B"H
Good mental health is a tricky thing. I can "have" it one minute and then "oops!--" and it's gone. I can make a plan for completing tasks and keeping up with self-care that I can follow in a "good" moment, and be quite unequal to the challenge of following it at another time. This often results in something that looks like procrastination, but feels more like a standoff between the desire to "be in the flow," and the fear of being judged for anything I may do. Here are some things I have learned from others and about myself that help me get moving when I am stuck.
Foremost, it is essential for me to stay in touch with my feelings. It was explained to me that even naming your feelings is a step toward tolerating them. The rationale is that when your feelings are "just how it is," they are all encompassing. When I can say, "That is sadness," I introduce the possibility that another state exists. The feeling becomes something that is present with you, but is separate from you.
I find it necessary to go deep with this technique. It's not enough for me to say "that is sadness," I need to identify the particular sadness and let it feel seen before it will stop demanding every bit of my attention. I do this by putting my attention on the feeling and seeing what comes to mind. If I don't get an intuitive "hit" right away, I talk or write about the thing that has come to mind until I do get that feeling of recognizing the cause of the sadness.
Sometimes I discover that I am trying not to think about my feelings to avoid discomfort. For example, if I am writing about what came to mind, and suddenly discover that I am far into intellectual-land and no closer to the source of the feeling, I have been jumped by avoidance. At that point the best question I can ask myself is, "What do I not want to face?"
I have always been a shut-down type of avoider, but some people are activity-based avoiders. They become a flurry of activity, doing anything but the thing that they're stuck on. Again, we can ask, "What do I not want to face?"
An advantage I have is that writing or speaking out my uncomfortable feelings is invariably cathartic for me if I push myself far enough. If someone was trying to face feelings and get unstuck, but didn't get a catharsis from writing or speaking about it, I would suggest setting aside 10 minutes (or 5, or 1) to tolerate the feeling. Any time during the toleration period that one's attention went to something else, one would return it to the uncomfortable feeling. And one would make sure to breathe deeply during this time. I would love for someone to undertake this technique as an experiment and report back on how it works.
For best results, I need to be active, rather than reactive, in identifying my feelings. If I can journal a bit daily, things are less likely to reach the point where my internal standoff has a tension like an old-West shootout about to happen. However, the better I feel, the less I want to disturb my peace by digging into uncomfortable feelings. And so, predictably, tensions build until "oops!--" the good mental health I was enjoying is gone.
The way I am currently working on getting out of this cycle is by studying a book called Shaar Habitachon, or, The Gate of Trust, in English. It reminds me that every single outcome in the world is a result of G-d's choice, not my own efforts. Why does water flow downward? Because G-d made it that way. But, as in the story of Moses at the Sea of Reeds, G-d could always make a different choice. Thus, natural laws guarantee nothing. With such an understanding, the key action we can take to make a difference is to trust G-d. Because it's going to go the way G-d makes it go.
The only thing we can choose is our own effort -- and that means an effort in the mind, because it is possible that you won't have the right circumstances to take action. So we can choose to dedicate ourselves to a certain way, but our degree of dedication does not foretell the results.
How does this interrupt the cycle of good mental health leads to laxity leads to poor mental health? If I can understand this piece about trusting G-d, then I will not be afraid of the results of looking into uncomfortable feelings, because I trust G-d with the outcome. Why does looking into unpleasant feelings have to lead to feeling unpleasant? Beyond a momentary discomfort that is necessary to determine that the feelings before us are actually the uncomfortable ones we've come here to work on -- why wouldn't we feel joy in untangling the misunderstandings which have plagued us?
Practically speaking, when I think that my business is in good order and I don't have pressing negative feelings to address, instead of relaxing, I'm going to start writing on a new topic: Why Not Trust G-d? (Thousands of reasons come to mind. But I know that they are in fact the troubles that are so inured in me that I can't yet view them as feelings rather than realities. Happily, I know the ways to process them that I have just described. There is hope for real progress in my mental health!)
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