To ask for your resilience tips

[Ellieostomy]

How do you stop things affecting you so much mentally? For example, the outcome of a situation (being deliberately vague) not being what you want or something you need being delayed. I find when things like this happen, the feeling of disappointment/sadness lingers and even the most insignificant things can keep me up at night worrying.

does anyone have any tips on things that help with this? My dad is so positive and always has been, but his way of coping with things is with faith and mine clearly isn’t as strong!

It's so hard, I struggle with this too. Have a look at the 'let them' theory and book. Mindfulness and meditation can help, I like toni bernhardt's books. Remembering everything changes over time. I like the remindfuls cards for overthinkers and worriers.

I think you need to get used to discomfort. I heard this recommended by a psychologist. For example, give yourself two options for dinner, one you like and one you don't really like. Toss a coin to decide which you will have and accept the decision.

When life is going well, I'm grateful for it. When life is more difficult, I try to tolerate it as best I can, knowing it won't be like this for ever. I think it does help if fundamentally, deep down, you have hope / confidence that life will improve

Also, as I've got older, I've seen that we all have different challenges at different times. I have some friends who previously seemed to have a golden life, but it became more difficult later on. I struggled in my 20s but life improved in my 30s

Allow myself a rant or two or three

distract myself - exercise is great or making detailed plans for soemthing

try to turn it around somehow - bet it’s a bad company to work for , it would be a bad year to do whatever I can’t do anyway , he’s so stupid to turn me down I never realised how stupid he was before

and in the middle of the night I have pen and paper to bite down things to think about later: and then roll over andrecite something like pride and prejudice in my head - tell myself a story

At the moment I'm having to rely a lot on 'I'll think of summat'. It's a bit of a mantra.

You don't always have to like an outcome or 'be positive' about it, sometimes the thing to do is have a cry, accept it and then get thinking about how to make the best of a situation.

Some things are a step back or a kick in the bollocks. Accept, reassess, have a think what to do next, take steps starting with research. In that order.

Don't try to sort everything at once mentally or practically.

Hope things work out well xx

And never underestimate the power of some exercise, whatever you can do. Really great for clearing your thoughts.

Some reading/ted talks/podcasts to check out -

Carol Dweck (growth mindset)
Brene Brown
The daily Stoic
The chimp paradox

I think the point you make is a really important one — that discomfort or unease is ok, and can and should be sat with, rather than seen as some kind of terrifying ordeal that needs to be batted away in a panic. But I don’t think you need to needlessly make yourself eat things you don’t like to practice! Life will give you other small opportunities to sit with discomfort on a daily basis without having to inflict disliked food on yourself for no reason!

I like to think about being hit by a bus.

No, I didn't get the job, but had I got the job I might have been hit by a bus on the way to work. I'll never know. I do know that I'm safe right now.

I used this a lot when I had a terminally ill relative - yes, three months is shit, but they could be hit by a bus in that time, so let's not mourn until I actually need to mourn.

If I feel really sad, I allocate sad time, like 30 mins at 8pm. I won't let myself think of the bad thing until then. By the time 8pm comes around, I've normally coped well enough that I don't want to actually think about the sad thing and choose to keep blocking it out.

In the middle of the night, I tell myself that if I'm not back asleep in 15 minutes, I must get up and do something shit, like 100 sit ups. I don't want to do that so it normally helps me fall back to sleep.

Exercise helps too. Running so fast I can't keep my thoughts.

Breathing exercises, learning that taking time to calmly think before reacting is not a weakness, learning to "box up" situations that are out with my control and focus on the positives in life, no matter how small they may be.

During some of my worst days the little positive might have been a simple thing like noticing and appreciating a pretty sun beam or a lone flower blooming in a sea of concrete.
Changing your thought processes can take time, but works wonders for me.

As another poster has mentioned too, allowing myself time to feel "bad" emotions but not allowing myself to wallow in them. That might mean forcing myself to go out for a walk, to meet up with friends, to do a hobby etc.

Thank you all for your tips, I’m going to look into them. My dad is one of the ‘think of the worst thing that could happen and you’ll realise it’s not that bad’ kind of people and I’d love to be that positive, but I really struggle!

i’m also very aware that my eldest is a worrier and he’s only young so I’d like to teach him ways to cope with things. I definitely agree about getting used to discomfort, but it’s more the situations when something negatively impacts you, but in the grand scheme of things you know it’s not a big deal but can’t help feeling stressed and anxious about it.

I find that my DH so totally blows everything out of proportion so I have to see the glass as half full and more else I would go totally mad. And that is no way to bring up children. Like it or not, I have to look for the positive even if it’s through gritted teeth.

Yes I tend to agree, I've never done it myself!

This is going to sound like a cheesy Instagram quote because that’s exactly what it is, but ‘success is a moment, striving is a journey. Enjoy the journey’. So basically find things to enjoy right now even if things are going wrong. I can’t always manage to do this but it does make things easier sometimes.

Following.

I have been in permanent physical discomfort for over 6 months after a health procedure failed.

