Tag: anxiety

Mark Pollock A Peace Plan for Life and Anxiety

Mark is my guest for episodes 74 and 75 of The Courage, Coaching and Counseling Podcast.

Listen on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast app.
You can watch the episode here on YouTube.

Mark Pollock is a retired Mental Health Therapist and Pastor recently transitioning from Oregon to South Carolina where he lives with his wife Robyn and near his two sons and their families.

His primary areas of experience have centered around the support of at-risk youth and helping the local church grow in its healthy spiritual development.

He is currently receiving training through the Soul Shepherding Institute to serve as a Spiritual Director with a focus on care for pastors and other church leaders, inner healing, and congregational unity and maturation.

Here is the Peace Plan he has come up with. We discuss it on the podcast.
Peace Plan 

  1. Be Saturated in the Love and Goodness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Ex. 33:18-23; Joshua 3:5; Ps. 23:6; 27: 13-14; Matt 28: 19; Gal 6:9), New Covenant (Jer. 31:31ff; 2 Cor. 3: 7-18; 2 Pet.1:3-11; 1 John 2:20,27) and Kingdom of God (Matt 6:33). 

Breath Prayer: “Immerse me in Your Love and Goodness.” 

  1. Continually Build Secure Attachment with God. Seek Healing of Formative Attachment Wounds (Ex. 34:6; Isaiah 46:3-4; 49:15-16; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6; 4:9). 

Breath Prayer: “You are my Father. I am Your Son.” 

  1. Develop and Practice a “Rule of Life” which includes but is not limited to Sabbath, Prayer, Fasting, Silence/Solitude, Scripture, Community, Service, Generosity and Witness (2 Tim. 1:7; See: Practicing the Way). 

Breath Prayer: “Rekindle ‘the Gift’, Power, Love and Sound Mind.” 

  1. Silence, Stillness and Solitude Daily, Weekly, and Quarterly – “Do” Nothing. (Ps. 46:10; Ps. 131; Habakkuk 2:20). 

Breath Prayer: “Cease Striving (Sink Down, Drop the Hand) and Know Me.” 

  1. Do What You See and Hear the Father Doing and Saying. Be Attentive and Responsive to the Experienced Power and Voice of God “Today” – the “Secret of Contentment”. (Mark 4:24; John 5:19-21; 12:49-50; 14:20; Eph 1:17-23; Phil 4:11-12; Heb. 3:15).  

Breath Prayer: “Give me eyes to see and ears to hear!” 

  1. Practice Meekness/Composure. Develop a Non-Anxious Presence. Individuating. Cast Anxiety on God and Soul Friends (Ps.55:22; 131; 139:23-24; Is. 26:3; Matt. 5:5; 11:28-30; James 5:16; 1 Peter 5:7). 

Breath Prayer: “Take My Yoke and Learn From Me.” 

  1. Do One Thing at a Time. Be Present in the Moment. Be Single-Minded. When Distracted Be Quick to Get Back on Track (Eccl. 3:1-8; Is. 43:19; Mark 2:5; Luke 9:47; 18:24; John 19:26; 1 Cor. 16:13). Breath Prayer: “Do a New Thing. Help Me See It.” 
  1. Be Attuned to All Emotions and Underlying Motivations. Seek Integration and Integrity. (Ps. 51:6 (CSB); Prov. 11:3; Phil 4:6; Col. 3:23).  

Breath Prayer: “Let Integrity Guide Me.” 

  1. Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anxiety. Be Self-Aware, Especially in Regard to Nervous Habits Used to Avoid Responsibility, Pain and Boredom – food, sexual temptation, technology, “entertainment”, mindlessness, etc.  

(Prov 15:32; Eph 4:26; 1 Peter 5:8).  

Breath Prayer: “Be Alert. Be Sober Minded.”  

  1. Enjoy the Small Things. Absorb the Big Things. Choose to Seek Gratitude, Joy and Peace in All Things (Phil.4:4-10; Col. 3:15). Breath Prayer: “Enjoy. Absorb. Choose.” 
  1. See Beauty (Ps.19:1-6). Create Beauty. Practice Awe/Worship (Exodus 31:3-5; Ps. 96:9; Habakkuk 3:2; 1 Cor. 12:1ff; Heb 12:28-29).  

