Bad habits are like kudzu or English ivy: easy to start and extremely difficult to get rid of. When having a flare up of the depression or anxiety, bad habits multiply for me like fruit flies on rotten fruit.
One of my current bad habits is that of taking a nap to circumvent part of the day. Sometimes I just see hours stretched out before me and nothing I feel I want to do with them and they look difficult to endure, so I take one of my hours-long naps and wallah! Afternoon is gone. (And I've allowed my emotions ("I don't feel like it") to manage me rather than the other way around.)
Also gone are the opportunities to work on my novel, to clean something, to draw, to read, to look for a good basic starter yoga routine, to exercise, and to do any number of other useful things, or things I enjoy doing or want to do.
While I am making progress and I am learning to manage my emotions, or at least learning to learn how to do so, I am still in difficult territory, surrounded by alligators and fish with sharp teeth and gigantic mosquitoes and roaches (I'm being metaphorical here, although it looks literal, given that I'm in Houston). I still have habits to beat into submission and mental routines to reroute. I can't just give in to bad habits, especially the one that makes me unconscious for 3 or 4 hours at a time.
In cognitive-behavioral therapy, we substitute rational language and thinking for that which is broken. For example, irrational and broken thinking and self-talk might be "I shouldn't be unemployed. I hate it! It's horrible! What am I going to do?" And then it just ramps up from there. Rational substitutions could be "I don't like be unemployed. I want to work. It's uncomfortable and I feel afraid. I'm going to go look for work now."
In the same way, I now need to begin substituting behaviors. One of the first ones I think I need to work on is this nap-habit. So what could I substitute for it? Well, taking a walk, but today was a rainy day, so that didn't work. But maybe some sort of exercise like dancing, something that is high-energy and can be done on the spur of the moment. Something that is easy to do because things that require time to set up or a lot of effort to do will simply not happen. The nap is easy, so the sub should be equally, or almost equally, easy.
Then, when I walk or dance or stretch my way past the "avoid-the-afternoon nap", I can do something else. Something requiring more time or effort. Something that will benefit me, which will also reinforce the lack of avoidance.
So, there is my plan. I'm putting it out there for you all to see, making me accountable and transparent. And giving me a place to go for reminders of what I can do instead of sleeping the day away.
Skye, do you have a DVD player? I highly recommend Walk Away the Pounds Express. All you need to do is pop in the DVD player and you can get a quick 15 minutes or half an hour of exercise right inside. You don't need much room and it's a good option when the weather outside is too hot or rainy, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'll look for the DVD. I do have a player and a TV that is much bigger than my laptop (22" vs 13"!).
DeleteI find a quick 15 min nap around 3pm to be a refresher. Anything else makes me sluggish. Of late, I've taken to lying on the couch with a good book in the mid afternoon. It's a reward for having written. Can't wait for fall to arrive (we're still in triple digits here) because then I'll have my five p.m. walk to look forward to and that always breaks up the day.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, if I lay down for a nap, it's a minimum of an hour and usually two. I don't know why. I'd love to be able to take those short little naps of 15-20 minutes that people take that refresh and energize them, because my naps seldom energize although they do sometimes refresh. If they go too late or too long, I just feel sluggish afterward.
DeleteI walked on Friday because I got out before the rains. But it keeps raining off and on now so I haven't gone out for a walk. I did dance last night, though. If my apartment were bigger I'd seriously consider getting my own stationary bike so I could at least do that inside without having to trundle down to the little gym we have here.
This is Amie - I've commented once before. I got behind on my blog reading, so this comment is extremely late, but I recently found out I have hypersomnia, which means my body cannot process my sleep correctly. I am constantly tired. Prior to the diagnosis, I just assumed it was a my body's way of saying it was overloaded by anxiety. I was laid off for 3 months last year and found my perfect sleep pattern was sleep 3-4 hours, stay awake 3-4 hours. Unfortunately, I have an 8-5 job now, so I can't keep that schedule. I finally had to say something when I would sleep pretty much the whole weekend away and my brain always felt foggy. My doctor put my on ritalin to keep my body going. It seemed so odd to give someone who deals with anxiety attacks an amphetamine, but it has actually worked wonderfully. Just thought I'd let you know - of course, I'm the Queen of Obscure Diagnoses, so this will probably not be an issue you would be dealing with :)
DeleteMake sure the napish behaviors aren't an effect of meds or something else. Make sure you are fighting the right battle.
ReplyDeleteAre you tired? Do you fall asleep if you are reading? How are you sleeping at night? I'm wondering if you are one of the many of us who are sleep deprived.
When you have the urge to nap, think it through. Make it a learning opportunity. And an opportunity to do something else.
Meditate.
All good thoughts. I will think about them and see if I can discern a pattern or if I have more than one kind of "napish behavior." :)
Delete(I napped for about an hour today, courtesy of an alarm I set. It was good but a bit tough to wake up fully at first.)
I tend to nap for about 45 minutes, and it really gives me a second wind to get through the day. Even when I just stop and lie down (usually with a cat or three), and plot out the next scene I'm going to write, it helps.
ReplyDeleteI think your plans sound god. I'll be sure to (annoyingly) remind you of them :-)
Maybe that's my problem with naps: no cat. Cats are a nap-regulating device. Huh. Actually, I think that cats are a nap-causing device.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you'll do your best to annoy, I mean, remind me. :)
naps are good, but sleeping all the time is not, of course. How about volunteering for a cat shelter? It would give you something fun to do, or at least a committment during the week while you're unemployed.
ReplyDeleteI try to nap with a timer so I won't sleep too long. And sometimes I just shut off the timer and keep sleeping :-(