So I wonder how I get used to it? Especially if I can't toss a coin and get the opposite of how I feel, 50% of the time?

It's an interesting one.

I think I'm pretty resilient - I've overcome a lot of trauma/ difficulties and am fairly good at letting things go, although I've had periods in my life where I've needed support for anxiety and depression, but they've never quite defeated me and even in the thick of them I was able to compartmentalise and still function to some degree. But I do think there's times in your life when your resilience is higher, and times when your defences are down a bit so it's harder to be resilient - and that's perfectly normal and you do need to be kind to yourself when that's the case.

I've always kept in mind that however horrific things feel at the time, I know I won't feel that bad in a week/ month/ year/ 5 years (select as appropriate to the situation). Nothing is permanent, good or bad, everything passes.

I have found reading and learning about something called the inside out/ three principles approach to mental health really helpful. Might be worth giving it a google - although there's a lot of very American, slightly woo stuff out there on it, there's also a lot of useful stuff in there.

Being comfortable with discomfort basically. Accepting you're going to have millions of thoughts a day, good, bad and indifferent - but they're just thoughts, they're not true, you don't have to believe them or give them any more significance. You also don't have to 'fix' them or change them or interrogate them - just let them pass. I sometimes think of a snowglobe - when it's all shaken up your thoughts are just swirling around in there, making it all cloudy and hard to see, and the more you try to DO something to fix it, the more you're just shaking it up more. So just put it down, let it settle, it will soon enough.

Something I'm trying to do more of too, is tell myself 'I'm really lucky and everything tends to work out for me' - trying to train my brain to look for confirmation of that! And if I am stressing or fretting over something, I'm training myself to think, 'well that was shit, but I'm generally a really lucky person and things always work out for me in the end, so this will too'. Might stray a little bit into the whole toxic positivity trope, but worth a shot? To be clear, I don't always believe this! I've had a great number of 'unlucky' and painful things happen to me, but on the other hand things HAVE generally worked out - I'm healthy, have a beautiful DC, a good husband, am gainfully employed with a roof over my head and food in my fridge - so it is true, I am lucky and things do work out for me. Takes a while to train yourself into that way of thinking but then when you start to see evidence of it everywhere.

This! I tend to find my positivity from persuading DP the world isn't ending.

Don’t get too comfortable, the longer you stay in a state of comfort, the more daunting any prospect of change becomes. Get used to frequent changes and you’ll learn that sometimes things change for the worse and sometimes for the better but ultimately there is almost always a way out. I’ve changed jobs every 2/3 years and became used to it so now I’m not worried about redundancy or bad bosses etc as I know I can change it again. Had a few failed relationships including one marriage. Moved houses multiple time, even countries and started afresh.
challenge yourself to do things outside your comfort zone and things you actively dislike from time to time to see that they’re not as bad as it seems.

Turn things round. So, for example if you do not get a job think, well that's their loss and that was prep for the really great job I'm going to get soon. Don't think, I didn't get the job, I'm hopeless and useless. You have to practice 🙂 if things are awful split time into chunks, in ten minutes this will be ok, or I will feel better in ten minutes or I can manage this for ten minutes. As a pp poster has said assign a time on the day to be sad or angry. So I'm sad about xxxxx I'm going to immerse myself in this sadness at 8pm for 30 minutes. Then the next day reduce the time by two minutes.
If all else fails go for a walk, do some gardening, eat chocolate digestives.

physical movement. When the mind starts whirring get out for a walk.

write in a journal before bed every day.

say to yourself ‘I choose to do this, I am lucky to have this opportunity’ for things like train delays, queues at airports or whatever makes you anxious

slowly but surely you can train your brain to get out of flight or fight mode

What helps me, is reminding myself that we all live like kings compared to only a few generations ago.
We live where my family have lived for many generations - everyday I walk past the village wells that my granny, so not that far removed, would have collected water from, probably several times a day.
Food is abundant, we have electricity, light when it is dark, endless entertainment, our homes are heated without shovelling coal or chopping wood, we have access to free health care. We can travel many miles, car/train/plane in a way our ancestors really wouldn’t believe. In the course of human history, we really have it pretty good! Which puts temporary annoyances into perspective for me.

Sorry to hear about your condition. I believe this approach would be for somebody who tends to shy away from discomfort but this is not an option for you. I hope you are able to get some relief.

@RosaAna thank you. I actually feel mentally a bit better than I did earlier, I am sorry if I brought the mood down.

In general I am resilient. I've withstood failed performance contracts at work in my 20s, break ups, difficult births etc.

The problem with the current issue is that every time I move, the pain reminds me it is there. I am not allowed to exercise, doctors instruction. If I could I'd be going hell for leather with weights and yoga and walking.

If it was anything else, I would look at the sunshine and daffodils, go for a walk, plant some seeds, clean the kitchen floors with some music or a podcast. But it is so very limiting. I feel strongly for people who might be in the same position as I am, but permanently.

Hopefully one day mine will improve.

Memento Mori - Remember you will die.

Sit with that. Meditate upon it. Now go use the time you have wisely.

@Ilovelowry that sounds very difficult.