Defying the Enemy Within
Page 11
WRAP-UP
•Many people everywhere suffer from anxiety.
•Anxiety is when you feel so stressed or worried you might suffer physical symptoms such as breathlessness or increased heart rate, and you might feel terribly fearful or imagine terrible things happening.
•When anxiety or a panic attack strikes, a good way to manage it is to practise mindfulness.
•Mindfulness is when you focus on the moment — the present, rather than the future or past.
•One way to practise mindfulness is to focus on your own body. You could rub your forefinger and thumb together and focus on that feeling. Or focus on your breathing.
•Exercise is another great way to be present.
LEARN AND PRACTISE THE 4, 7, 8 BREATHING TECHNIQUE
I have promised myself and my loved ones that I will not take my own life, but I still live with negative and suicidal thoughts, and it’s often a huge struggle for me to forge on through the day. But the fighter in me won’t let the thoughts beat me.
During one episode, I was sitting in an airport in Alabama waiting for my weather-delayed flight to be called. I started experiencing extreme paranoia, depression and frightening suicidal thoughts. My mind couldn’t help wandering into the ‘what ifs’ — what if my CTE symptoms became so severe I could no longer function, and I lost everything and everyone I loved?
Once I was on the plane, the negative voices in my head again began bellowing at me to end my life. I knew these thoughts didn’t reflect reality. So I gripped my hands and breathed in slowly using a technique that mental health advocate Kevin Hines calls 4, 7, 8:
Inhale for 4 seconds.
Hold your breath for 7 seconds.
Exhale for 8 seconds.
The effect of this breathing technique is to relax your body, lower your heart rate and focus your mind.
Often when I fly I have anxiety or panic attacks, when I become short of breath, as if there’s a net around my heart and lungs constricting my breathing.
Now, when this happens, I begin by practising what I preach — mindfulness. I slowly begin to rub my index finger against my thumb, noticing that the faster I do it the warmer my fingers get. This brings my mind back to the present.
Despite practising my mindfulness techniques, soon my mind starts to frantically run through every possible worst-case scenario. I scan the air hostess up and down to see whether she is concealing a gun and wonder if she is plotting a terror attack.
I constantly peer over my shoulder, worried that the passenger behind me is about to stick a knife into my neck. I visibly shake my head, as if I’m conversing with someone or trying to shake it off and bring myself back to reality.
Now I’m worried the plane is destined to crash. Will I ever see Courtney and the kids again? Will my family know I loved them? What will my funeral be like? Will people even turn up? I’m no big deal, why would they even come?
Now, I’m back to using 4, 7, 8 — inhaling for 4 seconds, holding my breath for 7 seconds and exhaling for 8 seconds.
I’m terrified, and tears begin to well in my eyes. But on the surface I am as calm as can be. Looking at me, you’d have no idea that, on the inside, I’m a nervous wreck, gasping for air and feeling like I’m just clinging to life.
The reality is, I have no control over the plane — I only have control over how I react to these thoughts. And none of my thoughts are real, and none of them can hurt me.
So I continue my 4, 7, 8 breathing and remember the mantra ‘this too will pass’. And with time it does.
Sometimes when I’m using the 4, 7, 8 technique I count the seconds on my wrist watch, often for ten or twenty minutes. That’s how long I can be in a panic. But it’s this very process that contributes to my resilience.
Mindfulness and breathing are so important because many of our mental problems are heightened due to the fact we live in our heads. Our thoughts have the power to bring us down, but they also have the power to lift us back up.
If we can focus on the present and use the 4, 7, 8 breathing technique, we can manage our anxiety and negative thought processes.
WRAP-UP
•When you have a panic attack or suffer an anxiety attack, try using a mindfulness technique such as rubbing your thumb and finger together. à
•You can also try the 4, 7, 8 breathing technique:
Inhale for 4 seconds.
Hold your breath for 7 seconds.
Exhale for 8 seconds.
WRITE IT DOWN
As hard as it can be, part of my wellness plan is to write about when I’m feeling depressed, because I’ve found writing helps me to eventually feel better.
When you write your feelings or negative thoughts down, you see them in front of you rather than having them race around in your head. Think of them like poison — if you accidently swallow poison, your body rejects it by regurgitating it. You can treat negative thoughts and feelings the same way — by speaking them or writing them down, you ‘regurgitate’ them and get them out of your head and out of you.
WRAP-UP
•Write down how you feel when you’re depressed.
•By writing down how you feel, it might help you to identify the next time these feelings come on again.
•Writing things down may also help you identify whether there are any external factors causing you to feel down, which you can then try to eliminate.
