ACTIVITY MERELY CREATES DISTRACTION
Without exaggeration, there is not a single time (during the night or day) where I don’t have to purposely keep my mind active. Perhaps the only exception could be when I am in a deep sleep, and not dreaming.
I have absolutely no choice but to keep my mind active by learning new things (such as languages and how to play musical instruments), reading books, writing material, doing artwork and solving puzzles. If my mind stops doing these activities it purely and simply cannot function, in any way whatsoever.
This probably sounds very strange to read, and a fair few of my previous therapists didn’t understand either. It was suggested to me that all I needed to do were daily breathing exercises. However I only find those effective whenever I feel mere stress.
I experience stress from time to time after challenging days with challenging events. But what affects me far more frequently is anxiety from the never ending flashbacks which constantly go through my mind. When I experience these flashbacks they’re extremely intense and very emotionally confusing. I also have absolutely no control over them, and whenever I have a few minutes of calmness I dread the upcoming moment of yet another flashback arriving.
With the immense level of anxiety that I experience from all this, breathing exercises are not strong enough to help me most of the time.
However there are certain textbook rules that I find I have to outright break in order for me to feel grounded, settled and calm. The first one being that I cannot possibly sleep in complete darkness and silence. Whenever I attempt to do so, all that happens is that my mind becomes fully awake and alert with all of those irritating flashbacks (of positive or negative experiences). Therefore I will toss and turn all night without getting a single second of sleep until sunrise. Though I have found that if I focus my mind on the sound of classical music playing, along with having some soft flickering light in my bedroom (from a television screen with the sleep timer turned on), my mind gets distracted from the flashbacks and I fall asleep very quickly. I also remain deeply asleep until the morning.
Another textbook rule that I have to break to enable me to fill grounded is to intensely involve myself in learning. This helps me so much whenever my mind needs to be distracted from deeply reliving a painful past experience. As I’m constantly experiencing flashbacks (of both positive and negative events), I have to engage myself in these learning activities at least three times a day. The things that I study in order to relax are languages other than English, as well as learning how to play my favourite musical instruments (preferably those of which I listen to whilst falling asleep).
Many people (including a few therapists) haven’t understood this, and have falsely assumed that it’s merely because I’m an overachiever. As well, due to the fact that I use the action of learning as a distraction, I always need to make sure that it’s to a level which challenges me a little. If I continue learning something at a level that is too comfortable, the activity isn’t strong enough to take my mind off my other anxiety issues. But some therapists have mistaken this as me overextending myself and having a performance anxiety disorder.
Nowadays I’ve grown to accept that I have some rare medical conditions which are currently not understood very well. So it’s inevitable that there will be a significant number of moments when I have to go against the textbook rules of psychology. I cannot deny that there are a lot of times when I experience feelings of being “broken” and “completely misunderstood” as a result of this.
However I do have therapists I’m now working with who truly believe and fully empathise with what I tell them. As well, they encourage me to trust what I know about myself, and to understand that I’m not like most cases. Yet me and my therapists do work especially hard with identifying the exact feeling of knowing when an exercise helps me or not. If we need to find an undocumented solution to a problem, my therapists and I work together through a process of trial and error. This I am pleased to say has proven itself to be a great success!