Have Your Ever Wished Your Thoughts Came With A Pause or A Stop Button?

There are around 50,000+ thoughts that we have every day and when you have anxiety or depression, these thoughts are very troubling as they stress you out and often happen so fast you almost feel dizzy or these thoughts can have you feeling sad or terrible about yourself. For some people, they can even be experiencing both anxiety and sadness.

But what can you do?

These thoughts are so hard to fight and your likely already exhausted from racing from one worry to another or have little energy to work on changing your thoughts due to your depression.

At it’s heart, these thoughts are a mindfulness problem. Being mindful relates to your ability to enjoy the present moment, which anxiety does not let you do as it has you living in the future and wondering “what if this happens and then if that happens, what will I do if this other thing happens . . .” Depression also does not let you enjoy the present moment as we focus on all the past things we regret, what’s happened to us, or why we have lost our hope.

True enjoyment though can only happen in the present.

I dare you, to try to really be happy and enjoy yourself in the past or future. Oh, you can reminisce about a great moment in the past or anticipate one in the future, but it is only a shadow of how good you can feel in the present. For example, imagine you plan to eat ice cream tonight, are you enjoying it more anticipating it or when you eat it later?

So how do I enjoy the present moment more?

Here’s some ideas you can try:

1. Notice the present moment experience, really sensing into the experience using your five senses to really enjoy what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, can touch, how connected you feel to others, or how you enjoy a moment alone, etc.

2. Use mindfulness skills to slow or stop your thinking for awhile. There are so many mindfulness practices I could not possibly list them all, but some to look up and try might be mindful eating, walking, focusing on your breath or a part of your body, focusing on an object, etc. The key is to focus on the steps involved in the activity you choose or the details of it. For example, if you choose walking, notice lifting you leg, how you place each foot, does heel or toe happen first, pause, then notice you other leg. You are single mindedly focusing with all your mind on what you chose to focus on.

3. When you practice being mindful, its super important to Single Task! (Absolutely No Multitasking!) Multitasking keeps our thinking brain moving.

4. When you get distracted by your thoughts, and I guarantee you will if you are new to training your brain in this way, try your best not to judge yourself, but to gently and with self compassion bring your attention back to what you are focusing on. And if you do judge yourself, try your best to not to judge your judging.

5. Practice radical self acceptance and self compassion, viewing what shows up as helpful information for you, instead of valuing it as good or bad.

I hope these tips help you better manage your thoughts of anxiety and depression and allow you to better experience the beauty of the present moment. It is also true though that some people feel more able to practice mindfulness when it is guided so that may mean finding a therapist or person skilled in mindfulness that is a good fit for you in Eureka, CA. If you are still feeling stuck, please feel free to call me at (707) 954-7060 for a free 15 minute consultation. I’d be happy to hear about what is going on for you and to help direct you to the right person to help you. If you are looking for anxiety counseling, depression counseling, or trauma informed counseling, you can read more about how I help here.

Why Do I Feel Like I’m On An Emotional Roller Coaster?

Have you ever felt like you were on an emotional roller coaster of anxiety and depression with extreme highs and lows? It can feel like a repeated pattern of panic and heaviness or shut down, so many refer to it as the roller coaster they want to get off of. There is also a reason why this keeps happening that is important to know about.

Why Does This Keep Happening To Me?

The highs often include what we call hyperarousal. This is something that is hard to define as we all experience it differently. It may include your heart beating faster than normal, difficulty catching your breath, feeling dizzy or light headed, shaky, trembling, sweaty, or tense. The reason it is hard to cope with this feeling is you are outside your “window of tolerance” or the space in which we cope well and process information. Above this window is anxiety and panic feelings and below it is a feeling of low energy, low motivation, not wanting to move, feeling shut down, and lethargic. This low is called hypoarousal.

What can be really hard to cope with is when both happen which is often the case and is what creates the roller coaster feeling of going high with anxiety and panic and then crashing into exhaustion and feeling shut down.

This is also often made harder by past traumas or hurtful experiences as this tends to shrink your window of tolerance smaller and smaller with each new trauma so you feel less and less able to cope with stressful situations than you used to. You may even get frustrated with yourself and wonder why you cannot cope with it like you used to.

So What Can I Do To Get Off This Emotional Roller Coaster?

The good news is there are things you can do that will help such learn techniques such as mindfulness, grounding, or how to increase your energy in your body. These techniques will help you stay in your window of tolerance so you can function better and you can even learn to widen your window back out so you can cope with more things. This often involves experiential activities. These are also good things to ask a therapist about when you do your initial consultation so you can find out if they know the approaches to help you with this as some may specialize in this and others may not.

I hope this helps you better understand the emotional roller coaster of anxiety and depression we sometimes go on and gives you some ideas on how to find the right therapist for you in Eureka, if you are ready to take that step. If you are still feeling stuck, please feel free to call me at (707) 954-7060 for a free 15 minute consultation. I’d be happy to hear about what is going on for you and to help direct you to the right person to help you. If you are looking for anxiety counseling, depression counseling, or trauma informed counseling, you can read more about how I help here.