Qualms & Wires

Ever since lockdown began, I've noticed people sharing their progress on various projects & interests - be it sporting, painting, cooking, etc. Because nobody asked, I thought I'd share a bit about my own little lockdown project: finally trying to address the feelings and symptoms of anxiety I've been experiencing for a while. 

My strategy for doing this has been to put myself on a self-run 'course' (I even gave it a title - if not a very original one - 'Managing Anxiety 101') consisting of content drawn from a variety of platforms (books, videos, social media, etc.). Since I spent most of the lockdown trying to combine a job with 24/7 childcare, I haven't been able to invest massively in terms of time or concentration, which is why it's a pretty lightweight 'curriculum' (much as I'd love to get stuck into the works of Jung or Kierkegaard, it's just not realistic for me at the moment) and it's very much still a work in progress, so I may come back to this list and update it.  

Managing any mental health issue is a long journey and there are no quick fixes of course, but just starting to proactively work on it has already helped me a lot. So here's a brief compendium of some of the resources I've found useful so far, and some of my reflections, in the hope that it might be of some interest or value to anyone experiencing similar issues, or who knows someone who is. 

The Chimp Paradox, by Dr. Steve Peters

If, like me, you're allergic to anything that smacks of new-agey spiritual mumbo jumbo and prefer an approach rooted in cold, hard clinical science - I'd recommend this. It boils down the workings of the brain to a super simplified model (basically imagining there's a chimp in there with you - though there is a bit more to it than that) and applies it to a broad range of areas in life. It's pretty general, and not specifically aimed at coping with anxiety, so I imagine it could help with other issues as well. The metaphor feels a little forced at times (like when you're given the choice between arm-wrestling your chimp or feeding it bananas) but for me that's part of the book's colour and charm. The general idea might sound a bit comical and cartoonish, but for someone in the early stages of addressing mental distress - the process of identifying the negative, critical & destructive voice in your head and envisioning it as a distinct entity with its own traits, objectives & motivations (which may have gone a bit haywire but are basically perfectly legitimate) can be a real breakthrough, as it was in my case. It also helps dissociate 'you' from your anxiety/depression/addiction or whatever it may be. At some point the book does deviate a bit too much into classic self-help territory for my taste, with it's very convoluted step by step plans for 'success' which make some rather fruitless attempts at reinventing the wheel. For me by far the most interesting was the mind model, but also the final chapters in which I finally learned - at the age of 33 - what 'doing your best' actually means (spoiler: it doesn't mean doing the best your could ever possibly manage. Was that obvious to everyone except me?). That was another breakthrough for me - because when you start trying to apply this approach to everything in your life - from the most significant to the most trivial of actions and decisions - you've made a significant step towards the kind of self-acceptance that can finally get the inner critic to shut up, or at least pipe down for a minute... 

Owning It, by Caroline Foran

I first discovered Foran through her podcast about anxiety (which shares the title of this book), which is also a great resource. The book calls itself 'Your Bullshit-Free Guide to Living with Anxiety' and, like the podcast, adopts a very informal, conversational tone, which makes it very accessible. It's short and not very big on detail - but it's great as a general introduction and also provides some useful practical tools. Foran also shares a lot of her own experiences with anxiety, adding to the personal feel of her content. Foran's formula for managing anxiety is very much based on practical understanding and techniques rooted in the present - especially Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, mindfulness, etc. She seems to take a dim view of the idea that exploring your past can yield vital insights about the roots of your current responses, which is where I would strongly disagree with her. Also, for a book that markets itself as 'bullshit-free' there is a slightly too much 'alternative' stuff in there for my taste - e.g. bio-energy, acupuncture - but each to their own. My only other note for her is she talks way WAY too fast (definitely an Irish thing) - I got the audiobook and found myself having to slow down the playback speed considerably (But I might well have a slower mental processor than most). Overall I'd probably say skip the book and go straight to the podcast, which explores a broad range of aspects of anxiety in much more depth through conversations Foran has with guests and experts (but still frequently comes back to basics, so you can pick it up anywhere). I'm going to go ahead and recommend particularly the episodes with neuroscientists, clinical psychologists & the like - who bring the heavy-duty brain theory and big words, because that's my jam, but there are also some interesting personal testimonials. Here it is on spotify.  and you can tip it through Patreon if so inclined.

Méditer Jour Apres Jour, by Christophe André

If you like the idea of mindfulness and meditation but struggle with actually practicing it, this book is likely to help (although I'm afraid I don't think it's available in any language other than French - though some of his other books are). What I really appreciate about his approach is that it engages all the senses - it uses illustration to brilliant effect and has accompanying audio. Even if you ignore the exercises, André's book is an immersive and moving read, and just allowing yourself to be transported to the scenes he evokes is incredibly calming. 

