Think back to elementary school. When you were a little kid, prancing around without a care for the world.
What did your teachers tell you? What were the posters hung on the wall?
“There is no I in team” (Counterpoint: there is a me though)
“Character is what you do when no one’s looking” (Overrated)
“You can be whatever you put your mind to” (No, you literally cannot)
And if you were anything like me, you probably thought that these were nothing more than sappy bs that people tell kids to make them feel better about themselves.
Looking at these quotes now, they still seem sappy and sort of fake. Misleadingly inspirational and deceivingly simple, if you will.
But over the last few years, one of them specifically has really begin to resonate with me.
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react.”
Cringe? Of course. True? Also yes.
Hear me out.
Since I was young, I have struggled with mental health (as many young people seem to be these days).
In grade nine, I was diagnosed with something called OCD. Now the pop culture conception of this is as being “particular about blocks and cleanliness.” Washing hands frequently. Insisting that the 4x4 grid which had 15 elements gain a 16th to make a perfect square.
And although that is one form of it, it’s not what I suffer from. Instead, once I hyper-fixate onto something, my brain will not let go. I must spend every waking moment thinking about it.
But the problem is, this thinking brings me great anxiety. So then I try to resolve it. Usually, I can’t. So the anxiety gets worse. And so I think about it more. So the anxiety gets worse. And the cycle repeats, over and over, until it turns into a depression-like state.
On the off chance I am able to resolve the problem, you know what my brain does?
“Ha. You thought you could get away with it? You thought you could escape the stress?”
Sike.
Here are ten other things to worry about.
And the cycle repeats itself.
“Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” is the full name. I think it’s pretty intuitive.
Once I finally moved off the waitlist and got into treatment, my psychologist gave me some advice that prompted a drastic mindset shift. And I’m going to spend the rest of this Substack explaining my interpretation of what she told me.
The first thing I had to do was recognize that my thoughts, my anxieties, were not rational. As in, they did not stem from an actual worry about the issue at hand. Rather, it was my brain simply searching for something, anything to worry about. I could be on a tropical beach in Hawaii, pina colada in hand, having everything I could possibly desire (both physical and emotional), and still, I would be stressed.
From here then, the acknowledgment becomes as follows. A one question quiz, if you will, to see how I should react to the situation.
Q. Do you have any control over it
A1. YES - then exert that control. Make the change.
A2. NO - then stop thinking about it. Because it won’t change anything.
I think that oftentimes, I want to tell myself I am in situation 1. That I do have complete and total control over the problem. Maybe it’s a way to justify the stress I’m feeling.
And from that, I’ll take action to try to make the change. If I’m worried about a job application, I’ll go and complete the application. If I’m stressed about an exam, I’ll go and study a bit. If I’m freaking out over an upcoming networking session, I’ll go and search for a few of the networkers on LinkedIn so I’m more prepared.
And you know what? That works.
Because it means that I’m using my anxiety for something. It’s no longer just obsessing over something, but it’s channeling that obsession, directing that energy into actual action.
The idea is, stress evolved as an evolutionary mechanism to help us adapt to and respond to risks and dangers we face. I have no idea if this is true or not. But if it is, then all I’m really doing is using stress for its original purpose.
After all, if I’m going to feel anxious, I might as well put that anxiety to good use. To motivate some sort of action.
But here’s the kicker. Many times, the answer to the question is actually “NO.” That I cannot exert control over the situation.
If people want to be assholes, I can not change that.
If the administration is out to get me, I can not change that.
If the job market is just so freaking brutal that there are 600+ applicants for one position, I can not change that.
And in these cases, it’s this mantra that I keep telling myself that has kept me sane: “if you can’t control it, then don’t think about it.”
The reasoning for this is quite intuitive. Stressing about a problem will not make it go away. It won’t give me any more control over the situation either. Heck, it may even give me less.
If I dread seeing someone, thinking about them all day won’t make them go away.
If I know I’m fucked for the exam, sitting there freaking out over it won’t make me pass.
Accepting that fact was crucial for me, because it meant that I could shift my focus away from “how do I solve this problem” and instead towards “how do I better manage this problem.”
Let me say that again.
I do not think it is about solving problems. It is about managing them.
“Isn’t this just a semantic difference?”
No.
Because solving a problem is about addressing the root causes. And as great as that is, it’s not always possible. Remember, many things are out of my control.
And even if it’s possible, fixing things won’t actually make me feel better. Because OCD induced anxiety is not rational. I’m not anxious about anything because that thing is particularly bad (although my brain will come up with 20 reasons to tell me that it is). Rather, I’m anxious about that thing because my brain is simply looking for something, ANYTHING, to be anxious about. It needs that level of despair. And if I somehow manage to make this source of anxiety go away, I’ll simply find something else to freak out over and self-justify that as being the end of the world.
