Many people have been asking about us and I wanted to tell you that we feel your love and concern and really appreciate it!
Great news:
Chloe is set to graduate from the clinic on July 18thand we couldn’t be more proud of her. She has truly been an inspiration in how hard she has been working to get better. We know that these trials are helping her to help others some day and I can't wait to watch her soar!
Carter has also been going to the clinic once a week for social anxiety, but will begin IOP on a daily basis as soon as Chloe is done. This means we will still be spending our days at the clinic which can be a bit disruptive to life but I don’t care because I love it!
I can truly say that we are all doing better than ever. How could we not be with a place where kids and parents can learn together, cry on each others’ shoulders, support each other and even laugh at our crappy lot in life? We have family therapy, individual therapy, support groups and most importantly we are being trained and drilled in how to handle all kinds of mental health issues and it is glorious. If I have an ocd question or situation, a parenting question, a marriage or relationship question…there is a professional at my beck and call every single day to hold my hand and walk me through the issue.
I know it sounds crazy, but I keep telling people that this is the
“BEST worst thing that has happened to us.”
We have had access to some of the best mental health care and tools around and our newfound understanding has given us the world. Our family, our happiness, our relationships, our parenting have all improved because of these tools. What makes me sad is that it took something so bad (a breakdown/suicide attempt) to get us into the position to really learn and practice these things.
EVERYONE should have these tools. We ALL need them so badly! Why aren’t these things more available to us? They should have been taught to us when we were children. Our children should be learning these things while they are young and so many lives and families could benefit.
I demand an improvement!
What is our society’s problem?
I don’t think it’s a new idea that total health includes mind, body and spirit is it?
When I look at our country, I see that we get the importance of physical health. There is a big push on teaching children about physical health. There are PE classes in school. There are gyms and personal trainers, nutrition advice and so many diets and workouts available. Heck, you can’t graduate from high school without Physical Education credits and without taking health class. It’s MANDATORY. We get that physical health is important.
Our country also seems to get the need for spiritual nourishment. For those who chose to embrace spirituality, there are also many options and tools for building spiritual strength. Churches, temples and seminaries of all kinds exist. People practice meditation, yoga, praying and religious rituals. In my church we have many programs including Young Mens and Young Womens, Sunday School, and the Come Follow Me program which provide opportunities to build and maintain spiritual health. You don’t need to look far to find access to all kinds of physical or spiritual health resources.
So WHY then,
when it comes to building and maintaining mental health and wellness, are resources so limited? What kinds of easy access to resources do parents have to teach these things?
Hardly anything!
Not okay!
I will say that our wonderful school counselor tried this year to teach the kids some mental health practices, and it was a start. But it's not nearly enough. I also see some teachers are trying to introduce some mental health skills in their classrooms as well and bless them for doing it. But as a society in general why do we seem to place such little value on mental and emotional wellness? Where is my mental health fitness center? Where are the mandatory or free mental health education classes in the schools or for the general public?
The more I think about this the more infuriated I become. I was curious about WHY this is… so I did a little reading. I found that it’s not only an issue in our country, but WORLDWIDE.
One article had some theories that made sense. Here’s a bit of what it said:
Patel, a psychiatrist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said,“Given its contribution to the global burden of disease, mental illness receives nowhere near the kind of attention and resources it deserves."
Why is mental health largely ignored on the global health agenda?
“Frankly, I don’t know,” said Patel. “The level if disinterest and apathy surrounding this massive problem is mysterious to me.”
Some of it clearly has to do with the stigma that still surrounds mental health, he said. Many people still tend to view mental illness as a character flaw, Patel said, as something that an individual is somehow personally responsible for having and for not being able to control their behavior.
Because of this misunderstanding, he said, many people with mental illness in poor communities (and not-so-poor, but ignorant, communities) suffer severe abuse.
“In developing countries, it is not uncommon to find people with serious mental illness chained up, locked away or subjected to regular, outright abuse, even in health care institutions,” Patel said. “If any of us saw even one individual with HIV/AIDS treated like that, there would be global outrage … But you don’t see the same outrage when it is people with mental illness.”
Something must be done and I’m all fired up about it. FIRED UP!!! But wait, I need to check myself. First, I need to focus my energy on getting my kids better, but mark my words, when they are doing well I am going to fight to fix this problem…even if it just means teaching what I’m learning on this blog, or applying these tools in my future classroom. Or maybe I’ll eventually rally on a bigger scale, who knows?
Until then, I want to share for others. There are so many things we have learned. I want to start with a topic that has been life changing for my family and me: THINKING ERRORS.
Thinking errors are thinking traps that influence our happiness and can push us into depression or anxiety. We all do them. Our mental well-being depends on our ability to manage our thoughts, regulate our emotions, and behave productively and responsibly despite our circumstances. This can be a challenging task for all of us at one point or another. But learning to recognize and manage our thinking errors will go a long way in helping us build mental strength.
According to a Webmd article, thinking errors “can skew your judgment and make it hard to appraise your situation realistically." (2002)
We as a family are practicing and working daily to identify these thinking errors and correct them. As you read these, I challenge you to recognize which thinking errors you or your children may be using and how they are negatively affecting your life.
THINKING ERRORS (Also called cognitive distortions)
- All or nothing thinking: You don't see middle ground. You assume if you don't get the promotion, the company wants to ease you out the door.
- Overgeneralization:You extrapolate your future based on a single event. You figure that if you failed the bar exam on the first try, you're just not cut out to be a lawyer.
· Mental Filter: Only paying attention to certain types of evidence. Noticing our failures but not seeing our successes.
