Month: October 2024

After doing a lot of reading and looking for some help to get a better understanding and control of my mental health I have decided to take the idea of positive thinking and use this to try and help manage my daily life.

I spoke to a friend last night via text on whatsapp and realised that the way I am feeling resonates with him and potentially a lot of people feel the same way. My friend mentioned “trying to stay positive” as a way of coping with my feelings.

As I have said before in my posts, the main focus of this website and blog is to not only to help myself with my mental health issues but others.

Fundamentals of Positive thinking

Positive thinking can have many benefits and although it may sound easy to do it can be quite hard in reality. Positive thinking is a way of eventually changing the way our brain works. Negative thoughts and the effects they have on the brain pretty much always cause worry, stress and anguish. This is why I need to do this.

Positive thoughts can and will if practiced and used daily, change a persons outlook on life. I have yet to fully embrace this fact but it is something I will be taking on with full commitment.

Last night I got very down and upset with myself. I had a long chat with my wife regarding how I was feeling and she reminded me to think positively. I can change how my brain works, I will change how my brain works. My life will get better and I will feel better and happier for this.

As I went to bed last night I really tried to concentrate on keeping these basic positive thoughts in my head. I was not fully successful as I had a few negative thoughts creep in but I managed to stay relatively positive and calm.

It was a strange feeling this morning when I woke up. 6am was an unusual occurrence as I have been waking up for months between 4am and 5am. I did wake up with some anxious thoughts and feeling a bit down. If I had a nightmare last night then I can not remember the details.

Benefits of Positive Thinking

There are a lot of benefits associated to the power of positive thinking and how it can improve your physical health and mental health. I personally have seen a few improvements in my own mental health recently and need to keep this approach going to gain many more benefits.

Here is a brief table below of some of the main benefits of positive thinking:

• Helps fight depression
• Better health
• Reduces stress
• Improved and healthier relationships
• Improves self-esteem
• Increased life span
• Lower levels of distress and pain
• Better psychological and physical well-being

There are many more benefits than listed above but overall the benefits of positive thinking can help with many more elements of a persons daily life.

Negative thinking and how it affects mental health

A negative thought process is something until recently I never realised I had. I have just always felt like this for as long as I can remember. This mindset has been there for pretty much all my adult life in one way or another and needs to change.

The negative thoughts are part of the problem with complex ptsd. I was diagnosed and treated for complex ptsd by my mental health counsellor. This happened as a result of the childhood sexual abuse that I was a victim of at the age of 13.

Looking back on my life I can identify with all of the symptoms below and how my mind has, and is still processing my thoughts. This is very tiring, both physically and emotionally and has been affecting my life every day. It also affects my family members on a daily basis and needs to stop.

Here is a list of the main thought types that I experience everyday. As you will see these can become very overwhelming and controlling. I’m starting to wish I had found this out years ago but no one mentioned it.

• Filtering – To filter out all of the good things that have happened in a situation and magnify the negative elements
• Catastrophizing – To automatically assume the worst possible outcome to a situation without fact that this will happen
• Magnification – To make a big deal out of a small problem
• Perfectionism – Keeping impossible standards and trying to be more perfect sets yourself up for failure.
• Overthinking – the main issue that controls your thought process

How this makes me feel

The list of symptoms above are experienced every day by myself at some point. Its hard to explain to someone why this happens. The brain is a very powerful tool and when it is programmed to act a certain way it becomes increasingly harder to change that.

I have struggled to understand why positive thinking is so important until now. Even though I went through 12 weeks of very intensive mental health counselling to help with my complex ptsd, this subject of positive thinking was never mentioned.

Over the course of my doctors appointments all those years ago, discussions with counsellors and other professionals, they never mentioned anything about positive thinking and how it could help me.

My doctors were happy to help with medication and assessments, even the doctor I spoke to recently to get more medication never mentioned anything about positive thinking.

What to do now..

Well I don’t know what to say apart from the obvious. I am going to have to try as hard as I can to develop a way to manage my negative thoughts. I need to feel like I am alive and not just existing. That thought has just hit me while I am sat here typing.

Wow, what have I been doing all these years? Why have I just realised how powerful my conversation with my wife was last night.

I know I have mentioned positive thinking before, it helped me a few weeks ago to play the best round of golf so far in my life. Why do I keep doing these kind of things. I lose my train of thought. Why do I forget things easily.

I think its because of all these negative thought processes going on in my brain that this happens. My Wife says I am always telling myself I am not good at anything. I always feel worthless.

I should have done this and didn’t, I made mistakes that caused issues for others. It seems like all of these types of thoughts have become my base level of emotions and that must stop.

I will be doing some press ups later today, I need to and I must concentrate fully and be positive about the effects they will have on my health and hopefully my sleep.

Last night I decided to actually complete on what I said in my previous post. After I had sorted my day and helped with family commitments, cooking dinner and other stuff, I decided to workout.

I had been thinking about it all day and decided that this has to be the first step in getting my mental health back on track.

Since I stopped exercising, and it has only been just over a week, my anxiety and depression has returned to levels that affect me greatly.

I was surprised about the number of push ups I was able to complete. It’s been a while so I didn’t think I could complete the initial number. As I completed more sets I started to feel the burn in my muscles and this felt good.

It gave my mind something to concentrate on. There was an element to this that helped ease some of the anxieties that I had been battling through out my day. I took my time and concentrated solely on completing each set.

After each set I took my rest time and concentrated on breathing thru my nose. I have been reading up on how breathing changes can affect your daily life.

The clarity and the burn from the exercises gave my mind something else to concentrate on. Maybe it was the oxygen increase from my breathing.

Exercising definitely changed my outlook

This definitely appeared to lift my mood. My mind seemed slightly clearer. I was able to listen and interact like a normal person with my children and wife when they returned home from scouts and cubs activities.

With this clarity, the ever present influence of my anxieties and depression appeared to lift slightly. I showed my eldest son how to fix a puncture on his bike and was thanked with a long hug.

This made me feel good. My relationship with my eldest son is slightly strained. I am aware that my actions and mental health issues have contributed to this but I cannot blame myself completely.

Teenage boys can be a challenge, all our friends with boys the same age are having a tough time. My mum and dad had a very tough time with me after my childhood sexual abuse. It must have been incredibly hard trying to live with me.

Trying to keep communication open with my eldest son is hard as he tends to speak mainly with his mum. I will try and soften my responses and mood around the house.

My youngest son was feeling tired after his adventures, wanted cuddles with his mum and didn’t want to go to bed. He is very clingy with his mum at the moment.

Sleep came easily after exercise

When I finally made it to my bed I felt tired. It was a good tired though. The burn from the earlier exercise, the sense of achievement in what I had done last night helped me relax.

It might not seem like much to someone who doesn’t suffer from anxiety, depression and complex ptsd symptoms, but it definitely made a difference to me.

I think I fell asleep about 11.30pm and I was awake around 5am this morning. I wasn’t bathed in sweat and did not feel any anxiety or fear as I woke up. This was unusual and a strange feeling to experience.

Getting back to sleep after I have woken up is one of the hardest parts of my day. Staying relaxed and not letting my mind wander to the past or what might happen is very hard.

Taking long slow deep breaths through my nose did a great job of relaxing me this morning and I managed to drift of back to sleep at some point.

Overall I feel like I have had a good morning so far. Writing this blog and seeing positives from yesterday. No panic or anxiety or depressive thoughts to change the mood of my day.

Only time will tell if the exercising, positive outlook on daily life, eating and generally looking after myself will help me on this journey.

I truly hope it does.