How to Focus on Your Life Instead of Your Illness

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on five tips to start focusing on your life instead of your disorder. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Now, I know your first reaction might be, but aren't we supposed to focus mindfully on making those changes and working on our recovery program? And my answer is a qualified yes. But focusing on something to the exclusion of everything else causes you to miss a lot. When you're focused on something constantly, when it's your head is way down in the weeds, you're not seeing what's going on around you. You're not seeing how these small changes are improving your rich and meaningful life. Heck, you're not even noticing the small changes because you're. You got your head down and you're just so narrowly focused. So focusing on treatment when in treatment is excellent. When you're in residential, when you're at the treatment center, when you are doing your treatment activities, you know, each day, that's excellent. Obviously 100% focus. Then it's also important to give yourself permission to have a life. Give yourself permission to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Focusing on treatment all the time can cause you to miss what's going on and become detached from others. So your significant others might start complaining. You're always talking about treatment. You're always focused on treatment. You never have time to do anything. And yes, those are cognitive distortions, always and nevers. But that's what a lot of people hear. And I think it's important to be able to hear that and go, is there something, Is there a kernel of truth to what they're saying? Am I focusing exclusively on this and missing the fruits of my labor? So how can you recover and live a rich and meaningful life? Well, the first one is to ditch dirty discomfort. Too often people in recovery, when they're having a bad day, they get frustrated. They're like, oh, here we go again. Or they start to become afraid that they are going to have a complete relapse right then and there. Being angry, stressed or depressed about your illness, whether it's a physical illness or a mental illness, your inability to flip a switch and use your new behaviors a hundred percent perfectly, a hundred percent of the time, and then instantly feel better just makes the problem worse. You developed your problem over the course of weeks, months, years. It's not going to change in 28 days. It's not going to change completely in 10 weeks. So it's important to get curious to recognize that this is a learning process. Some symptoms that are common to a Lot of disorders include HPA axis activation, that threat response system that activates when your blood sugar is out of whack, when you're in pain, when you're sleep deprived, when you're stressed. Well, that's going to activate. And for a lot of people that are in recovery, that HPA axis is out of whack because they have experienced stress disorder, distress, trauma for so long. It's going to take a while for that HPA axis to heal. Just like if you broke your arm, you wouldn't wake up the next morning and voila, it was better. You know, it would take several weeks for the bones to heal back together. Your HPA axis is no different. Inflammation is also common. We know there's a strong connection between horizon hpa, AIs disregulation and inflammation. We know there's a strong correlation between anxiety and depression and inflammation. So we can, with relative certainty, say the majority of people who are struggling with mental health or autoimmune disorders are going to be also struggling with some level of inflammation. And again, that is not going to go away overnight. That's not going to go away until the underlying issue causing the inflammation, whether it is autoimmune or HPA axis or something else, until that issue is healed. A lot of people, whether it's a chronic physical or mental ill illness, struggle with being unhappy. And I'm just using that kind of general term, anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, grief, you know, all of those dysphoric or unpleasant emotions. People struggle with that. And yeah, you're probably not going to start treatment and the very next day, day, be happy. Matter of fact, most people in treatment go through a period where they feel a little worse before they start feeling better, because they start addressing all of that stuff. It's kind of like having a wound that was dirty and everything, and you let it heal over without getting all of the dirt out. So it got infected, infected. And in order to heal that wound, you first have to clean out the infection, clean out the, the crud. And that doesn't feel good. Recognizing that is important. Instead of fighting with it, struggling with that discomfort and getting angry that you're still depressed or getting anxious that you're not feeling better quick enough. Just say, okay, I'm not feeling better today, or I'm angry or depressed today. It is what it is. And dirty discomfort is a term that Hayes uses, an acceptance and commitment therapy that refers to that quicksand of emotions when you start feeling angry about or guilty about being depressed. So you're adding Layers on, you're struggling, and you start sinking in the weight of those unpleasant feelings. So let's ditch those extra layers. Cognitively. If you're struggling with inflammation, if you're struggling with autoimmune issues, if you're struggling with mental health or addiction issues, you're probably going to have brain fog and it's not going to clear overnight. Just like a pea soup. Fog does not clear the minute the sun comes up. This is probably not going to clear overnight. It will get better, but it won't clear overnight. And in relationships, most likely during your symptomatic period, you may have experienced things like isolation and conflict. Okay, people in your life may still want to be there and support