Five things I loved about 'Monkey Mind'
My husband's Amazon prime is basically used solely by me to order books. And when I say books, I don't mean the light, fluffy kind. Anyone looking at his order history would probably recommend he be sectioned. Which I find amusing. But I'm not afraid to say I appreciate a self help book. Yes, you probably get one truly good one for every three you read. But I'm willing to take those odds.
Last month, I purchased what I know is already a classic for many - Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel Smith. I think the reason I'd avoided it thus far was partly fear. A need for that reassuring, positive prose that comes with the more instructional texts, with words like 'overcoming' and 'recovery' and 'coping strategies'. Monkey Mind is not that. It's a memoir; it's not saying it can solve the problem, in fact it's saying the problem can't really be solved. And actually, that's sort of the joy of it.
I've read lots of reviews and I know it's a bit of a Marmite one - some seem to hate it, some love it. But I was firmly in the latter camp. I have never read a book before that so accurately describes what those spells of anxiety feel like. How little they make sense. How impossible they are to explain to those who haven't experienced them. How illogical and exhausting and frustrating and demoralising it feels to be stuck in the quicksand of your own thoughts when all you want to do is keep walking.
Monkey Mind is a Buddhist term meaning unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive and uncontrollable. A very familiar string of words. And the thing is, we all have monkey minds. Humans have 50,000 thoughts a day, so no wonder. But some of us struggle to cope and control them. We get into negative patterns. In other words, the monkey has gone wild.
The thing that makes Monkey Mind so readable is how funny Daniel makes the most dire situations. From his first job as a fact checker at an American magazine (the very job an anxiety sufferer should surely avoid), to his chronic sweating at work to which he devotes an entire chapter (sanitary pads became his underarm saviour).
There are hundred of things that could be said about Monkey Mind, so I'm going to take five passages that really helped me and that I've read over and over. I've included page numbers - my edition is the Simon & Schuster paperback - here on Amazon.
'Taking off, or some version of it, is exactly what anxious people do. Sometimes taking off means staying put. The anxious person looks at his car parked in the driveway and envisions accordioned metal, melted tires, burning flesh - and he doesn't drive. He looks at a wedding invitation and envisions awkward conversations, drunken relatives, demands to join a conga line - and he sends his regrets... At other times taking off actually means taking off: bailing on a date, ending a relationship, quitting a job, skipping town. But always it means the deeply felt impulse - the involuntary impulse - to escape. To avoid.' (pp. 41-42)
I thought this was a brilliant way to humanise that flight feeling. For me, it's a restless, high energy breathlessness that I'll often find myself struggling with for no apparent reason. It's a feeling of needing to run away or chase the adrenaline of getting to the next thing. When really I'm fine right where I am. Just reminding myself there is nothing to run from and that I'm safe and can just stay where I am helps me calm down.
'It helps. It feels good to be reminded that you aren't the single most anxious person on the Eastern seaboard. But it doesn't help for long. Talking to a friend who does not balk at your insanity is like having a stiff drink. It fills you with a glow. But when it wears off, everything is the same. In my experience, that is what most conventional therapy is like... On the way home I'd be suffused with the same emotion I have whenever I drop a bag of clothes off at Good-will: self congratulation. I'd made a step towards recovery. My body would feel for the first time in six days, strong and unencumbered. Then, slowly but inevitable, the anxiety would swell again. A pinprick would stick in my chest and spread outward until the icicle was firmly lodged. My mind would shake off the last of its poultry training and I'd know, I'd just know: I was who I had become.' (p.80)
I really identified with this one. For a long time I had a habit of needing to offload and an unhealthy view that I would feel better if only I could do that. If I could call my mum and tell her, it would go away. And it does, like Daniel says, for a little while. But then it comes back stronger. I also had this compulsion with a therapist I saw, like telling it to her would make it go away. I'm lucky enough to have found a therapist now who I'm seeing who is tackling this with me. I've realised that good as talking is (and it is - never stop sharing with your mum or friends) it isn't an end in itself and it should never feel like a compulsion that will solve everything. To change your thinking, you need action in the form of catching thoughts and dealing with them. Forming new habits and training your brain. And only you can do that. That's what you should take away from good therapy. And speaking of catching thoughts...
'The more attention I paid to the mechanics of my anxiety the more I began to notice an aspect of my mind I'd never noticed before - a sort of subconscious chatter, just beneath the surface of awareness, that was always going, always yammering, always commentating, like a little newscaster perched on my frontal lobes. And this newscaster, it turned out, was not the kind of person you'd want to sit next to at a dinner party, he was very pessimistic, my mental homunculus. If there was even a slim chance that a situation could end in calamity, he'd toss it up on the teleprompter and treat it like news." (pp. 200-201)
And the answer?
