Incremental Improvers! Graham here.

I’ve been trying a couple of new things for my mental health lately. One is a new therapist, and the other is an exotic-sounding thing called Neurofeedback. 

This is noteworthy not so much because of what the things are, but for the fact I’m trying anything new at all. Because for a while there, I’d mostly given up on the idea that mental health professionals could actually help me.

Nothing against the profession. It’s just that, after so many years of seeking help, and so much money spent, you do start to wonder… 

‘Am I really getting anywhere?’

To my surprise, both these new things are proving helpful. It’s too early to talk about either one just yet, but it has me thinking about what made me go back and try again.

Trying to feel better is a tender thing

After years of thinking ‘I guess I’m on my own here,’ it’s hard to ask for help again.

First off, I’ve had mixed - and sometimes actively unhelpful - experiences with mental health professionals. Finding alternatives to the ‘traditional helpers’ has been a massive part of how I navigate the big feels path. Peers. Meditation teachers. An entire shelf’s worth of self-help books.

Secondly, in order to ask for help again, I first had to admit that I wanted to feel better. And that’s a tender thing. Because to a large extent, I'd come to believe that just wasn't an option for me. 

So despite having been burned before, and not having much hope it would actually work, what emboldened me to ‘just ask for help’ once more?

The obvious answer: desperation!

Some of it’s just plain old desperation. I didn’t want to keep feeling this way.

In recent years, the persistent fear and tension I experience daily has felt particularly overwhelming. In truth, I’m not sure if the fear itself has had the volume turned up, or if I’ve just exhausted my usual ways of ignoring it.

Same difference?

It’s more than desperation though

There’s something else in the mix, I think, beyond just desperation. Something we don’t talk about as often as we might. 

The flip side to all that fear and dread so many of us feel.

I’m calling it ‘the courage to keep going’. 

In the mental health world, some might use the word ‘resilience’ for what I’m trying to describe here. But I don’t think that’s quite it. 

I think of resilience as a kind of bullet-proof quality. An ability to not feel so blown apart in the first place.

For me, the word courage is closer to the truth. It’s not that I don’t feel overwhelmed by life on a daily basis. It’s that, year after year, I somehow manage to keep going, regardless.

A special kind of courage

It takes a special kind of courage to ‘keep on keeping on’, when you feel sad or scared a bunch of the time.

There’s a simple story we have about fear: do the scary thing, and then it’s not so scary anymore.

Great! Job done.

But in my experience it doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes the same things scare you for years, and you have no idea why. The supermarket. A social gathering of your nearest and dearest friends.

You do these scary things anyway, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t stop being hard. 

To me, that’s a special kind of courage. A courage you muster time and again. 

It’s so easy to not give ourselves credit for this courage. ‘Well I shouldn’t find life so hard in the first place.’ 

And yet, there it is. That mysterious force within, buoying us along.

The courage to keep doing the little things

This courage to keep going has many forms. 

It’s not just about doing the things that scare you. It’s the courage to keep doing any and all of those things that might help your mental state, day in, day out.

Whether it’s big things, like seeing a new therapist, with no real assurance it will actually be a nourishing or helpful experience. 

Or little things, like meditating today, because you said you would, even though you have no idea if it’s actually helping. 

At its root, it’s the courage to keep going, even when you’re not at all sure you’re heading in the right direction.

It's hard to know what's helping

One of the most common things I hear from Big Feels Clubbers is some variation of this: 

‘I know there are little things I could be doing to help myself, but it’s so hard to keep them up! Every. Damn. Day.’

I feel ya.

One of the hardest things about it is that, deep down, you’re never entirely sure those little things are actually helping. 

Is meditation good for me? Or am I just getting more aware of how anxious I am? 

Is 'Neurofeedback' really a thing? Or have I just wandered into a William Gibson sci-fi novel?

Look Doc, I don't know how evidence-based this is but... I'll try anything once?

Wandering in the fog

As you struggle with the day-to-day work of self-improvement, it can feel like you’re wandering blindly in a kind of fog, just hoping you’ll eventually see a light. 

So I like this image from Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi, which turns that idea on its head. Talking about the path of seeking inner peace, he offers this. Progress will be slow, he warns, to the point that it’s easy to think nothing’s actually happening. 

But he says, awakening doesn’t happen all at once, in a sudden downpour. It’s more like walking in fog. Slowly but surely, you get wet, whether you notice it or not.

You just have to keep walking.

Small steps

When life is overwhelming, for whatever reason, it stands to reason that small steps are all we have available to us. When the ground is unsteady, you have to go slowly.

This is hard. 

When you’re really not sure if you’re okay, or ever will be again, you want desperately to take great leaps and bounds, if only to prove to yourself that it won’t always be like this.

So those crucial small steps are an ongoing act of courage. To shuffle onward regardless. Never really knowing where it’s taking you.

It's not so much mental health as 'incremental health'. Inching in the general direction of what might, eventually, turn out to be forwards.

Living at the edge of our understanding

There’s a line about all this from mindfulness teacher Joseph Goldstein. It's been rattling around my brain since I first heard it: 

“We are always at the leading edge of our understanding.”

Meaning, we're always, each day, at the new limits of our knowledge - about anything really, but perhaps especially who we are and how we’re travelling.

I think of the Buddhist idea of The One Who Knows - the little voice of wisdom in the corner of your mind, who isn't too fussed about how everything's going just now. Who sees the bigger picture.

For most of us, this little voice of wisdom isn't very easy to hear. Especially on dark and stormy nights.

So lately I’ve been taking comfort in considering the other side of this exchange. Not The One Who Knows, but instead, The One Who's Still Finding Out. Only ever working on what limited information he has. Stepping courageously forward regardless, in whatever small ways he can muster.

I don’t know if these new things I’m trying for my mental health will ‘help’. I don’t know if they’ll make me any less scared, or just what the ‘lesson’ in all this fear really is.

But I do know I keep trying. In my own ways. On my own path. Even when it’s hard. And today I am deciding to see this as an ongoing act of courage. 

The courage to keep going.

xx

In other (rather impressive?) news. . . 

A very cool thing happened last week. Honor Eastly, my Big Feels Club co-pilot, has been nominated for the 2021 Australian Mental Health Prize.

Wait what!?

This is a national award, recognising Australians who have made outstanding contributions to the field of mental health.

There's something quite incredible about seeing Honor in the short list, amongst professors and the like. Honor is representing a new kind of expertise. One that hasn't always been counted. To me, she's representing the wisdom and knowledge we all collectively hold - but don't always get credit for. The wisdom and knowledge of living through this stuff ourselves, and talking about it openly.

And of course her first response to the nomination was, 'wait, who me?' But I'll tell you what, she's worked bloody hard to get there, waving the flag for us all.

Check out the short list of nominees here. The winner will be announced next Tuesday at a public Zoom event.

And watch out for more Honor-made content in these pages in the coming months! She's finally finished two years of hard slog working on the mental health system from the inside. For the next little while we're lucky enough to have her talents full time on Big Feels, as we take this wee club into it's next phase. Speaking of which...

Contributing members, watch for the next Patreon post!

After hearing your thoughts on what next for this club, we're about to send out a very juicy update, detailing where we're headed next.  

Watch for the next Patreon update some time this week, to hear all about our plans for a souped up Big Feels Club membership.

Woop!

Not a contributing member, but thinking of becoming one? Watch this space! We'll be telling everyone all about the new Big Feels membership experience and how you can get on board, very soon :)