Breath Prayer: “See and Create Gifts of Beauty.” 

  1. Intentionally Build and Maintain a Few Deep and Authentic Relationships. (1 Sam 18:1; Prov 17:17; 18:24; Eccl. 4:9-10, 12; Matt 26:36-46; Rom 12:10; Eph 5:21ff; Col. 2:2-3; 1 Peter 4:8). 

Breath Prayer: “Submit to ‘Knitting.’” 

  1. Listening to Others (and the Spirit) for the Purpose of Understanding.  Listening as a Spiritual Gift and Prerequisite to the Prophetic.  

(Matt 13:9; Luke 8:18; 1 Cor. 14:1ff; Jam 1: 19).  

Breath Prayer: “Be Slow to Speak and Quick to Listen.” 

  1. Do Not Be Self-Seeking or Controlling. It’s Not “All About Me”  

(1 Cor. 13:5; Gal.6:8-10; Phil. 2:3-5). 

Breath Prayer: “In Humility Value Others.” 

  1. Accept the Things I Can’t Control. Abandon Outcomes.  

(Jer 10:23; Job 14:5; Luke 12:26; Romans 8:28; James 4:13-16; 1 Peter 4:19).  

Breath Prayer: “Not Even an Hour? Why Worry?” 

  1. Align Body and Spirit with the Spirit of God – Breathing, Diet, Exercise, Rest, Fasting (1 Cor 6: 19-20; 9:24-27; 2 Cor 6:14-7:1; 3 Jn 1:2).  

Breath Prayer: “My Body. Your Temple.” 

  1. “Finally, Be Strong in the Lord and in His Mighty Power… Put on the Full Armor… Stand.”  

(Isaiah 54:17; John 10:10; 2 Cor. 10:3-5; Eph. 4: 8-20; 6:10-18; 1 John 2:15-17). 

Breath Prayer: “Take a Stand and Live.” 

Skull Sessions Podcast Interview with Devin Higgins


Recently had a chance to talk with Devin Higgins on his new Skull Sessions Podcast.

We talked about how Covid has affected mental health, relationships, mental health stigma, anxiety, depression and Insomnia (47 minutes in).



When COVID 19 Steals Your Sleep

The world is still reeling from the Coronavirus pandemic. Here in Oregon, we are a few weeks into social distancing and shelter-in-place. Businesses big and small have shut down, families are struggling with unemployment and an uncertain future. Couples and families are strained with living in close quarters while at the same time people are feeling isolated and disconnected from friends, church and other activities.
Parents and teachers are scrambling to learn how to do online school from home. Medical providers are racing to prepare for a surge of patients with a shortage of available beds and personal protection devices.

I’ve been working in the field of sleep for the past 24 years, working for the sleep labs at OHSU and Kaiser Permanente. The past two weeks reminded me of the morning of 9/11 when I drove into work with my coworker at the sleep lab and we listen to the radio report of the planes hitting the towers. Later that morning we sat with a group of patients after their overnight sleep studies and we set them up with CPAP machines and watched the towers fall together.

This pandemic may not be as sudden as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 but it is wreaking havoc on our lives in many ways.

We’re under a tremendous amount of stress because of the disruption to our normal rhythms and routine. It’s not only taking a toll on relationships and our emotional health, it’s also stealing our sleep.

Here are a few resources to help you, those you work with or your family get your sleep back on track and to manage the stress you may be experiencing.

The first is the CBT- Coach App by the US Dept of Veteran Affairs

I recently had a client increased their total sleep time from just under 5 hrs sleep to 7.5 hrs sleep per night in the last three weeks.

There are other apps that can help with stress and sleep at the VA site:
Mindfulness Coach, Mood Coach as well as apps for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Anger & Irritability Management Skills.

The second resource is the book the Insomnia Answer.
In this book, Paul Glovinsky and Dr. Arthur Spielman teach the Spielman 3-P Model of Insomnia.
The three P factors that can disrupt sleep are Predisposing, Precipitating and Perpetuating Factors. The Predisposing Factors are our tendency to having Insomnia. If you have a low predisposition you probably have always slept well, if you have a high predisposition you are sensitive or vulnerable to disrupted sleep. You may be sensitive to noise and light, struggle with worry or anxiety or have struggled with sleep since childhood.

