The other day I was thinking about negativity - and how it seems to keep invading my thoughts, and how I always feel like such a failure when I realize I've let it return again.
Then I went outside to water some new trees we had planted in our backyard this summer and noticed that there were new weeds growing up through the mulch... even though we'd just sprayed for weeds a few days ago and killed most of them. And it hit me that negative thoughts are the weeds in the garden of my brain.
(I never promised this blog would be free from cliched metaphors.)
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| (Image from gardening.wikia.com) |
No matter how often I might spray the weeds or spend time pulling them out of the ground, I never expect that I'll tame nature completely and never have to weed my landscaping again. I know they'll come back. I don't blame myself personally when they do. I also don't get too depressed about the futility of the exercise... I know nature's just doing what it does, and I'm just doing what I do as a conscientious human living in an American subdivision that has certain standards for its lawns.
Yeah, I'll be pulling weeds for the rest of my home-ownership days, but whatever. It has to be done. I often wait until it looks really bad - because I'm lazy, just like the rest of y'all - but when it gets to the point where I can feel my neighbors' judge-y stares on the other sides of their windows, I get to it. I know it's best for my lawn and my newly planted trees and my other plants and flowers if they don't have to compete with weeds for the resources they need, so I sacrifice some time and energy to get the job done.
If I'm willing to do that for my
lawn - why is it so hard to prioritize and do for my mental health?
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Side note/disclaimer -
I do not have clinical depression (though the term
dysthymia has been tossed around in the occasional therapy session), and I'm not on any medication. I say this just to clarify that when I say "negative thoughts" I mean little anxieties and persistent worries - "I'm useless," "I got nothing done today," "All I do is self-sabotage and make life harder for myself," "Why can't I stop being so hard on myself?" "God, Andrea, you're the worst, hahahaha." It is nothing so serious as "God, Andrea, you are The Actual Worst, please go kill yourself."
I am talking about negative thoughts that
can be conditioned to go away - or at least fade into the background. And I've been regularly seeing a therapist to help me do this. I am not advocating that what might work for me might work for anyone else. I am not a psychologist. Please refer to a professional if you need advice.
And if your negative thoughts are to the point where you're thinking about killing yourself, here is the
suicide prevention hotline you should call (in the U.S.):
1-800-273-8255. Also, please know that other people love you, even if you're not quite sure how to love yourself.
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| Dandelions - (Image from Wikipedia) |
So back to my weeds. There are two ways to get rid of plant-weeds - 1) preventative sprays, and 2) pulling the weeds out (at the root if possible).
Similarly, there are two tactics for trying to quell negative-thought-weeds - 1) training myself to be more positive, to prevent the negative thoughts from popping up in the first place, and 2) recognizing negative thoughts when they do show up, and convincing myself not to listen to them.
The thing with pulling up weeds (either kind), is that the longer I let them sit there before I address them, the harder they are to get rid of once I decide to get around to it. Their roots get longer and more established, they breed and produce more weeds, and they start clogging out the good things I want around - like flowers and positive thoughts.
What I really need to do is be more
proactive. I need to use the first method more often - I need to give myself compliments and recognize when I've done something I should allow myself to be proud of, I need to breed positivity so that some of those negative thoughts won't come around at all.
And I also need to more consistently weed out the negative thoughts when they do show up. I need to recognize faulty reasoning and replace it with actual logic.
Instead of thinking: "This will never work. I'll never sell enough art to make a living at it; I'll never find a literary agent and get my novels published" - I need to think: "I've actually sold quite a few pieces already, and I have a lot of great marketing ideas that I just need to follow through on, and who knows what good might come from it? And there are many avenues to take - both to sell artwork, and to publish a novel - and if one avenue doesn't work, there are others I can try. And also, I really
am a good artist and a good storyteller, and whether or not there is a market for the stuff I create has no actually bearing on the quality of said stuff, nor myself as a person."
If I pull up that particular weed enough times by examining it and convincing myself it has no real basis in fact, maybe eventually it will stop growing. Or maybe this is a particular insecurity of mine that won't ever really go away, and I'll have to keep pulling up the weed over and over again.
But if/when it does come back, I shouldn't blame myself for "letting it" return. I can't give it that kind of power. It's not my "nemesis." It's just a weed. And I can pull it up and discard it a hundred times if I have to. It's not that fucking hard. It's just a weed. I pull them out of my yard. I can pull them out of my head, too.
It's not an exercise in futility. It's an exercise in
resilience. Positive people take the time to be positive. They schedule time to recharge, schedule time to do the things that make them happy. It's proof that they're prioritizing the right things.
So that's my goal. To go through and weed out my head - and my yard - on a more regular basis.
