Facts V's Thoughts

Dealing with a long-term health condition can be overwhelming, and it's easy for anxiety to spiral. Even harder is learning to separate the facts of your condition from the thoughts you're having about it. The raft of emotions that comes with your diagnosis can be so overwhelming that the lines between facts and ruminations become blurred. 

In today's world, where information is just a click away, it can be hard to separate good advice from unverified "facts". The internet can contain unsubstantiated information, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. This in turn only amplifies the negative thoughts and anxieties that accompany a new diagnosis.

So, in the words of the experts: a fact is a piece of information that's objectively true and can be proven. It's a statement about something that has happened or is known to exist. Facts are not opinions, which are personal beliefs or judgments, and they are foundational to fields like science, history, and law.

Again according to the experts, a thought is a mental event or process. It is a product of the mind and can involve a wide range of activities, such as imagining, considering, reasoning and reflecting. Thoughts can be about anything — objects, people, concepts, feelings, or even other thoughts. 

While on paper both of the statements above are reasonable, for me, when dealing with the impact to our physical well-being the lines between what's objective and known facts and what we imagine as a potential threat can become somewhat fuzzy. It's easy for our anxiety to take over, the brain can no longer distinguish between facts and thoughts, which in turn causes our imagination to go off like a set of fireworks 🎇. 

In the context of a health condition, a fact would be a doctor's diagnosis. For example “My doctor told me I have high blood pressure

Thoughts, on the other hand, are subjective interpretations about a situation. They are the stories we tell ourselves based on the facts. They are not necessarily true, and often, when anxiety is high, they can be negative or catastrophic. For example "My doctor told me I have high blood pressure, so I'm going to have a heart attack soon."

 

So how do we navigate this minefield that our brain is trying to get through? How do we stop, take a step back and distinguish fact from thought? 

Well, there are many proven processes based around mindfulness that are drawn from many psychological principles. This I will leave to the experts. But I would like to share some of my own tips and ideas. They may help, but if these are not for you then all it means is that you will find your own way when you are ready. 

My first tip is keeping a journal. Everything that pops in your head, write it down. Don't over analyse it, don't try to write so it's grammatically correct or as an essay that needs marking. It is just the raw emotions you are feeling at that time. When you have done this walk away. Don't keep reading it. Just close down your tablet or computer or put your journal somewhere and go do something else, go for a walk, watch some TV, whatever works for you. Then you can go back the next day and look at what you wrote and see if you can recognise the difference between any actual facts you have included and what are the emotions and thoughts that you have superimposed over those facts. This does help, because it can help to take the emotions down from a threat to realising they are just your own musings. 

The next, which is a biggie for me is do not use a search engine to find your answers!! There are some brilliant organisations out there who will give you fact based answers. Such as the British Heart Foundation, or forums where you can get the support you need like Healthunlocked which covers an array of health conditions. 

This brings to mind a bit of a funny story from a few years ago when I worked in an office that had a communal kitchen. I was part of a small team, and luckily we were a group who all got along well. We used to bring in goodies and sweets to share and we kept them in a small box marked with our names in one of the many cupboards in the communal kitchen. We noticed over time that our “stash” seemed to go down very quickly and couldn't understand why until we found a colleague from another department helping himself to not just an odd goodie (which we would not have minded at all) but handfuls at a time. So we removed the box and the next time we sat in the kitchen area and our colleague came in we started talking about how it was a shame that we had to throw out all our sweets as it turns out that if you ate too many of them they had a mild laxative effect!! Needless to say our colleague steered well clear of our stash in the future.

But it does go to show how the imagination can run away with you once the tiniest seed is planted.

Thanks for reading and a virtual hug to you all

I will have a new post soon ☺️