Rowan Aderyn

As part of my ongoing effort to recover my mental health and focus on the positive lessons life gave me, I was journaling the other day and reflecting how I felt I was in a tail spin hurtling downwards. My emotions absolutely out of control. As I wrote I remembered the occasions i was actually in a tail spin flying gliders. Sometimes they would get you to practice loosing control so that you could learn to recover the aircraft. You would be merrily flying through the air and the instructor would ask you to lift your nose up and to keeping lifting. One minute you would point straight up into the clouds the next you would feel all the energy fall away, the nose would start dipping back towards the earth and you would find yourself spiralling downwards. Reflecting on that lesson I could easily see the parallels to what I was feeling now.

Here are the lessons I chose to apply…

Practice

The first reflection was simply how we would practice these drills in a safe controlled way so that when it happened unexpectedly we would be able to react calmly and regain control.

This is so relevant to our mental health. If we don’t practice the well being tools regularly then when we need them it is almost impossible to utilise them. Luckily I have a huge tool box full of an arsenal of methods to recover. Sure some are better practiced than others but none of them are new to me. That filled me with a little more confidence I can overcome my current depressed state.

Don’t fight it

One of the key lessons when you find yourself in a glider spiralling down is don’t fight it. If you try to fight it, or over correct you will absolutely find yourself in a worse situation than before.

I think I have been fighting too hard against my current set of feelings. I have been trying to do two things, give them space and force myself almost to feel them, or trying separately to force positive feelings into the space and create a better vibe. I think this has created a huge tension and battle. I need to let myself go with the flow a little. If I feel my emotions dipping I shouldn’t try to force the positive feelings to replace them, nor should I try and force myself to sit with the negative feelings I have.

Trust

The final lesson they taught you and possibly the most powerful for me right now. The aircraft will always want to right itself. When you practised these manoeuvres enough you could start to feel the aircraft wanting to correct itself. All you had to do was nudge it in the direction it wanted to go and sure enough it would level out.

This was a huge epiphany to me. I had been fighting so hard to get back to normal but if I just relaxed a little and stepped back from it all. Sure enough I could feel myself wanting to flow to my usual state. I just need to trust myself to right this plane.

---

These lessons alone wont be a miracle fix but they help. And I am so clinging to that final one I have got this.