Thought Patterns

Posted on by stilllearning2b

The way we pattern our thoughts has an enormous impact on our mental health and happiness. Thought patterns can be divided into two main categories. I’m going to call these recursive and input-output. A note to those who are math-phobic: I am going to use some math concepts to explain these thinking patterns. Stay with me; I promise I’ll make it simple:)

Recursive Thinking

In math, we can look at functions (think of these like a rule or pattern) recursively by only considering the output. The rule ignores the input completely and only considers the starting output and the pattern to get from one term to the next. For example, in the table below, the rule would say, “Start with 12 and add 3 each time.” Recursive rules feed upon themselves, with each output based on the one before. They are like a chain, with each term linked to the one before and the one after.

InputIn recursive thinking, your thought pattern is initiated by something: a memory, a trauma, a comment. Your thoughts then feed upon themselves with no regard for any external input. This type of thinking can lead to depression or anxiety as the brain simply continues the emotionally equivalent of “plus 3” with no end in sight. When you feel stuck emotionally, this is the type of pattern you are experiencing. When your reaction builds well beyond the initial stimulus, you are thinking recursively. When you feel sad or angry or anxious even in the face of calm, you are allowing the chain of thought to continue unbroken.

Input-Output Thinking

An input-output rule in math relates the output to the input. For example, in the (identical) table below, the input-output rule would say, “Multiply the input by 3 and add 9.” The output is dependent upon the input. Change the input, and you alter the output.

In input-output thinking, your reactions are based upon the external stimulus rather than your previous thoughts. You may be sad, but the emotion and associated thought patterns are due to your situation. You may respond in anger or feel fear but these are due to the inputs you experience. If you change the input, the associated thoughts will change with it.

Recursion is easy, effortless – which is why it is so valuable in computer programming. Its endless loops create the self-similarity needed for programs to run unaltered. Recursive thinking can be beneficial when it is positive in nature, but all too often it is the negative thoughts that pull us into its pattern.

Recursion has a weakness. Since each output is dependent upon the one before, if you break the chain, you break the pattern. If you catch yourself in this cycling thought pattern, find a way to interrupt the flow. Do something differently to break the cycle. Whatever you normally do or say, don’t. Recursion requires a hands-off approach to survive. So get your hands dirty and change it.

Then, consciously shift your thinking to input-output and deliberately choose positive inputs to encourage positive outputs. Surround yourself with nature, connect with friends, do something that feels good. Change the input and your thoughts will follow.

Input

Taming the Monkey Mind: Taking the Monkey for a Ride

Posted on by stilllearning2b

My monkey mind has been unruly of late. It’s been delivering excuses to refrain from sitting quietly faster than McDonald’s serves up burgers. And the excuses are about as palatable.

I could list those excuses, rationalize away my lack of mindfulness. But what’s the point? It’s just noise. Distraction.

I have two friends, sisters, who lost their mother many years ago. Ever since, they have chosen to make Mother’s Day a day of celebrating life. Their venue of choice? Amusement parks. I have been lucky enough to have been included in the tradition.

Every Mother’s Day finds us at the gates of some purveyor of adrenaline – laced fun. Sometimes we stay local, sometimes we travel. Regardless, the goal is the same – a day of riding as many coasters as possible while engaging in great food and better company.

Boy, did I ever need that yesterday.

The coasters forced my monkey into submission. I had no choice but to accept the experience. No choice but to let go. No choice but to be in the moment and enjoy the ride. With my eyes closed, there was no anticipation, just experience.

With each new coaster, I could feel the tension draining from my shoulders and clarity slowly replacing my muddied brain. My breath deepened and my posture straightened. I felt refreshed and relaxed.

For weeks now, meditation has been a chore, something I have to force myself to do. But this morning, my mat is calling to me, inviting. I want to sit. I want to breathe. I want to be.

Sometimes my monkey mind protests too much stillness and too much routine. He needs to feel the air rushing past his face and hear the joyful screams and laughter bursting forth, unrestrained. He needs to have his untamed side acknowledged and celebrated. He needs to let go with no thought of decorum or restraint (well, other than the ones that keep me from falling 200 feet to the ground!).

