Me time – Anxiety management – Page 7

September 23, 2020September 22, 2020

Everything is art: Inktober 2020

Zentangles, doodles, and how to know that the difference is zendoodles

When you type “bullet journal” into Google or Pinterest you get many beautiful images of people with fantastic weekly spreads and lovely water-colour paint ideas. All the things that you want to do and do not have the artistic inclination for. (And with “you” I mean “me”). The groups that I follow put me to shame towards the end of every month with their beautiful monthly layouts and water trackers that look like something you want to frame. Tutorials are available for doodle icons and fairy gardens and castles… yes, there was another Pinterest rabbit hole that lead me down a path of artistic inferiority.

The linking clickety click did however lead to the discovery of the term Zentangles®, a form of art therapy that entails creating art by repeating patterns.

My fascination with paisley and mandala’s resonated beautifully with this idea, together with me feeling guilty if I just sit and watch Netflix. So I started trying my hand at a few repetitive patterns of my own.

The difference between tangling and doodling

So apparently when you doodle, you draw as an afterthought. This will typically happen in a lecture if you find your mind wandering, or while on the phone. A tangle however, is something that happens when you are only focused on the artwork. It supposedly relaxes you as a form of focused distraction. So, what was I then doing while sitting in front of the TV? Apparently it was… wait for it… zendoodling… which is a combination.

When I started out different ink drawings my first attempts were Mandala’s… and yes, these, too, have a home in this crazy circus… Zendala’s.

Inktober

I have chatted previously about the Whatsapp group that I belong to that share creative endevours. Since 2018 someone in this group has posted a little artistic every day. Even if it was just to inform everyone about a stationery sale. My friend who started this group suggested that some of us join the Inktober challenge. For the first time ever I am going to try it. She shared the official Inktober prompts which you can find here. I have however wandered off again and decided to look for a zentangle oriented prompt list, which I located here.

And while looking for this… I found out that zentangles should be done on tiles. Which are actually just squares or circles of paper. Of course, something that can be bought on Amazon. All clicks lead there after all. So the first suggestion is this one. I have found recommendations for these tiles on various forums as well. For now, I am not buying any tiles, even if I have my eye on these round die-cut ones. There are even fancy storage file pages like these. Who knew, a whole new world has opened up for me!

The DIY route

So as I am attempting my first ever Inktober on a budget, and have blown that budget on pens and markers and other beautiful things from Brush and Canvas, I am opting to cut my own tiles and store them in a cheap photo album.

Please make suggestions on tile sizes and shapes in the comments and follow this board on Pinterest if you want to be part of my nightly scribbles.

September 20, 2020September 20, 2020

Overplanning – going back to the drawing board and my twist on goalsetting

I started my bullet journal and the planning around it as an extension of a task given to me by my psychologist. In short, the task boiled down to “Find something that works for you to get your butt in gear”. She was kind about it, but the message rang true – stop complaining about feeling overwhelmed. You have identified the problem, now put in the work.

So a plan started taking shape. I wanted to identify what I needed to do every day, write it down and do it… even if I did not want to. I wanted to stop avoiding things that I felt was too hard or would be too much effort. I wanted to stop angonising over everything on the list and just know that I would get to it eventually. Rome was not built in a day. I wrote a little about my time blocking plan here.

I started the time blocking in August and I am still not quite winning. I am however determined and stubbornly persevering because on the days it works it really does work great.

With all this notetaking and analysing and list-making, I did however realise that I have gotten to the point of overplanning. The effectivity of it all got lost in the writing things down and not actually doing them. So… back to why of it all.

2020 has been a year where I had to put in a lot of work into figuring out why I do things the way that I do them. It has been a year of accepting that I am an overthinking, overplanning, colour coding ball of anxiety, and converting these elements of my personality into strengths instead of weaknesses. And in many cases, it was actually just a mind-shift and a happy realisation that some people are really just different and approach the same problem in different ways.

I have recently done a lot of reading on goalsetting. Mainly because I want the things that I do and the things that I am to have substance and a clear purpose. Various resources advise on how to formulate goals but nothing quite made sense to me. Of course, you have to write them down, but to write them down you first have to have something to write down!

