Mental Well-being Through Lockdown: Drop The Drill Sergeant.
A new year has arrived, we thought the worst was behind us after an extremely tough 2020. Then it happens, less than a week into 2021 and a third national lockdown in place. With winter itself being a patchy time of year anyway, a long and hard lockdown to control the new COVID-19 variant will take its toll on our mental health.
Therefore I'm aiming to bring out totally free and supportive articles the length of the U.K. lockdown to support your mental health. Today we're going to start with addressing that all powerful neglected area and jiggly thing inside our heads we call our brain.
Todays Article is: DROP THE DRILL SERGREANT.
If I told you that you are lazy, stupid, overweight bad at your job or gormless, you'll leave this blog instantly. Yet when the new year comes around, many of us make worse mental lists cataloguing how bad we are and all our flaws are.
Every year we will create a New Years Resolution that we will endeavour to make that year "ours" and we will plan all sorts of goals, aspirations, plans and motivation to achieve them. Whilst this is a great way to go about it and make new aspirations, we have to be careful on how we go about it. We see this via Facebook posts, when our colleagues come in the office and brag about what they are going to do whether it is Dry January or starting on that summer body. Then a week later, or even a day later, they come in and do exactly the opposite to what they were saying they were going to do the day before. The typical excuses are " oh I forgot" "oh it was too difficult" and "oh I'll start tomorrow". We often see this more so in the gym, a typical (none-covid) January looks similar to the picture below. So why do we place such a big emphasis on our plans and goals and then all of a sudden we give up?.
This comes down to our inner Drill Sergeant, we've all seen movies and documentaries of basic training when recruits are subject to screams for being in the right and wrong places at the right and wrong times. We would think that we wouldn't, if given the choice, to experience that to ourselves, yet when every new year comes around, we generate more negative lists of ourselves almost as if our internal monologues have been hijacked by a nasty Drill Sergeant. We hurl awful insults at ourselves and we drum up our past mistakes, call ourselves names "you're greedy, you're dumb, you're weak". We all know that this boot camp mentality just doesn't feel good but we act and believe that's what we need to do break our bad habits to get motivated for the new year, however we're wrong. All this self-flagellation is just self-defeating and breaks our goals and motivation. Throw in a sprinkle of a pandemic and lockdown and this will have disastrous consequences.
To put it simply, this is what is happening inside our brain and its constant until we break and give up.
So how can we meet our goals and be happier in the process, especially in the new lockdown and Covid?
Being critical of ourselves can be healthily, it identifies our flaws and leads to change, however negative Self-Criticism of ourselves can be damaging. The belief that "I made a mistake, therefore I am a mistake, I am bad" really isn't healthy at all as it shuts down our own awareness or we will feel hollow with shame or we dissociate from our bodies, cut ourselves off from other people and it makes it harder to speak to others as we are so full of shame. Its more difficult to see the truth because we are so blinded by shame that we cant process or take it in. This really takes away our energy and motivation to try and do better next time. So this Drill Sergeant is a motivating mindset, its a debilitative mindset, and it more common than we think, especially at this time of year. With jobs at risk the future uncertain, this an be exceptionally stressful, especially when you had plans to take your education, job, career, family, self- promotion, sport to new levels and now it feels we're all set back a long time with no end in sight.
There is some physiological aspect to this. Whenever we do something wrong or make a mistake, we feel threatened (the Fight, Flight or Freeze response). When we make a mistake we fight ourselves in the Fight response. Think of it like this "DANGER...I'M THE DANGER, I'M THE PROBLEM, I HAVE TO FIGHT MYSELF TO STAY SAFE!". So we beat ourselves up more to control ourselves to do better next time. The Flight response represents how we react to shame that we couldn't do it. Shame is the safety behaviour, the wanting to isolate away from everyone as a way to protect ourselves from perceived judgements of others. The Freeze response is when we get stuck its the "I'm so bad, I'm awful, I cant do anything" and we remain in this perpetual cycle, its equivalent to an animal playing dead and hoping the predator (mistake) will go away.
