1. “Maybe you can treat yourself like a person and not like a project.” It changed my life. I’d been treating myself like something to fix, and seeing every little problem as evidence that I was a failure and a terrible person. I learned to give myself the same benefit of the doubt as I’d give any other human I met on the street. Humans make mistakes, including me—that doesn’t mean there’s issues to fix, it means I’m a person.
2. That my mental health issues arise when my body is trying to tell me that im mentally exhausted. Just like when you dont get enough sleep, your body tells you that by making you feel tired, or hungry when you havent eaten enough. When i haven’t been giving myself enough down time, ive been super stressed trying to please everyone and meet everyone’s needs, i burn out, and feeling depressed or anxious at nothing in particular is just a way my body lets me know that i need to look after myself. That I’m not necessarily broken or going to feel this way for the rest of my life.
3. My therapist and I were discussing how I felt about a pretty deep betrayal from my now ex-wife. I was beating myself up for not seeing how bad she really was when there was plenty of evidence. He wrote down something on his yellow notepad and then held it up right in my face, practically touching my nose.
He said “what’s that say?”
I couldn’t read it; it was too close to my face. Stepping back from it a bit, it could read it said “you’re too close to see it.” He was right. I was too close to the problems and the situation to have been able to see it where in retrospect it was so obvious. I stopped beating myself up over it and was able to let it go.
4. “You’re not sleeping, you’re missing meals, and you barely see your friends. It’s no wonder you’re depressed. You are barely taking care of baseline needs, my dude!”. She was right. I needed to actually take care of basic human needs before I could move up any higher on Maslow’s hierarchy.
Close second: “You aren’t obligated to have a relationship with anyone”. Helped me realize that I could walk away from toxic relationships, romantic or otherwise.
5. You cannot expect one person to fullfill all your needs and to be with you whenever you want them to.
6. Mine said this in an offhand way, but it’s stuck with me:
“Try to find something you enjoy in every day. Even if it’s something small like taking a hot shower or going for a walk. If you start feeling down, you can think about what you enjoyed from that day, and recognize that you’ve done something nice for yourself”.
7. I’m confined to a wheelchair. It’s amazing how many people still look at you like you’re a freak! I was told by my shrink of 15 years to smile big and say hi loudly. They’ll either say hi or look away. Either way, I’ve made an attempt to humanize them to the disabled. If they don’t, it’s their problem.
8. The lifespan of an emotion (the actual physiological sensations—adrenalin, heat in the face, tightness in the chest, rapid heartbeat, fists clenched, etc.) doesn’t last very long. Emotions only last about 90 seconds or so.
What keeps an emotion alive and lingering after the fact is the stories and the associated thoughts we tell ourselves about them. It’s usually what we think should have been rather than what it is that causes us that extra suffering we’re all too familiar with. And the longer we’ve been telling ourselves a certain story, the harder it is to “just let it go.”
9. I had issues getting motivated for pretty much anything, even my hobbies. She told me that even doing nothing is a conscious desicion, it is not something that just happens, I made that choice and I will need to decide it every day for the rest of my life.
It’s a rather simple thought but it completely changed me. Basically gave me back control. I always ask myself stuff like “Do I really want to sit on my couch and watch YouTube the whole Saturday?” now. And the answer is almost always “No”, so I go out and ride my bike or meet up with friends. Really helped me, just the simple task of questioning what you want to do with your time and making it a conscious decision.
10. “Bad things happen in our lives every day. Most of them are unavoidable. That’s life. Rather than burning yourself out working to avoid bad things from happening, teach yourself resilience – how you experience, process, accept, recover, and move on from bad things. The better you get at being resilient, the less time you spend being anxious and depressed about a bad situation or potentially bad situation. Not only this, resilience is inspiring. If your kids, spouse, parents, siblings, friends, etc., notice how quickly you bounce back from a bad situation, it will spread positivity.”
11. “If you don’t heal from what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people that didn’t cut you.”
12. “It’s not your job to manage other people’s emotions. It’s not your job to anticipate their every need before they vocalize it. Let people do their own thing; if they need help, they will ask, and if they don’t ask then that’s one less ask to stress about.”
13. “I was freaking out about things that COULD happen, and he simply asked me, “So what would you do if that happened?” It sounds super simple, and it is, but it helped me realize I have solutions to problems that MIGHT arise. I shouldn’t let fear stop me from doing things that would be beneficial or enjoyable.”
14. “Take one day off a week. Completely off. No work. No “projects.” No plans. Wake up with nothing on the agenda.
Someone giving me permission to do nothing was pretty revolutionary for someone coming from a protestant hard work ethic upbringing that villainized relaxation as idleness/laziness. She was not just giving me permission; she was insisting on it as imperative to my health and well-being.”