Which all boiled down to the simple questions:

What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?

For example, while putting on my running shoes:

The what: I am going for a run.
The why: Because it helps with my sanity and it is good for me to get outside.

And while on said run a penny dropped. When goal setting I should perhaps not ask what do I want to achieve, but instead, who do I want to be. By doing this my goals align with my morals and values or at least and should, in theory, steer me towards an improved version of myself. In a roundabout way this makes me trustworthy and accountable and moving towards something instead of just hanging around.

A simple example: I make time every morning and every afternoon to answer and organise my work email. This helps with my to-do list and also that you do not get into a position where things just remain unanswered. It also helps to not be on my email the whole day and then just generate more email. Yes, I will share my inbox organisation tricks with you soon :)! And why did I decide to do this? Because at some stage when things were all happening at once, I realised that I was not getting to my email and things fell through the cracks. So the little block on my schedule dedicated to my inbox is me just trying to address that failure. Again this is something that I am now trying. I am trying goalsetting and will see what works, what helps and what does not actually contribute anything. And yes, I will happily report back in an overthinking fashion. So yes, I have identified the problem and I am putting in the work.

September 15, 2020

Traveler’s Notebook and the hands that made it

Have you ever fallen down the Pinterest rabbit hole, where you blink and the realise an hour has passed and you are no longer clicking on what you searched for originally? This is a little addiction of mine. I am working on it.

When I started my planner, Pinterest was a wonderful source of inspiration and ideas. I loved to see what other people incorporated into theirs. How their bullet journal system works. What they draw and colour and washi tape…

I also very quickly then develop some handwriting envy because some dotters just have beautiful penmanship.

One of these Pinterest excursions introduced me to the traveller’s notebook. A system that many people use for journaling and planning and incorporating all the parts that make up their life. It allows you to keep everything together, but still separate and this really appealed to me. As with many things I immediately opened Google and clicked on the shopping tab and could not find anything like the beautiful images I saw on Pinterest.

I abandoned my search and started my planner system in a beautiful yellow Filofax. I would have given up on my traveler’s notebook had it not been for a small little Facebook community called Bullet Journal Group for South Africa! Not only are these individuals who adore stationery and writing and planning but also people who instantly give recommendations when help is asked for. Members inspire one another with beautiful page spreads and journaling and planning tips. I was thrilled to find a community that got as excited about highlighters as I do.

Individuals on the group are happy to share their planning systems as well as where they found the perfect dot journal. What also increasingly rocked up on the feed were people singing the praises of some of the small privately run businesses that make beautiful bespoke stationery, stickers and yes… my traveller’s notebook!

Props for Dots stocks stickers, stamps and washi tape, a little bit of everything really. The range was however recently expanded to include beautiful handmade Traveler’s Notebooks and I immediately fell in love. I sent an email on a Saturday and it was immediately answered by Lonkie Loosemore who sent through prices and followed up with samples and colours and questions about the pockets I would like. I even got to choose the colour of the stitching. I was blown away by the personal service and thrilled when my beautiful bespoke TN showed up a little more than a week later.

I tried to take some photographs but it does not really do it justice. She even sent a matching pencil case, all handcrafted and gorgeous. I think my yellow Filofax will still be my day job planner but I am so excited about the possibilities that are opened up by the TN. Thank you very much Lonkie at Props for Dots, I will cherish it always.

September 8, 2020September 9, 2020

Discipline – when motivation does not show up for work

My dance class started again after not being allowed studio time due to the COVID pandemic and all the ins and outs of lockdown. Last week I was a little early and my dance teacher who is beautiful and dynamic and also married to a professional dancer commented on how hard she finds it to motivate herself in these strange times. I was quite surprised, because she is the perfect picture of drive and motivation.

This reminded me of a quote that was on the breakroom wall at one of my student jobs: “You will not always be motivated, so you must learn to be disciplined.”

