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Breaking the Mind Whirl

(What goes on when we get in a spin)

"Anxiety not only feeds off itself, it also chews away at our ability to cope with it"

This chapter explores a little of what is going on when we find ourselves in an anxious, stressed, or depressed state of mind and what we can do about it. We will be exploring this in some detail in order to better understand how to recognise what is going on and what to do about it.

Mind Whirl

We all experience mind whirl from time to time. Some are able to identify it as anxiety, some as a form of depression, some are more familiar with a seemingly endless repetition of thoughts, and to some it shows as a tendency to mentally gnaw away uncomfortably at a problem.

There are a couple of key features about this state of mind that help us work with it. Firstly, whether we are consciously aware of it or not, there is an associated string of thoughts that at some point loops back on itself and begins again. Secondly, there is no final resolution to the thinking.

The actual thinking activity can become very complex. There may be more than one thought loop going on, and there may be several apparent solutions that appear from time to time, but ultimately these are being rejected as unsatisfactory for one reason or another.

But we cannot change what we are not aware of. If we are to disentangle what is going on and work through it we must first raise our level of awareness.

Case Story – Justin's Girlfriend

"Why does this keep happening to me?" complained Justin, "How come all my girlfriends end up running away from me?" Justin was a well-liked, accomplished, and intelligent man, but somehow he kept finding himself in relationships that were going nowhere. This time he was seriously fed up with the cycle but didn't know how to proceed.

Justin didn't want to push his latest girlfriend Safa but he wanted her to make it clear whether or not she was seriously interested in him and whether she actually wanted be in a relationship with him. When they got together they really enjoyed each other's company and had developed a full physical relationship. The problem was that it was not a committed relationship; they did not see each other on a regular basis and Safa had shown no sign of wanting to introduce him to her circle of friends.

Justin worried constantly that their relationship was about to end and was frustrated when he thought that he was not being taken seriously. He deduced that Safa, because she had been hurt in the past, was so scared to commit that she would rather lose her friendship than make their relationship public. It turned out that Justin was also worried that he would soon be 40 years old and thought it was getting too late to have children and build a family, something he really wanted.

By listing his worries and his wants and looking for common themes in his past relationships, Justin was able to see a pattern emerging. Partly because he was a strongly independent man himself, he was attracted to women that also seemed strongly independent. He wanted a partner that was decisive and was able to live with and match his own spirit and ambition. What he had not realised is that the women he thought of as strong and independent would also be women who protected their independence and who would be less willing to commit. He also realised that his fear of "running out of time" was making him behave in a needy and intense way that probably did indeed scare his girlfriends.

Once Justin was clearer about his own wants and how these affected his choices and behaviours he was able to relax more when he was with Safa and to talk to her more openly about his hopes and fears. He was also more able to realistically think about their relationship without thinking that it was so much down to Safa's attitude whether it developed further or not.

Becoming More Aware of Cognitive Thinking

Most of us are already aware of a kind of running commentary that goes on in our minds more or less continuously. This commentary may become more or less noticeable at different times. To be able to interrupt or work with the flow of our thoughts, we need to be able to become aware of the thoughts as and when we want to. This is a skill that can be built up through practice.

It is best to practice in a quiet place free from obvious distractions. In a noisy environment or where we are likely to be talking with other people our awareness will naturally go towards the outside distractions rather than to our thoughts.

It helps to have a pen and paper handy and begin to think of a particular issue or image that is important to you. You will almost immediately have thoughts about that issue or image; it may seem almost as if you are talking to yourself inside your head. As these words come into your head write them down or capture then with your attention for a moment or two.

As you get one thought it will almost inevitably stir up another; one that is linked to the first in some way. A string of thoughts will begin to appear. These thoughts will tend to be short and may become quite graphic or extreme. Simply note each thought as it arises and move on to the next. With practice you will be able to record longer and longer streams of cognitive thought, the kind of thought that is going on continuously even though we don't always notice it.

Let's look at an example. The following is an extreme version of what might go on starting from the observation that life is difficult:

"Life is difficult",

"And I'm on my own to deal with it and I can't do it on my own"

"So I have to find some help"

"But there's nobody about for me at the moment"

"Or they are concentrating on their own thing"

"So even if I do find someone to listen they won't help much"

"So I probably won't find anyone to help me"

"Nothing will change"

"There's no hope"

"I may as well give up"

"I'm doomed to a life of failure and responsibility and depression"

"Which just confirms that life is difficult"

"So I have to be stronger and tough it through on my own"

"But success will be tough to achieve"

"Everything will be a struggle"

"And I'll have to sacrifice"

"Others will tend to benefit at my expense"

"I'm doomed to a life of struggle and difficulty"

"Which just confirms that life is difficult"

There are a number of things that we can notice about this stream of thought:

Firstly, the thoughts appear to lead on from one to another - there is a superficial appearance of logic.

