I read a post recently that referred to anxiety as a demon, and I often read blogs that say if you personalise a disorder it no longer becomes as scary.
So, you guessed it, I named my anxiety, Demon Dave.
Now Demon Dave has been in my head for a very long time, except he's never had a personality, he's always just been something I argued with. And this is not to be confused with thinking I'm hearing voices or having a severe episode of Schizophrenia, I'm not (I don't have that mental illness).
But I have realised that when I am having conversations in my head (which happens alll the time), without even realising it, and it's going over and over again, never making a decision, arguing, "this is what you should have said", "this is what you should say", "you're not good enough" etc etc, now I can just stop myself and say "shut up Dave" and then he goes away.
I have been trying this for the last week now and I can honestly say, alongside the "grounding method", this is one of the best techniques I've found to date. I have felt calmer, less preoccupied and at peace with my thoughts.
I have spent my life either not realising I could control my thoughts, or trying to just block them out. In fact, this is actually one of the worst things you can do.
I've learnt that actually you should acknowledge the thought and then send it on it's way, rather than allowing it to snowball and consume you. This is actually where 'Bouncy Ball Thoughts' came from - my thoughts just spiralled and snowballed and bounced off the wall without me being able to grab hold of any of them.
Now, with the help of coping mechanisms from my counsellor and mental health nurse, I am already finding myself in a much more peaceful place in my head.
I still struggle with concentration and terrible procrastination, and I'm yet to find the answer to this, but I want to talk about Demon Dave and what works for me - because if you can name your 'head voice' you may find it works for you too.
For example, I am often told that journaling helps to control your thoughts as you can braindump - and that absolutely does work - it's one of the reasons I created this website. However, where I was becoming unstuck and frustrated was when I couldn't journal; driving, the shower, cooking, walking the dogs etc - the times when your thoughts go cray cray and you've got nowhere to put them.
You also have to be careful that you don't remove ALL your thoughts, I did go through a process of doing this and found myself forgetting what I wanted to say or what I needed to do. So, you need to acknowledge the important thoughts - i.e "make sure you remind X to let the dogs out", BUT, when you have those obsessive, unnecessary, non-factual thoughts in your head it is in fact your 'head voice' talking, and you can remove them.
When this happens to me, which can be regularly, I now just say "Ok Dave, I hear ya, but please bugger off, it's not important" and the thought goes instantly. If I find myself catastrophizing, I do the same, "Look Dave, it's obvious he hasn't text because he's busy, not because he's died in a car accident, stop tricking me", and again, thought disappears, I often chuckle to myself because I'm talking (in my head) to an imaginary Demon called Dave, but then that also diffusing what has the potential to create bad emotions and irrational reactions.
I appreciate if you tell people this, it may make you sound a little crazy, but I promise you it works.
Name your demon and talk to him/her instead.
And if you want to take it a step further you can even give your demon a body. Mine is a dog. My friend sent me something recently from Mark Manson on Instagram about our emotions being like a dog inside our head and it totally made sense to me.
From that moment on, Demon Dave, became a Dog.
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