Whether you have a low predisposition or high predisposition for insomnia at some point Life can happen to your sleep. The Precipitating Factors are changes in life that disrupt your sleep. They can be negative stressful changes like conflict and stress at work, divorce, unemployment or a 20 page term paper that you’ve waited till the last weekend to start. They can also be positive changes like a job promotion, moving to a new house, a vacation,
The impact of Covid 19 is a huge Precipitating Factor on the sleep of many people, even folks who usually have no problems sleeping.

The Perpetuating Factors are ways of coping with being sleep deprived that may help short-term but end up perpetuating the problem. Things like caffeine, napping, watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram till 1am. It can also include eating in the middle of the night or sleeping in for hours on the weekend to try to catch up on sleep. These are the the things that get us caught in a viscious downward spiral; for example, “I didn’t sleep so I drink coffee. But I can’t sleep because I drank coffee.” Or “I didn’t sleep so I end up falling asleep on the couch but then I can’t sleep because I took a 2 hr nap after dinner.”

The 3rd resource is especially helpful if you have trouble turning your brain off at bedtime and struggle to get to sleep or in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep is Say Goodnight To Insomnia by Gregg Jacobs.
Dr. Jacobs uses the phrase Negative Sleep Thoughts or NSTs to describe thoughts that trigger more stress and physiologic arousal, squirt your brain with the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. Some authors call these “hot thoughts”. He teaches you how to reframe your Negative Sleep Thoughts into quieter or cooler thoughts that are soothing, calming and less alerting.

Besides sleeping better right now after a few weeks of Insomnia. These resources will help prevent this acute or situational Insomnia from becoming the start of a chronic problem. Psychophysiogic or “conditioned” insomnia is the type of insomnia that becomes like a bad habit. It’s when you are exhausted and tired and maybe feel drowsy or sleep in the living room or on the computer but as soon as you brush your teeth, put your pjs on, get in bed and turn out the lights you feel more wide awake. When you start to struggle with getting sleep or staying asleep your bed, bedroom and bedtime can start to become associated with frustration and trigger a stress reaction. It can get to the point where folks have a mini-stress attack and start to avoid going to bed, staying later and later because they start to believe that sleep just doesn’t work for them.

One more note on improving sleep at this time, good sleep habits or sleep hygiene doesn’t just start with your evening or bedtime routine. Good sleep hygiene starts with your morning routine and can be practiced throughout the day because one keep to sleep is managing your mental, emotional and physical arousal during the day. Starting out the day well, eating healthy, getting some physical activity during the day, practicing mindfulness or other spiritual disciples all contribute to keeping your stress level down. For a lot of us right now, we are both bored or idle at times or extremely busy and scrambling around figuring out how to respond and adapt to new realities. Deciding on a structure and schedule for the day is helpful, especially for kids home from school.

My next blog post will be of some resources to help with homeschool and time together as a family, working from home, exercise and routine.
(I wanted to include it in this post but it’s getting late and I need to get ready for bed a good night’s sleep.)

For more info here’s a video I did on sleep and stress on Facebook.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about sleep.

Being a “christian perfectionist”

A “christian perfectionist” is an oxymoron.
Buying into perfectionism is an excuse to hold on to the idolatry of self and the works of your hands.
In a sense, Perfectionism is a religion fueled by fear, comparison and self-preservation; it’s living as if your worth and security is at stake.
Jesus > than religion. (Some smart guy said this a bit ago)
Your worth is established, your future is secure.
Faith eliminates fear and compassion replaces comparison.

For fearful anxious parents

It’s hard to give up fear because in many ways fear can keep your kids safe.

Fear can keep you safe.

The problem with fear is that trust can’t exist in an environment of fear. And there can not be true connection and intimacy without trust.

There is a different way to keep yourself safe. And that’s wisdom, strength, and connection.

Yes, I want my kids to be safe and I want to protect them when they’re little. But as are growing up, and when they’re all grown up, I actually want them to shed safety.
I want them to be brave.
I want them to live like warriors.

Counseling is awesome

Counseling is awesome because it makes your fears smaller and dreams bigger.