Question, would you be this critical of your child, partner, friend or family member if they made a mistake? No, which makes us more able to be kinder, more caring and supportive than to ourselves. So the natural behaviour we place on ourselves makes sense, but its totally counter-productive, it doesn't make us safe an it stops us in our ability to make productive change. The mind in a way, lies to us. Self-Criticism is normally way harder on us than it should be, so we make higher expectations that we know we cannot get to so revert to the the cycle above and more likely drop out of what it is we are or had planned. This inevitably will affect our mental health.
If our child makes a mistake you wouldn't say "I hate you, you're worthless, I don't love you anymore, you better do better next time our else" but rather we would say " I love you regardless, its okay everyone fails sometimes" and we crucially offer "how can I help you?, how can I help you to get better grades next time? or how can I help you get over this?". We do this because we love our children as a parent should do. Generally, we naturally try to support to be more constructive in human nature.
The theme here is Compassion and Self-Compassion.
Self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Sounds tough right? In the first instances it is. Looking deep down and saying "okay, I made a mistake, that doesn't mean I'm a bad person" or " This year has left me without a job and I'm so worried, but its okay as I know I worry a lot and I can look for other work and cut down my costs to help me through. This shows my strength" or "my GCSEs/ A-Levels / Degree year has been impacted because of Covid and I'm really worried, but I know I'm smart and there is more support out there to aid me in my education which I can organise.
Essentially, when we practice self-compassion, we are deactivating that threat-defence system we spoke of before and activating the care system in our bodies.
Research has shown that if we throw away that Drill Sergeant and focus on compassion after a failure, we will have more grit, determination, passion and motivation to do better than before but this must start with us and our self compassion. This shows that self-compassion helps us make changes in our lives. For example, people who are kinder toward themselves are better equipped to make progress toward health-related goals, such as losing weight, exercising, quitting smoking, or recovering from substance abuse. When we’re self-compassionate, instead of shaming ourselves, we are able to face our struggles head-on with all of our resources available to us.
Self-compassion is also related with the oxytocin release (the love hormone that facilitates safety and connection), which reduces our distress and increases our feelings of care and support. This soothing effect can help us when we are going through difficult times that require us to make changes in our lives, serving as a powerful source of strength and resilience. For example, the University of Arizona found that participants who were going through a divorce and displayed more self-compassion when talking about their breakup were healthier, happier, and more resilient. Another study that came out of the University of California Berkley was that when students, whom went through a extremely hard vocab test, spent time on compassion after failure has increased motivation, passion, drive, results on the next test and most importantly happiness compared to those whom were left to shame or those given self-confidence training. This shows how incredibly effective self compassion is as a tool to support your mental health.
This doesn't resort solo here, its been used in supporting the military too. Soldiers returning from Afghanistan who were taught self-compassion had lower levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Self Compassion gives us a sense that its okay, we're human and we're not perfect but also it gives us a warmth of care.
So how do we go about this?
Starting to develop Self-Compassion practices, you first have to explore and understand the barriers you might have that prevent you from self-compassion (at first this may feel really tricky as we are not used to it like we are to be self-critical). This will be entirely dependent on your individual life experiences and beliefs. One way to do this is to reflect on the core (usually negative) beliefs you currently hold about yourself. Write them down and then ask yourself:
How does it make you feel once written down?
When did you first develop this belief? What experiences are connected to it?
What external experiences or situations trigger this belief about yourself?
Who encourages this belief about yourself?
How would your life look if you didn’t believe this about yourself?
Then is to take this perspective
Be your own best friend – When you do feel negative thoughts of judgment for the self begin to arise again, ask yourself how you would respond to a best friend who thought or felt that way about themselves? Would you be cruel and critical, or kind and compassionate?
Apply this to yourself in the manner of "It's okay Dan, I'm here for you, you are really strong, lets have sit down and go through all these thoughts and feelings and address them one by one. You can get through this".
I hope this has provided some insight and support for you, I know for me writing this I've felt some strong emotions in wanting to support you through these difficult times as I have myself experienced long and dark times previously.
My goal is really to stop that nuclear explosion in your mind through lockdown and give it a sense of support, clarity and compassion. So remember to drop that nasty Drill Sergeant that is lurking in your mind, you deserve more compassion and love in your life!
