Things I've learned from counselling #10: don't make the problem larger

[kaberett]

I occasionally mention the concept of making. the job. smaller. Overwhelmed by a task? Okay, alter your concept of "success" to something manageable. You're not going to write a novel today, but you can write the prologue. Or half a chapter. Or whatever. And then you can do another half chapter tomorrow. And then you get to the end, and you look up, and there's a novel.

Counselling and mindfulness and a whole host of other things have, over the years, trained me to at least consider the possibility of don't make the job larger. That's not a framing it's been given explicitly, but it's not exactly an unrecognised phenomenon: to some extent, think sneaky hate spiral (ALL OF THE THINGS ARE PROBLEMS), but also catastrophising (THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD).

For me, it tends to go a bit like this: the Thing is terrible. If I am already overwhelmed, it is even worse than that. I cannot possibly control or have any effect on the Thing [note that this is a distortion: instead of making the job smaller, to make it less overwhelming, I abnegate agency and power in order to do away with choice and responsibility, both of which are Hard]. Anxiety about the Thing then gets displaced onto anything that looks even slightly similar within a large radius: "there is no point in even trying to Deal with the Thing, because it's not like I can handle the Badger either." And thus I spiral further and further into telling myself I'm shit and incapable and incompetent and can't manage anything, and get distressed about wider irrelevant putative problems that may not even be problems, and all the while the Thing looms larger and larger above the foothills of self-hatred.

Mindfulness techniques, as it turns out, have really helped me with this. The meditative practice of sitting with thoughts but gently redirecting one's focus to one's breath, or heartbeat, or whatever, has an awful lot in common with looking at the thought that goes you are too incompetent/ill/crippy/lazy to be on this PhD programme, you can't even adequately read and synthesise literature, there's no point even trying to fix the transfer report, you might as well fail out now and be done with it and - not ignore it, but nod at it, show it to the waiting area, and return to the pargraph at hand.

I sometimes summarise this - possibly via Pratchett - as you do the job in front of you. There's no "just" about it - like I said, it's taken me years to get to the point where I can semi-reliably do this under pressure - but over the course of this evening I've realised just how far I've come in this respect, and I am enormously grateful.

Comments

[jjhunter]

These are really good things for me to be reminded of at this moment in time; thank you for sharing.

*wonders if we might be having some kind of transcontinental telepathy going on*

[thefairymelusine]

And sometimes the job in front of you is "you are going into overload/a meltdown, go and do something nice until you can cope with the previous job again" (my friends are on standby to politely but firmly remind me of this at the moment)

[kaberett]

Preeeeeeeeecisely.

[thefairymelusine]

This is, I think, where various cultures of "work as the supreme moral good" (which are very understandable things, especially if you have experience of not working being bad) really, really fuck people over, especially autistic/other non neurotypical people and other disabled people. Because you do sometimes need your job to be "go to someone's house for dinner and talk to people and relax" or "sit quietly in your living room doing a jigsaw" or "just take an (Amount of Time) off and see what happens in it". That's really necessary to being able to do the next job, and to being able to help other people with their other jobs.

And one of the corrosive things about prolonged poverty and/or unemployment is that it robs you of both the energy, and the financial and physical resources to be able to DO any of the jobs in front of you well.

[kaberett]

yes. last night the job in front of me was "get someone, anyone to come to the house and look after you" - housemate was out and I was in A State - and to my complete astonishment I managed it. I contacted about three different people before I found someone able to respond/come over, but I did the thing. I am more impressed with myself than I can say, really.

[thefairymelusine]

Well done! and yeah, that's a major thing (especially with overload and executive dysfunction)

The job of "call my best mate when hyperventilating and get him to tell me to go and sit on the chaise longue, do jigsaws and watch either Kevin Smith movies or Disney until you can breath properly again" comes up a lot these days. As does "call your mad Anglican drinking buddies and ask if they would like to go to the pub"

[ex_we935]

This is a really helpful post, yes. When you're looking at things one at at time, rather than as a string of Horrible Possible Events That Will Destroy Everything, it makes it more manageable. It's important to try and focus at the task at hand instead of seeing a massive structure that looks insurmountable. That's how I tend to think of things anyway. :) Spiralling into catastrophising thoughts is something some of us struggle with here and it's always helpful to make them smaller so they don't look so scary.

~D.

[alexseanchai]

You're not going to write a novel today, but you can write the prologue. Or half a chapter. Or whatever. And then you can do another half chapter tomorrow. And then you get to the end, and you look up, and there's a novel.

*eyes Viva La Vida file*

[cosmolinguist]

This is very good for me to read, too.

I love "do the job in front of you." I also found a line I pilfered (and no doubt altered in the years since I read it) from Unseen Academicals unbelievably useful: "she had to be her own fairy godmother." I am my own goddam fairy godmother: most of what looks like magic seems to really just be hard work and planning.

[macey]

One of the things I'm very grateful to my mother for is teaching me this. My childhood was full of 'mind maps', where you make a list of what you need to do, then break the items down, then break them down again until the chunks are bite-sized.

