Developing a More Positive and Helpful Mindset

I had been struggling a bit this week for blog post ideas as I knew I wanted to write something about positivity but didn't really know how to phrase it or go about it.

Looking back, I can see that I only really started to make significant steps forward in my recovery when my overall mindset began to change.  I am aware that this is all probably going to sound a bit idealistic and unattainable as I know that you can't just change your whole mindset overnight.  I am also not very sure as to how or why my mindset and outlook on life began to change but I think it had something to do with the fact that for a number of months, I was forced to have to face and reflect on myself and my life without as many distractions.

In my previous post on PTSD, I spoke a little bit about how the illness can leave its sufferers struggling to see a future for themselves.  I would say that this way of thinking tends to become more prominent when we feel overwhelmed by our symptoms and unable to control them.  I used to fall into a thought pattern that went something like this:

Everyday I am reminded of the terrible things that happened in my past

No matter how hard I try to cope or manage my symptoms, it just seems to make it worse

Everyday it is getting harder to hide my symptoms from others

I am going to end up losing my job, my home, fail at my studies and lose all my friends and family as I will become too much of a burden to them

I can't see a future for myself

How am I going to be able to do the usual things like hold down a job, get married, have children, buy a house, when I physically can't have children, am terrified of men, can barely leave the house, struggle to even make a phone call and just generally struggle with life on so many levels?

There is no future for myself.

As you can probably imagine, ruminating on these thoughts didn't make my future look any brighter.  I was caught up in a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and they were all leading in one direction.  Seeing no future for myself was one of the main things that lead to me becoming suicidal.

Once I committed myself to living, or rather more to 'sticking it out', I realised that something had to change otherwise I was just going to find myself in the same trap time and time again.  I had seen where that trap would lead and I was determined never to let myself go back there again.  I think that sometimes in a difficult or troubling situation, you have a choice whether to make life more difficult than it already is or easier for yourself.  For the first time, probably ever, I decided I was going to break a habit of a life time and try to make things easier for myself.  I want to share with you some of the thoughts and reflections that lead me to this more positive and helpful mindset in the hope that it may help others to reflect upon how they could try to see things more positively.

Be happy with less.

Sometimes I think we can want too much in life and if we want too much, we are always going to be disappointed.  It has helped me to come to some level of acceptance that I may not achieve everything I want in my life but the most important thing is to make the most of the things I do achieve.  I also came to the view that so long as I am not feeling suicidal and am relatively content about being alive, that can be enough for me because at a basic level, what else is there really?

Don't look so far ahead.

You can end up becoming so wrapped up in what may or may not happen in the future that you lose sight of the things you have going for you in the here and now.  At the moment, I've decided that I can't really shed any light on where I want my life to go in the long term - where I'm going to live, what career path I'm going to take, my main goals, focuses and ambitions.  And I've decided that's okay for now as my priority is getting myself into a more healthy frame of mind to be able to face those kind of questions.

You are young.

This may not necessarily be the case for everyone but I think there is some truth in the saying that we are all young at heart.  I often feel as though I have lived a lot longer than 23 years as I would say my life has been pretty eventful and in many ways I was forced to grow up quickly.  The reality is though that I am 23 and while my life may not be in a place I ever imagined it'd be in at this age, that is no reason to write myself off.  The truth is that I have far more years ahead of me than I feel as though I do and those years are full of possibilities and opportunities.  We live in a time where people can change their plans at so many points in their lives and take a totally different path to the one they may have planned.

You can't predict the future.

All your ideas about your future are entirely influence by your perception of your life in the present.  What we often forget is that we actually have no certainty about what the future may hold for us.  My life has already changed a great deal already, I may be a very different person in 10 years time and with a very different outlook.  Why invest so much worry in the future when you have no idea how it is going to turn out?

Focus on the positives in your life in the here and now.

This is probably the thing I have found most helpful.  When we get into a negative cycle of thinking, it can seem impossible at times to see the positive and I think that's why we have to make the most of it when we do.  I find that once you spot a bit of positivity in your life, a bit more tends to show up.  In those moments where I recognise that I am happy or even grateful to be alive, it gives me hope that no matter where my future may take me, I will be able to cherish more of those moments and acknowledge that there is some happiness in my life.  We may worry about all the little details of the future but I think really what all that worry comes down to is that at the end of it all, we just want to be happy.