'Listen closely. When you are anxious note precisely what your mind has said and then interrogate what you find for accuracy. Treat every anxious thought like a philosophical proposition and test it. Apply logic to the context of your mind.' (p.201)
It's hard work, but try it for a week and you'll see most of the thoughts we have aren't our true source of anxiety. Pull your mind up and hold it accountable for the thoughts you find there.
The one thing I'd say is that this is different from intellectualising - you want to be catching thoughts as they pass through, not trying to problem solve them. Remember, problem solving doesn't work on irrational thoughts in an anxious mind!
I've tried this and I can honestly say it helps - I've surprised myself with some of the little triggers I've noticed and have been able to get myself feeling back on track by nipping them in the bud.
'It would be years before I would win her back. In the interim I would have to learn how to wall my anxiety off from others, to seal it up inside myself so securely that its indiscriminate uncertainty would no longer be able to influence or infect the people I loved - which is to say, my feelings for the people I loved. I would have to learn how to protect love itself from anxiety.' (p.181)
This is such a hard chapter to read, aptly named 'Anxious Love'. Smith drives his girlfriend away (she's now his wife and mother of his children so it all works out in the end!) but not without its twists and turns. This can be the toughest part of anxiety, when you feel like it's affecting your relationships. Smith recounts what should have been a dream holiday which just became consumed by his anxiety - it's heartbreaking and illogical but so real and so many will identify with it.
My husband has been absolutely incredible and I'll write more on this, but my anxiety was really fired up badly in the run up to our wedding and with the pressure for this to be such a 'perfect' time, I found it really quite hard. On days when I don't feel myself and just feel numb and over analyse everything - that's tough. But remembering what matters and not trying to force it along with the amazing support and understanding of my husband always gets me out the other side.
"I didn't realize yet that there is no cure for anxiety, just perpetual treatment. I didn't yet realize that a quarter century of anxiety had gouged deep, packed-earth ruts in my brain, and that the only way to stop my thoughts from falling back into those ruts was to dig new tracks and keep digging them, forever. I didn't yet realize that the only non-negotiable approach to the anxious life is discipline. So it has been that, over and over again, through the years, I have relapsed and returned, relapsed and returned. With no perfect discipline the relapses are inevitable, but I have learned to take measures so that they don't last as long as they once did, and so that the returns last longer and are less volatile. I have learned that the best safeguards against nervous collapse are responsibilities: contracts, assignments, and, above all, the blessed, bracing restraints of human relationships." (p.206)
This is what I love about Monkey Mind - it's not setting unrealistic expectations of recovery, it's saying it takes work and it's OK that it's part of who you are. For me, I've had stints of years without much anxiety at all, so I know it's possible and I know I'll get there again. So if you haven't read Monkey Mind, do. Even if it's not your cup of tea, you'll take at least one good thing away from it.
I've read lots of reviews and I know it's a bit of a Marmite one - some seem to hate it, some love it. But I was firmly in the latter camp. I have never read a book before that so accurately describes what those spells of anxiety feel like. How little they make sense. How impossible they are to explain to those who haven't experienced them. How illogical and exhausting and frustrating and demoralising it feels to be stuck in the quicksand of your own thoughts when all you want to do is keep walking.
Monkey Mind is a Buddhist term meaning unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive and uncontrollable. A very familiar string of words. And the thing is, we all have monkey minds. Humans have 50,000 thoughts a day, so no wonder. But some of us struggle to cope and control them. We get into negative patterns. In other words, the monkey has gone wild.
The thing that makes Monkey Mind so readable is how funny Daniel makes the most dire situations. From his first job as a fact checker at an American magazine (the very job an anxiety sufferer should surely avoid), to his chronic sweating at work to which he devotes an entire chapter (sanitary pads became his underarm saviour).
There are hundred of things that could be said about Monkey Mind, so I'm going to take five passages that really helped me and that I've read over and over. I've included page numbers - my edition is the Simon & Schuster paperback - here on Amazon.
