Why you shouldn't be searching for a new you in the new year
Change is overrated – especially when you've worked really hard to gain some equilibrium
Photo by Sandra Grünewald for Unsplash
MARK: This is the time of year when a lot of us do some life-stocktaking. Where am I? Could I be happier? What do I need to do to be happier?
RHYS: I'm not a big believer in resolutions. Back when I lived at home with Mum, I had a ton! I wanted my own place for starters, a different job, more money, the usual stuff.
Now, not so much. It's taken me about two years to finally be comfortable in my own skin – and surroundings, because I am now in my own home.
So, now I don't want to do anything different to mess with that dynamic. I've never been happier than I am now with how things are. That’s not to say that different things affect my mood. But I know how to recognise when and why that’s happening.
MARK: You ‘don't want to do anything different to mess with that dynamic’: super interesting, that. The message we’re all bombarded with – ESPECIALLY at this time of year – is all about change: why we need to change and what we need to do to change.
I see with you – and other friends who have suffered with depression and anxiety – that you really value equilibrium: the state, and feeling, of being balanced.
Equilibrium is not valued anywhere near enough. We are always being nagged to change our appearance, change our outlook, shake things up: NOT to recognise when you are in a good place and strive to keep it that way.
But back to the new year self-review. Is that the same for people with anxiety – or is this a continual process of self-evaluation and self-challenge?
RHYS: I'm constantly self-evaluating anyway, so it's no different to how I feel throughout the year. Unlike most, I don't celebrate New Year – heck, I barely celebrate Christmas. So I'm perfectly happy just spending the evenings by myself as I like my own company. But then I find myself wondering, should I make more of an effort to go out, reach out to the friends that I should be talking to more – people that I miss?’
I've always got someone to talk to, though. If I didn't that would be a different story.
MARK: Well, if they’re true friends they’ll understand why they see you less than they’d like. It seems to be one of the benefits of getting older, by the way: your friendships can survive a gap of months and even years when you don’t see each other. That’s not to say that going out or even just picking up the phone is ever wasted.
Friendships are very good for you. The journal, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, goes even further:
Friendship is the single most important factor influencing our health, well-being and happiness.
Then the researchers add a ‘but…’:
Creating and maintaining friendships is, however, extremely costly, in terms of both the time that has to be invested and the cognitive mechanisms that underpin them.
Friends, but how are their cognitive mechanisms holding up? Photo by Donovan Grabowski on Unsplash
More about landmarks…
RHYS: Anyone who has anxiety/depression counts the end of each day, and the beginning of another as an absolute win. You've gotten through the day and made it to the next one, so celebrating a new year pales in comparison. You know you're going to have the same struggles almost every day. So, over the past five to six years, I've struggled every single new year. I always think, ‘Here comes another year of attacks and bullshit’.
MARK: Whoa! That’s quite a thought to begin the new year with.
I guess it means there’s less scope to be disappointed in people…
Out of interest, do you project those feelings onto the world at large? I’ve read before that pessimism and anxiety are linked – in fact, there was a study saying just this only the other day.
I was having a chat with your Grandma about the new year and she was saying ‘wasn’t 2022 a dreadful year?’ And I immediately thought of all the ways it wasn’t. Ukraine was invaded – but fought back heroically and now Putin and other dictators aren’t so cocksure. Democracy was saved in France, Brazil and the USA. The world opened up as the worst of COVID passed. Even UK politics shows signs of becoming sensible again.
But then, I’m naturally an optimist, which can cause its own problems when the real world refuses to match your expectations.
RHYS: One of my favourite bands, Paramore, has a song called For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic. I am exactly that. For the past several years when I’ve had a REALLY shit day, especially an anxious one, I I always say to myself that tomorrow can only be better. One day will be good, the next might be bad. But I can always guarantee the next day after that will be better. So for a pessimist, I’m pretty optimistic!
MARK: On this ‘stocktaking’ question – is it possible to over-analyse yourself and your situation?
RHYS: Absolutely. As mentioned before I'm constantly over-analysing myself. Here are a few examples of what I'm thinking during any normal situation:
* Am I talking enough?
* Should I have made that joke?
* Does my body language make me seem closed off?
It's hard to switch your anxiety brain off – even worse when you get home and you start thinking about the things above. I like to think I'm confident, but that doesn't stop me from overthinking.
MARK: But those feelings are all about being human! Better to suffer from an excess of empathy, an over-regard for other people’s feelings, rather than the opposite. Unless you want a career in politics, that is.
I remember Channel Four did a short segment asking some of their presenters what they regretted in life. One (who happens to be a good friend of mine) simply said ‘everything’. By any accounts, he is a very successful man who has achieved most if not all of his ambitions. Yet he is constantly wishing he’d done things differently.