Part of my problem is that sometimes my brain goes into hatespirals where this kind of 'but look, you did X, and objectively you're pretty successful with Y' are actually actively harmful because brain gets to tell me how terrible I am for not being grateful for all that, and also it gets to prove why X and Y are not really all that great because well it's not like you're the best in that /ever/ or anything. I haven't really figured out a way out of those yet, since pretty much any positive thought, action, or support from others tends to push me deeper.

With the 'break it into chunks' approach, sometimes, the hardest thing for me is dipping my toe in and breaking the surface tension. I have a friend who says she always ends a writing session at the end of a scene, so that her voice stays consistent straight through. I can't do that - I have to put down just a sentence or two of the next scene, to break the 'getting started' tension. Do you have any habits to help deal with that first push out of inertia?

[kaberett]

<3

(yes always)

[kaberett]

♥

[kaberett]

I will confess that I thought of you >>;

[kaberett]

yesss

[kaberett]

I do a lot of the perfectionist-child stuff with that one - like, ongoing work on how you don't have to be the best at something to be useful and to be able to improve; also that if only The Best In The World were doing An Thing then there wouldn't be very much of the products of their labours to go around; and that the thing is better done than not done at all.

Re surface tension - yeah, I have to have some of the next bit done as well, as a hook. And I can rewrite the beginning of the next bit either then or later! Consistency is what editing is for. The other thing I try to do if I'm working on a big writing project (typically for work, but also when doing fic exchanges) is to Write A Bit Every Day. Even if it's only a sentence. Even if it's only a word. Because then I'm kept focussed on the small job - the job in front of me - and thinking about the next step, the next small job; whereas if I back off from it for too long the entire thing comes back into perspective and I start getting immobilising terror again, which isn't... helpful. ;)

[naath]

Today I'm not going to "tidy the house" I am going to "put away one thing at a time"... it's a much better framing.

[sarah]

Thank you for the recommendations. This is a tricky spiral that I often fall into as well.

[alexseanchai]

:p

[quirkytizzy]

I have just about run out of all steam in which to do things like coherent responses with, but I wanted to say: YES OMG THIS THING EXACTLY THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS. MAKE THE JOB SMALLER THAT IS BRILLIANT!

More to come later. Hell, maybe an entire LJ entry. Cuz this shit is ON FUCKING TARGET.

[quirkytizzy]

Can I share this on an entry of mine, so long as I link back to you?

[kaberett]

sure :-)

[ceb]

A wise teacher at secondary school successfully instilled in me the concept that panicking about things doesn't get you anywhere, whereas doing *something* even if it's tiny and the whole thing feels overwhelming at least results in some progress. I am very often grateful to him.

[footpad]

(gnaw)

[kaberett]

*fuzz*

[jesse_the_k]

♥ ♥ ♥

[silveradept]

I can do this... sometimes. Which is why I usually like priority markings, because I will otherwise go do all the things that I know take a little time, just to knock them out and clear them off the schedule and/or chore list, and then when someone else asks about the thing they actually wanted done that day, there's friction, because having done ten things becomes useless when someone is mad at you for not having done one.

[inoru_no_hoshi]

the Thing is terrible. If I am already overwhelmed, it is even worse than that. I cannot possibly control or have any effect on the Thing [note that this is a distortion: instead of making the job smaller, to make it less overwhelming, I abnegate agency and power in order to do away with choice and responsibility, both of which are Hard]. Anxiety about the Thing then gets displaced onto anything that looks even slightly similar within a large radius: "there is no point in even trying to Deal with the Thing, because it's not like I can handle the Badger either." And thus I spiral further and further into telling myself I'm shit and incapable and incompetent and can't manage anything, and get distressed about wider irrelevant putative problems that may not even be problems, and all the while the Thing looms larger and larger above the foothills of self-hatred.

... That looks so familiar I had a moment of "Is Alex in my brain?!", but I guess it makes sense this is a common spiral. (Which is kinda sad and depressing to think about.)

For me, I also turn back to things I know I'm good at/are comfort-familiar, which progresses nothing and gets me right back into the rut I started in. And figuring out how to break it in ways that don't require resources I just don't have/can't access efficiently is so hard that it becomes a sub-loop in the above. :( (Especially when I hyperfocus on something and later go, "Oops, didn't I mean to do [thing]?" but it's sleeptime or just an impractical time of day/night to do [thing]...)

And macey said, above, Part of my problem is that sometimes my brain goes into hatespirals where this kind of 'but look, you did X, and objectively you're pretty successful with Y' are actually actively harmful because brain gets to tell me how terrible I am for not being grateful for all that, and also it gets to prove why X and Y are not really all that great because well it's not like you're the best in that /ever/ or anything. which, yes, also that.

Brains. *hiss*

I'm glad you've got techniques that help you; maybe I can see if they help me. ♥♥

[spirit_level]

you deserve ALL the applause, really. i am v. impressed with your ability to persevere this way because i have All The Trouble with this type of job & currently can't even make myself contact one person for help, let alone three. well done, you!

[fyreharper]

[This is relevant, thank you]