Sometimes the monkey just needs to ride. Maybe next year I’ll bring my meditation mat and some incense to the park:)

 

Mommies Are Tired

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I test drove motherhood this week.

I was one of 18 chaperones on a three-day trip to Savannah with over 200 8th graders.

I love these trips, but they are such a shock to my system as I go from no kids to being completely responsible for a group of 16 and sharing responsibility for the others.

My days started with me trying to grab sips of coffee while I made the rounds, making sure students were awake and appropriately dressed, administering medication and giving sage advice to address the issues that arise overnight when you stick four teenage girls in a room together.

Breakfast, usually my peaceful time in front of the computer, was taken standing up in the lobby of the hotel so that I could direct the girls and strive to keep their voices at a semi-reasonable level. I think I managed two bites of hot oatmeal before it congealed.

Through the day, I lugged a large backpack filled with their medications and the day’s schedule. I was nurse, tour guide and counselor in one. I made sure that sunscreen and bug spray were applied. And then reapplied. I cautioned them about the effects of the overconsumption of sugar and the need to bring a jacket. I even found myself repeating the dreaded mom words, “Just try,” at the limited bathroom opportunities.

I swear the girls knew the moment I stepped into the shower at the end of the long days as the phone would start to ring as soon as I applied the shampoo to my hair – the hotel equivalent of calling “Mom” across the house.

By the time all of the girls were settled in their rooms, I would collapse, exhausted.

Yet unable to sleep.

The details of the days are tiring, but it is nothing compared to the weight of responsibility that motherhood, even of the three-day variety, holds. I saw potential dangers lurking around previously harmless corners. Every stranger was a threat, every body of water a potential drowning and every curb provided an opportunity to fall. At night, I found that I could not enter deep sleep, as I was constantly listening for the kids.

 

 

When I was a kid, the pastor at my church would call all of the children up to the steps in front of the pulpit for a brief children’s message embedded within the larger sermon. One year when I was about four, the pastor celebrated Mother’s Day by beginning with the prompt, “Mommies are” and then holding out the microphone for the kids to complete the sentence.

The first few shares were your standard:

“Mommies are nice.”

“Mommies are pretty.”

“Mommies are gentle.”

And then the microphone was put in front of me. My contribution on that Mother’s Day?

“Mommies are tired.”

 

Yes, they are. Motherhood is a job with the biggest responsibilities possible and no time off. Motherhood is a job that, just when you think you have it figured out, your kid enters a new phase; you’re in perpetual training. Motherhood is a job that requires that your own needs are neglected so that your offspring’s needs are met.

It is tiring.

But is also rewarding beyond belief, as reflected in the faces of the moms as they reunited with their kids at the end of the trip. I’m sure they enjoyed their three days of peace and quiet but they were thrilled to see their kids (even stinky, cranky, hopped-up-on-sugar kids:) )again.

As for me, I enjoyed the test drive but this particular model is not for me. I’ll stick with teaching!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you tired mommies. I am in awe of what you do every day.

 

 

 

 

What is He?

Posted on by stilllearning2b

At the beginning, I looked for a label. I needed a label. I read The Sociopath Next Door. I combed the DSM. I held his history and his traits against checklists until my eyes blurred.

I wanted a label because I thought it would bring understanding. Closure.

I knew he wasn’t the man I loved. But, who was he? What was he?

I saw him as some monster. He must be, to be able to do those things.

As is so often the case, elements of each label: sociopath, narcissist, addict fit yet no one term seemed to fully explain him. The reading was useful; it gave me a vocabulary and a way of understanding. It provided perspective.

But it gave no real answers.

I still didn’t know why he did those things.

I was no closer to understanding what went wrong.