All this is to say, it’s very difficult for me to actually make myself feel better my tackling the problems head on. So instead, I have to manage them.
“Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.”
Control the 90%.
Now this sounds intuitive enough. But the real question is how? How can I actually manage my emotions?
The first step is a mindset change. That is what I talked about earlier. Recognizing the fact that I should not try to solve the problems, but rather, I need to manage them. From here, I’m able to guide my actions.
What has really worked for me is distracting myself.
A lot of my anxiety occurs in the morning as I wake up. A thought will pop into my head the second I open my eyes, and it’ll stubbornly stay stuck there. So what I do is I force myself out of bed and outside for a walk.
By filling my time with other things, I remove the opportunity for me to keep thinking about whatever I’m anxious about.
If I lie in bed trying to think through my stress, I know that I can be there for hours at a time. But if I take that first step of getting out of bed and doing just about anything else, then I remove the opportunity for myself to be anxious. Because I’m literally too busy doing other things.
The same logic holds true for other situations too. I’ve found that when I’m with friends, I tend not to worry as much. Yes, because their company is comforting. But also because at a more brute level, I am just too busy doing stuff with them to be able to entertain anxious thoughts.
For others, I imagine you’d have your own things that when you’re doing them, you’re fully focused on it.
Does this mean that I’ll never be anxious? Of course not. After I get home from hanging out with my friends, for instance, a flood of thoughts will rush into my head and the despair will continue. But this is already a win. Because even if there are 2-3 hours of anxiety there, I still got 5-6 hours of no anxiety. That’s far better than the 0 no anxiety hours I would’ve gotten if I had just sulked at home.
So that’s the first part. Distract yourself.
And the second? Focus on the present.
Whenever I’m doing something, I do my best to focus on it. My mind LOVES to wander to anxious thoughts, but as soon as a thought pops into my head, I actively try to drown it out.
A lot of times, this looks like me literally telling myself, “Andre, it’s your OCD. Stop thinking about this.” Repeating this over and over again, it works. Soon, I actually stop thinking about it. And I’ll recall back to the one question quiz to rationally remind my brain that I don’t need to worry because worrying will not accomplish anything.
Distraction can also help with this. As soon as the urge to be anxious pops up, I’ll really try to dig my heels deeper into whatever I’m doing. It’s not easy - it takes me proactive mental effort to focus on what is going on in the moment. Simply doing actions is not enough. I need to actually remind my brain to focus on said actions. Think about them not only in passing, but consciously and with intent.
And that crowds out the anxious thoughts.
Is this easy?
Of course not.
I’m not going to pretend like I have it all figured out. Because I really don’t. OCD is a bitch. Anxiety is a bitch. And it’s not as easy to make it go away as telling myself, “I don’t need to worry about this anymore.” There are days when, despite doing all this, I still feel like shit.
But it’s a continual journey that I’m working on. And it’s what I am trying my darn best to do.
What has really helped all throughout goes back to the entire mindset shift. Really acknowledging that the source of these thoughts is my OCD, and that to combat them I have to manage the problem, not solve it.
Some of my friends that I’ve shared this approach with have called it self gaslighting.
And you know what?
I actually kind of like that term. Because it accurately describes what this is.
You are questioning your own reality. Manipulating your own brain into believing that everything will be okay, regardless of if it will.
And as bad as it sounds, it’s what’s saved my mental health.
At the end of the day, I do what I can to solve my problems and stressors. Directing anxiety towards action, if you will. But once that’s done, I’m trying to recognize that regardless of if I’ve solved the problem, I won’t feel any better.
I’m going to say this again.
Solving the problem won’t make me feel any better.
So, for the sake of my own sanity, the only choice I have left is to distract myself and focus on the present moment. Every second I can spend not anxious, even if the anxiety returns later, is a second in which I have lived a better life.
It’s a second that I’ve reclaimed from the anxious forces.
It’s a second that my life has become materially better in.
And it’s a second that means the world to me.
This is not meant to be mental health advice or a diagnosis. What works for me may not work for everyone. If you want to chat about mental health and/or anxiety and/or OCD, my DMs are open.
Classic Andre substack W
really great read andre !!!! i've been looking for a way to articulate my thoughts and "I could be on a tropical beach in Hawaii, pina colada in hand, having everything I could possibly desire (both physical and emotional), and still, I would be stressed" might've just done it. i'm so glad you shared this :)