the critical voice, part three

This morning I sat down opposite my therapist and said, “How do I stop trying to fix things?”
“What things are you trying to fix?” he asked, in his quiet Irish therapist voice.
“ALL the things,” I said. “Literally everything that crosses my mind; personal, local, global, minor, major, implausible, imaginary. Anything that’s a problem, I want to fix immediately, and my brain gets very upset with me if I can’t.”

He wanted examples. Therapists like examples.

I told him I was upset with the election result and worried about what might happen under a majority Conservative government. I was worried about the NHS, about my friends on disability benefits, and especially about the Human Rights Act. My brain responded to these entirely rational concerns with how can we fix this? I told it that I was in no position to personally fix it. I could not convince the Conservative party that they held horrible, damaging views, nor change the views of an increasingly right-wing nation, nor completely overhaul the political system to fairer and more compassionate ends. I could, of course, sign petitions and attend protests and, if I wanted to screw up my mental health entirely, return to political blogging. But this wasn’t what my brain wanted. My brain wanted me to fix it, personally. If not entirely by myself, then at least as the Leader of People Fixing Things. And it wanted results immediately, before the Tories actually managed to do any damage.

I told my brain that, see, this was exactly what I’d been telling it. It had proved that its expectations of me were way, way too high and completely unrealistic. Personally fixing the politics of an entire country? That’s ridiculous, brain. Surely you can see that. My brain sighed and said that’s a lame excuse and you know it. Everyone is sitting around like you, saying they can’t do anything, and that’s why it never gets done. Overhauling a country probably isn’t that hard if you know the right things to say. I asked my brain if it remembered what attempting to get involved in activism did to the state of my mental health last time. My brain said I can’t imagine why you’d think your personal mental health is so much more important than the fate of an entire country.

My therapist handed me a sheet entitled “Unhelpful Thinking Patterns” that he thought I might recognise some of. My brain scanned it and immediately scolded me for being so rubbish as to have all of them. I suggested that perhaps this might be its own fault, and it pointed at the sheet and said see that bit about shifting blame for things that are your fault?

I explained that for about six months now I’d been identifying problems in my life and trying to come up with ways to fix them. I’d come up with genuine problems, identify good and sensible ways to start turning things around, and then my brain would be pleased and start imagining wildly unrealistic consequences to my tiny starter actions.

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Unhappy with weight gain
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Feel sad and gross all the time
SOLUTION: Start small by replacing chocolate with fruit at lunchtime
EXPECTED RESULT: Somehow lose half a stone in a week; happiness to follow immediately thereafter

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Job dissatisfaction
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Boredom, more unoccupied time to exacerbate anxiety problems
SOLUTION: Begin thinking about different career fields
EXPECTED RESULT: Get ideal job immediately by stumbling over it in the street or some such, all problems suddenly fixed

If the expected unrealistic consequence was not instantly achieved, my brain got upset and discouraged and gave me unpleasant thoughts. It got to the point where this happened:

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Trying to fix everything
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Frustration, exhaustion, reduced ability to actually do anything
SOLUTION: Stop trying to fix things
EXPECTED RESULT: Attempting to fix things turns out to be root cause of all problems; everything stops being difficult within the next three days

When I told him the last one my therapist did that very, very slightly surprised face that therapists who think they know what’s coming make when they hear something they really weren’t expecting. I’ve seen him do it once before, when we did an instant visualisation exercise:

Therapist: What did you see when I said ‘Roses’?
Me: I saw an illustrated rose garden in the style of an Alice in Wonderland book I used to have, except instead of actual roses it was my friend Rose, hundreds of her, on stems.
Therapist: ...you have a busy mind.

He might not have heard, “Hey, I could stop trying to fix things! That’ll fix things!” before, but he assured me that the urge to fix things was common, as was having a critical voice with completely unrealistic expectations. Be kind to yourself, he said. The primitive part of your brain sends up a fear signal, then your conscious mind starts working overtime to make it stop. It’s completely normal human behaviour. But we can work on it.

Good, I thought.

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Completely unrealistic expectations
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Small achievements overlooked, progress stalled
SOLUTION: Place some distance in front of the thought that throws up the problem, say thank you and tell it you’ll get back to it later, this is not the time to be crafting solutions
EXPECTED RESULT: Perfectly calm and ordered brain within the hour

ARGH.