Because he is simultaneously both more and less than any of those diagnosis. Yes, his actions displayed elements of those labels. Yes, they are useful to discuss his behaviors. But they are not him. (Related: How to Apply Labels)

This Psychology Today article, that addresses the use of the label of “narcissist,” appeared in my reader this morning. It’s an interesting debate, especially as the terminology from the DSM leaves the closed quarters of the therapist’s office and enters society at large. See if you can tell who wrote the first comment that is quoted:) I especially like the author’s point about victimhood – that is something I realized as well along the way.

I eventually gave up on assigning him a diagnosis. They all seemed to paint him as two-dimensional, existing only in the pathology. They neglected to describe the man that was a wonderful husband for so many years. They ignored the man behind the mask of whatever illness or disorder or situation led him astray. They were too simplistic, too formulaic.

Regardless of what else he is, I’m happy now to simply call him my “ex.”

 

 

Mom: A Mother’s Day Tribute

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Mom. Such a simple word, yet so loaded with meaning and memory. It’s where we all come from. It’s what we simultaneously yearn for and yet try to escape from. My own mother often jokes that the umbilical cord is never fully cut. It just stretches to accommodate.

There’s some truth in that.

Although I’ve only been able to admit that more recently.

For most of my childhood, it was just my mom and I. She worked long hours (Five Ways You Know You’ve Been Raised by a Therapist) so that we could stay in the house and I could stay in the same schools. That consistency provided early security that gave me roots from which to grow. We were close. Sometimes too close. A perimenopausal woman and a hormonal teenager can be quite the powder keg at times!

She tackled a lot as a single mom. She and my dad had purchased a VW Vanagon when I was little. That blue box on wheels became home base for my mom and I as we started our traditions of camping at Lost Maples every Thanksgiving and spending weeks at the Kerrville Folk Festival every summer. I learned the importance of layering against the cold and staying wet in defense of the heat. I learned how to play miniature golf on a closed course using a croquet set (The trick? Spanish moss in the hole so that you can retrieve the ball). I learned that it’s important to secure the screens against the racoons and that butane curling irons let a self-conscious 11 year old girl fix her hair even while she’s camping. I learned the joy of being silly as we played our kazoos on the drives to the campgrounds and invented crazy dances (don’t even ask – not putting the pumpkin dance on YouTube:) ). She instilled in me a love of nature, simple laughter and of quiet escape. I am so thankful to have had those experiences and to be able to continue them forward. Only without the kazoos!

The van:) Notice my fashionable early 90s plaid flannel in the heat of a Texas summer!
The van:) Notice my fashionable early 90s plaid flannel in the heat of a Texas summer!

She didn’t always have it easy raising me. I was a willful child, prone to impatience and peppered with perfectionism. Some things don’t change:) She did a great job of adjusting her parenting to fit me rather than trying to get me to fit into some standard mold. I may have to only mom who had to get onto her kid about the importance of NOT doing my homework (I would beg to leave some of those camping trips early so that I could get back to my work)!. She knew that I pushed myself hard enough (or even too hard) and that her usual role was to encourage me to ease up, not to push me further. At the same time, she recognized those situations where I needed some encouragement and she would not let me weasel my way out (Vanilla, Please).

Yet still, I spent most of my life trying to separate from my mom, as though I could not find myself while till securely tied to her. That’s the thing with moms – we need them but we don’t always want to need them.

Several years ago, my mom prepared a gift for her own mother. She obtained photographs of the matriarchal line in the family going back 7 generations. She worked to size and crop the images to provide uniformity and then mounted them in a long rectangular frame, each woman’s face peering out from a separate oval cut into the tawny mat.

It took my breath away. That line of mothers and daughters. Beginning with a woman that I had never met yet whose lineage I carried and ending with a picture of me. Each daughter a product of the mother before.

Many of those closest to me have lost their mothers, either through death, distance or dementia. Some had their moms for much of a lifetime, some for only a number of years and others never met them at all. Yet they all still carry the imprint of their mothers on their hearts.

They have taught me to be thankful for my own mother. To be grateful for the moments and memories we share.

She is my biggest cheerleader when things are going well and my biggest supporter when my world collapses.

I love the relationship I now have with my mom. I need her and I’m okay with that. Love you, mom:)

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