Developing Positive Emotional Habits

Heads up: this is very much stream of consciousness writing. Yep.

I went to a seminar today on developing positive emotional habits. That, in fact, was the title of the seminar. It was geared towards healthcare professionals - I even got continuing education credits! Now, my reasons for going were purely selfish - let's be honest, I need all the help I can get. Especially since what I'm working on right now is curbing my negative thoughts/behaviors/emotions.

Now, the seminar starts with reviewing the basics of brain chemistry as it relates to emotions - all the basic primitive stuff (fight, flight or freeze) - to all of the new information gleamed from experiments and brain imaging. It's all very interesting, fascinating even (to me at least). We learned all about the reward centers (controlled by dopamine), the emotional hub spot (the amygdala), and other fun structures (hippocampus, frontal cortex). The science of emotion and habits and addiction is just amazing. This is neat stuff y'all. Trust me.

Then we moved into discussing how to change our emotional response, and why it can be difficult to do. All these ideas. All these techniques. My mind was a jumbled, racing mass of what-ifs and maybes, and could-haves. Some things I've already been practicing. Some were new. My mind went hog wild. I became excited. I became motivated. This. THIS. All of THIS. I will do ALL of THIS and it will be epic and awesome and I'll be better and amazing and life will be grand and I'll be happy and I'll eat bacon cupcakes and fuck those who oppose me!

And then reality likes to bitch slap me. Because reality is a cunt-faced whore sandwich bent on ruining my new found motivation. See, I actually do have a mood disorder. And despite my best efforts and intentions, I will have emotions/moods/behaviors that I can't control or can't manage or don't understand. This is distressing.

On the one hand I have this new knowledge, this motivation, to really step up and work on squelching my negativity. And on the other hand I have my mood disorder and all of its uncertainties and tenacity and lies. I can have the best "control" over my emotions and be positive and optimistic, but if bipolar depression truly takes hold again, all of that control is for not. If anything more elevated than mild hypomania strikes, all bets are off. I have no self control, despite my knowledge. Despite my training and practice.

See, that's the problem. At least with me. I'm working so hard right now on ending the negative, fostering the positive. I'm using techniques I've learned in the past and I'll apply the new ones I learned today. I know the science. The actual mother fucking science.

But how well will this work for me? How well does it work when trapped in the steely grips of a mood episode? Knowing that I can change my dopamine response to a stimulus doesn't help much when I physically can't get out of bed or I'm holding a bottle of pills. Knowing I should be practicing top-down control while I'm manic and impulsive isn't going to stop me from blurting out something inappropriate or making an impulse buy (or worse).

That's my problem. All of this knowledge is awesome and will work and I'll be great. Except I won't. Because how well will it work? My mind races back and forth, back and forth. From thinking that I'll have this emotion thing pretty much figured out and all is cool, to the reality that I do have a mood disorder and this may not always work and I may be out of control.

This back and forth is so fucking distressing. It's so fucking tiring. And it's so fucking stupid. My brain picks this all apart, looks at it from every possible angle. It tries to categorize it, put it all in neat little boxes which doesn't work. But it's what I do. I have to analyze, I have to make sense of abstract bits of everything. This shit doesn't fit in boxes. It doesn't sit on the shelf, tidy and organized like I want it to.

Seriously. Why is this so fucking difficult for me to grasp?

So much of my writing and thinking lately is about this. I keep turning it over in my mind, hoping I'll see something new. But there's nothing new. There never is. The emotional control will work well when I'm stable or having mild mood swings. In a mood episode . . . who knows. Probably not. Maybe it will help me recover more quickly. I should be able to accept this fact. It's simple. But I don't. Or maybe I can't. I don't even know anymore.

I don't even know what the hell is going on in my brain lately. It's almost as if since I've been working so hard on changing my thinking and my behavior and my emotional response, my thinking has become more obsessive. Deciphering my moods and emotions: was that bipolar? ACOA? Normal? How do I categorize this? How was my response? I had a bad mood? Quick! Damage control! You can't spiral again for God's sake don't go down that road again!

I can't not try to figure it all out. But I'm driving myself crazy. I can't leave well enough alone. I truly am my own worst enemy.