I have an app on my phone that sends me motivational quotes every hour on the hour. They tend to be hit or miss, but the other day, I received one that said, “Personal growth isn’t a matter of learning new information, but of unlearning old limits.” It hit so close to home that I almost fell out of my chair. I’m not kidding. I was reaching for something on the floor at the time (I tend to be a multitasker), but that’s not the point.
To get a sense of why I was almost literally floored by this, you first have to understand that I hit a bit of a rough patch in terms of my mental health last year. Afterwards, I made the decision to essentially dedicate all of my spare time and energy towards bettering my mental health, and because I’m a little obsessive (but in an endearing way), I threw myself into this process, leaving no stone unturned. I adopted a number of new daily practices (see my essay “The Only Way Out is Through” for additional details on some of those), participated in a behavioral health IOP, began meeting with a therapist once a week, started reading more self-help books, listened to my favorite mental health experts’ podcasts, looked up research studies, watched countless TED talks, etc. In other words, I committed myself to learning everything that there was to learn about becoming a happier, healthier, more resilient human.
Little did I know that simply “learning” was not even half the battle.
What I eventually discovered about myself (and everyone else) is that none of us were born into this world already having the problematic thought patterns that lead to anxiety, depression, OCD, etc. Yes, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a wide variety of mental illnesses are hereditary. However, low self-esteem on its own is not hereditary. Inability to deal with uncertainty is not hereditary. Trauma is certainly not hereditary. You can be genetically predisposed to developing some form of mental illness and still come into this world with a relatively blank slate. Why? Because our individual responses to life’s challenges are learned behaviors. Initially, this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Even though I knew that I needed help, I was unwilling to accept the fact that was going to have to change the way that I looked at and spoke to myself in order to actually make any lasting progress.
Let me take a quick detour to explain my thought process at the time with the following scenario: It’s as if I was standing at the bottom of a deep hole in the ground that I had dug myself, and someone was telling me that in order to get out of the hole, I was going to need to learn how to use the ladder that would be thrown down to me. I, being stubborn but also proud of the work that I had done up until this point, would try to convince that other person that no, I did not need a ladder, I had a shovel that had worked just fine to get me where I was. The other person would try to convince me that the shovel wasn’t going to work anymore, and in fact, using the shovel to dig deeper would only make things worse. This argument between myself and the other person would continue until rain started to fall, and it began to get dark outside. With no other choices, I finally accepted that maybe giving the ladder a shot wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Before I began this process, my inner critic (the shovel) was an absolute monster. I spoke to myself in such a harsh tone (one that I would never even dream of using on anyone else) because I believed that A) I deserved it, and B) criticizing myself would eventually force me to change and be “better.” What’s worse, when left unchecked, my inner critic’s occasional outburst eventually grew into a lingering chant, and then into an unavoidable scream that began to drown out all other thoughts in my head. What started out as “Why are you always running late,” eventually morphed into “What’s wrong with you? Why are you like this? Everyone else can do it. Why can’t you ever get it together?” And ultimately, “You’re worthless. You’re trash. Everything that you’ve accomplished in life happened by chance or by accident. You don’t deserve anything good.”
(Reading it now, I can’t help but laugh a little because it looks so ridiculous when written out. I mean, who thinks like that? I did. And a lot of other people do, too).
I knew that I had to learn how to speak to myself in a softer voice, but on top of that, I also needed to unlearn the beliefs that caused me to have those thoughts about myself in the first place. I had to learn how to constantly question the paths of thought that my brain normally followed. When I caught myself saying shame-inducing things like, “You’re so lazy. You should have worked out today,” I had to practice challenging that thought and better understanding where it was coming from. Why did I think that I needed to exercise that day? Does missing a day (or a few) at the gym make me a bad person? Does not working out mean that I'll automatically gain weight? If so, does that make me any less worthy of love or acceptance? What was causing this fear, and was there really any truth at the core of it?
The funny thing about your inner critic (especially when you battle depression) is that it almost never has the facts to back up its arguments. As you learn to stop over-identifying with your thoughts, they begin to lose their control over you. It’s a bit like the boggart in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; it feeds off of your fears, but once you learn how to take a step back from the immediate rush of emotion (whether that’s through reasoning or humor), you’re able to gain power over it. And that’s how, just by learning how to call my thoughts into question, I was able to unlearn some of the unhealthy beliefs that I held about myself and change the tune of the voice inside my head.
Mind you, this didn’t happen overnight. As it turned out, I had quite a bit of unlearning to do; a list of all of the beliefs that I had to call into question would be as long as my arm. To this day, I still struggle with challenging some of the commentary from my inner critic, but at the very least, I've learned the importance of being more gentle with myself during the process. As Dr. Kristin Neff puts it, "I'm still a mess, but at least now I'm a self-compassionate mess."
What I know now is that cultivating and maintaining mental wellness isn’t just about learning new coping mechanisms; it’s about unlearning the behaviors and patterns that got you to the bottom of the hole in the first place. You can read every self-help book out there, but if you don’t take the time to challenge your unhealthy thoughts, you’re no better off. My trek up the ladder is an ongoing process, but I have to have faith that as long as I remain curious about my thoughts, I’ll continue to climb farther out of the hole. Ultimately, the biggest difference between the person I was six months ago and the person that I am now isn’t all of the new things that I’ve learned, read, or listened to during this period of time; the biggest difference is everything that I have unlearned since I started this process.
Wow. What a liberating thought.
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