· Disqualifying the positive: Discounting the good things that have happened or that you have done for some reason or another. That doesn’t count.
· Jumping to conclusions: There are two types:
Mind reading: Imagining we know what others are thinking.
Fortune-telling: You predict that things will turn out badly, no matter what you say or do. Your new boyfriend does not call you as promised before a business trip, and you spend the week convinced he's breaking up with you.
· Magnification:(Catastrophising and miminalization) Blowing things out of proportion or inappropriately shrinking something to make it seem less important.
- Emotional reasoning:You get lost in your emotions. You spill food on yourself at a restaurant and feel like a jerk, so you assume other people see you that way, too.
- Shoulds and oughts:You focus on other people's expectations of you, instead of on your own needs. You feel you ought to help a co-worker with his project -- even though it will make you fall behind in your work.
· Labelling: Assigning labels to ourselves or other people. I’m a loser. I’m completely useless. They’re such an idiot.
· Personalization: Blaming yourself or taking responsibility for something that wasn’t completely your fault. Conversely, blaming other people for something that was your fault.
For children especially, thinking errors are a destructive habit to get into, because they prevent them from learning the important skills that lead to success in life.
As I have been learning about thinking errors, I have two major questions:
1. How can we change them? and
2. Why do they happen, or how do they form?
At the OCD and Anxiety Clinic, they work with clients on how to overcome these within the scope of their diagnoses. I’m just curious in general, as a whole, how would someone like me help my kids or help myself change these thinking errors?
Here’s what I’ve found:
1. Identify your thinking errors as you use them. Practice distinguishing between negative and accurate thoughts. At the clinic, they have a form that you are supposed to fill out when you find yourself feeling anxiety. As your SUDS levels go up, you write down the thoughts you are having in the first column of the form and more often than not they are thinking errors. In the second column you identify at least two thinking errors that could go along with those thoughts you are having. In the last column you challenge the thinking error by collecting evidence to support or negate the thought, challenge it, and brainstorm an accurate thought to replace it. The repetition of doing this really helps to change the way you think.
Anxious thought: "I can't speak in front of a crowd because everyone will judge me and think I'm stupid if I make a mistake or sound dumb."
At least two thinking errors in that thought would be: Mind reading, and overgeneralizing
Challenge the thought: What is the likelihood of EVERY single person judging me? What is the likelihood of NO ONE judging me? We can rule those two out as not realistic. What's left is that maybe one or two people might judge me. Maybe they will or won't think I'm stupid but I at least know that ____ knows I'm not stupid. I know I'm not stupid. My teacher knows I'm not stupid. etc.
Hopefully, anxiety about the situation will decrease after this exercise.
2. Cultivating optimism
Parents can play the “Unfortunately, Fortunately” game with their kids. Together with your child, come up with “five sticky situations,” which you write down on cards and put in a hat. Each person then pulls out a card and says the unfortunate situation (Chansky uses the example: “Unfortunately, the movie I wanted to see was sold out”). The other person responds with a fortunate perspective (“But fortunately, I went to see another movie”). Then you go back and forth, each mentioning unfortunate and fortunate circumstances.
The next time your child is going through a difficult situation, you might say, according to Chansky, “There are a lot of ‘unfortunatelys’ stacking up. Can we see if there are any ‘fortunatelys’ in this situation?”
3. Building distance from negative thoughts. Teach your child to be a thought detective. Avoid saying they are being negative, instead blame the “negative brain”. (This also makes you an ally in helping defend your child against this ‘troublesome third party). This relabeling “begins to demote the validity of negative thinking, encouraging the child not to trust it as the truth but According to Chansky, this relabeling “begins to demote the validity of negative thinking, encouraging the child to not trust it as the ‘truth,’ but as the annoying, upsetting, overprotective or just sort of ill-informed voice that it is.” You can brainstorm ways to talk back to that negative brain: “You’re not the boss of me; you make me feel bad; I’m not listening to you!”
Other helps: If you have a child with anxiety, you MUST READ THIS ARTICLE they gave us at the clinic!!!
On to causes:
What the heck causes people to form thinking errors?:
Biochemical or physiological conditions: We sure get this one. Sadly, my kids don’t stand a chance with the crappy genetic combination my husband and my genes created. Being genetically predisposed to anxiety and OCD automatically predisposes them to forming thinking errors.
Cultural and social factors: We can pick up thinking errors and cultural biases from society. This includes the fast-paced nature of our society. People need time to examine, question and test their thinking. If people are placed in a fast-paced environment they are forced to use oversimplified thinking and therefore will have more thinking errors. Slow down everyone!
Habits and attribution bias: If a person thinks a certain way for a long time, it can make it more likely to keep thinking that way.
Fear, anger and conflict: Being overly exposed to any of these things can create thinking errors.
Other articles I’ve found about this subject:
Isn’t it fascinating? If anyone has any success using any of these suggestions, I’d love to hear about it. And I LOVE all of your comments. Thank you so much for taking the time to reach out, even if it’s just a line or two. It lifts me more than you know!
Love you all,
Molly
References:
Arnquist, Sarah. (2011). Why is Mental Health Largely Ignored on the Global Health Agenda? Retrieved from: https://www.ghdonline.org/ncd/discussion/why-is-mental-health-largely-ignored-on-the-global/
Tartakovsky, Margarita. (2018) 3 Handy ways to help your child overcome negative thinking. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/blog/3-handy-ways-to-help-your-child-overcome-negative-thinking/
WebMD (2002). Fixing Common Thinking Errors. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/common-thinking-errors.
