How to rebuild your bubble

Hi,

I thought it could be interesting to share experiences and personal techniques on how to rebuild one's bubble when needed.

I feel that mine is fragile for the time being. I try to recover and have some usual techniques, but would be interested exchanging experiences.

It can be very very little things. For example : something very important for me is to have good shoes. So I feel more grounded and more comfortable.

Have you something to share on that topic? Most interesting to me is whatever thing you have experienced yourself .

I'm not really sure what you mean. It sounds a bit like how I started wearing leather jeans again a couple of years ago. It's a bit of a midlife crisis thing. I met a girl that was half my age and it didn't work out but it made me feel like dressing and growing my hair in an old familiar style. You can maybe call it rebuilding my bubble because it's a bit like rebuilding my identity or reverting to type and being a bit non-conformist. I also do things like listening to old music that I identify with, rather than just like. A lot of it's about nostalgia for me. I don't really feel involved in what's going on in the world right now and maybe I can't take the pace of modern life, so I opt out from that and live in my own little bubble.

Don't know if that's the sort of thing you meant.

I'm also unclear on the meaning. Can you explain what you mean by our 'bubble' and/or give an example of when our bubble needs rebuilding? Thanks

It's nice answer. It's not exactly what i was thinking about, though.

I thought of something more short in time. For instance : you walk in the street, someone shoves you, then you are upset for some time and maybe you take time to rebuild your bubble. Have you some techniques to recover?

The shoes were a more long term example. For me, walking with good shoes (and nice places) is a nice way to rebuild my bubble. While with bad ones it could be worse

It can be about some little incident, it can be more in general how to recover your internal security.


(sorry for not being very clear, and for mistakes in english)


Edit : Monday_Sunshine, I hadn't seen your question. Do you see better what I meant?

I think the healthiest thing i do is go to the gym. Running especially helps reduce my anxiety and clear my head, and overall I just feel good after going to the gym. The less healthy technique I use is to isolate myself for a while and probably just watch a lot of TV as a way to try and occupy my mind with something else because when something embarrassing happens to me I tend to get obsessive about it.

That's nice! i read your advice and instead of surfing on internet I went for a walk and then a did a little gym. I already feel a little better.

Weird is that washing dishes gave me some relief today. While usually i don't like it much. Just having something easy done, and stop thinking...

Yup! Washing the dishes does it for me too. Like you said, any busy work that shuts your brain off for a while helps. Dishes, vacuuming, cleaning etc. Also doing something that feels productive Sorry if something bubble bursting happened to you recently Philonoe, but if so I hope you feel better soon!

I think that doing yoga or meditation can help in a lot of ways. It's supposed to help you to discipline your mind and to break out of bad habits and negative thought patterns. I was able to come off the medication that I was on after doing meditation for a few months and that was years ago. It was just meditation but these people took it really seriously and wouldn't let children do it or some woman that was part of the group that had some sort of mental health problem. Then they decided that you couldn't do it if you hadn't been totally clean and sober for a year. So, that was the end of that with them.

Hi Philonoe,

If I'm understanding correctly (your English is most excellent BTW), this is what I do sometimes. Like in a crowded store if people are thoughtlessly blocking the aisle just texting or something and I'm getting frustrated and tense. Or getting cut off in traffic, rudeness, stuff like that. The first thing I do is take a couple slow deep breaths, tell myself "relax" and relax my muscles as much as I can (without laying down of course!). It's called "cued relaxation," and is something that can happen in just a few seconds with practice.

Then I change my focus. For example in the store situation I'll choose a color, let's say red...and while walking around I'll try notice anything that's red (peoples' clothes, labels, food, whatever). Just to temporarily distract me from those lingering negative thoughts. In an outdoor situation instead of a color I like to change my focus (just notice, really) to any nature around me.

I'd love to hear about your 'usual techniques' as well. The shoe-thing helping with grounding is way cool! I so agree about the behavior thing too, especially relevant for longer-term things for me. If I'm getting stuck in negative thoughts or emotions, just changing the behavior seems to break that cycle. Actually DO something instead of thinking too much!

For the first time in my life, I've been able to blame unpleasant happenings on other people rather than just blaming myself all the time automatically. This has helped a lot. I second the ideas of exercise and meditation. Exercise is almost a miracle drug for so many things. I don't do actual meditation, but just my nightly guided meditation to get to sleep helps quite a bit.

The guided meditations I find on the internet have areas such as anxiety, self-esteem etc. that they address. I'm wondering if anybody has found that it helps to play some of the guided meditations that state "you're a worthwhile person" etc.? With the one I use, the voice is very kindly and it makes me feel better even though I know the person speaking doesn't know me whatsoever.