Many of the thoughts are extreme and there are assumptions appearing as statements of fact, they are thoughts that are actually reflecting an overall state of mind (depressive) rather than offering a realistic commentary.

There is a cycle of thought that is self-reinforcing. There are at least two places where the starting judgement ("Life is difficult") is repeated and so is likely to continue in a repetitive manner.

There are points at which other streams of thought can start off, for example at the point where the thought about others tending to benefit pops up.

There are a number of predictions about how life will be, which are entirely gloomy in this example.

There are some thoughts that are establishing actions to be taken: find help, give up, and sacrifice. These are the thoughts that directly demand particular behaviour and influence our future appreciation of life.

Unfortunately, because our thoughts are often semi-conscious and appear superficially logical we tend to believe them and, as in this example, our thoughts will often come out of and reinforce a basic belief (in this case "life is difficult" and "I'm doomed").

Some of these thoughts come with an associated feeling. If I think to myself "There's no hope" then I also get to feel some level of despair and sadness. If I think to myself "I'm on my own to deal with it" I may get to feel loneliness or anger and frustration. To be sure, the feelings are not necessarily strong, but are there none the less and affecting my overall state of mind.

Practising listening in to this thinking process can be extremely valuable just in itself, and keeping a journal of these thoughts on different topics can prove very illuminating and worthwhile. It is this level and type of thinking that is the subject of 'rephrasing' in cognitive therapy.

Language Symptoms

There are some loops of thought that go on in the mind that are exposed by the language that goes with them. When you think things like this or when you hear someone else speaking these words, there is often a thought loop at work.

Have to...

Must...

Should...

Need to...

These are all demands to action, ways that we drive ourselves toward action of one sort or another: "I have to sort myself out", "I need to make sure no-one pushes past me in this queue", "I must pay more attention", and so on.

Demands like these will nearly always come with a matching fear of what will happen if I don't follow the demand. "I have to sort myself out otherwise I'll never get anywhere". "I need to make sure no-one pushes past me in this queue or I'll lose out". "I must pay more attention because if I don't I'll be stuck in this dump forever".

The fear and the demand are closely coupled; the fear drives the demand and the demand highlights and generates the fear. "If I don't sort myself out I'll never get anywhere". "If someone pushes past I'll lose out and be taken for a sucker". "If I don't pay attention I won't progress and I'll get stuck here".

This close coupling is actually a benefit in certain situations as it creates a motivation to do something along with the emotional energy (fear or greed for example) to keep us focussed. Some people become very successful, at least on the outside, by running this sort of 'must succeed' loop.

Much of the time though what is generated is stress along with actions that are of reduced effectiveness at best and may even be unethical or illegal. The tight coupling of this type of loop blinkers us to a single line of action, whether it is appropriate or not, and makes it difficult for us to think about the realities of the issue.

Indecision and Procrastination

There is another way that the mind can get in a whirl which becomes self-limiting and potentially stressful. This is where the string of thoughts is much longer, or there are several loops going at once. In essence these loops involve demands or decisions that seem to be mutually incompatible.

For example: Suppose that I want a new car because my old one is clapped out. I have been to the dealer and pretty much made my mind up about the type that I want. I've got my budget and there are two there that fit my budget, a blue one and a red one. Now I want to make up my mind:

"I like the red one because it is newer and has the more powerful engine."

"I like the blue one because it is cheaper and I can use the money for something else."

"If I pick the red one the car will last longer."

"The blue one is more economical so I'll save over time."

"This is the last time I'll have this much saved up, so I have to make the best choice."

"This is my last chance to get such a new car and the red one could be more reliable than the blue one."

"I don't know. I just can't make up my mind."

"I need to think about it some more."

"I'll have to leave it and come back next week."

This is odd. There are two possible cars that meet my requirement and I've come away unhappy and with nothing ? why?

Almost every line of thought here could be pulled apart word by word and checked for unclear thinking, but let's keep to the demand words as a way to find out why I have not been able to choose:

"... I have to make the best choice."

"I need to think about it some more."

"I'll have to leave it and come back next week."

That first one is basically a self demand to make a perfect choice, to get the best deal, to get the most appropriate option of the two available.

The second two give demands to give up and go home, to fail to choose.

