Take a scroll through social media’s mental health offerings, and you’ll see advice centered around how to control your thinking, likely inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy’s ascent to domination in the therapy world. But, there’s a distinction worth noting: we cannot control our thoughts. Yes, we can reframe our thoughts and test cognitive distortions—an invaluable practice—but the original thought is out of our purview.
Naturally, a rec league softball game had me pondering this theme last week, where my thoughts were intrusive:
“You’re going to turn an ankle”
“You’re going to strike out next time you’re up at the plate”
“You’re going to let the whole team down”
A state anything but unfamiliar—having written about it before—I found myself building upon the last outfield epiphany, wondering, “I don’t want to think these things, but they keep appearing despite my best efforts. I have zero control over the entry of these thoughts. So… do I care what they say? Do they even matter? They’re random firings of neurons.” That little sidebar freed the game up, and an awesome night of hits, errors, plays, and outs ensued. Those thoughts didn’t hold weight, only background buzz (could be called anxiety) attempting to strong-arm vulnerability, prevent embarrassment, and foster perfection.
The pattern reminded me of intern year, where intrusive thoughts ran my life. When I say intrusive thoughts, I mean repeated, horrible, and twisted thoughts. When they’d enter my mind, I took it as an indictment of my virtue, and of course tried to make them submit. Adjoined twins fighting each other for control, it was a recipe to tear yourself apart. Addicted to control, I’d met a game I couldn’t win—living in a new place (California), working with new people, and trying to save patients I couldn’t always help. Much was uncontrollable.
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After a few years of turmoil, my ego surrendered which led me to therapy, where I came to terms with something long denied: I don’t control much of my fate. It’s not all up to me.
Once understood, I’ve owned what I can and improved in beating myself up for mistakes—a catalyst for this new chapter. I deal with internal demons of ridicule and get caught in thought spirals, but I remind myself of my limitations: I am not omnipotent, I make mistakes.
On the Instagram account Daily Stoic (managed by author Ryan Holiday), he nails it:
Is the opposite of anxiety humility? I believe it’s close. Humility is relinquishment. Humility is a no when you should say yes. Humility isn’t one-sided surrender; its counterpart is part radical responsibility of what we do control.
Across my path into medical school and residency, then out, humility has been my guide. To get where I hope to go and build a life loved, I must be committed to what’s within my domain and release what is not. I am not omnipotent. I can not make everyone happy. I cannot uphold a version of myself that’s not me without paying the costs.
This has required a lot of no’s which has opened outright yes’s. It’s created many difficult, straining decisions that I continue to learn from, but from each my roots grow deeper into the ground beneath my feet, helping me weather mistakes; a process I wish to humbly repeat for the rest of my life.
A process I’ve come to term full purview living.
Anxiety vs humility — that’s an opposite pair I had not considered. I think there’s something to it, but maybe not the whole story because the relationship doesn’t go in the other direction. Would you say that the opposite of humble is … anxious? Probably not.
Agreed. There’s something to the connection but not full-on chirality. Also depends on how we term anxiety, which is pretty difficult to peg.