thinkythink

Tips for Spacey Days.

Here's the irony of the runaway mind:

On tired days, I think a lot. Yet I'm too tired to plan. My executive function is asleep, yet I can think in circles about what I oughta be doing; I can do stuff in my head but not in real life; I can think about random topics ad nauseum.

Tip #1: Notice this is happening.
I've said this before, in other tips, and I'm saying it again now.

Tip #2: Do a check-in with yourself.
Are you too tired to plan?
Is planning not working?
Is any kind of planning or decision-making working?

While you're at it, check in about your energy level:
What's your physical energy level?
What's your mental energy level?
What's your emotional energy/stability level?

Tip #3: Remember, it's not your fault.
This morning I was bugging myself about it this way: I was thinking, without even quite noticing, that if only I had been exercising more, I wouldn't be so tired.

Regardless of the accuracy of this statement, it's not my fault that when I'm tired, I can't plan so well.

In my case, I'm pregnant, and so I'm tired. Silly me! I am getting exercise whenever I feel up to it! And I can't predict how much energy I'll have! (Fact is, that's true for other reasons when I'm not pregnant. But when I'm pregnant, I can't push the exercise as much, and doing so certainly wouldn't make me feel rested.)

Tip #4: Is there anything predictable about your mental state?
Is there something that has triggered your mental state? Don't think big and psychological here. Think what you ate, how much you slept, whether your hormones are crazy, what you did yesterday... and use it to acknowledge where you're at. Does it help you to know this? Is there something that will help?

Tip #5: Get out of your head. Because that can really help. Don't fight yourself, but use the information from the questions above to come up with some stuff that might make your body work better right NOW so your brain will, or to let you LET GO of it. Move. Sleep. Read. Whatever.

Tip #6: Or, get right into your head. Do something that feels useful and that your brain can latch right onto, like going through e-mails, or reading some articles- let your mind get lost, and make a note that you'll come back to planning later.  You can't plan now, so it just ain't the right activity.

That's a start. What works for you?

Negative Thinking

Andy Wibbels has made me brave enough to speak out in concern/dismay about The Secret, and today he's added to it by bringing my attention to this article over at slate.com. Bravo John Gravois! Bravo for taking Oprah/The Secret on, and putting the power of negative thinking to the task as well. John asks us all to contribute stories related to (a) the power of negative thinking, and (b) the problems positive thinking has caused. Check out his request at the end of the article.

John cites Karen Cerullo's book Never Saw It Coming, in discussing the ill effects of overly positive thinking on disaster preparedness on a governmental level. I'm putting it on my reading list because it strikes a chord, along with the mention of all the bad associations we have with negative thinkers.

You might find this super odd coming from a coach. Why does Becca think we should think negatively?

I don't think you should think negatively, except in limited circumstances where it works. For example, for limited periods of time, negative motivation such as fear can be a powerful force for good.

But I do know that I've been cut down before for appearing to think negatively. When I'm trying to understand how to prepare for something like a trip, event, or perhaps a conversation, and I don't quite get the gestalt of how it's going to go, I want to plan for the different possibilities. When I go backpacking with my husband, I like to pack the first aid kit by the rules. My husband tends to wing it. Also by the rules, I leave a note in the car with our planned route, and call my sister and tell her where will be, so someone knows.  People attribute grand pessimism to preparedness of that sort. Yet this is not pessimism; when I plan by going through all the terrible things that could happen, or just asking questions to get at how it could go, I'm giving my mind something to wrap itself around so I know what I'm doing. If that sounds vague, that's related to the point: I need the vagueness to be toned down a little, so I can compute, so I don't get overwhelmed by loose-canon thinking. I can only "jump without a net" if I know, say, what I'm jumping off of.

I often suggest to others that they do the same when they're grappling with a daily life scenario- think about how a conversation could go, and how it could go wrong, so they can feel less shut down by the prospect of the conversation itself, and feel more prepared. Usually they don't have to use the emergency pretend-my-pet-is-sick-so-I-can-get-out-of-my-family's-house-at-xmas
plan, but they may at some point resort to the I-have-to-go-to-the-drugstore excuse to get some air so they can think rather than being crumbled to tears or migraines by the not-so wholesomeness of a family gathering. And the tears and migraines are reduced as well by knowing there are plans. There are escape routes. They are prepared. This is not the positive thinking zone (and believe me, I've had friends and even doctors tell me that this was a great way to deal with difficult family or social scenarios: look for the goodness in it). Funny thing is that it's with that disaster planning that it begins to become possible in my experience to find small moments of goodness and ease, and to build from there.

