What is hopelessness? Simply, it is a loss of hope and optimism, and a failure of belief that the future will be brighter and better. Hopelessness takes your energy and trashes it. It contributes to and even defines depression to a great extent. When you’re feeling hopeless, that’s often a point at which you give up trying to do anything, and it all gets worse. Sound familiar?
Life in general is pretty stressful. We’ve all got a giant list of “shoulds” in our heads already, about family, romantic partners, children, work, religious and social commitments, and a myriad of other things. We’ve got bedrooms to paint, dinners to make, children to shuttle around, bosses to satisfy, cars to wash, craft projects to complete, vacations to plan, and chin hairs to pluck! My goodness, we are busy! The list is endless.
Add PCOS to all of that, with the reminders about proper eating, exercise, supplementation, fertility enhancement techniques, stress reduction, and everything else, and you’ve got a big old heap of overwhelm festering in your brain. That’s your brain, by the way, that’s already over-taxed by the hormonal imbalances caused by PCOS – so it’s a double whammy. You may already be feeling sluggish and lethargic mentally, and now there’s even more you’re supposed to read, understand, absorb, interpret, and apply. And it’s feeling like you can’t possibly master this condition, or ever really have a perfect plan (or even a half-way decent plan that’s effective) for managing it.
I want you to know that PCOS doesn’t just feel overwhelming, stressful, and depressing – it actually is overwhelming, stressful, and depressing. It’s entirely normal to get overwhelmed by it, be angry at it, ignore it, hate it and everything associated with it, and just want to wake up and find that it’s disappeared. It’s also normal to be bored, irritated, and not want to cope at all. And it’s normal to struggle with it, find some peace and balance, and then struggle some more.
In the struggle, you may find a place to focus on that actually has some positive aspects to it, and that will allow you to shift your attitude, and shift out of hopelessness. Your mind is a powerful thing, and a source for positive thoughts as well as negative ones. It’s pretty clear that focusing on negative thoughts produces more negative thinking – but the same is true of positive thoughts. That’s why it’s often recommended to focus on what’s good in your life, as a way of starting the shift toward the positive. In support of that concept, next week’s “Mental Health Monday” post will be about the upside of PCOS.
Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders and chronic illnesses.
If you would like to learn more about Dr. HOUSE or her practice, or invite her to speak at your event, please visit her website at http://www.drhousemd.com/, or e-mail her at Gretchen@drhousemd.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd