Welcome to this new blog “Mindforest” - a log of the path I've taken searching for a healthy, balanced, happy mind. I know
I'm not doing anything new here; I'm sure this path has been searched for and
followed literally a billion times over. But it is not an easy path to find, and you
can easily wander off the trail and realise that you’re quite lost. And of course the path for each person is
different, because people's lives are different; what works for one person might
not work for another.
Personal background
You join me around 3 years into my journey. I am a man in my late 30’s living in the
North of England – I have every reason to be happy; I'm healthy, I have a good
steady job, a beautiful, intelligent girlfriend, plenty of friends and hobbies,
a big family that cares for me. Yet
something is wrong. Modern day living
isn't natural and so my brain isn't in its natural state. I frequently feel stressed for no particular
reason I can see, and often feel miserable or have negative thoughts and
feelings.
One very important thing to mention right now is that 9
months ago my brother committed suicide.
So obviously, no, not everything is hunky-dory; I've got good reason to
be sad. Steadily my feelings of grief
have been getting better, I'm not sure what a normal timeframe for feeling
better after such a close bereavement is but I feel as if I'm through the worst of it now and re-adjusting to normality.
Around 3 years ago my ex-girlfriend broke up with me because
I had become so irritable and angry. To
me it was a total shock, I didn't even realise I had a problem, despite being
told by her over and over again that I was always moody. It was a big wakeup call to be dumped by
someone that I thought needed me so much; the grief I was giving her outweighed
any benefit of having me as a boyfriend.
I decided to do something about it – I started researching
on anger and irritability. There were
several articles on the internet that were useful to begin with, although they
were very brief. I came across a
recommendation of a book called “Overcoming Anger and Irritability”, I took it
out the library and found it very useful.
This title was one of many books in the “Overcoming” series, which focus
on overcoming personal problems using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This book (plus, as I found out, all the
others in the series) begins with an introduction to how CBT works. It goes on to discuss anger and irritability,
the causes, why some people suffer and some don’t, and then the 2nd
half of the book has a series of exercises using CBT to help overcome the
problems.
The book worked very well, after a few weeks I was getting
on top of my irritability and feeling considerably better, although I didn't
quite feel “cured”. One of the great
things about CBT is that it focusses on your behaviour now, it does not need to
deal with the root cause of your problems.
You don’t need to spend years with a psychoanalyst delving into your
childhood problems; if you start behaving like someone that isn't irritable,
then for all intents and purposes, you’re not an irritable person. A short-cut to the end goal. My problem wasn't just that I was irritable,
that was merely a symptom of a deeper issue that I couldn't quite put my finger
on.
On the inside cover of “Overcoming Anger and Irritability” was
a list of other books in the series, and I decided to check out “Overcoming Stress”. I found that this book resonated more deeply
with me – my main problem was stress for sure and this was causing the
irritability and many other problems that made my mind ill at ease. This book also pointed me in the direction of
“Mindfulness” which I have tried to follow.
Another book I read in the series was “Overcoming Social Anxiety and
Shyness” which I found immensely useful and I can honestly say I feel and act
different ever since I read it.
Those 3 books gave me a great foundation to build on. I genuinely felt that I had for the most part
overcome my stress, anxiety, and irritability and could focus on working
towards having a more peaceful, healthy mind.
But somewhere along the way I strayed from the path; I think it was
because I was feeling generally OK and no longer needed to work at staying
mentally balanced. And then if I had
just strayed off the path anyway, then the death of my brother picked me right
up and threw me deep into the woods, with the path nowhere in sight.
Scope of this blog
The idea of this is to create a log of the path I'm taking so
that others can learn from it. It will
include my experiences from day to day, delve back into the past (what has
worked for me and what hasn't), and review different sources of information I
have found useful. I haven’t found a
source of information that in isolation I've thought “Yes! This is it!
This describes and resolves my problem completely!” I'm not trying to create this missing source
of information, but to put another guide book on the shelf that perhaps the
beginner can relate to more easily. I'm
not a Buddhist monk or Shaman teacher – I'm an ordinary man living in the
modern world just wanting to have a healthy, happy, balanced mind. I'm not trying to appeal to the masses, I am
trying to appeal to someone like me (or perhaps someone like me a few years back
when I had no direction at all).
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