I’m writing with a quick update for June. There’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that my depression symptoms are pretty much in remission. Two examples. I went 10 whole days early this month without any suicidal ideations. And, though I’m still aware of “salient suicide opportunities” (e.g., stepping in front of a bus), they are not coming daily: true, I had one yesterday, but not the day before.
The bad news is about my fear symptoms. They had mostly disappeared over the winter. However, as I reported back in May, they have come back. As I’ve explained before, what seems to happen is: i) cortisol goes flowing into my brain for no good reason; ii) this creates in my mind the sensation as-of fear; iii) because there’s no external thing that seems to be the cause of the fear, my mind naturally confabulates something frightening to explain why I feel afraid (e.g., I’m afraid because winter is coming and I don’t have a solid plan for surviving it); finally, iv) I end up focused on that target. Now all of a sudden I’m afraid in the more usual way. Ugh.
The mindfulness technique called for here is to “just let the fear be there”. Let me tell you, though, that isn’t easy, because feeling afraid is really very unpleasant. Indeed, evolution made our feeling-of-fear terrifically uncomfortable so that we would pay attention to our environment when it shows up, and try to avoid whatever caused the feeling. It’s just like pain in that regard. Ignoring fear sensations is thus hard to pull off, as it goes against our inborn nature.
Several weeks ago, my psychotherapist Lori proposed a practice to implement when my fear symptoms pop up out of the blue. The two-fold task she assigned me was, first, to see if there’s any pattern at all: maybe it’s not wholly random, wholly a matter of misdirected brain chemistry; second, to pay close attention to where in my body I am feeling the fear. Some of usual suspects, for instance, are tightness in my checks, clutching the toes of my left foot, and increased heart rate. (Dear Bipolar Brain: Why my left foot? That’s so random.)
Her suggested practice has yielded two results. On the one hand, moving my attention away from the fear sensation in my mind, and towards the fear symptoms in my body, seems to distract me, and really helps overcome the fear. On the other hand, I have indeed noticed one tiny piece of a pattern: when I’m putting on my running shoes, when I’m planning a run, even when I just think about running, the fear symptoms tend to show up. To expand on that last point, it’s like I am scared because I can’t run as fast or as far anymore. I’m terrified of trying to run and not succeeding. In light of that, I’m trying to make my running plans purposely less demanding. These days, I run only three kilometers. And, instead of 10 minutes running and then a one-minute walk break, I’m taking a walk break every six minutes, as I slowly rebuild my stamina. In brief, I’m compassionately making the task easier on myself. The hope is that I’ll thereby become less afraid of failure.
The overarching good news, and the crucial point, is this: the unpleasant fear sensations notwithstanding, I am coping well with being full-time at work. I have no plans to turn back!