you, but they also may be cautious. They may be protecting themselves. So your relationships aren't automatically going to be all roses. It's going to take some time. Instead of getting angry about it and using all that energy, or instead of feeling guilty about the things that you did and, and beating yourself up for that, you know, struggling with that dirty discomfort, saying, okay, yeah, I made some bad choices, I did some bad things. I'm going to use my energy to move forward. Which takes us to number two, get the facts. Sometimes it's hard to see those small steps forward. Just like when you're on a diet. Sometimes it's hard to notice if you're losing weight. When you're just, you know, if you've lost a half a pound or if you've lost a pound, but one day you put on your clothes and all of a sudden it's like, oh, this fits better. You know, that's a big step. You didn't notice the little steps leading up to that. So it's important to keep a journal. Identify one to three symptoms or behaviors that bother you that you want to work on, that you want to improve. And I say one to three. Ideally, it's just one, because when you improve one area, most of the other areas are also going to improve. But some people want to identify, want to focus on two or three, okay, but any more than three, you're not going to be able to live your life and also monitor. So identify one to three symptoms that you're going to keep a journal of. Identify what those behaviors are and the new behaviors that you want to replace them with. Keep your in your journal each night or each morning. But generally, generally people do this retrospectively each night. Your progress toward recovery and the problems or obstacles that you experienced in implementing your new behaviors that particular day. So at the end of Every day, you are still reflecting on the day. You are still learning from what happened throughout the day. But during the day, you were able to experience life, you were able to enjoy life, and, you know, hopefully you were also able to use some of those tools. And at the end of the day, you can look back and go, hey, I did that pretty well. And, hey, I'm still not doing that one so well. Address all or nothing thinking. An athlete doesn't wake up one morning and suddenly have the, the ability to go probably, you know, they work at it for years and years and years practicing, rehearsing, competing, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but they still get back out on the field or the court or whatever it is. A child does not go from scooching across the floor on his belly to walking overnight. It takes time. It takes falling on their bum a few times. That's okay, but it's progress. If you've had children, you can probably reflect on those conversations you had. When your child was learning how to walk. It wasn't, oh, he, he pulled himself up yesterday, but now he's just scooching, I give up. It was, oh, my gosh, you should see the progress. Every day he's trying to pull himself up, or he's trying to do something a little bit new, or he's trying again. Children are determined. They don't have something in the back of their mind going, well, this sucks. I'm never going to figure this out. They're just like, I'm going to figure this out. They don't get angry and struggle with that dirty discomfort. They don't feel guilty because they're not walking soon enough. They just do what they do and seek feedback and support about what you're doing. Well, when you're in the midst of it, especially if you've been struggling with whatever it is for a long time, you've probably gotten pretty good at finding your faults, at criticizing yourself. But during that reflection period, at the end of the day, ask yourself, what did I do well? Seek feedback from those around you. What am I doing well? But it's important again, to, to keep this somewhat confined. You don't want to be monopolizing not only every hour of your life, but every hour that you're spending with other people focusing on your disorder. It's important to pick your. Pick your head up and look around and say, you know, what's going on with you. Jim, let's talk about you for a minute. Foreign Help us continue to make practical tools available to everybody by supporting the channel you can donate any amount@doc snipes.com or on cash app at Doc Snipes. You can become a member of the YouTube channel and get perks@doc snipes.com join. You can purchase a super thanks on videos you find particularly helpful or if you need CEUs, you can earn continuing education@allce.com. Tip number three Live in the and accept that it is whatever it is is. If you're depressed today, you're depressed. It is. It is what it is. Then you can get curious and say, okay, how do I improve the next moment? But I'm not going to get angry about the fact that I feel this way. If you wake up in the morning and you're you've got brain fog, okay, it is now. Living in the and means saying, how can I live my rich and meaningful life to the greatest extent possible and have brain fog? There are interventions. There are things that you can do to improve that brain fog or to help you live that rich and meaningful life despite having brain fog. So live in the and except that it is even though it may be able to be improved right now, it sucks. Okay, pain. You wake up, you're in a lot of pain. All right? Today is not a good pain day. It is what it is. And if you get start getting angry about it, that triggers that HPA axis, which actually probably worsens the inflammation and lowers your pain threshold. And that all works against you. So asking yourself, how can I live my rich and meaningful life and have pain? This weekend I went out into the garden and I was clearing out all the old BlackBerry bushes and stuff and getting ready for spring planting. And I did something. I don't know what it was, don't remember doing anything, but I clearly did something to the joint on my middle finger. And Saturday