Learning the niggles from the aches.

Hello lovely lot,

I was out on a run whilst this topic in my head came about. I become creatively awaken whilst moving and my mind often wonders during runs. For some people running is only a clock watching game; I have become accustom to running that it is merely a place for a mindless place I can race with my thoughts.

So it is not a surprise that mental health diagnosis have risen over years, more are being admitted to hospitals, seeking therapy, more antidepressants administered year on year. Rightly so, this world has become a bigger stress ball for pockets of societies to become more in touch with their mental health needs; in which we need more help with coping.

I wanted to help explain this message with liking this to a physical injury. So, for example, let’s imagine we are out on a run. All of a sudden, we feel a really strange pull in the back of the leg. It doesn’t feel comfortable, however, we are so close to home we decide to carry on running despite it feeling quite uncomfortable. We make it home, yet there is certainly a problem with our leg. There are some options people do when something doesn’t feel quite right with their body; 1) google symptoms, analyse the problem, look for a name to call it. 2) starts home treatment that has worked before with a past/previous experience. 3) leave it, see what happens on the next run. Let’s apply the same principle to our head health. So we might be feeling a little ‘off’. Maybe we wouldn’t google our symptom. We might instantly think- I’m not in a good place right now…

So, back the the leg theory, on the next run, the same injury happens again, this time we barely make it out the door before we really think ‘ this doesn’t feel right, I need to head home’. If you didn’t google your symptoms before, we may be feeling a little more curious to find a ‘name’ to this problem. Having a name makes anything uncertain seem more attainable and easier to understand. So for this injury, the one before we didn’t have a name to, now we know we have pulled a muscle. Brilliant (well not but…) at least we know what is is, how to deal with it, and how to look after it. By placing a name to the problem opens up the possiblyilty to getting the right treatment and not a goose chase of mindless ‘half-arsed’ fixing approach.

This is the weird part of the leg theory. So if we decided NOT to google the issue, We decided to leave it unnamed, we gave it a rest for a coupe days and we head out for a little 10 minute jog; just to see how it feels. 3 minutes in, we feel great, we don’t feel any problems at all. 9 minutes in and we decide to extend the run even further… injury? What injury, this feels amazing, and wouldn’t have known their was a problem with my leg!

Injuries are a little easier to diagnosis than mental health. And weirdly enough, some niggles in the body are just that; weird little niggles that sometimes just sort themselves out. Weird but it really does happen. Although I am not* always advocating the same approach for mental health; we can use this as a learning technique.

Ask yourself a question; is this just a niggle or is this a pain that keeps reoccurring? To know the answer we have to allow some time and space to see whether a problem becomes exacerbated or whether time has healed and unknotted the niggle. There is no rush to jump straight into getting a diagnosis of an mental health illness; especially if it’s early days and there hasn’t been enough time to see if the storm passes naturally; because this is life. Storms will come. Waves will ebb and flow, its a deal we have to accept. Maybe this isn’t always the version of how to go about dealing with inner demons that we often hear a lot. Allow yourself to become in-tune with your feelings; to do this is simple. Time. Let time pass. You have to not rush quickly to find a therapist. You do not have to rush to sort or ‘fix’ the burning issue with outside help. We are more capable of our lives than we sometimes know. Allowing the storm to pass because storms do pass is very different to being in a pain sink hole where life is overwhelming and all consuming that we are zapped from all happiness and normal life. But how do we know the difference?

I know the difference between a niggle and a injury when it comes to running. It works the same for my head. That’s because I’ve listened to what I know I am feeling. I have a in-tune feelings dial that I have worked one because I didn’t always ‘rush’ towards getting plasters for problems that were always going to go away; neither did I let a problem become too much before I could nip it in the bud.

Listen and be patient x