something about it. I received some lovely feedback from yesterday’s post about my experience learning to manage anxiety and in turn helping my son do the same for himself. There are so many of us out there who experience anxiety. As an oddball bit of reassurance, I often think of the construction worker from Futurama’: ‘We’re all scared. It’s the human condition. Whys do you thinks I puts on this tough-guy facade?’
The more we talk about it, the less stigma and the more support there will be. This was certainly true in my case: I don’t think I would have coped nearly so effectively had it not been for a colleague several years prior telling me about her recovery from a debilitating anxiety illness, involved her family starting a support group for others in the same situation. Through the process of identifying what was going on and my road to recovery, I thought of her many times. About how I’d always regarded her as such a calm and self-assured person, and how I came to understand why this was so. And how if she could do it, then so could I.
A couple of months after I quit my PhD, I was blindsided when a coworker at my temp job described me as a calm hippie chick. Never, ever would it have occurred to me to think of myself as that. After all, this was a time I couldn’t foresee an end to the muscle twitches, phantom itchiness and constant waves of dread. Sometimes whistling a happy tune pays off.
Which brings me to a tip I’d love to share. Next time you’re changing your password at work/study, set it to a short positive mantra. Think about how many times you log in each day: for many of us, that’s a hell of potential opportunities to say something encouraging or give a reminder to be positive. Speaking from experience, there’s nothing quite like being forced to type something like BeCool or ImHappy or ItsAllGood when I’m feeling stressed and cranky or discouraged.
Of course, follow the commonsense rules of mixing it up with capitals, numerals, special characters and seemingly unrelated words. If you’re stuck, there’s always C@lmH1ppyCh1ck:)