night I woke up at like 2 in the morning and I was in agony. My finger was swollen up. Couldn't, you know, couldn't move that joint. It was, it was unpleasant and I got frustrated for a second. I'm like, crap, I hurt myself. But then I let it go. I didn't get angry about it. I didn't get angry about the fact that it was keeping me from sleeping. I'm like, okay, what do I do about this? So I got up, I ran some cool water over it for a few minutes, wrapped it up with a little compression, went back to bed. So I figured out, what can I do for my rich and meaningful life? I know I need to get good sleep. So instead of getting angry, which would Keep me awake. And instead of not doing anything so the pain would keep me awake, I did what I could do, and then I went back to bed. Mental illness, chronic illness, they're the same way. If you're having a flare up, if you're having a symptomatic moment or a symptomatic day, all right, accept it. And what can you do, given your condition right now, to have the best day possible? It doesn't mean it's going to be an A day, but what can you do to have the best day possible? Tip number four, and maybe I should have put this one earlier. Define your rich and meaningful life. Sometimes you can get so focused to get out of the quicksand of your distress that you lose sight of what you actually need to be happy. And I say need. What do you need in order to be happy? There may be a lot of things that you want out here. I think there are for a lot of us. But what do you need to be happy? And I encourage you to get out and you need to need to write it down on separate sheets of paper. Each sheet of paper represents one thing that you need to be happy. People, places, things, experiences. What is it that you need in your life to be happy? So your children, your significant other, your best friend, your. Your house, maybe your pets, places, you know, maybe you want to be able to go on vacation this, this summer or regularly or whatever it is. What do you need to be happy in your rich and meaningful life? In the moment as well as in the, you know, foreseeable future? You don't want to necessarily look 10, 15, 20 years down the road. That gives you an idea of where you can dedicate some of your energy, of the things that you want to actually look at and reflect on. So you can recognize, hopefully, that in some areas things are actually going well and that can help you deal or cope with or endure whatever word you want to use. The things that aren't going so well, even though they suck on the front of each page, identify ways to nurture that aspect of your rich and meaningful life. So, for instance, my cat, Mojo, love him to death. He's important in my rich and meaningful life. So how can I nurture my cat now? You know, it's. That's pretty simple. Playing with him, feeding him, letting him sit on my lap, you know, those sorts of things. But that means I've got to be available to him if I'm never around or if I'm always cooped up in my office and have the door shut that is not going to help me nurture it. So I need to set aside time to nurture that relationship. On the back of the sheet, identify potential obstacles or challenges and the way to address them. Okay, we'll keep with Mojo for right now. At the moment, I am fostering my son's girlfriend's cat's kitten, if you can follow that. But they can't be in the same room right now. Mojo really does not like this kitten. And he has an autoimmune disorder. So when he gets stressed, his feet get all crusty and painful and everything, and it's ugly. So I have to keep them separate to keep Mojo calm. And you know that I have this, the care of this little, this other little soul in my life. So challenges to spending time with Mojo when I'm also, when I also have time, that's divided because I also have to spend some time with this little kitten to help get it socialized and ready to be adopted. Figuring out how to deal with that, to make sure that Mojo has his time every day where he can sit on my lap, where he can be unbothered by that other cat. And, you know, that makes everybody happy. Now, obviously some of the things that you're going to put down are much more important than your relationship with your cat. But, you know, that gives you an idea of what you're, what you're wanting to do. Figure out, how do you want, what do you want this relationship to look like and what can you do to nurture it. And again, on the back, what may get in your way. That way you can start making a plan, and that helps you envision that rich and meaningful life. That helps you focus on improving things in your life in addition to your condition, whatever that is. Because you know what? As some of those things start improving, it will also have a positive effect on your condition. If your relationships start improving, you'll probably be somewhat less stressed. Lower stress is associated with improvement in most conditions. So it's a two way street. You are actually working on your recovery, even if you're not directly working on your recovery. Imagine that number five, live in the present, not in the future. Instead of saying, when X is gone, I'll be happy. When my pain is gone, I'll be happy. When my depression's gone, I'll be happy. When I'm cured of this, whatever it is, I will be happy. Well, that's. You don't know when that will be. What can you be happy about in the moment? And this takes us back to a concept called hardiness that Kobasa proposed back in 1978. Commitment, control and challenge. Now, I mentioned it a little bit on the last slide. Identify all those things that are important in your rich and meaningful life. And since you have them on different sheets of paper, this is an easier exercise. In one pile, pile up all the things that are going well, or at least okay. And then the other pile, you can leave the things that are not going so well. But ideally you're going to be able to see that you've got things in both piles, you've got