In “Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts”, Sally Winston and Martin Seif wrote:
Minds tend to get stickier when they are fatigued, overwhelmed by good or bad events, and dealing with illness, stressful situations, or conflicting emotions … Sticky mind goes along with feeling anxious.
What Drs Winston and Seif are showing us is that what we often call “setbacks” - times where anxious thoughts seem to return and drive us again - may very well be expected and normal reactions to the normal stress of life.
We’re seeing this often in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The community is full of people that recover from the virus but for whom the health struggle and fear that comes along with it leave a lasting impression that seems to impact anxiety recovery to some degree. “COVID set me back to square one” is a common statement I hear every day lately.
A person getting back on their feet will find that scary, anxious thoughts that they assumed were banished have returned with a vengeance. Everything is scary again. With a mind awash in catastrophic, distorted, thoughts, exposures that had been mastered are difficult again. It’s natural for someone in this situation to proclaim to the community that they are “starting over” and that everything has “gone out the window”.
COVID is not only trigger for this. Any life stressor - even good stress like getting a big promotion at work or moving to a lovely new home - can make us a bit less resilient mentally and emotionally. The same story plays out for members of the community faced with loss of a loved one, the end (or start) of a serious relationship, health issues in the family, or any number of stressful situations.
The important thing to remember here is that if you find yourself under stress and discover that your recovery seems to have been washed away or knocked back to square one, it hasn’t. Nothing is wrong. You’re not doing anything wrong. You didn’t make mistakes, nor are you broken or beyond hope. Your mind is just acting like any human mind will act under stress, so you are simply feeling things again that you haven’t felt for a while. That’s not a disaster or an emergency.
Two rules apply here.
First, be nice to yourself. If life has you under the gun, then acknowledge this and do not demand that you perform at peak recovery levels at all time. That’s not fair. Do your best to address the stressors and to find healthy ways to process stressful events and situations. This is part of being human.
Second, understand that there is no change in game plan recovery-wise. You’ll just have to do what you’ve been doing, leaning in toward that fear and acting even when those newly returned thoughts tell you that you should not. This is annoying and frustrating for sure, but this is not a disaster. You know how it’s done, so it will be a matter of getting back to the doing. What you do NOT have to do is bemoan your fate endlessly and repeat to anyone that will listen that you have “relapsed”. Understand the situation, acknowledge it, then relate to it in a productive way. Do not give the thoughts and fear and more power than they need to have.
Everything in life is transient in nature, including the stuff that is stressing you out right now. Over time, things change, recovery resumes, and you go back to the progress you’ve created before.
68. Stressful Times Lead To Stickier Thoughts