Friday 23 September 2011

bees in my head


Do you ever have bees in your head?  Do you ever feel like your thoughts keep spinning round and round – buzzing like bees – and it’s hard to stop the merry-go-round?   Do your bees keep you awake at night?

This happens to me sometimes.  Am I the only one who experiences this?  I bet I’m not.

Ways of trying to calm the bees
Short of blasting the inside of my head with bee-killing spray, I try the following things - some of which are less successful than others:
  • Think things through.  This can cause me to go quiet and a bit withdrawn. 
  • Talk things over with Meyles.  He’s a very good listener and understander – provided he doesn’t try to do the blokey thing of problem-solving on my behalf!  (I need to find my own solutions strangely enough.)
  • Get focused on eating well, sleeping and exercising regularly to help keep tiredness minimised.
  • Hold on and wait for things to pass.
Emotional involvement
Some thoughts are unpleasant and when they cycle through my brain for long enough, I can have an equally unpleasant emotional reaction.  At this point I become aware that my emotional response is not necessarily equivalent to whatever the heck the bees are buzzing about.  I have to be really careful not to act on my emotional response, because when the bees clear and the mind stops spinning, the elements will align very differently.

A new skill
Allowing my thoughts to go over and over the same things will only wear a path ever deeper like wheel ruts being used over and over.  So I try this:
  • Acknowledge what my bees are buzzing around about
  • Acknowledge my emotion and give myself permission to feel whatever I need to
  • If there’s something pro-active I choose to do about the situation, decide if/how I will do it
  • Remind myself that when it comes to my thoughts, they are like a radio that never stop playing.  And although I can operate the ‘volume’ switch, I don’t have access to an ‘on/off’ switch
  • Be careful not to act on unpleasant emotion, as it could lead to regret. Better to wait till the bees stop buzzing
  • Give myself time to come to a point of acceptance, if I need to
  • Become interested in something else – read a book, share a meal with friends
My thoughts are mine, but they are not necessarily who I am

Got any good strategies for calming bees?  What are they?  Feel free to contribute and comment if you want.


4 comments:

  1. Great blog! I sometimes write my thoughts and brainstorm about it. I find the creative process of 'dumping' all the buzzing on paper works for me.

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  2. Hi Anonymous. Good tip. The 'brain dump' works for me too - both verbally or in written form. You have to sometimes just get it out of your head, don't you!

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  3. blogging tends to deal with my bees. either writing in my own (i have two) or commenting on others. i think it gets the stuff out, but also is a creative release.

    the other thing i do is get busy. mostly my bees are noisiest when i have a big task looming or am feeling a bit overwhelmed by daily chores. i just have to GET ON with it and the bees start to subside.

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  4. Hi Susan. Thanks for your comment. I fully know what you mean re blogging being helpful with calming the bees. And I think we must be very alike, because it's sitting around thinking thinking thinking that causes the bees to go crazy! Yes, got to get on with it. Well said.

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