The big problem is actually with the first demand, to make a perfect choice. There is no perfect choice, no best choice. These two cars, like many things in life, offer different benefits and costs and it is not the easy job we demand it be to select between them, particularly as the best choice means a choice that stays the best choice. We try to predict the future; how long the cars will last, how economical they will be, how else we can use our budget, and so on. The simple truth is that we cannot reliably predict the future so we cannot 'make the best choice'. If I can't 'make the best choice' then I may as well give up.

This form of procrastination is very common and is often maintained by two features shown by this example; wanting two or more things that are incompatible or difficult to compare and having a demand to make a perfect or best choice.

Drive to Perfection

Following straight on from looking at procrastination there is another form of mind whirl that can cause problems, and that is perfectionism or the drive to overdo. This fear-based drive is a semi-conscious and repeating attempt to control life so that the fear will not come true. The fear may be fear of failure, or fear of exposure, or fear of loss, or any of a large number of fears. The associated self-demand is to do everything that can be done and do it well.

The internal solution to avoiding risk is to make sure that everything is as it should be, that everything is finished and completed to a high standard, or that everything that is bought or is used is of the highest quality and 'right'. The internal mental loop is based on the idea that by maintaining 'rightness' then the (unconscious) fears are held back.

People who show this behaviour seldom, in my experience, think of themselves as seeking perfection or being driven, they are merely doing what needs to be done. Those around them see it though, and may well suffer from it too.

There are a couple of related ways of being that can be confused with the perfectionist drama though; love of detail, and compulsive disorders.

Love of detail can come from a personality trait rather than a fear. Some people are naturally fascinated by detail and can achieve great things by following that passion. Many artists and scientists spend their lives successfully exploring detail. This can be easy to confuse with a perfectionist drive, and may well co-exist in the same person. The difference is in the source of the behaviour (passion or fear) and in the satisfaction of the experience. Someone who is driven to perfection will tend to experience stress and discomfort whilst the detail-seeker will tend to experience pleasure and release.

Compulsive disorders are a form of illness requiring extended specialist therapy. Here the repeating of particular behaviours has taken over and the link, if ever there was one, to a mental driving loop has been swamped. It may be that the associative mind is over-acting to produce compulsions to repeat behaviour almost regardless of what is going on in real life.

Sleeplessness and Anxiety

On-going feelings of anxiety and interrupted sleep patterns are a common consequence of traumas (individual events or situations that produce strong emotional after-effects) and tough life challenges.

Both of these can be clear symptoms that the mind is stuck and overworking. Our semi-conscious mind is once again stuck in a whirl of fears and projections, trying to find a solution but not succeeding. Each time our mind goes round the loop we are reminded at an emotional level of the fear, which we then experience as discomfort, unease, frustration, and even physically as tension or an unsettled stomach.

Fear-based thinking that results in anxiety is basically fear about the future. We fear that things will get worse, we fear that things won't work out, we fear that we are permanently damaged, we fear that our loved one is in danger, we fear the next sound in the night. The fears may be realistic, though often not, and the plotting and planning that our mind goes through does not calm the fear, it fuels it.

I was due to teach a course some years back and found myself getting very concerned about teaching. This is part of what I uncovered when I listened in to my semi-conscious thinking:

"I don't know what I'm doing so I'm not going to teach well"

"I have to have a clear and specific context when I teach"

"Otherwise I'll be bland and uninteresting"

"I'll be nondescript"

"I have to make sure I'm competent"

"I have to make sure I can't be faulted"

"I have to introduce something new"

"I have to astound and amaze"

"Otherwise people will lose interest"

"I won't teach well"

"I'll be left behind because I'm insignificant and don't know what I'm doing"

Once I had it out I the open I could see how my fear of failure was driving me to over-achieve, to "amaze and astound". I got discomfort from both the fear and the internal command. I knew at some level that I was not able to amaze and astound to order. Indeed that form of teaching would have been inappropriate even if I had been able to instantly develop overpowering charisma and acquire astounding knowledge. I knew that I could not meet this inconsistent and unreasonable demand and so it fed straight back into my fears of inadequacy and hence enlarged my fear of failure.

This internally-driven fear-and-demand cycle produces more fear and anxiety and becomes self-perpetuating; the cycles goes on and on. We get to feel anxious and we get to have troubled and unproductive thoughts.

As the thoughts are not fully conscious they will tend to go on even while we are half asleep and the anxiety will wake us at those times when our sleep is light. Once stuck in a loop we find it harder to get back to sleep and then add worries about sleeping to the mix!

