What If It's Not The Stress After All?

A lively debate has begun in the stress management community over Kelly McGonigal’s Ted Talk in which she presents research that indicates it’s not stress that is damaging, but instead one’s attitude toward stress that dictates the damage done to one’s health by stressful situations.  To put it bluntly, stress doesn’t kill people, thinking that stress is bad kills people.  Volition over physiology.

Can we all be so wrong?

Mindfulness and Anxiety

Here's another post you may have missed that emphasizes the positive effects of meditation.

From August 2012.

Anxiety disorder is much more than being very nervous or edgy.  In anxiety, a person will report an unreasonable exaggeration of threats, repetitive negative thinking, hyperarousal, and a strong identification with fear.  The fight or flight response is kicked into overdrive and physical symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, and digestive problems often join with the cognitive challenges that anxiety disorder presents.  In General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) the symptoms become so severe that normal daily functioning becomes impossible.

Mindfulness and Hypomania

I've written quite a bit lately about the overselling of mindfulness, yet I continue to practice and to teach.  I'd like to repost the following to illustrate something that I think mindfulness is very good for.  Something that can help those who, like me, struggle with bipolar disorder.

From March 2013

I wrote in a post titled Discipline and Diagnostics that one of the benefits of meditation to a person with a mental illness is the ability to detect episodes early.  Well, I’m in one.

It’s been hard to sit at all, let alone for the thirty minutes I do each day.  I find myself agitated and fidgety.  My thoughts are all over the place.  This is not unusual during meditation, but in taking note of the subjects of my thoughts, I can see hypomania creeping in.  I’m thinking of buying stuff.  I’m thinking of trading stocks.  I’m thinking of another career change, discarding good ideas for more exciting, if undoable, ones.  All of my thoughts are about getting and doing.  Anything.  Right now I feel smarter, more creative, and more energetic than I usually do.  That might be dangerous, but that’s what I’m feeling, and that’s what I encounter during meditation.

Too Stressed to Meditate

For the past couple of years, meditation has been easy.  I’d put in some hard work over the previous decade and had found a place of stillness each time I took to the cushion.  Sure, sometimes what I met as I observed my mind was difficult, but my practice had become productive and indispensible.  I spent the last two years as a stay at home Dad of a toddler.  I did all of the Dad, and much of the Mom, stuff.  I managed the house, cleaned (badly), cooked (very well), arranged activities and play dates, and did what I could to keep the family satisfied.  None of this was easy, but my daughter napped every day.  And while she napped I had a solid thirty-five minutes to meditate, without fail.  I taught a couple of classes each week, and led a Wednesday night drop-in meditation group, but that was more rewarding and fulfilling than taxing.

Then, all of it came to an end.

Maybe It's the Discipline

Mindfulness works as a therapy to increase impulse control.  While the results of practice are well-researched, the neurological mechanisms are indeterminate.   Something about mindfulness practice actually changes the cortical make-up of the brain.  Why this happens is not yet known.  It could be the focused attention or the release of judgmental thoughts.  Or, it could be the discipline.

Judgment and Low Expectations

Certainly, the people closest to you want what’s best for you.  They want you to be safe, secure, and, if possible, happy.  Sometimes they want these things for us even more than we want them for ourselves.  This is loving, caring, and compassionate.  And it can be a burden that holds us back from our true potential.

When It Seems Like Work Isn't Working

I've always been an advocate of, if at all possible, staying off of disability insurance and working.  In fact, I believe that true wellness is not possible without the productivity and relative independence that come from work.  I've written about the benefits and the challenges of those of us with mental illness finding and keeping a job.  But one thing confronts many who have a gap in their resume due to a prolonged illness.

Underemployment.