I hear amazing things sometimes in counseling, especially from introverts.
Really, counseling is like the TED Talk stage for introverts.
In those moments, what’s amazing is not that they put on a great performance.
It’s that they finally stop.
Performing.
It’s not crafted and rehearsed, they set aside the pretense and give voice to what’s true and real inside.
Unfettered.

The thing about smart people anxiety and the multi-layered introspection of introverts and creatives is that they (we) often over-estimate our fears and underestimate our strengths.

Anxiety seems so loud resounding and rolling around in our own heads.
And this is one great way that counseling is so much like writing, they both help us stay true to ourselves while at the same time, helping us discover ourselves.
They both give us perspective on what thoughts to give credence to and which are lies.
Which ones to take captive and which ones to release.
Yeah, counseling can be tough, it’s hard to see people struggle with grief and pain but I love it because I regularly get to watch people be incredibly brave and authentic and that is extremely inspiring.

Procrastination is Not Self-Care

Procrastination is not self-care.

I started this week with the plan to do some writing tonight.  I’ve been thinking about two different blog posts for the past two weeks (Social Media is the new Materialism.  Instagram is turning us into hoarders and cat ladies. And a post on the Space Between Being and Doing).  And I was feeling a bit bummed that I didn’t post a 1 year anniversary of the blog post last week.  (I did do a short Periscope video.)

§§§

This weekend it hit me: this month that I’m closer to 50 years old than I am to 40.  And I’m still not doing exactly what I’d like to be doing.

My dream or desire to be working for a church doing family, small group or counseling ministry hasn’t happened yet.

But maybe I’m doing what I need to be doing for now.

Maybe I need to keep working at counseling, coaching, writing and speaking in the places and with the people I have right in front of me and keep improving to serve the church of Portland as a whole.  Instead of on staff with one church.

§§§

This post almost didn’t happen.  After getting home and eating dinner, I ended up procastinating instead of writing.

I watched the rest of the SpongeBob Squarepants movie and some of 50th Anniversary episodes of Doctor Who with my daughter.

But then we came across this great TED Talk by Tim Urban: Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator

It is hilarious!  It’s not only humorous, it’s also a powerful talk by a guy who gets it what procrastinators think and feel.

While listening, it hit me, “Procrastination is not self-care.”

I’ll be writing more on self-care and the healthy rhythm between Being and Doing soon but that idea, Procrastination is not self-care, I think is a gamechanger for me.  The resulting feelings when I procrastinate compared to when I take care of myself in a healthy way, are worlds apart.

If you struggle with procrastination, I think this video will help you see procrastination in a new, humorous light.

It helped me hop on here real quick and I’m looking forward to getting to those two other posts here soon.

Is there anything you are procrastinating on these days?

On being lost in Portlandia

 
A poem inspired by a video challenge by my online colleague Christie Sears Thomson of Trade Winds Therapy

What do you do
when you’re sitting in your pew
and you hear those words again

“God loves you”

And you want to believe it with all your heart
But you look inside
and you aren’t sure that you still have one

You aren’t sure because of what you’ve done
and where you’ve been

you lost it somewhere along the way
Or maybe lost it to someone

All you know is that along with your heart, you’ve lost yourself
You’re lost and you can’t find your way home

And all the overthinking and sleepless nights
All the social gatherings and porn
and the trips to the coffee shops and food carts that you try to fill that space with
Can’t shake the feeling you’re alone in the crowd
and you always will be
That you’ve disqualified yourself from finding your way back
Back to joy
Back to life

And when the preacher talks about
doing the things you don’t want to do
and not doing the things you want to
You get that.
You do that.
All day, every day
You know this one.

You don’t realize it but you’re on the hero’s journey
You’re finding your way
You’re finding who you are
You’re searching for your purpose

Along the journey, you need friends.
You need mentors and counselors to come along side

I don’t know all the answers or the way ahead
But I’ll help you figure it out.
I’ll remind you
You’re past can be healed
There’s grace enough for you
There’s redemption
You’ll even be able to forgive others as you forgive yourself

There’s hope
You aren’t alone
and you’re not done yet.

When you have to wait for counseling

Having to wait for counseling can be really frustrating. A little more frustrating than waiting for your mocha at the coffee shop.  This blog is on what you can do while waiting.