Online Resources

Therapy in a Nutshell. If videos are more your thing, I really recommend therapist Emma McAdams's series on anxiety management. It provides a solid overview of the brain science stuff, as well as a range of practical tools such as grounding and relaxation exercises (beyond the usual breathe-in-breathe-out stuff). If you're short of time I can't recommend this enough - it packs in such a lot of information - both theory & practice in such a concise, easily digestible format. It's also available as a course on Udemy but as far as I can see the whole thing is available for free on her youtube channel as well. On her website there are a number of other courses available, dealing with a broad range of mental health issues. 

- Calm (the app). So far I've resisted purchasing membership which means that 99% of the content of this app is inaccessible to me, but I thought I'd mention it anyway since I've found some of the free guided meditations and stories to be very effective for relieving immediate stress and panic, and I say that as someone with a strong scepticism of guided meditations. In fact, it was only by listening to one of their free 'sleep stories' that I was able to calm down sufficiently to fall asleep, the night they shut down the schools back in March (largely thanks to the soothing, soporific quality of Stephen Fry's narration).

- TikTok. There are a huge number of therapists and coaches on tiktok (mostly younger ones, unsurprisingly) and some of the content is actually worthwhile. Granted, it's pretty superficial stuff, but if you're short on time and would just like some food for thought or quick tips to help you out in times of stress, it's not a bad place to start. Also a good place to find evidence that others are going through similar experiences to your own - but beware of falling down dark rabbit-holes (at one point I somehow ended up on a loop of 'young teens with post-traumatic mental disorders' and it was pretty bleak stuff) or getting side-tracked by talk of chakras, third eyes and spiritual awakenings (unless that's your thing of course.)  

Honourable mentions

Here's a couple of things I read/watched a few years ago and therefore don't count as part of the current 'syllabus' but which were helpful at the time. 

- Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton - which uses the visual in a similar manner as André, but with more emphasis on actual artworks and without the meditation stuff. 

- Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig - this is no work of Shakespeare and reads a bit like someone's notebook but it's designed to be accessible and comforting to even someone feeling at their very lowest and it that sense it succeeds. 

- The School of Life. My 'Alain de Botton is THE guru and is right about everything' phase is a few years behind me now, so I now take this content with a sizeable pinch of salt because once you've watched enough of them, you start to identify that some of the theories are rather over-simplistic. But of course to deal with vast emotional topics in the space of a short video necessarily requires quite some simplifying. If you're a fan of animation like me, you'll also enjoy the visual side of this content - they work with a range of animators so each video has its own style which is refreshing. 

What I didn't find helpful: Most Ted Talks, instagram therapists who share 'inspirational quotes' as the bulk of their content (I'm rather horrified at how many apparently qualified professionals are doing this) and use the hashtag #truthbomb. I would also advise steering clear of any self-help books which claim to give you any kind of results in a specified number of days (e.g. '21 days to resilience' etc.). Also particularly unhelpful is anything that starts explaining to you all the terrible thinga stress does to your body (Plenty of well-meaning resources for dealing with Covid-related stress/anxiety seem to do this, completely unaware of how utterly stupid it is to give already stressed-out people one more thing to stress about.) 

If you're short of time and sometimes motivation, a way that is helping me stay on track and keep the momentum going is by treating this like an academic course and therefore going through some formalities to feel that I am actively 'working' on it. For me that involves making copious notes, reviewing them regularly (ish), trying to do practical exercises throughout the day, actively monitoring my thoughts and feelings, and keeping a log of my progress - but everyone is different and this was just what was helpful for me. Note-taking is particularly valuable because it helps me to understand what I'm reading/listening to, makes it more likely I'll remember it, helps me structure my thoughts, and provides space for reflection. It also means you end up creating a resource made up entirely of things that resonated with you, which you can go back to at any time. The benefit of a self-administered course is you can tailor it entirely - from the reading list to the homework - according to your own needs and preferences. 

Health warning: I embarked on this project partly in a bid to avoid having therapy, working on the assumption that each therapist has their own ideas and theories which they will simply project onto you, so if you just familiarise yourself with those notions you can apply them to yourself without the need for a therapist. This is, of course, an outrageous underestimation of what therapy is about and how therapists work to help you get to the root of your issues. I've since accepted that there is only so much you can do by yourself and I strongly adhere to the idea that everyone can benefit from therapy (I just have difficulty applying that principle in my own case, for some reason). 

That being said, there are a lot of things you can do for yourself - such as understanding what anxiety is, where it comes from, how it affects you, and familiarising yourself with various techniques for coping with it, both reactively and proactively. But anyone who suffers from a persistent mental health issue that interferes with living their day-to-day life or seriously impacts their mood and wellbeing will eventually find there is a limit to what they can do to self-treat and self-medicate, and that's the moment to seek external help, which is what I'm now doing as a next step on this path.      

Ok that's it. Would be very happy to hear any further recommendations, or ardent disagreement with any of the above.