Breaking into the Whirl

In the chapter "Dealing With Emotion" we identified some basic techniques that can work well with low levels of anxiety or anxiety that is related to a single event. When it comes to dealing with longer-term anxiety we may need some slightly stronger medicine however, and here are two approaches that can work well: truth-telling and addressing the fear.

Telling the Truth

This may surprise you, but it turns out that most of us have fallen into the habit of believing the things that we think, when actually most of what we think at a conscious level turns out to be guesswork, projection, or unnoticed prejudice of one form or another. Even those of us that pride ourselves in our rationality can fall into the trap of automatically acting on a high percentage of our thinking as if it is true without really checking it out consistently. We all have surprisingly bright minds that are constantly inventing commentaries about other people, about our own performance and what we need to do, about what is about to happen, and about what we want, and so on. In those times when we simply take this in as truthful we are basically living life as an illusion of some sort and we can easily end up in a whirl.

Truth-telling is not a particularly glamorous process and not always straightforward, so inevitably we don't always engage with it as fully or consistently as we might. Even the most level-headed of us can have mental blind-spots where our thinking leads us astray without us being aware of it.

We may like to think of ourselves as honest and well-meaning, but when it comes to genuine truth-telling about the things that we think, we tend to stay well within our own personal comfort zones. Our universal motto might as well be "Don't confuse me with the truth, my mind is made up!"

When our mind gets in a whirl then it is very likely that we are getting caught up in our own self-deceptions or trying to deny some aspect of the reality that we find ourselves in. We have a choice: either do nothing and hope that circumstances change or do the work that is required to come to terms with our true situation and genuinely seek to find a way out of it.

The simplest way to engage with truth-telling is to write our thoughts out on paper and for each and every one make an alternative statement that is as truthful as we can make it. This is not the simplistic replacing of a 'negative' thought with a 'positive' thought, which has little lasting value, but the conscious checking out of the assumptions that we are making.

Writing is very effective, because it externalises the thought and allows us to concentrate very fully on just one thought at a time. This can be done by talking each thought through with somebody else, but choose somebody to support that can stay very neutral, somebody who will neither add their judgments to your own.

Here are some pointers to make this process easier and more effective:

Questions: It can be difficult to state a clear truth when a question appears as a thought. Whenever there is a question there is always an unvoiced statement behind it. For example; the question "Why did I have to do that?" will probably come from a statement "I should not have done that". Replace the question by the statement and then tell the truth in relation to that statement.

Judgments: Judgments are assumptions dressed up as facts, they tend to be stated in a very definite form that is over-generalised. "I'm an idiot" may be the judgment where the truth may be "I regret what I did".

Demands: These are the way that our cognitive mind attempts to drive us into action; watch out for words such as 'need', 'have to', 'should', or 'must'. A demand such as "I have to sort this out" may be restated as "I want to find a realistic and achievable solution to this issue".

Black and white thoughts: When we are in a whirl our mind will tend to resort to extreme black and white thinking to try to deal with the situation, whereas the truth will be somewhere in between. A statement such as "He was really mean to me" might be more truthfully stated as "He raised his voice at one point and I didn't like that".

Projections: We often 'project' our own unconscious beliefs and states of mind into other people. "She thinks I'm weak" may hide the otherwise unstated belief "I'm weak". We don't know what other people are thinking or what their intentions are or what they are feeling, and even when they tell us those things we will still interpret what they say in our own way. There may be two statements to make as a truth-telling, perhaps along these lines; "I don't know what she thinks of me" and "I am a human being with my own capabilities and limitations".

Interpretations and predictions: One of the most powerful things that our mind does is to try and interpret what happens to us, to try and make sense of it all. These interpretations may come out as judgments or black and white thoughts, and they can also appear as predictions and observations. "I don't stand a chance now" is a prediction of failure whereas the truth may be "I don't know what I can do to succeed at the moment, and I can check out what my remaining options are".

Telling the truth in this way can be extremely powerful, giving relief from the mind whirl and opening the mind up to new opportunities.

Case Story – Ailisha's Ordeal

It was nearly 5 years before Ailisha sought support. As a student nurse, she had been sleeping alone in her student house during a summer break when all the other students had gone home. She was woken by the sounds of a group of men smashing their way in and noisily ransacking the house, gradually working their way up towards her bedroom at the top of the house. She rang the police and attempted to barricade herself in. She switched her music player on loud to try and scare the intruders, but this had no noticeable effect. Thankfully the police arrived quickly and in force, just in time to stop the men breaking into the room that she was in at the top of the house.

