Creating a Regular Practice

M

Mr Hip Guy

Beloved Grand Eagle
This recent thread got me thinking. The video describes 9 "micro habits" that can drive self-improvement around emotions and anxiety, which we know can obviously drive TMS symptoms or TMS "behavior."

https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threa...ation-of-trauma-or-anxiety.30340/#post-163612

I've long thought that I should start some kind of regular (if not daily, then several times a week at least) practice to bolster my progress in dealing with my TMS brain. I was pretty much a "book cure" in a lot of ways, but I have had a lot of flare ups and fallbacks that caused me to question things until I again "got back to basics" and cured the flare up/fallback. Rinse and repeat.

A regular practice should "empty the cup" to keep these flares from popping up. And know my nature, I strive on schedules/routines and I have a number of those in place for my physical well being (exercise, strength training, etc), well DUH why don't I have something similar for my mental/emotional health?

And most of the successful people featured here and elsewhere seem to have a regular "practice" -

What might that look like? What components are essential? Here are a few off the top of my head:

- Meditation. - This seems to be a biggie, and one I personally struggle with (all the more reason to pursue it regularly). Jeremy Whitacre's blog has me moving this to the top of the list.

- Journaling/Logging/Diary - This seems to be a pretty obvious one. A journal regularly practiced seems like it would uncover all kinds of things by its very nature. I am not opposed to this at all, I enjoy it, it just needs to become a habit.

- Check Ins - So I mean this a little different from journaling, I think may be this is more checking how I am doing in a number of spaces. How am I feeling physically? Mentally? Emotionally? But this could be incorporated into the log/diary above.

Are there any other obvious ones I am forgetting?
 
'Gratitude'... remember and dwell for a few moments on at least one thing (or more) a day that you appreciate and are grateful for. This helps combat the brain's natural tendency/bias to notice and focus on the negative. If you write them down, you can go back once a week and re-read what you put for an extra boost.

EDIT: I also use 'visualisations' in my routine... taking a few moments to imagine being in a lovely safe place and/or visualising doing with fluidity and ease anything that I might be finding difficult to do.
 
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Thank you both. @BloodMoon Both of these make sense and I have had success with both previously. Do you have these as cues in your routine and/or are they part of your journaling/diary process?
 
Yes, they are part of my routine. The visualisations of my doing things with ease and fluidity and being in a lovely safe place I spend a few minutes doing first thing in the morning before I get out of bed. And at the other end of the day, in the evening just before I go to bed, I write down my gratitudes for the day and on Sunday evenings I re-read the gratitudes I wrote down during the week. I don't journal anymore, apart from writing the odd 'unsent' angry letter in response to someone who's pissed me off. (I've never felt that when I have journaled it has had any real bearing on the progress I have seen on my mind/body 'journey'.)

I omitted to mention that I also use slowed down breathing for my mental health. I pepper doing it for a few moments at a time throughout the day. I do it when I realised that I am stressed and I also 'piggy back' it onto other stuff that I regularly do, e.g. I go to the bathroom and before I leave the bathroom I stand still, close my eyes and take a few breaths focussing on lengthening my out breaths, and every time I use the stairs in my house I lengthen my out breaths. I find 'piggy backing' is a great way of making this kind of good stuff a 'micro habit' and therefore a part of your life.

Something I also do is check in with myself when I'm doing things like chores... I deliberately slow down my movements rather than rushing through the tasks.
 
Okay I like that idea of incorporating those micro-habits into routines you're already doing (i.e. upon waking, morning bathroom stop). During chores I already automatically enter a meditative state, especially something like mowing the lawn where with the noise etc you already end up in your own head.
 
I think meditation is pretty important. And mental/emotional awareness, which for me is journaling.
 
I think building time in a schedule to "have fun" is very important, and often difficult for people who simply can't tolerate being with themselves (which is many of us) - having fun (or doing relaxing "tasks" or hobbies) is a form of busy mindfulness that is kind of in between all the responsibility in our lives and the not doing many of practice eg. Meditation (a form of not doing).

Perhaps my biggest thing, which is routine in that I do it daily, but not as a "scheduled" thing is mindset or what some people call brain retraining: both of the physical body and of the mind and it's been the most important part of my journey. It's taking all the skills I learned from journaling and implementing them into everyday life - essentially living the psychological. It has developed over time and changed me both mentally and spiritually. It's so much easier to see my habits of coping, and of thought and making firm decisions to be OK with them or decide I want to change them (now, or over time). It's a form of mentally challenging myself to change. I think this is similar to what the Mindful Gardener calls a "walk and talk" - which he does add to a daily schedule.
 
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