Falling Asleep

I'm a little bit cranky this morning because Gulliver woke me up at 4:30 AM. He thought it was really important to be able to open the closet door, and meowed thusly. When I succumbed and opened the door for him, he became disinterested.

That's when I found myself lying in bed counting. That's what gets me back to sleep.

I don't count sheep. I used to count animals jumping, and mostly I was imagining the curves of their bodies. It had to be complex enough to keep me occupied. Now it's simpler: I just count. I have to remember how far I counted, and if my mind wanders off and I've forgotten where I left off, I backtrack.
I usually get to somewhere between 200 and 300 at which point I'm asleep.

Someone pointed out to me that this is like meditation, and I think that's true- as long as you remember that I'm not trying to make my other thoughts go away; I'm just keeping my focus in one relatively quiet place for a while. And the numbers aren't a mantra- I'm not focusing on the same thing over and over; that would never keep me occupied. I think it works because when I'm really tired already, I keep forgetting both what number I was on, and the fact that I'm counting. My mind starts doing all kinds of activities, like writing a blog post, or going to the grocery store, and I might as well actually be doing the activity for all the detail! It's a bit tiring in itself to be mentally carrying out tasks, but too interesting to let me go to sleep. Counting isn't interesting, but it takes effort when I'm exhausted.

Last night counting didn't stop Gulliver from attacking with loud purring an hour and a half later, mind you. Good thing he's cute.

Banning The Right Thing

I want to expose the myth of The One Thing That's Right For You. There's a lot of talk about finding the Thing That's Right For You. That's the thing you're most passionate about; the thing that will motivate you naturally; the thing to get clear on so you can follow its path. It might be your "calling" or a project, the subject you study or the career you choose. Here's the problem: when you think in multitrack hyperspeed, thinking is the one thing you do. You have tons of great ideas. Any one of these great ideas can get you going, get you passionate and energized and surging ahead. The energy can be so powerful, and the thinking so rapid, that the idea creates its own reason for being the One Thing. You can be convinced that's the right way to go, just by thinking about it. It might be one of a thousand possibilities. I find that for some folks the whole notion of picking the one way to go shuts them down, paralyzes them. It can make them feel stupid or insecure for not knowing that thing. But why should they when there are so many options? Picking one just shuts infinite doors. So how do you pick what to focus on and what to do? I'm not suggesting you do nothing, and I'm not suggesting you discard your interest in particular ideas. I am saying that another approach might be more likely to keep you in action, and keep you happy, than chasing a notion of purpose that doesn't suit everyone. If you're like me, your interest in something might be gone as soon as it has lost some novelty, even if it seemed amazing before- and then the trick is to pick some of those amazing ideas to go with when the time is ripe. They don't need to be a forever purpose.

Tips for Too Much Thinking

One of the challenges I've always had is thinking too much. It's gotten a lot better over the years, with all kinds of help and strategies, and being nice to myself. I think I'll be addressing this more in my blog, but I did want to get started with a few things that help.

I'm not talking about ruminating or obsessively worrying. The same things might sometimes help, but that's not what I'm focusing on here.
This is about volume and speed of thought.
The part that's hard isn't what you're thinking about, but rather that you're thinking so fast that it's tiring. You may forget what you were thinking about just now, and that can be troubling, because it seemed like a good idea, or just because it's disconcerting not to know what you were just thinking, but meanwhile you're about 100 topics further. That leads me to tip #1:

#1.  There's no need to think about what you're thinking about.
You're just thinking. Your brain is on auto-pilot with no functioning brakes. It is happening to you.
I'm not saying you ought to get mad at yourself for thinking about your thoughts (aka metathinking). That won't really help much. And I'm all about whatever helps.

This immediately leads to tip #2:

#2. Don't fight your thinking. I love this book Taming your Gremlin by Rick Carson. It's funny and sweet, and it's all about not fighting the gremlins/committee/editor doing all the criticizing up there in your peanut head. Perhaps you're doing no criticizing whatsoever, just thinking about baseball statistics and how the people who analyze them are odd and cute furry animals and how nice the birdie is that just flew by plus the article you read this morning about the local police department and also your idea for starting a business to sell more blue clothing wait what was I thinking about chocolate?

