Athletes elite and amatuer focus on daily recovery to maintain muscular strength and flexibility. But what are we doing to maintain our minds and emotional bodies?
Although our days are consumed by hours of “productive” stay-at-home activities—Snipping nose hairs, glaring out the window like an uninterested cat, making snacks out of peanut butter and banana—Who knew you could find so much enjoyment out of these? But then you start to notice a noise. You check the hallway, the kitchen, outside your window, but nothing’s there.
So you pick up your book and read, or you pick up your computer and write. And usually, these activities can behave as a glorious escape from the “Real World”. As you are immersed into another world of murder, fantasy, dystopia, or passion, it all seems to be comforting, relaxing, and sometimes titillating. But then you put down the book, you put down the computer. And in the silence, it starts again.
And you finally close your eyes and start to become completely aware that some of these noises are coming from your chest area… your sinuses, your forehead…and your hands are shaking. This is your emotional body trying to express itself. Tension across your forehead and a pit on your stomach lead the charge, but there are a slew of other emotional states just chomping at the bit to get your attention.
In this extraordinary time, we are being forced to BE indoors, BE with a few other people only, BE alone. And guess who else is with us?? Our thoughts, fears, and worries. We have to finally BE with ourselves, and all of the internal communication our bodies have been doing to get our attention. Our emotions are right there, and they’re begging to be recognized and expressed. Our emotional states right now are one of fatigue and exhaustion.
And what are we doing to recover mentally or emotionally on a daily basis to keep us balanced? If you look at normal physiology, there is so much emphasis on the exterior of us, the condition of our physical body. Our health is judged mainly on the appearance of the physical and what we put in it. Every doctor recommendation has to do more with physical activity and eat better to improve health. Exercise, running, yoga and stretching are the maintenance and recovery of the physical body. What habits or tasks do we have for mental or emotional maintenance? If you look at an athlete, after a long day of practice, he or she ices for 20 min, stretches, rotator cuff exercises, core work, ices again, knowing that this is what is necessary to perform tomorrow at the highest stakes. Same on game day. The evening routine of an athlete can take from 30min to 2 hrs. before bedtime to prepare them for the next day.
And what, pray tell, are any of us doing for our mental or emotional recovery? How are we prepared for the next day? How long are you putting aside in your day to stretch your mind? How long are you icing your heart from the anger-filled flare up from watching the news? What kind of emotional core work are you doing to give you stability, balance, and strength? NOT A DAMN THING. What can you do? And we’re not just in practice. We’re out on the front lines emotionally every day. These are visceral emotions of fear, worry, anxiousness, battling with ourselves. And then we just go to bed and do it again the next day. Our health isn’t just what we put in our body, it’s what we put out, verbally, emotionally and energetically.
And reading about psychoses and syndromes doesn’t help. The eternal question of “what is wrong with me” riddles the brain. And what is supposed to be a physical and emotional expression becomes an intellectual exercise, to label it, to give it a name, to make it a part of our story. And what I’ve been saying for years is that when smart people think, emotions get lonely. We’ll spend so much time talking about an emotion to ourselves, our therapist, our friends, and our families, that sometimes we’re just too damn smart for our own good. We talk ABOUT our emotions as though we’re 2 parents talking about a child when the child is sitting RIGHT THERE.
Emotions are just like children. They don’t need names, they don’t need fancy words they just need to be called on. Emotions are like little anxious children in a classroom raising their hands frantically, waiting to be called on. And as we ignore them, they get louder, and louder, and louder. They fill our muscles, our tissues, our organs and toxic emotion is the source of Dis-Ease in the body.
So, in order to get our mental/emotional states back to a place of strength and calm, we need to create a recovery period, with exercises to do, on a daily basis, in order to maintain and reach an optimal health. Something to do today, so we can feel good tomorrow. Journaling is one of those exercises that will support your mental health, clear some of that emotional sludge that seems overwhelming.
