Episode Summary
In this episode I share a small victory about how I overcame internal resistance that previously would have written off my day.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi and welcome to this episode of the Hope, Help, Happiness podcast.
Yesterday I talked about whether I would actually have gone through with taking my own life had I not gone to the doctors. That was a bit of a dark, deep and gloomy session. What I wanted to do this morning is share something more positive that just happened to me and take the opportunity to reflect on it.
Now, one of the challenges I’ve had in trying to deal with my problems and face up to the difficulties I’m encountering has been suffering from learned helplessness. How that’s manifested itself is when I’m faced with challenges, I think they’re too difficult. I think I can’t do them. And so I withdraw from them.
Now that’s got worse and worse over the last six to eight months. It often manifests itself first thing in the morning when I’ve been unable to get out of bed. Over time I effectively felt I’d given up and there didn’t seem like any point in doing anything.
So when I woke up in the morning, I would think about the problems I was having. I’d get overwhelmed by them and I’d just stay in bed. There’ve been times when I’ve stayed in bed for as long as four or five days! [I am embarrassed to admit that publicly but I have to be honest an open if I am going to heal]. When you live alone you can get away with that. When I don’t have a strong social network I’m regularly participating in, it’s very easy to for me to do that.
It’s a problem I’ve had and it’s not really good. It’s the habit I’ve developed.
Let me tell you about what happened today.
Up until today I have been doing a stretch routine in the morning when I get up and it’s been working really well. I explained it and gave an update on that in previous episodes.
This morning my alarm went off at 6.30am as usual. One of the strategies I’ve started to do is to put my alarm (it’s actually my phone), on a small table out in the hallway outside the bedroom door. I used to have it by the side of the bed, but in my state of slumber I was regularly pressing the snooze button.
Interestingly enough, yesterday I noticed the orange, easy to see snooze button on the alarm app is MASSIVE and the stop button is tiny and much less noticeable! Surely they should do that the other way around to stop people from snoozing.
Anyway, I digress. Back to this morning.
Having put the phone in the hallway, when the alarm goes off I’ve got to get out of bed to silence it. Now this morning the alarm went off and I was in a real deep slumber. I really did not want to wake up at all. When I heard the alarm go off, I just felt knackered and was really, really groggy.
But I had to get out of bed, to go into the hallway so I could shut the alarm off. Immediately I was faced with a decision – “Stop” or “Snooze”?
I really, really wanted to go back to bed. I was tired. I was groggy. I wasn’t present in the day and I felt I needed to go back to bed. From the hallway, I looked back at my duvet. It was just 10 feet away from me.
I knew it was warm.
I wanted to go back to sleep.
But I didn’t, even though I bed was calling me.
I overcame that urge and instead of turning right back to the bedroom, I turned left and went to the bathroom. I cleaned my teeth, had a drink of water and started to wake up.
Then I went back into the bedroom to do my usual morning stretch routine. Here’s where my resolve was further tested. I knew the duvet was still warm. I could just easily slip back in there and snooze for a little bit.
That’s what I really wanted to do.
But I didn’t.
I made my bed, tidied up the duvet, sorted out the pillows and re-arranged the decorative cushions. Then I started my morning stretch routine.
Initially I felt more tense and tight than normal for this time in the morning. I didn’t really want to do my exercises, but slowly I went through the process, just like I’ve been doing every other morning recently.
I don’t know why this morning I was more groggy than normal, but I did my exercises and slowly worked my way through them.
And for me that’s a victory. That’s a massive victory.
It might sound like something small. Okay, I got out of bed and I didn’t go back to sleep.
For me though, where I’ve been, it’s a massive step. I am starting to feel the results of this regular effort. My discipline is starting to build back up again now through just this small, simple action.
My resistance, it’s there, it’s still resisting a little bit, but I’m making progress. Now sometimes I still give into it. Yesterday for example, I was trying to sort out something with one of my accounts online. And they needed a whole load of documentation. I thought I’d given it them.
But all of a sudden, a whole other set of new document requirements appeared. I stopped working on that task because I could feel this resistance. Fear started to build up. I thought “I can’t do it”. It started to feel like there is too much to do and I began to feel overwhelm.
So there’s still some aspects of resistance I have yet to overcome.
But this small victory this morning shows me I’m making progress. It has given me the confidence I can make these changes and I’m really pleased.
I think I need to positively reinforce myself when I do this to remind myself this is a step forward. As small as it may seem to you, [and let’s face it, practically it is a very simple thing to do], in psychological terms, in motivational terms and in self esteem terms, it’s a massive step forward.
I think my journey to overcome the challenges I’m facing is going to be the combination of little steps like this.
So that’s Today’s episode.
Until tomorrow.