As I said, it’s called being human.
But someone like that doesn’t have a scrap of social anxiety – which you do.
RHYS: Yes. I sometimes find myself rehearsing for social situations. I think of something interesting that's happened to me lately – just so I have my five minutes of talking/blabbing/ranting prepared. So that's done and out the way, and I can go back to listening. That's only when I really need to send a voice note, normally to my friend Lucy.
Supermarket fun: but not all buys are equally special
Fun fact: on 7th January 2023 I made my first visit of the year to a supermarket. It was busy. And I could feel myself start to have a mild attack leading up to it. I literally could not have been in and out quicker. I found myself out of breath as I was unlocking my bike. As I rode off back home I was literally whispering "what the f**k" repeatedly to myself. Not only was that the first time I had one just for getting groceries, but the first time an attack has ever overcome me so easily and quickly.
I think because I've got a cold at the moment it sort of masks when the anxiety comes on, as the symptoms are more or less identical.
MARK: What techniques can you use to avoid this happening again – or at least make the experience less stressful? I’ve read that some therapists make you imagine in detail what’s the worst thing that could happen (you spill a carton of milk? Your credit card fails and you hold up the queue? A security tag sets off the alarm as you leave?) Does that even remotely work?
RHYS: Making sure your credit card isn’t going to get declined before you walk into the supermarket definitely helps. Breathing exercises work wonders too.
You cannot avoid situations like this unless you want to order groceries online all of your life. I’ve worked in retail, and that helped me a lot dealing with the public. But at work I’m a member of staff, I HAVE to interact, so it’s already a lot easier: barely a thought goes into it.
ANXIETY ROLE MODEL (ARM): Prince Harry?
In case you missed it, this is the cover of the Duke of Sussex’s new book
MARK: In this blog, we like to pay tribute to people who either suffer from anxiety, help us understand the condition better, or both.
But this time, there’s a question mark next to our chosen name.
There are lots of things in Prince Harry’s book and all the media kerfuffle around it that must make his family friends, and indeed the whole nation, desperately sad. This is one of the saddest.
Before all this happened, I’d have said that both brothers deserve equal credit for bringing the issue of mental health into the open.
But now Harry’s book suggests that he was kind of dragooned into having therapy by William and this damaged him in some way. The Palace won’t answer back, but there are plenty of reporters and commentators who will. This report gives the other side.
How you react to Harry depends on who you are and where you are from. If you are not British and under 40, for example, you’re much more likely to sympathise with him.
I’m neither of those things and I think he is now doing real damage to the cause of mental health awareness. He operates under the guise of ‘wellness’: he needs to speak his truth in order to understand what he has been through and become whole again. (Only a cynic would point out that the more he reveals, the more damaging his revelations, the more millions of dollars he makes).
Why is that damaging the cause? First, because he seems to have forgotten that the very things that hurt him so much will also hurt other people. Let’s take just one of many examples. He is ultra-protective of his wife and the slurs against her members of his family and their advisors are apparently made against her. That’s only natural. Yet he is happy to say that he and his brother didn’t want his father to marry his stepmother. It’s hard to think of anything that might cause both Charles and Camilla more distress.
A lot of people, not just royal family members and courtiers, but people with no public profile, are collateral damage in Harry’s headlong charge towards his truth. The problem is, by seeing every experience into an attack on him, he risks the charge of narcissism: because I am so special, whatever I feel matters so much more.
You talked early about how constant self-examination is a fact of life – but also how you work so hard to maintain friendships and respect other people’s feelings. I’d have thought that Harry is the last role model we need.
RHYS: I haven’t read Harry’s book, but I sympathise with him since he distanced himself from the Royal Family. He chose to put his wife and personal life first, which, if I’m ever to be married (at this point at 32 is doubtful) but I would definitely do it too.
MARK: You’ve got plenty of time! But it’s true that the conflicting loyalties towards your partner and your family can be crushingly stressful. I hope as a family we’d make things easy for you when that time comes.
RHYS: Telling his truth was always going to cause some distress, though, and why wouldn’t it? His mother passed away when he was very young, and his father married Camilla, again when he was young. He’s bound to have some issues with that, and perhaps therapy didn’t help and probably brought up more trauma than was needed at the time.
BUT he did speak up, and has had the guts to talk about it, move to another country, write a book about his experience, do a viral interview with Oprah Winfrey which caused a lot of backlash for him and the Royal Family. If I was him during that time I would have been a lot worse off.
So I’d say he definitely deserves the Anxiety Role Model award for this blog.