She had apparently coped well at the time, even though the court case had been extremely challenging with threats made before and after the trial and attempts made by the families of the burglars to blame her for bringing 'shame' to their families. She had returned to her studies and graduated with distinction.

Now, 5 years later, she found herself reliving her ordeal. She wanted to set up home with her boyfriend and start a family, but every time she thought about moving to a house of their own she found herself gripped by fear. She found herself remembering what had happened and was getting nightmares. She also started to have panic attacks during the day. Ailisha was clearly suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and she found a therapist to work with to deal directly with this, but in the meantime she also worked on relieving her anxiety.

One thing became clear; at the time of the break-in she had indeed coped but more for the benefit of her friends and family than for herself. She had never really admitted what she had felt and what she had feared while the men were in the house and so she had never really come to terms with it as fully as she needed to. Now her feelings had resurfaced because the idea of living in a separate house (rather than in the shared flat that she lived in to avoid her fears of being alone) was reminding her of that night. Her memory was coming back as a direct replay of the feelings that she had experienced at the time.

Her fears were that she couldn't cope, that she would always be too scared to live a normal life, and that life was threatening. Things improved almost immediately, when she started to share honestly about her ordeal and when she started to keep a journal of her thoughts and feelings. She was able to go a considerable way towards breaking the link to her feelings of panic by recognising that they came from the past rather than the present, so the panic attacks passed. She was also able to start to challenge her fears about her ability to cope by reminding herself that actually she had coped with an extremely serious and scary situation. She also knew that she could work with her boyfriend to secure their new home so that she would not feel so at risk.

The deeper trauma would take more work, but she no longer had the debilitating anxiety whenever she thought of the future.

Anxious thinking is driven by fear. Fear of the situation, fear of success or failure, fears for the future. Some people are very conscious of the fear and so they can work directly to reduce the level of fear and to get the fear in proportion. By reducing or removing the fear, the whole cycle of thought collapses and the anxiety, stress, and driven state will pass.

The fear can addressed in many ways, including these:

Truth-telling: Just as above, tell the absolute truth about the fear and likelihood of that fear becoming true. This approach may not work when the fear comes from a recent trauma or is associated with a long-term issue (see below) but often is a useful start on reducing the fear.

Put it in its place: Most fears are about the future, and most fears only have a relatively small probability of coming true. We can handle many by simply making a conscious and firm choice to not worry in advance about something that may or may not happen in the future, we can choose to handle it when it happens. Repeating this conscious choice over a period of time can re-train our mind to not get into useless worry; to abandon our anxious approach to life.

Worst case scenario: Sometimes we simply don't want to face the fear, so we don't challenge it. We can ask ourselves what would happen if the worst that we feared came true? How would we cope? What would we do? Sometimes this combination of exploring the worst case and identifying alternative ways of handling it will be enough to allow the fear to subside.

Break associations: Often we can have fear and anxiety that is linked in our mind to a past event or events. In this case our mind tends to continue to relive the past by making warnings about the future ("It will happen again") and by attaching feelings from the past to our experience of the present. This is a simple function of memory and learning but it can become troublesome if it is unchecked or if the anxiety that it generates is out of proportion. These associations can be weakened and even broken by simply bringing the original events to mind and saying something along these lines: "That was the past and I experienced what I experienced. I am different now and I can experience things differently".

There are additional more complex processes of visioning and re-experiencing past situations that can be used with the support of an appropriate therapist to reduce trauma, anxiety, and some types of phobia.

De-sensitisation: Some people can successfully reduce feelings of anxiety and fear through a supported process of de-sensitisation. This basically involves imagining or actually going into situations where the fear is triggered but controlled, and gradually building up experiences of being OK with those situations. This experiencing challenges the fear and builds a resistance to it. Again there are advanced and sophisticated versions of this used by therapists to deal with more tenacious phobias and anxieties.

Fear of the fear: There is an additional layer of preconscious control that some people can develop over time to protect themselves from an underlying fear which can keep us from dealing healthily with our core fears. When we develop a fear of even recognising our own fears this puts an additional layer of protection in place so that we avoid situations where our core fear might surface. The problem is that our core fears are not clearly recognised not dealt with and we lose out on some aspects of normal life.

The key to progress here is to start by recognising that we have become habitually afraid to face our deeper fears. Only by choosing to step through this layer of protection can we then choose how to deal with our deeper fears. Start with simply exploring memories of different situations where you have held back but you are not sure why. Did you experience anxiety without knowing what the anxiety was about? Was your behaviour a clear avoidance at a time when you actually wanted to join in? Then, mentally test for deeper fears by asking yourself the question "What was I actually afraid of, and why?"

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