'Taking off, or some version of it, is exactly what anxious people do. Sometimes taking off means staying put. The anxious person looks at his car parked in the driveway and envisions accordioned metal, melted tires, burning flesh - and he doesn't drive. He looks at a wedding invitation and envisions awkward conversations, drunken relatives, demands to join a conga line - and he sends his regrets... At other times taking off actually means taking off: bailing on a date, ending a relationship, quitting a job, skipping town. But always it means the deeply felt impulse - the involuntary impulse - to escape. To avoid.' (pp. 41-42)
I thought this was a brilliant way to humanise that flight feeling. For me, it's a restless, high energy breathlessness that I'll often find myself struggling with for no apparent reason. It's a feeling of needing to run away or chase the adrenaline of getting to the next thing. When really I'm fine right where I am. Just reminding myself there is nothing to run from and that I'm safe and can just stay where I am helps me calm down.
'It helps. It feels good to be reminded that you aren't the single most anxious person on the Eastern seaboard. But it doesn't help for long. Talking to a friend who does not balk at your insanity is like having a stiff drink. It fills you with a glow. But when it wears off, everything is the same. In my experience, that is what most conventional therapy is like... On the way home I'd be suffused with the same emotion I have whenever I drop a bag of clothes off at Good-will: self congratulation. I'd made a step towards recovery. My body would feel for the first time in six days, strong and unencumbered. Then, slowly but inevitable, the anxiety would swell again. A pinprick would stick in my chest and spread outward until the icicle was firmly lodged. My mind would shake off the last of its poultry training and I'd know, I'd just know: I was who I had become.' (p.80)
I really identified with this one. For a long time I had a habit of needing to offload and an unhealthy view that I would feel better if only I could do that. If I could call my mum and tell her, it would go away. And it does, like Daniel says, for a little while. But then it comes back stronger. I also had this compulsion with a therapist I saw, like telling it to her would make it go away. I'm lucky enough to have found a therapist now who I'm seeing who is tackling this with me. I've realised that good as talking is (and it is - never stop sharing with your mum or friends) it isn't an end in itself and it should never feel like a compulsion that will solve everything. To change your thinking, you need action in the form of catching thoughts and dealing with them. Forming new habits and training your brain. And only you can do that. That's what you should take away from good therapy. And speaking of catching thoughts...
'The more attention I paid to the mechanics of my anxiety the more I began to notice an aspect of my mind I'd never noticed before - a sort of subconscious chatter, just beneath the surface of awareness, that was always going, always yammering, always commentating, like a little newscaster perched on my frontal lobes. And this newscaster, it turned out, was not the kind of person you'd want to sit next to at a dinner party, he was very pessimistic, my mental homunculus. If there was even a slim chance that a situation could end in calamity, he'd toss it up on the teleprompter and treat it like news." (pp. 200-201)
And the answer?
'Listen closely. When you are anxious note precisely what your mind has said and then interrogate what you find for accuracy. Treat every anxious thought like a philosophical proposition and test it. Apply logic to the context of your mind.' (p.201)
It's hard work, but try it for a week and you'll see most of the thoughts we have aren't our true source of anxiety. Pull your mind up and hold it accountable for the thoughts you find there.
The one thing I'd say is that this is different from intellectualising - you want to be catching thoughts as they pass through, not trying to problem solve them. Remember, problem solving doesn't work on irrational thoughts in an anxious mind!
I've tried this and I can honestly say it helps - I've surprised myself with some of the little triggers I've noticed and have been able to get myself feeling back on track by nipping them in the bud.
'It would be years before I would win her back. In the interim I would have to learn how to wall my anxiety off from others, to seal it up inside myself so securely that its indiscriminate uncertainty would no longer be able to influence or infect the people I loved - which is to say, my feelings for the people I loved. I would have to learn how to protect love itself from anxiety.' (p.181)
This is such a hard chapter to read, aptly named 'Anxious Love'. Smith drives his girlfriend away (she's now his wife and mother of his children so it all works out in the end!) but not without its twists and turns. This can be the toughest part of anxiety, when you feel like it's affecting your relationships. Smith recounts what should have been a dream holiday which just became consumed by his anxiety - it's heartbreaking and illogical but so real and so many will identify with it.
My husband has been absolutely incredible and I'll write more on this, but my anxiety was really fired up badly in the run up to our wedding and with the pressure for this to be such a 'perfect' time, I found it really quite hard. On days when I don't feel myself and just feel numb and over analyse everything - that's tough. But remembering what matters and not trying to force it along with the amazing support and understanding of my husband always gets me out the other side.
This is what I love about Monkey Mind - it's not setting unrealistic expectations of recovery, it's saying it takes work and it's OK that it's part of who you are. For me, I've had stints of years without much anxiety at all, so I know it's possible and I know I'll get there again. So if you haven't read Monkey Mind, do. Even if it's not your cup of tea, you'll take at least one good thing away from it.
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