some things that are going well. Focusing only on the problem likely makes the problem feel worse. Think about if you I periodically have back pain and if I focus on the pain in my back, guess what? I notice the pain in my back and I tend to tense up and I tend to guard it more, which makes the pain worse. Focusing on the problem, focusing on the discomfort makes you acutely aware of it. So if you're focusing on other things as well, then it's likely to prevent it, prevent you from making it worse, if you will. So let's take back pain or addiction. Yes, you need to be aware of triggers. You need to protect yourself and be mindful of how you're acting and where you go. You know you're not, you know when you get up in the morning that you're not going to go to certain places. Okay, you know, I got that. If you have a back problem, you know in the morning when you get up that you're going to need to put your back brace on. And you know there are certain movements you're not going to do. However, if you focus on just that all day long, you miss everything else that's going on. Be aware of it. Be mindful and notice other things. Focus on what you can control. What can you use your energy to nurture? Okay, my back hurts. Stinks. I'm not going to get angry about it. It is what it is. And with me, I usually did it doing hurt my back doing something that I enjoyed, like gardening. So okay, yeah, it is what it is. How can I use my energy? Well, I can use my energy to put on my back brace. I can use my energy to put on my TENS unit or to take care of it. But I can also use my energy to work, to spend time with my animals, to call my kid, to cook, whatever else it is that I want to do. Yes, I may not be able to go to the gym and do squats today, but there are a lot of other things that are important in my rich and meaningful life that I can use my energy for in addition to or while I am simultaneously healing from my injury and view problems in the present as challenges instead of obstacles to your future happiness or barriers to your future happiness? Okay, this problem exists and we'll stick with back pain. My back hurts and it keeps me from doing some of the things that I love. And when my back hurts, my husband's very adamant that I'm not outside tilling and, you know, pulling blackberries and whatever else. So that keeps me out of the garden too. And I don't like it. So it's a challenge to see in my mind, sort of a game to see how quickly I can recover. How can I do what I need to do in order to start feeling better? How can I, with the rest of the time in the day, use my energy to get take care of other things that are important in my rich and meaningful life that aren't hindered by back pain? So it's a challenge and it encourages me to be more mentally flexible because I tend to be kind of rigid. If I have something scheduled for for the day and I can't do it, I get stuck. And living in the present and using hardiness focus forces me to be mentally flexible. So I'm saying, okay, well, what can I do? So this is out. Instead of getting angry about it and poochie about it and throwing a temper tantrum and wasting a bunch of energy is what it is. What can I use my energy for that's useful? And I always have stuff on the list on the refrigerator that I can do. Tip number six, dedicate time to recovery. I know you're scratching your head going, but I thought you said don't focus on it. Don't focus on it exclusively all day, every day, but focus on it exclusively during your recovery periods. Remember, in. In other videos I've said that change is a job. Whether you're changing behaviors or you're recovering from addiction or a stroke or whatever else, it's a job. So you need to dedicate time for that job every single day. While it can be helpful to focus on recovery activities a hundred percent of each day, part of your rich and meaningful life is recovery or unhelpful to focus on those things. Part of your rich and meaningful life is recovery. So yes, we do need to focus on recovery part of the day. You know, that's part of that pie. Part of that rich and meaningful life. Set aside each time each day, especially in early recovery. And then as you get further out, maybe each week, but definitely first six months or so each day to focus on your recovery activities. If nothing else, but to reflect on what you did well and what areas still need work. The time that you set aside will generally decrease as your recovery improves. As you learn these new behaviors, as you start practicing them, as your relationships heal, as your body heals, as your thinking and your thoughts are become more flexible, you'll generally require less time to dedicate to recovery. Every day. Now, for some people in recovery, especially from addictions, they continue to do go to at least one meeting a day every day. And that's not necessarily harmful. That is their reflection time. If they're sitting in meetings nine hours a day or 10 hours a day day, every single day, then they're going to miss their rich and meaningful life. So yes, there is a time to focus on it, and there's also a time to focus on the other things that are supportive of your recovery. Recovery from illness or managing a chronic condition takes a lot of time and energy. The reason for recovery or management of your condition is so you can have a rich and meaningful life, which means part of your rich and meaningful life is recovery or management of your condition. Quality time and energy dedicated to recovery activities is important, and I'm not saying it isn't. And again, in early recovery, it, depending on this situation, the circumstance, the issue, it may be all day, you know, if you're in residential treatment, for example. But as you recover, you will spend less and less time focused on those recovery activities and more and more time focusing on dividing your energy to also nurture the things that are other things that are important in your rich and meaningful life.