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Dealing with a lot on your mind & how to cope?

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littlestars

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I will get stressed out just as anyone does with life issues. I will get stressed out over my disorders. I will get stressed out with personal/introspective issues.
Then every little thing will get to me and I’ll feel overwhelmed. My boyfriend always tells me that I “can’t let every little thing get to you”. I wish I knew how to do that. Sometimes I feel like I can’t relax and I’m bad at regulating myself. I’m not sure if what I am posting about belongs in “disregulation”.
My boyfriend told me that the solution was to think about other things to cope with the overwhelming feelings. Sometimes these emotions feel so permanent. I feel like I ought to explore new things and enjoy my life more. I used to know how to do that before I experienced repeated trauma. Before that I was not so preoccupied with surviving that I became obsessed with my mental health and treatment.
 
I will get stressed out just as anyone does with life issues. I will get stressed out over my disorders. I will get stressed out with personal/introspective issues.
Then every little thing will get to me and I’ll feel overwhelmed. My boyfriend always tells me that I “can’t let every little thing get to you”. I wish I knew how to do that. Sometimes I feel like I can’t relax and I’m bad at regulating myself. I’m not sure if what I am posting about belongs in “disregulation”.
My boyfriend told me that the solution was to think about other things to cope with the overwhelming feelings. Sometimes these emotions feel so permanent. I feel like I ought to explore new things and enjoy my life more. I used to know how to do that before I experienced repeated trauma. Before that I was not so preoccupied with surviving that I became obsessed with my mental health and treatment.
It happens to us highly sensitive people. But, we have our superpowers!

I go for long walks/hikes in nature.

It helps me calm down, and I can often prioritize things.

If you can't do that, other exercise also helps. And meditation: when I'm really wired, it can be hard to meditate.

Sometimes when I am way overloaded, I won't allow myself coffee until the afternoon. Or, I fast for a few hours longer than my normal eating window would be.

A long meditation (15 minutes +) helps reset everything, too. And avoiding processed sugars.

Have you tried any of these things?
 
My boyfriend told me that the solution was to think about other things to cope with the overwhelming feelings. Sometimes these emotions feel so permanent.

separating my feelings from my facts helps me considerably. my own feelings and facts get so jumbled together that it is often hard for me to know which is which. emotions change continually and the heart goes where it goes. facts don't change and need to be dealt with, regardless of how i feel about them.

for example.
emotion
i hate doing my taxes.
fact
the taxes need to be done and hate only distorts my thinking.
the sooner begun, the sooner done.

dunno if this is anything close to what you were looking for, but. . .
gentle support while you sort your own.
 
I primarily use an ADHD trick :

- When my mind is moving, my body is still.
- When my body is moving, my mind is still.

If my PTSD wants to play Big Dog (and it always wins that fight, when it decides to play)… and kick me out of the still mind I get in motion… intrusive thoughts will up the ante into flashbacks or panic attacks. Most of the time, though, it simply “waits” the stillness of motion out. I can’t keep moving 24/7/365, after all. I have to sleep sometime, if nothing else. And if I don’t want my body to break down, I should actually stop to sit/rest/eat/etc.

I think this is one of the ways surfing helped me get my PTSD & Dysreg under so much better control, way back when. As I can just sit/lay on the board, floating in -or outside- of the lineup. Until I decide I want to be moving, again. A few minutes of peace first with the wave (double bonus here, as gravity-sports are inherantly grounding to me: Pay Attention! Or the ground reaches up and smacks me, as I bite it/wipe out/etc); and again, paddling back out. To sit. Allowing the thoughts & feelings to come back. Or not. In their own time. Until I decided I was done with that for now, and caught another wave, and swam back out, again. It created these periods of… delineation? Focus? Allowance? That re-taught me control, a sense of times&places, etc. in a very gradual & self directed way. Similar to how taking gig-jobs (a few weeks to a few months) abroad started re-teaching me “then & there” vs “here & now”. Separating out and untangling … so much.
 
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