[Onward2wards]

I've noticed that I have "triggers", or cues to enter a certain psychological state based on specific patterns of thought or external events. I think we all have "baggage" of one form or another - somewhere within we tend to carry around every black day when things didn't go according to plan and we then got kicked when we were down as well (especially if some negative pattern was repeated at a formative age).

It has been helping me recently to be aware of two broad triggers and my response to them:
1. Sudden "I have a bad feeling about this" perceptions followed by worrying about something, and then wanting to distract myself from whatever I was doing or about to do. That is old fears talking (learned anxiety).
2. Sudden sensations of "discouraged lethargy", as if something has reminded me on a subconscious level of old disappointments, and I'm responding with a desire to wrap myself in a blanket and say "well, there's another day that's going to be a huge waste of effort!". I think this is "learned helplessness".

There has to be a better way of dealing with such automatic cues and reactions than either running away or communing with the sofa cushions in tired resignation! Being more aware of these cues and reactions is helping me ask myself "what do I want right now, what am I afraid of, and is there a better response that I won't regret later?" Mindfulness is definitely helpful - not just being aware of our external surroundings, but being equally conscious of our internal reactions to things.

I've been using a combination of mindfulness (being more deliberately conscious of what I am doing and what's going on inside and outside), cognitive behavioral techniques (logically thinking through repeated thoughts and behaviors, challenging anything that starts to look exaggerated), and more psychodynamic techniques (where you look for patterns that point to events that bothered you profoundly a long time ago, and your internal reactions to them which may still be present). It's a lot of work but it has been slowly paying off.

For some reason it's embarrassing to admit that I've probably needed talk therapy for a long time. It's even more awkward for me to admit that I strongly prefer that to meds (which don't work all that well for me) but I haven't explored it as aggressively as I'd like because therapy gets so expensive so quickly (compared to meds).

[Skeezyks]

Thank you for sharing these interesting thoughts, Onward2wards!