How I Reorganized My Brain
It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t optional.
This is Star Island. Anchored in Cass Lake in northern Minnesota, Star Island is home a family camp with deep Unitarian Universalist roots. I am not a Unitarian, but family friends of Dear First Husband (DFH) are and going to Star Island for a week with them was a well-established summer tradition by the time I joined the family. And who was I to buck tradition?
In the weeks ahead of my first trip to Star Island in 2010, my brain buzzed with anxiety. That spring, a dull, hot numbness crept downward from my left cheek, upward from my left toes, and inward from my left fingertips. I tried to ignore it. I tried to tamp down panic when I stumbled over my toes in the hall after class, when a bottle of insulin slipped through my fingers, when nails pressed into both palms sparked sharper points of pain in my right hand than in my left.
It’s a hassle to go the doctor’s office, I thought. I don’t have time. I’ll be fine.
The prospect of a week in the middle of a lake in northern Minnesota, however, far from any familiar health care options, finally prompted me to take a modicum of action. A few days before leaving, too late to schedule any kind of appointment (see how expertly I procrastinated?), I called a nurseline. Here are the recommendations I took away to manage and monitor the numbness:
- Take Ibuprofen to tamp down any inflammation that might be pinching a nerve.
- Smile and check for lopsidedness that would indicate a stroke.
- Squeeze DFH’s index fingers with both hands to check for equal strength.
I’ll be fine, I thought, and smiled squarely at DFH.
And I was fine — for a few days. Halfway through the week during an otherwise lovely lunch, I began to have difficulty swallowing.
I’m not fine, I thought.
The hassle of going to a doctor’s office weeks ago in the shrank to a tiny, enticing pinprick as the task of getting medical care during a family vacation on an island sat and swelled on my chest. Alert the family friends. Call over the camp director. Arranged for a ride back to the marina. Find the closest urgent care clinic. Worry my family.
I am such a burden, I thought, and squeezed DFH’s fingers.
It got worse. When I told the urgent care receptionist that I was having difficulty breathing, she sent me to the nearby emergency department. The embarrassment and shame deepened once the CT scan and blood panel came back negative.
I am fine, I thought.
I am not fine, I thought.
We asked the doctor to give us a few minutes and discussed our options. In the time it had taken to boat, drive, check in, check in again, scan, wait, and analyze, my throat and chest had loosened. With the additional reassurance that neither was a tumor visibly growing in my skull nor had I contracted Lyme’s disease, I felt comfortable returning to Star Island to finish out the vacation.
I am such an idiot, I thought.
Back in the cities and fueled by fear, I finally scheduled appointments. I inconvenienced my mother by asking her to accompany me to an appointment with a neurologist. I inconvenienced my brother by asking him to take me to an MRI.
I am such a burden, I thought.
Everything came back normal.
I am fine, I thought.
I am not fine, I thought.
The neurologist offered the option of having a more sensitive MRI taken at the Mayo Clinic. I knew that wouldn’t help. By this time, I had done some thinking and some reading, and had convinced I knew what the culprit was: anxiety.
I am such an idiot, I thought. But I can fix this.
I took my self-diagnosis to my mom, who is a psychologist and full of recommendations to help cure what ails you. To me, she recommended a workbook.
This workbook promised “practical, step-by-step directions” to overcome negative self-talk and change mistaken beliefs. And it turns out my brain was home to a steady stream of negative self-talk and a whole basket full of mistaken beliefs.
I am a practical person, I thought. I can fix this.
The workbook had many practical directions I was ready and willing to follow. But it also had what appeared to me to be extremely impractical exercises involving self-affirmations.
I am not that kind of person, I thought.
Nevertheless, I gritted my teeth, trusted the book, wrote down the affirmations on index cards, and said them. Out loud, every day.
But I ran into a problem.
Just because I say it doesn’t make it true, I thought.
And indeed, research suggests that positive praise and affirmations, such as “I am a lovable person” can be incongruent with the mindset of those with low self-esteem, which leads to feelings of conflict and doubt, which then lead to more negative thoughts. (See Why Positive Affirmations Don’t Work.)
So I started looking for evidence. When I cycled through the stack of index cards, if something had happened that day that supported the affirmation on the front of the card, I wrote it down on the back of the card.
This was the magic sauce.
“I can relax and tolerate a little disorder and ambiguity,” I said. Like when we got lost on the way up to Cass Lake.
“I am letting go of guilt when I can’t fulfill others’ expectations,” I said. Like when I told DFH I don’t like to have company over on Sundays.
Focusing on these evidence-based affirmations helped me begin to shed mistaken beliefs about myself — that I was a burden to others, that people weren’t interested in what I had to say, that people would resent me if I didn’t meet (my perceptions of) their expectations.
And as that basket of mistaken beliefs lightened, so did my brain, and my chest, and my face.
As it turns out, a normal brain is a plastic brain, able to form new connections well after the first few years of life. In fact, scientists are certain that the brain continually adjusts and reorganizes. (See Neuroplasticity.) The neurologist’s conclusion that my brain was normal meant that I could take advantage of my brain’s neuroplasticity and reorganize neural connections to my heart’s content.
And this is where my love of organizing and my need to maintain the changes I was effecting came together in a beautiful life hack: the affirmation tickler file.
To keep up the neural reorganization projects I had underway, I incorporated a focus-management idea from a book I recommend all the time, David Allen’s Getting Things Done. The tickler file I set up had 31 numbered day folders and 12 labeled month folders.
I tucked the now evidenced-based index cards into the day folders and focused on one affirmation a day. As I gained mastery over this particular snippet of negative self-talk or jettisoned that mistaken belief, I retired that index card.
Once all the index cards had been retired, I knew I had to figure out something to maintain the reorganization.
I am a clever and resourceful person, I thought.
So I continued collecting evidence of my value, but this time into a draft email. Into it I copied and pasted the compliments people paid me via email, Gmail chat, or text — or I transcribed verbal compliments. Once the original email got too long and I started operating in different settings, I started other draft emails and organized them by context. These became my “Million Bucks” emails.
I don’t review these emails regularly like I did the index cards. I tried, adding prompts to my tickler file, but it didn’t take. I discovered that the mere act of looking for and archiving compliments reinforced the new organization in my brain.
I am really good at what I do, I thought.
The left-sided numbness I experienced in 2010 took its sweet time to recede, and it didn’t stay gone. Like a gorilla walking through a group of people passing basketballs, the sensitivity of my left cheek, toes, or fingertips was lost on me until someone asked how my numbness was doing. It has since become my bellwether, a signal that anxiety is slipping back into my brain, conspiring to rewire my carefully connected neurons. I pay attention now.
I am deciding not to ignore my symptoms of stress, I think.
And Star Island in Cass Lake? Immediately following my third trip there in 2013, my family completely reorganized itself. Star Island feels as far away as Vulpecula.
I lead a very interesting life, I think.
These days, I am adjusting to a new family. A new camp. A new lake.
If you’d like to read more about my journey, click here: Life.
