HABITS
I was feeling really good this past Friday. Just as I was recognising this though, a little voice in my head started wondering why that was and began generating anxiety. It’s like my brain was looking for things to be anxious about in the absence of anything obvious. I started reflecting on it, and I realised that this is something I often do. And then that got me thinking about routines and habits. We can get so used to feeling scared or angry or anxious or stressed out that these emotions and states become habituated; our brain becomes trained to think certain thoughts, those cycles of thinking that we find ourselves caught in, and then those thoughts breed matching emotions.
We can, therefore, get stuck in negative emotional loops just like we can get stuck in negative loops of thinking. We may find ourselves feeling an emotion even when there is nothing going on that would logically make us feel that way. Many mornings I wake up feeling anxious right off the bat when there was clearly no impetus to cause me to feel that way. I was just asleep!
This is especially true when we have had to deal with a chronic health condition like cancer because the experience is just so damn long. We are going through this massive, traumatic event, and it takes months or years just to get through the treatments and start feeling like we are ready to unpack and work on the emotional and mental aspects of our healing. In that time, those months and years, we are experiencing exponentially more stress, anxiety, fear, anger, resentment or any number of emotions. It goes on for so long that our brain and body get accustomed to being in those states, and they remember and maintain them even after the immediate danger is over and we’re trying to move on into life after cancer.
The key is to catch ourselves when we notice that we are heading down the path to anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, or whichever state is the habit for us. Once we catch ourselves starting those loops of thinking, we can consciously choose a different thought and over time retrain our brains to be in these more positive places instead. Once we start shifting our thinking, our emotional state follows suit.
Congratulate yourself on catching that thinking and then actively release it, choosing something else like a positive mantra to take its place. I’ve started saying variations of, “I can do/be/complete _______ successfully without feeling anxious about it. Thanks anxiety, but I don’t need your presence to stay motivated. I’m quite capable on my own.” Another mantra I love and used on Friday was, “It is safe to release this anxiety and I choose to release it now”.
And I think that mantra contains another piece of puzzle. When we acknowledge and believe that we have control over our thoughts and emotions and we choose to exercise that control, we are freed from the hold of these negative states. Although it is much easier said than done, especially when dealing with something huge like cancer, how we think and feel is most definitely within our control, and that is a beautiful, empowering thing to embrace.
Happy Healing
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