Releasing the Notes

Trigger warning: This post contains content about depression, suicidal thoughts, and Rebecca Black.

Every once in a while a song is released that is so bad that it is shared as a joke.

Then it gets stuck in your head.

So you listen to it again,

and again.

Until it gets lodged into pop culture history.

I’m sure you have a song in mind already. Maybe it is “She Bang” by William Hung, “Chinese Food” by Alison Gold, “Miracles” by Insane Clown Posse (language warning), or some good ol’ Rebecca Black

We all know that is a bad song. Yet, we have all listened to it, and I am betting more than once.

I like to call these “anti-hits”, because they are not hits in the traditional sense, but they have become hits as people listen to them ironically.

That is how depression works sometimes.

When I am struggling particularly with my depression, I have these thoughts that I hate, but over time they have become lodged in my head. Thoughts like:

• I’m not good enough
• No one actually likes me, they just feel bad so they are nice
• I’m worthless
• There is no way out
• There is one way out…

All of these thoughts are intrusive. I don’t try to think them intentionally, but they like to show up and crash the party. Just like “Friday” wasn’t stuck in your head until I brought it up.

And just like that song will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day, a negative thought will lodge itself in my mind for the whole day. One mistake early in the day can trigger the “I’m not good enough” thought to pop up, and then it repeats throughout the day as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I do my ketamine treatments, I start with an intention – a phrase that I repeat to myself as the effects of the medication take root. My session this last week had the intention of “I’m good enough”. The session was mostly visual, not nearly as much discussion between the questioning me and the knowing me that I have discussed before.

I opened my head from the back, and there sitting on top of my brain was a layered wrapping of yellow police tape, but instead of the usual “Caution” warning, it was just the phrase “Not Good Enough”, over and over and over. I pulled out a tool to help me remove the tape by placing it on a roll. I found the end, attached it to the roll, and began winding the tape off of my brain.

An interesting thing about being under the influence of ketamine is that you can lose all concept of time. I have had sessions where I felt I had lived for thousands of years, only to return to myself in the moment I left like some Narnian time-warp.

I was removing the tape for hours, just layer after layer after layer. After what felt like a solid 8 hours I took a break to take care of my chickens. The ones I don’t have yet, but have come to represent peace in many of my sessions.

Then I returned and unwound more tape again.

This happened throughout the whole session. Just unwinding tape for an unreal amount of time, taking a short break to take care of something, and returning to unroll more tape.

Then the session was over. There was no resolution, and it was disheartening, to say the least. But here is what I took from that session:

I have told myself that I am not good enough for so long that it is going to take a lot of work and time to unlearn that phrase. Spending a day telling myself that I am good enough won’t undo decades of saying the opposite.

It is the same with any negative self-talk. All the terrible things I say about myself only get set in deeper each time I say them. And they often come in the heat of the moment.

Just last night I was struggling and caught myself responding to a genuine concern with a phrase I have told myself too often:

I guess I am just a shitty person.

Pardon the French. Or don’t, I am just trying to keep this honest.

I stepped away from the situation, rather grumpily, and sat down outside. It didn’t take long for me to realize I had deflected a confrontation by using that statement. I had used it as a coping mechanism, probably one of the most unhealthy ones I have. In jumping straight to that phrase, I subconsciously said, “I am not willing to have difficult conversations, so I will use a shocking phrase that will make the other person feel bad for trying and likely discourage them from trying again.”

I still need to apologize for that. It is on my list for today.

The point is that when I tell myself these things over and over they pop up when they are the least helpful, and they only make things worse.

How do I combat these? That is a difficult question. I have had multiple therapists talk to me about daily affirmations. They just feel so disingenuous to me, and that is definitely a “me” problem. Maybe I need to give them another chance.

I was also assigned once to write a daily paragraph about myself from the view of my successes. This was very difficult for me, and it lasted only a short time.

I can’t even take compliments without deflecting them.

I need to work on that.

While I was thinking about this last night, I remembered a book by John Allen called As A Man Thinketh.

In the book, John Allen talks about mental weeds. If we don’t pull the mental weeds, they will seed and take over the garden of our mind.

I think I have a weed problem.

So the answer to how I fix this problem is not an easy one. It is pulling the weeds. It is removing the “Not Good Enough” tape from my brain. It is positive self-talk.

It is work.

So, as the Swifties say, I am entering a new era – my self-love era.

At least I am trying to.

A quick note of unsolicited advice:

I think there are a lot of ways kids get the negative messages that they will internalize and tell themselves over and over until they stick. The only way we have to fight this before it becomes a problem is to fill them with love and positivity. So tell your kids how awesome they are, and how proud of them you are. And do it often.

That is all.