Hello Bad Wolf
My head is too full. It’s ready to burst. To pop right off my head. Then I really would be Headless Greg.
There are way too many thoughts in my head. They have become so tightly packed that I can’t view each one on its own. I can’t even begin to sort through them, to organise them, to make any sense whatsoever of them.
Not only do my thoughts seem to have multiplied, but they have inflated, too. Annoyingly, only the negative ones have gotten larger; enormous worries were tiny just yesterday. They are blocking my view of all the goodness that must still be in there somewhere.
This overfilled head is weighing me down. Lugging it around is making me feel tired and irritable.
In other words: today I am having a bad mental health day.
When the computer inside my head overheats, I know how to perform the maintenance required to cool it back down. It’s not quite as easy as switching it off and on again, but the solutions can be surprisingly simple.
The most basic self-care techniques can often be the most effective. Going for a walk, getting some rest, having a conversation with a good friend, or a spot of journaling can do you the world of good. There is a reason these recommendations have become cliché. For me, at least, they help to deflate and release some of those overcrowded thoughts in my mind.
To stretch the computer analogy a little further, sometimes the mouse needs to spin its rainbow wheel for a few seconds, and on other occasions, a full-blown reboot is necessary. The first step is always identifying the issue.
Whether it’s a teeny tiny blip or a big, scare one, when your mental health goes off track, you have to acknowledge that something is wrong and permit yourself to seek out the help you need. I know this is true, but recently, self-acceptance is the step I have been struggling with the most.
“When the scale of my thoughts is off-kilter, the anxious voice shouts over the logic.”
Just over a year ago, I moved from my hometown of Glasgow to Birmingham. Improving my mental health - getting into better habits and overcoming anxieties - was one of a long list of post-move goals. Building a happier, healthier life was the overarching aim - and I’m happy to say that, broadly speaking, I achieved it. I don’t want to sound too much like a TikTok lyric (I think I like this little life) but I really do love the life I have built for myself.
I’ve been on much better terms with my brain since I relocated, but we still fall out from time to time. Ever since moving, I feel oddly guilty whenever I have even a fleeting moment of poor mental health. The negative thoughts aren’t just big, they are loud.
Stop being so ungrateful. You chose to move here - you can’t be sad. If living here doesn’t make you happy, what will?
Logically, I know this is nonsense. I can be having a bad day but still be happy overall. No matter where I live, I am still entitled to feel how I feel.
However, when the scale of my thoughts is off-kilter, that anxious voice manages to shout above the logic. It makes me hesitant to admit that there is anything wrong, to myself or anyone else, because I don’t want to seem ungrateful.
On days like today, when I don’t feel quite right, I find it helpful to read other people’s mental health stories to remind myself how common it is to be confused by your own brain.
This time around, I’ve read a few stories centring around the idea of the bad wolf. To me, the term bad wolf relates to the David Tenant and Billie Piper era of Doctor Who (if you know, you know), however it is also part of a famous parable Two Wolves, the story of a grandfather teaching his grandson about an inner battle.
Basically, inside us all there is a bad wolf and a good wolf - or a black wolf and a white wolf, depending on who is telling the story. The bad wolf represents negative thoughts while the good wolf represents positive ones. It can be tempting to only pay attention to the good wolf, but that will only lead to the bad one to become hungry and vicious.
The key lesson from the parable is that you have to pay attention to the bad wolf to keep it at bay; you have to acknowledge your negative thoughts in order to release them.
I need to look my bad word directly in the eye. To have a gentle yet firm word with it.
I woke up to the weight of you lying heavy on my chest. You’ve followed me around all day, distracting me. I know you’ll be back, but at least for now, please give me peace.
When I was younger, I used to be convinced that the bad wolf would never leave me alone. It visits me much less often than it has done in the past, but still knows where I live. The wolf would find me at any postcode on the planet. It would follow me to the moon and back.
Wherever I moved to, I’d still have days when I struggled with my mental health. It’s due to brain chemistry not a lack of gratitude.
“I used to be convinced that the bad wolf would never leave me alone.”
This is the same brain I had growing up in Glasgow, having never heard of ‘mental health’. It’s the same one I had when I started working on my anxiety while in Barcelona with two dear, equally anxious friends. It’s the brain I brought with me to Dundee when I moved there to study, and to embrace my queerness and creativity as a form of therapy.
You take the same brain with you wherever you go. And that’s not a bad thing. While you might sometimes wish you could trade your brain in for a newer model which is less prone to malfunctioning, there is an upside to being stuck with the one you’ve got. The longer you live with it, the more you get to know it. Each day, whether good or bad, up or down, you can learn a little bit more about how your brain works.
I learn new things about my brain all the time. About what makes it feel so heavy and how to lighten the load, what overwhelms it and what soothes it. While this doesn’t stop the bad wolf from visiting, it makes me feel calmer when I realise it has arrived.
My brain and I will become friends again. My head will empty. The bad wolf will leave.