Don’t lose hope.  Having to wait for counseling can be really stressful because often the situation that prompted you to email or call for counseling can be a crisis that is affecting your family or marriage.  If you’ve been putting off going to counseling, struggling with emotions or behaviors or communication for a while, if you’re in pain and things feel out of control and unmanageable – not being able to be seen can make you feel even more desperate or upset.

Maybe you’ve just discovered porn on your husband’s laptop.  Or your daughter’s started to cut herself and talk about suicide.

Things don’t have to get worse in the meantime, they can even get better while you wait.

I recorded a Periscope video on this.  I missed a few key resources and ideas I wanted to share so here’s a blog that goes more in depth.

Here are a few reasons why you may have to wait for counseling and some suggestions for each.

1) You want to start counseling but your counselor isn’t available. Sometimes the counselor you’d like to see doesn’t have openings in their schedule or their appointment times don’t work your schedule.

2) You want to do counseling but it’s too expensive.

3) Your insurance won’t cover counseling at all, or it covers it but not as frequently as you’d like.

4) You don’t know who you want to see.

5) You aren’t sure if you want or need counseling.

6) You’re ready for counseling but your partner isn’t ready or they don’t want to go with you.

Here are a few suggestions for each situation.  Try a few of these and by the time you meet with your counselor, you’ll be able to dive right in and hit the ground running.

1) Take action on what you can.  (If you are in crisis or struggling with suicidal ideation – call the 800-SUICIDE crisis line, call 911, call your medical provider and ask for emergency psychiatric services or get someone to bring you to the local ER or urgent care. )  The situation doesn’t have to stay the same or get worse.  You may already know what you need or want to do.  If the counselor you would like to see isn’t available, you may be able to learn more about their approach to counseling by reading their website.  I started this blog for clients and friends and try to post info to help with the topics and problems I meet with people about. Your counselor may have a blog or website where they share resources and info.  Besides here, I post articles on relationships and mental health on the A New Day Counseling Center Facebook page.

You can also ask for a referral to another counselor.  If the counselor you’d like to see isn’t available they may be willing to recommend a colleague or another counselor who could help.   I recommend my friends at A New Day Counseling and the student interns who are training here.  There are also several counselors in the Portland and Vancouver area who are doing good work that I recommend.

2) Consider low-cost counseling resources.  At A New Day Counseling we have interns who can meet with folks for $25 a session.  Sometimes asking your employer or human resources department about counseling resources may help, there may be an Employee Assistance Program available. Addendum: Sunnyside Counseling here in Portland also has interns who can provide care for $25 a session.  If you know of other counselors who provide a sliding fee scale or discounted rates, feel free to comment below.  Your church may also be willing to help defray the cost of counseling for a limited number of sessions, ask your pastor or church leader if that’s a possibility.

Consider pastoral or lay counseling or coaching. Some churches provide free or low-cost counseling and/or coaching and mentoring.  You may not need counseling.  I like to describe the difference between coaching and counseling this way.  Coaching can be like a personal trainer at the gym.  They help you set goals, encourage and push you to go from good to great or okay to good.  Counselors use many of the same tools and techniques but they can be more like a physical therapist.  They help you with goals and problem-solving but they also focus on repair, treatment, therapy, and healing a problem.  Coaches tend to focus on the present and future. Counselors do that but they also explore the past more, as needed.  I’ve been trained both as a counselor and a coach.

Consider peer and group support.  I didn’t say enough about this in the Periscope video!  Some insurance plans or medical groups may not provide counseling weekly or at all but they may have groups for treatment or support.  Three A few other types of groups I didn’t mention are Celebrate Recovery, NAMI, Griefshare, DivorceCare, For Men Only, and Refuge groups locally.  There are also groups for dealing with pornography and sexual addiction locally.  There are twelve-step groups for alcoholism, codependency, drug addiction, overeating.  All can be beneficial and offer support; one of the hardest things about making a change or struggling with emotional and relationship issues is feeling isolated and alone.  Groups help and I often recommend groups for my clients who I meet with in addition to meeting with me.

Addendum:
3) Consider meeting with your primary care provider for a medical evaluation for anxiety or depression.  They may recommend a trial prescription for medication that may be helpful for what you are experiencing.