The conversation was picked up by one of the other dancers who arrived and turned to how you should be disciplined in the most basic things in your day and this got me thinking of my own life. She used the example of something simple like, picking something up that had fallen beside the wastepaper basket immediately vs. leaving it there for later defines how disciplined you are. Little things like making the bed, sticking to a routine, getting up early…

I did the silent tally in my head. There are things that I struggle with that others have just made a part of their day. Something stupid like cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. I tend to stack the dishwasher and then leave the pots and pans that cannot go in there for… I don’t know… the fairies. And EVERY morning I am angry that I did not just take the time to clean it up. One would think that by your mid-thirties you would have started doing grown-up things. But no, every morning I have this fight with myself as I pack lunchboxes. At least I make the bed.

When I was diagnosed with depression and the associated anxiety, this was a lesson that my psychologist also wanted to teach me… but it did not root at the time. Looking back all the little changes that I started with to just cope were there to teach me discipline. Because the motivation at the time was just to keep the tiny Lilliputians alive.

When the prodding continued and we figured out that there were vestibular issues associated with my hearing loss, which obviously contributed to the anxiety, I had to go through rehab to literally get my balance back. Simple little things were not simple at the time and with despondence came disappointment and the motivation flew out the window. So I had to find some discipline to keep at it.

I have written a lot about routine and planning and how important those things are to me. And I realised that sticking to anything takes discipline.

The first step for me is therefore deciding what I want to achieve and formulate a plan. Together with that plan things need to be in place to help me stick to it. Some days are easier than others, on some days I get up feeling like I am going to conquer the world and then the discipline is not really needed and on other days I wake up feeling like I want to hide out somewhere and on those days, I just need a simple recipe to go through the motions. Thigs need to happen and I need to do them.

What is true is that I tend to stick to the things that I enjoy. So I stick to my bullet journaling and my morning pages and the planning, because I enjoy it. I stick to the running because I like how it makes me feel. I stick to the story at night for the Lilliputians because I love reading with them. But those damn dishes!

So perhaps I should figure out what the things are that I enjoy within the stuff that sometimes feels like work. Perhaps that will help me keep the momentum. I also need to consider that I may be avoiding something because I think that it is such an effort and then when I finally do it, it takes me 10 minutes.

And sure, I will also celebrate the things that I do manage to do and tick off the list. I will acknowledge tomorrow morning, for example, that even though I did not wash the pan, I at least made the bed.

August 25, 2020September 9, 2020

Disposition documentation

Mood and emotional tracking, an ongoing process

My experience with psychiatrists is somewhat limited. I saw one for two years on and off in my twenties and started seeing one again after the Lilliputians were born for postnatal depression. I am however a big believer that if you identify that something is up, it is important to deal with it and not ignore it. And you cannot manage what you do not measure.

One of the very first tasks she gave me was to track my emotions on a day to day basis. This was never for her to review but instead for me to become aware of how I am actually doing. As this process developed I realised that it also helped me to identify triggers for specific things. This first task was given almost two and a half years ago and I am still doing it. My plan for this has been quite varied, as I have not yet been able to find a perfect fit.

Initially, I had it as part of my habit tracker where I would fill in daily if I was feeling happy or sad, etc. But I only kept it up till the middle of the month and then abandoned it. So August 2020 gave me some time to review this process and read up about the importance and the purpose of emotional tracking. For some inspiration on mood charts, you can start here.

I had to go back to the drawing board and decide what the purpose was. I identified that I want to see a pattern over time and I wanted things to be clearly defined. I want to be able to link certain emotions with specific events or lack thereof. For example being more agitated on days that I missed my run. With this mission, I came across Dr. Susan David, who wrote a book titled Emotional Agility.

Although I have not read the book myself I have found various resources and little extra’s that enhance this title. The one that I want to chat about today is the notion that we sometimes use very vague terms to describe our emotions. For example, saying that you are happy can mean a lot of different things. It can be that you are grateful, or content, or even relieved. Saying that you are angry can mean that you are frustrated or disgusted or offended. She defined the various descriptive words that can be linked to anger, anxiousness, shyness, happiness, feeling hurt, and feeling sad. You can view the different ones here.

I have translated the various ones for my journal and will use these as a guide to check in with myself on a daily basis. Every day will therefore probably have more than one word, but at least this makes more sense to me than saying I am happy or sad.