BREAK IT DOWN AND VALUE EACH SMALL IMPROVEMENT
At Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), I learned to break everything down. There, I learned to get through tough times moment by moment; to count the minutes or seconds on a clock. This is another way of living in the present, and I know now that this has saved my life many times.
During my first few months at AA and NA, I listened to other people in the group share their stories of being five, seven or ten years free of alcohol and drug abuse. I immediately wanted to be in those days of recovery, but I eventually realised how important it is to ‘keep it in the day’. I couldn’t fast forward to five years’ sobriety without concentrating on being sober and drug free today.
Now I’ve lived almost twelve years in drug and alcohol recovery, and I get to share my wisdom with people struggling in their early days.
It’s the same when you have frequent suicidal thoughts. You need to learn to get through them by living through each and every second. By living in the moment during that tough time, that moment, that day, you learn that every action, every thought and every breath contributes to you feeling better — or worse.
But often we expect to improve by a great margin. In fact, most people only feel better about themselves if they see a huge amount of improvement quickly.
I’ve learned, however, that even a small improvement of, say, 1 per cent, is worth celebrating, because I had to fight tooth and nail just to get to that 1 per cent.
One of the secrets of my recovery was learning to value small improvements. I realised I didn’t need to go from zero to one hundred to improve. I only had to improve a little at a time.
Many people around the globe put enormous amounts of unnecessary pressure on themselves and others when it comes to improvement. What people need to remember is that even a little improvement is an improvement. Even if it feels like the negatives outweigh the positives, continue to build on those positives by just 1 per cent at a time. That’s how I have grown to be strong and resilient in the face of adversity.
WRAP-UP
•To survive a tough situation such as addiction or suicidal thoughts, you need to break it down into minutes or seconds.
•Each second or minute you survive is an improvement on the previous second or minute.
•Don’t pressure yourself to improve by 100 per cent. à
•Even a 1 per cent improvement is worth celebrating.
•Each 1 per cent builds on the previous 1 per cent, until you one day discover you’ve made big improvements.
FOCUS ON WHY YOU STAY CLEAN
Now think of how those treats, when they enter your body, set off a chemical reaction in your brain to act on impulse and participate in silly behaviours. And imagine you have so many of these treats that you completely forget what you did the day before. Also, to make things worse, these treats might be illegal and may cause death in some extreme cases.
This is what happens with alcohol and drugs. And because of a chemical imbalance in the brain, many people are more prone to becoming addicted to alcohol or drugs.
Now, because alcohol is a legalised drug, I see it as the number one drug that is killing our communities.
At the time of writing this book, I’m approaching twelve years clean and sober from alcohol and drugs, which I believe is one of my greatest achievements. But I know that even though I’m in recovery, I still battle alcoholism. At some point of any day, I’ll want drugs or alcohol. Some people call this a substance use disorder.
There have been many times in my life when I’ve wanted to pick up a drink and go back to my days of partying with party drugs. I still carry a genetic disposition towards alcoholism, but that doesn’t mean I must drink.
I take my substance use disorder seriously, because if I give in to the desire to pick up a drink or take a drug again, I may spiral into depression and risk suicide.
There are still times when I feel down and out, and want to throw everything away because the world seems too tough to handle and everything seems to be going against me. But these days I know that these tough times will pass, as they always have.
Some years ago, when I was helping a close friend called Jody through her personal journey of recovery, she said: ‘This too shall pass’. Since then, we’ve both had that saying tattooed on our bodies, because, in our experience, no matter how tough the situation, it passes.
I’m not pretending it’s been easy. I know I’m a recovering addict, and that risk of addiction is forever tapping me on the shoulder to remind me it’s there. I still struggle when it comes to pain medication, and I have to be extremely careful about taking any type of prescription medication, checking with the doctor to make sure the medication is not a mind-altering substances. I can’t take any mind-altering substance because there’s the risk they could take me back to the days of being a barely functioning addict, of wanting the thrill of the chase and the feeling of medication. Even when someone like me knows I shouldn’t be taking something, the cunning mind of a recovering addict will convince me it will be okay.
When that happens, I remind myself why I quit alcohol and drugs — to improve my life, but also to be a role model for my kids, to show them you don’t need any type of substance to live a happy life and have an enjoyable time. The truth is, all the trophies on the shelf couldn’t compare to knowing that my kids don’t see their dad drinking. I’m so very proud that my children have never seen me drink alcohol. Hopefully they never will. But it’s one day at a time.
WRAP-UP
•Many people think they have to beat addictions. But most people are genetically predisposed for addiction, and we carry these genes our entire lives.
•You don’t have to beat addictions. You just have to learn to manage them.
•There have been many times when I could have turned to alcohol or drugs to silence the voices or get through a tough situation.
