What to expect when your brain wants to kill you excerpt from chapter: STRATEGIES

All of the following are effective in some shape or form, but for them to be truly beneficial, you must make those that resonate with you part of your daily routine.  They must be deeply integrated so that when you need support, a pause or a break, or even just a distraction to get over a crisis, big or small, you will instinctively choose the right strategy for you at that moment.  Many of these I don’t embrace that tightly.  I hope listing as many as I can remember will give someone else an option they never considered.

Let’s start with ice.  Before I experienced modern psychotherapy, I equated Psychiatric Hospitals with 19th and 20th Century Insane Asylums and their notoriously harsh treatment of patients.  I have a vivid image in my head of a patient screaming and crying as they were forcibly put into an ice bath and restrained in place.  It was a technique used regularly as much as a punishment as a treatment.  As it turns out, though, ice baths significantly affect a patient’s physiology.  They are routinely used by athletes to reduce muscle soreness and inflammation and to enhance recovery.  For patients, if you put your face in ice water and hold your breath, it triggers the dive reflex, slows the heart rate, calms the nerves and makes your body conserve oxygen. 

I don’t like being cold.  The only ice I want is in a drink, so the idea of an ice bath is abhorrent.  Nevertheless, I’ve always been open to trying different strategies at least once, so one day, when I was agitated, I tried it.  I filled a large bowl with water and a couple handfuls of ice.  I then bobbed for apples, or in this case, ice cubes.  As expected, it was not pleasant.  Perhaps it would have been refreshing if it had been a hot day.  As it was, it immediately distracted my thoughts.  Bracing.  As a strategy, it was effective, but as a viable option, I would have to pass.  There was too much involved in setting it up.  When I told my Pdoc I tried it, he was actually surprised.  He rarely had patients act on his suggestions.  He was more inclined to trust medication, especially PRNs, in such situations.  I won’t dismiss this strategy out of hand, but if I ever use it again, it will be in desperation.  

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