Rewiring My Brain

I haven't had a blog post in a while, but it's 2am and my allergies have me up late, so I figured I'd spill some thoughts. I've mentioned before what an effect the Olympics had on me and watching some of these amazing young athletes talk about their mental process. 

As someone on my own mental health journey I've found it fascinating and trying to learn it myself. Eileen Gu talked a lot about neuroplasticity which I had never heard of until she talked about it. Essentially if you can control how you think you can control who you are and ultimately what you can do. 

This was mind blowing to me. Growing up the youngest in a really conservative family, I was often put down, or told I couldn't do things. Most of the time it was in the form of "jokes' and told I needed to get a thicker skin and toughen up and quit taking things personally. The problem was my tiny neurodivergent brain didn't work that way. All those insults got packed up and collected and over time accepted as truth. 

I remember many times going in for a big project, interview, task or goal thinking this is my shot. Yet in my head I simply could not picture a scenario in which I succeeded. In the end I ended up choking. Even in other aspects of life of career goals when I did have some success my brain would instantly go to "How am I going to fuck this up?" and in the end, I self sabotaged my way out of things and just blew it all up, because in the back of my mind, at least I was in some control in how it came apart. 

Its not a healthy way to look at things, but just an awful cycle I found myself stuck in. So I got the book "The Brain that Changes itself" which is about cases in which people have major neurocognitive problems, that they were able to correct by changing how they think, doing mental exercises and how they approach it. It's a long process and I'm nowhere near where I need to be, but I do find its working. 

We recently have been dealing with a financial issue that's been hanging over our heads. I'm not going to get into the details, but its been a dark cloud for a few years. Part of me kept ignoring it hoping it would go away and if my mind even thought about it would end up in a near panic attack. 

So this week I started writing down how I can reframe it. Instead of "this is a terrible disaster that will ruin us" I started writing "this is a set back that is fixable. Nothing bad is happening right now so this is the time go get out ahead of it."

We spoke to a professional earlier today, who I feel confident can help us. He broke the situation down into smaller steps and was confident ours was not as dire as it looked. Coming out of the meeting we felt hopeful and positive and I feel like reframing the situation not only will help us moving forward with our finances, but also keeping my mental health out of a negative spiral. 

I cannot express what a huge win this is for me. Almost all of my adult life, any set back or wrench thrown into my plans and goals immediately sent me down a path of negativity, sadness and despair for days or months. 

So, this has been the key. I know in her documentary Taylor Swift said view things instead of something that happens to you into something happening for you and how to make it work to your advantage. We discovered somethings in the meeting today that will not only deal with the problem, but will actually benefit us going forward. 

That is just one example, but perhaps the biggest one I can think of lately where I applied neuroplasticity and it worked. Having bipolar is going to make this process more difficult than if I had a standard brain, but I'm confident now I can do it. 

For a few months I had tried to wean off my medication and switch to cannabis, which was fine at first, but after many weeks became too much. So now I'm back on my medication and feeling much better. 

Will I always need the meds? Probably, even with rewiring my brain. But the meds helps me think clearly in how to calm down, take a step back and look at how to attack problems and goals as they arise instead of getting frustrated and calling myself awful names and seeing failure as inevitable. 

I'll continue to document my progress here and since this is an art page, my art has been a major outlet and savior in helping me deal with and process things. For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful and excited about my healing and can't wait to see what is to come.