Journaling Techniques –
To form a nightly recovery routine, Journaling can be a very healthy and effective way to manage your emotions, and to release them on a daily basis. Journaling can be a lengthy process if you choose it to be. It can also be a very simple process, consisting of only two sentences: What I liked about today, and how I’d like tomorrow to go. These are very easy ways to get your mindset in a healthy way to recover and be ready for the next morning. But if you'd like to have more in-depth tools to help releasing some of the emotions that have been bubbling and squeaking inside of you, then here are some tools that can focus on releasing the held emotions and mental thoughts that I've just been begging to be recognized and let go.
Write Fears and worries - What I want instead
When you recognize your fears and worries, in effect you “call” on them to let them be recognized, so they can put their hand down and subside. My mother expressed worry that she never wanted to write her fears at the possibility that they come true. My response was that “In your head, they’re already true.” When in your head, these creative conjectures take up more personal space and less worldly space. Getting them out gives them more space to inhabit, and hence they lose their potency per square foot. Also if you write these BIG FEARs and demons in your head, and write them in very small print, then you can begin to see that they are really nothing more than some squiggly lines on a page. And if they’re still big, crumple up the page. And if they’re still big, then burn it (safely) in your fireplace.
Writing fears and worries give you a chance to see them and then focus your mind and what you would like instead.
On page 1,
“I am scared that_______________ (the virus will grow, I’ll have no toilet paper, etc.)”
“I worry that _________________ (one of my family members get ill)
On page 2, write how you would like to feel instead.
“I would like to feel _____________ (confident that we’ll get control of the virus / trusting that I’m safe from my sanitation behaviors)”
“I would like to have faith that our family will be taken care of”
I was speaking with my mom on the phone who has never journaled, and after the 1st night, she said she had the best sleep she’s had in a long time. My father chimed in to say “what on earth did you do to your mother for her to sleep so well?” I told him to write his fears, and he said, “I already had 2 beers.”
“No, Dad, FEARS. Write your FEARS.”
“Why do I need to do that when I can have 2 beers, and I sleep just fine?”
Emotional Piggybank – Withdrawals and Deposits
If you can see your mental/emotional state as a balance in your mind-body, with negative thoughts, people, articles and experiences having a negative value. Then look at the moments of joy, smiles, small victories and abundance, and those have a positive value. At the end of the day, do you have a negative or positive value? The goal is to use the journal to make Withdrawals and Deposits. Withdraw all of the negative thoughts, fears, and experiences from your day. And when you deposit, deposit all of the “Positive Evidence” that was a part of your day.
Withdrawals – “I’m afraid that… I’m worried that…” That interaction with my neighbor, yuck, that news conference made me angry.
Deposits – “I ended up cleaning the yard today. I cooked a good meal. My kid thanked me. I had a great walk with my family. I just love my wife, she’s really being a trooper. I’m so grateful that we have toilet paper and food.”
By doing this, you can get to a positive balance, and day by day, little by little, knowing that each night, you’re withdrawing those negative experiences so you can start the next day with a better balance.
In all, these are just tools. Tools that can be used any given night as a part of a recovery routine that we can perform a few hours before we go to bed. If we can be so purposeful about when we get up, what we eat, what exercise we do, then we definitely have the ability to be mindful about what words we say, what emotions were holding onto, and how we want our next day to go. It’s not “New Age,” and it’s not “Alternative.” It’s common sense. And it's our responsibility to treat are emotional and mental body with as much compassion as we would other people's emotional state. We are so easily compassionate and empathetic for others, yet we judge our own fears and worries to be viewed as crutches and weakness.
Mental health can and must first improve not only by how we express our emotions and thoughts, but how we judge our own emotional and mental States. When we can be more accepting of who we are as human beings, being inherently flawed, then the more we can be accepting of the expression of what flows through us on a daily basis. And when this happens we can start focusing on our health from an inside-out approach, and not just the physical outside-in view. And then very soon we can look forward to sitting in the silence, and just hear silence.