Guess what? The same not fighting it helps a lot. Let's back up a minute, though. Strategies to get along with your chatterbox neurons may be further than you are right now, or you might be just so tired from the chatter and the automatic fighting.

#3. If you fight it, let that be. Sometimes that's just what you're doing. Remember- it's just happening to you...so,

#4. Notice it- let's talk first step here. Say 'hey look at my brain go- it's doing all that thinking!'
This is NOT trying to quiet it. It is NOT suppressing it. It is NOT major meditation (not to discount the value of different kinds of meditation to some people). You may forget you noticed a moment later. If it's really bad, you might just keep naming the phenomenon every minute or ten or ten seconds- hey look! I'm thinking! Or, oh crap! Stupid thinking! There it goes again!

#5. Give yourself a break. Do whatever it is that lets your brain be still(er). For me it's watching idiot TV. Also helps me when I can't decide what to do to help my hyperthinking state. You know how we fear the mind-numbing effects of TV? Well, that's exactly what we're looking for. For me, when the brain is explosively chattering, TV = Zen. Zen does not = Zen for me, it equals think-bomb proliferation. Other people I know and have worked with do things like nap; listen to unnamed radio programming their rational selves find offensive; play solitaire; play sudoku; run really fast.

What works for you?

My brain is a lot quieter than it used to be, now that I'm less of a fighter about it, and it rarely gets truly exhausting. And I know way better than to say to myself, "don't think so much." Yeah, right.

Bootstrapping the hem

This afternoon I was talking to someone about sewing curtains. I bought fabric several months ago to make curtains for the bedroom of my new house. We've got a machine now, and the sun keep peaking around the shades, making it a task ripe on my to do list. But I get scared of fabric. I don't understand it. I've made stuff before, as a kid, with a kit or a lot of help... and it ain't that hard. Adding a liner to the curtain may jumble the process up in my head, but more so is this lack of understanding of fabric, and more specifically just this step: how to measure and mark it before cutting.

The last curtains threw me off. All I had to do was shorten these cheapo sheers I picked up at IKEA. After the iron-in hem strip resulted in fabric Destruction, I opted to actually hem the things, and it actually took my husband and I a lot of trial and error to figure out that we actually needed to pin the things to the floor, stretch them out, and use a tape measure to get anything  resembling a straight line. This left me a little intimidated, yet confused- I've hemmed things before. It just ain't that hard.
So I read a bunch of books from the library about sewing. They all seem to assume that you know how to measure and mark fabric. It took a lot of reading to realize that
(a) they assume you know how to do this already, meaning that they don't have to explain that in the beginner's instructions, and
(b) there are a few methods for finding a straight line to cut your curtain fabric, but they depend on your not having sheer, stretchy fabric, with an irregular design, and an existing top hem that's not particularly square with respect to the edge or the weave of the fabric.

This is all pretty boring, I realize, but it illustrates a principle that seems to exist in ADHD living:
the step we don't understand is way smaller than anyone thinks. It seems like a dumb thing not to know. No one would ever realize we don't know it. We don't realize it's the tiny thing we don't know, and we don't realize that it's why we don't get it.

In this case, I needed a conceptual framework (as I always do) for 'how it works to measure and mark fabric in general,' so I could understand what was going on in this particular situation. Then I can get a little less frightened off by this process. But this is exactly what happens in so many areas to both me and the clients I work with... in areas ranging from how to cook dinner, to what's stopping you from getting that project/paper/chore done, to how to talk to strangers- or friends. Sound familiar?

stay moving?

When the boulder stops rolling altogether, it's interminably difficult to get it going. Here I am, back from a conference that's got me all buzzing, and swimming in a sea of executive function booby traps, hoping to keep the boulder rolling. I work at home. The house is littered with undone chores. Will I do them? Will I work? What work will I do? Will I nap? I'm wiped out after an intense weekend, and it's pretty weird to be alone again with just my condensed and ever busy thoughts rolling around in there, mingling with the things I want to do. So the pothole that could park that boulder for the time being is deciding what to do. For now, I'm starting, as  intended, by writing, this time a la blog.