•When that happens, a voice in my head will tell me it will be okay to have a drink or take a drug. But I know that it won’t.
•When that happens, I remind myself why I quit alcohol and drugs.
THRIVE
BUILD UP YOUR RESILIENCE
Whenever I lost a boxing match, I generally had to wait hours, weeks and sometimes months for my next fight and next chance to win. In those months between a loss and the next fight, doubts would overcome me. To keep going forward towards my new goal, I needed to build resilience. I learned that repetition of thought and action was my best friend in terms of keeping on track and staying resilient.
I learned to break the many months, weeks, days and hours into the smallest of fragments. And I would tell myself that anything I’d done in the past would impact on what I was achieving now, and anything I did now would impact on my achievements tomorrow. Every small step counted, and each could make the difference.
Coping with mental illness requires a similar approach. And building resilience is vital if you’re not only to survive but thrive. I’ve learned that improvement isn’t measured in material possessions or numbers, but by tiny degrees, one step at a time. I’ve learned to breathe through those dark times, and in breathing through those times of despair I’ve learned to improve second by second, every minute of every hour of every day. Slowly, the minutes turn into days, the days into weeks, the weeks into months and I’m on track to becoming the best possible version of myself. In learning resilience through tough times, I’ve learned to not only survive, but thrive. Here are some of the things that have helped me build resilience and helped me thrive.
EMBRACE YOUR FEARS
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?
Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
I first heard this quote when I saw the movie Coach Carter. I didn’t quite understand it at the time, but a few years on, having experienced my fair share of disappointments and setbacks, it started to be a little more relatable.
Like everyone, my fears and insecurities would pop up, whether in a rugby league game, a physical confrontation in the ring, doing the hard yards in the gym, or facing situations in everyday life.
Thanks to my parents, I’d been blessed with athletic ability. But my deepest fear, even as a kid, was what would happen if I tried my absolute best and fell short? I was so afraid I’d be lost and emotionally hurt, I was too scared to try my absolute best. It’s true that throughout my entire NRL career I had the attitude of just doing enough to get by, because I was afraid of doing my best — and failing.
Occasionally, I’d face my inner fears when I was playing league — times in the final minutes of a game when the team needed a big play to get us over the line. One such time was when I was playing for the Sydney Roosters in the Jersey Flegg Grand Final. The scores were tied with approximately two minutes left on the clock. It was a grand final, I had to stand up so I called for the ball 35 metres out from the opposition line and hit the sweetest field goal I’ve ever kicked in my career. We won the game by one point. I did it that day, but so often I was too hesitant to go the extra mile.
I also still carry the burden of knowing I hurt many people in the past due to my fears. In my personal relationships, I never gave myself entirely to the woman I loved for fear of getting hurt. This was not fair on my partners, who had given me their complete loyalty and trust.
So everyone has fears and insecurities. It’s how you deal with them that counts. And when I was younger, I didn’t deal with them well.
These days, when I feel fear, I always remember my dad’s story about the little boy or girl inside us all, and how we need to take that little boy or girl by the hand and face our fear together. ‘Lead that little boy, be his guiding light, together as one. Together you can conquer any obstacle you face,’ Dad said. And that’s what I do. I take the little boy inside me by the hand and together we move forward, through the fear.
Boxing helped me develop the mental strength to confront my fears. In the boxing ring I learned to give my best, to never give up and to fight to the finish. I see it like this: every single time I step inside the boxing gym, I am asked the questions that bring
out the little boy inside me. Every time things get physically hard in training, it tests me mentally.
Once upon a time I wasn’t able to stand strong in those tough situations, and I’d run and hide. Now, when I search deep inside myself, I like the person I find. I am a strong warrior, happy to guide that little boy into the deep and come through to the other side.
So often it’s not physical obstacles that cause people to fall short, but mental factors. By surviving physical challenges, you build mental toughness. Since I took up boxing, I’m always looking for new physical challenges, because they test me mentally as well.
I am still tested by my fears, which continue to haunt me. But every day is a fresh start to build on what I overcame the day before. And fears are only fears — they’re not reality.
WRAP-UP
•Learn that each fear is just a thought.
•Break each thought down and then slowly begin to chip away at it to overcome it.
•Physical challenges help you grow stronger mentally.
LET GO OF EGO
It’s tough to keep control of your ego, which could be defined as your sense of self-importance. Well, it certainly was tough for me, especially during my league career, when, it’s fair to say, the bright lights got to me. I was living in Sydney, and while I was still in contact with some of my friends from home, football and training consumed a lot of my life. And with all the attention from the public, even the media, I found it tough to stay grounded.