Your insurance plan may also provide online resources that can help with mental health topics.  If you are a Kaiser member, there are self-help resources to learn more about the Mind Body connection, the process of change, and improving communication.  There are also support programs for Stress, Overcoming Depression, Overcoming Insomnia. There are guided imagery and relaxation podcasts that can help you with anxiety, pain, and insomnia.  You can also call the Health Coach team to enroll in free coaching for stress management.  Some Kaiser members use health coaching to supplement their counseling. They get additional support on the phone between their office appointments with their mental health providers.  If you don’t have KP insurance may provide similar resources: groups, online resources, online coaching, or phone coaching.

4) Write down what you want counseling to change.  Learn how to describe what you are experiencing.  Write down what is happening: Inside you and outside of you.  What are you hoping will be different?  Different counselors have different approaches to therapy but they often involve changing how you feel, how you view yourself, your self-talk, how you are currently experiencing life, your patterns of behavior and communication, the way to relate to others. Investigate.  Read a few counselor’s bios. Ask others who have been to counseling who they might recommend. Read more about mental health topics online and on social media.

5) Learn more about your problem. One way to take action is to start to learn more about what you are struggling with.  Once you start articulating what you are going through you can start to narrow down defining the problem and solutions.  There are online assessments that can help you narrow down the problem.  You don’t want to get too locked in to a specific “diagnosis” until you meet with your counselor but you can start to learn and read about mood disorders like depression and anxiety, you can start to learn more about healthy conflict resolution and communication.

Gaining more understanding, awareness of your feelings, and insight about yourself and how you impact and relate to others are the skills of self-awareness and emotional and relational intelligence.  You may be able to make improvements on your own. If the struggles are impairing your work, your relationships – if they are longstanding, pervasive, and perpetual – if they aren’t getting better on their own or if they get better for a while but then come back, it might be time to try counseling.

Start writing down your story.  Start looking at who you are and what you’ve been through.  If it’s too hard to this on your own, that’s okay.  Go slow.  Writing it down helps you get clarity, decreases how big the problems and the past are in your head and heart.  What’s the script?  What are your core beliefs and family rules?  What is the metaphor, the word picture you have for life, or your image of yourself?  After you learn how to describe what is happening see if you can make connections and identifying the patterns and triggers in your life.  All of this work can be painful.  It can also be a relief to start to face it.  Writing down and facing your story can start to heal and free you up from any destructive patterns and the hold your past may have on you.

6) Give yourself permission to work on yourself.  Often, getting counseling, working on your healing, boundaries, growth areas, mood, and stress – your stuff – can help your marriage or relationship because if you get healthier you influence and impact your partner.  Marriages are a system, if you change you change the dynamics and the relationship.  If you change your steps in the dance, if you change your lines in the script, you can change your interactions, your patterns, and vicious cycles.

I often recommend the books Boundaries, Boundaries in Marriage, Boundaries with Kids, and Love & Logic.  Each of these books gives principles that can be helpful in communication and relationships.  The authors’ website has video advice for a number of emotional and relationship topics.

I hope this blog will help you if you are in the gap of wanting to start counseling and starting.

I will blog soon more on how to explore your past, present, and future.

Smart People Anxiety

  One of the great things about working and living in Portlandia is the people.

I’ve found Portland is kind of a mecca for some of my favorite types of people: creatives and artists.

I enjoy meeting with folks who are insightful, thoughtful, compassionate, those who sometimes are slow to speak outside the counseling office because they want their words to be well-considered. Often they are introverted but not all. Many are grad school students at the seminary, involved in leadership or ministry. They care deeply about people, often very empathetic and authentic. They inspire me because they see things beyond the surface. Their everyday walking around, thoughts are art. I’d love to read their memoirs or journals. They fascinate me.

The downside though is often creatives and artists because of the way they see the world and the depths to which they think and process things can really struggle with anxiety and depression.

They have high highs and low lows. They quickly can go from “Everything is awesome to everything has gone to hell”. (They’d describe this much better)

They get paralyzed by their introspection

Overwhelmed by the intensity or the changes of their emotions

They can feel isolated and misunderstood.

