Continuing on with our Anxiety theme of posts I want to introduce you to ‘DIVERSION’.
A wonderful concept that has helped me a number of times and has now actually led to amazing hobbies that I now do because I want to, rather than because I have to to occupy my mind.
When I first started with anxiety I was told my mind was overthinking things even though I had no knowledge of this and that my subconscious mind was doing it all on its own ( I was shocked I had more than one mind).
Anyhow… shock over and then the reality hit me that indeed it would go off and just think its own thoughts on an habitual conveyor belt of negativity. This conveyor belt was even installed by me and I had not one single clue of its existence until it became overloaded and wham bam there it was having a panic attack! Me who has it all going on and didn’t over think anything – or so I thought!
So in all of my research one of the things that kept coming up was this thing called diversion.
Charles Linden talks about it a lot in his work and how to deal with anxiety and it made sense to me greatly. I appreciated that laying down thinking about the impending doom I was feeling internally was probably not the best idea!
I would and I know I would have just lay there and think the worst as my heart was beating in my ears and my hands were shaking!
So… divert divert divert .
I would clean out my cutlery drawer, pair the socks, alphabetically sort out my herbs and spices (yes I did do that), I would clean the bathroom, tidy anything that came to mind, I would play loud happy music and dance like a madman and … I would bake and I mean bake for the UK! All of this occupied my mind so it rested and the trigger that set it off had time to reset itself.
This was long before the colouring books and mindful works that are about these days, as all of these are made to allow your mind to take time out from doing what it does and that’s think – you and only you have to retrain it!
Keep at it! Every day, twice a day only you will know.
You could :
- Learn a new language
- Take a walk
- Volunteer
- Read a book
- Bake
- Clean
- Dance
- Sew
- Learn a new skill
- Paint
- Write
- Craft
The more you can occupy yourself with things that don’t stress you the quicker you can retrain your Neuro pathways into a new way of behaving.
I loved journaling and now I find it to be my favourite hobby but it also helps to make me find a happy place in my head – And we all need one of those.
Make a list if things you could do to divert your mind!
Share it with us here today!
Love Paula