Happiness comes in different forms.

People want different things from life and the things that make people happy are not all the same.  I might not have children, get married, live in the area I want to, be in the career I originally intended, I might live alone for the rest of my life with only my pet rabbits for company but all of that doesn't mean that I won't be happy.  Only time will tell what will make me happy.

So what if you don't achieve every hope and ambition you set out to achieve?

Being happy is more important.

It's important to have drive and ambition but not at the expense of everything else in your life.  I have always been a high achiever accompanied by a bit of a stubbornness in that I don't give up on achieving something which I've set out to do.  I recognise that this isn't an awful quality to have but I also need to recognise that if I do not achieve everything I have set out to achieve, I am not a failure.  Sometimes veering away from our original intention and taking a different path, shows that we have confidence in ourselves and have become clearer on what will make us happy in life. 

Sometimes it's the things that you find out along the way which shape you more than what you find at your destination

I've always been of the view that life is more about the journey than the destination.
The joy is in learning.

Sometimes it's the things that happen instead that make us happiest.

Just because things haven't gone to plan, doesn't mean they haven't worked out for us.  So many things have happened in my life that I never would have imagined.  Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to suffer from mental health problems to extent of which I have, have to take medication, be admitted to a psychiatric ward, defer my studies, have 7 months off work etc.  All those things were certainly never a part of my life plan.  However, when I reflect on it all, I see that if those things hadn't happened, so many good things wouldn't have either.  I wouldn't have met some of the people I know now, I wouldn't have the relationship I have with some of my friends and family now, I wouldn't have gone on some lovely outings and long walks and more than anything, I don't think I would have appreciated some of the little things in life that I do so very much now.

Don't measure your own worth by the extent to which you meet other people's expectations.

At the end of the day, I think we have to be able to live for ourselves and the decision that we make for ourselves.  Other people may have expectations for us and that can be a positive thing because it shows that they believe that we have a lot to give.  It important at the same time though that we don't rule our lives by other people's expectations for us, we have to focus on our own expectations for ourselves.  As someone who has always achieved well, I find it easy to feel a pressure that I should be doing something useful with my 'brains' and not let them go to waste.  We can use our intelligence in different ways though, even if I don't follow the conventional path others may expect me to follow, I can still fulfil my potential in ways that are important to me.

It's your life, take responsibility and ownership for it.

This strongly follows on from the last one.  I have based so many important decisions in my life on what would best suit other people rather than what would best suit me.  You should always take other people's needs into consideration but not to extent that it stands in the way of what you want to do in your life.  In the film The Holiday there is this line that goes something along the lines of 'you have to be the leading lady in your own life' and I think that really sums it up.  You have to take charge, put yourself first sometimes and make sure you are doing what you want to do.

Everyone needs support at one point or another.

This is the one I find most tough but without a doubt it makes a huge difference.  I have always found reaching out for support from others difficult because due to my BPD, I fear putting too many of my problems onto others as I worry that it will become too much for them and they will abandon me.  Because I reach out to relatively few people, once I find someone I begin to trust and start opening up to, I can end up becoming overly attached to them and run the risk of going a bit overboard, putting too many of my worries onto them.  It is a difficult balance but I recognise that it is important that I do feel that I can reach out for help from others when I need it.  I find it helps me to look at it from the other side.  If someone came to me with a problem, I would try to help and would want them to feel able to reach out for support when they needed it.  We do have to take control of our own lives but everyone needs a bit of help along the way from time to time.

Capture the moments in which you see the world more positively and save them for the harder times.

I would love to be able to think positively all the time but I suppose that's just not realistic.  I can find myself slipping into more negative thought patterns from time to time but what tends to bring me out of it is reminding myself that while I may be in a negative frame of mind right now, there have been a number of times when I have been much more positive.  Each one of the photos below represents a moment of positive thinking for me.  Whenever I feel myself falling back into a more negative cycle of thinking, I look back at photos like these and remind myself that there are plenty more positive moments to come.

Love and Strength,

The One Day Seeker