And frustrated at feeling out of control.

If you add, for many of my clients and grad students, being devote in their faith; they can be vulnerable to another layer of anxiety around believing they are not doing enough for God or for others.

For example, they may feel overwhelmed at the enormity of a social justice issue, at how big the problem is or how much work and changes needs to be done in that area. And they can have a hard time turn off or turning down how concerned or troubled they are about the issue.

When I see this, one thing I tell them is they are suffering from what I call “Smart people anxiety”.

It’s not the simple, garden-variety anxiety or depression – it’s complicated!

Strong thinkers are strong feelers.

There’s levels and layers to their anxiety!

Their anxiety doesn’t just get triggered and then follow one railroad track to a catastrophic ending.

Their anxiety branches off in multiple and elaborate permutations that quickly can overwhelm them.

It becomes a huge suffocating mess to untangle.

Because of how creative and thoughtful and imaginative they are.

Another phrase I use as way of talking and exploring this other than “smart people anxiety” is “Inception level anxiety” or “Inceptionesque anxiety”.

Inception being the movie directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCarprio.

Inception is about a team of people that get hired to create dreams and implant new realities and memories into their targets. A young member of their team played by Ellen Paige has a talent for creating very realistic elaborate dreams. The more realistic the dream world and images she creates, the greater the chances at their deception, their inception, will work.

In the movie, with a challenging target, they attempt to plant a dream, within a dream, within a dream. The problem is the deeper they go the harder it is to distinguish the dreams from reality.

For artists and creative, I think this is a part of what makes their anxiety or depression harder to untangle and treat. They can quickly build elaborate constructs, metaphors, inner worlds and word pictures for what they are going through. We all do this when we go through struggles and experiences, we try to make meaning, to make sense of things. Creatives can overdo this. They can attach so much meaning and attach so many different things to their stressors and triggers; they don’t just catastrophize, they globalize. What might be, what it might mean, quickly becomes reality.

Thing is, it often isn’t completely true, or true at all. Because it might mean something doesn’t mean that is the best or truest interpretation to hold. Just because it feels, or seems real, doesn’t mean it is.

Here’s a few things that the team from Inception did that might help you if you struggle with this type of anxiety:

  • They set limits. When one of their team went down into the psyche, into the dream state, of their target they set alarms to pull them out of the dream. This prevents them from getting trapped in the dream and disconnected from reality forever. If you struggle with rumination and worry you can set limits too. You can literally set an alarm, a time limit, just like the Inception team to remind you to get out of your head and go do something else. You set limits by having a designated space to worry. You can journal. The thoughts can seem a while lot smaller on a page, and you can literally close the book on them when you write them down. Journalling also slows you’re racing thoughts down because we usually can’t write as fast our thoughts. You can also set limits by having boundaries on the types of conten, and how negative it is, that you allow as input or what you create and dwell on. For example, what types of music, media, news, people – and how much and how long – you expose yourself to.
  • They had a totem. Each member of the team had a something to hold, something with someone weight, that they could “carry” with them down into the dream to root them to reality and help them distinguish what was real and what was a dream. DiCaprio’s character had a top that he kept in his pocket and held onto. For folks struggling with the anxiety of quitting tobacco, they often use a totem of their own, a “worry stone” to help them focus on the present and work through a period of craving. For folks with this type of anxiety, focusing on what’s present, being mindful, focusing on things external to them instead of their thoughts (diaphragmatic breathing and exercise help), focusing on their core beliefs, what’s most important, what they know to be true, instead of thinking too far ahead or focusing on their ruminations and visualizations can be very helpful. These are a few ways of grounding themselves and reconnecting with reality.
  • They didn’t do the work alone. DiCaprio’s character, because of his past, lost objectivity. He started to struggle with what was real. It made him vulnerable to making selfish, poor choices that comprised the team’s mission. His past was haunting him. He needed the others on his team, especially Paige, to keep him on track.

If you’re a creative or introvert, struggling with how powerful your anxiety or depression can be, I hope this post will encourage you to use your powers of insight and imagination “for good”.
Watch here on the blog for more posts on anxiety and depression.

In the meantime, what do you think? If you’ve seen the movie, anything you’d add?

And, most importantly, anything you’ll do with this?