How One Word Is Changing My Relationship With Mental Health

Researched and Written by Katy Wicks - Happy Citta Founder

The word is experiment.

I first encountered it in the context of mental health while studying counselling and CBT, where experiments are often the little tasks people try between sessions. You take a thought, belief or prediction out into everyday life and see whether it holds up. Nobody has to hand you a more positive belief and expect you to accept it on trust. You get to gather some evidence of your own.

At the time of studying I thought little of it, just terminology, therapy jargon that served the minor purpose of justifying homework.

Since then, the word has started to mean something more personal to me. I have found myself using it as a way of approaching my own mental health. It feels far less demanding to ask, "What happens if I try something different?" than to decide I need to make any significant changes.

A test

The phrase most commonly used in CBT is behavioural experiment. It sounds a bit clinical for something that takes place in the untidy reality of an ordinary day, although the principle itself is straightforward.

As an example, if I believe that speaking honestly in a meeting will make everyone think I am difficult, I could spend a long time tracing where that belief came from, questioning how logical it is and trying to replace it with something more balanced. That might be useful. At some point, however, I could also contribute one honest, respectfully expressed opinion and see what actually happens.

I might write down my prediction beforehand and compare it with the reality afterwards. Maybe a few people disagree with my outlandish (probably minor) suggestion, but the meeting carries on. Somebody else may be relieved that I said it. Maybe it is as uncomfortable as I expected, yet still nowhere near the disaster I had pictured.

One meeting would hardly prove anything conclusively, but it would give me something real to work with.

This is what appeals to me. I am testing the belief, rather than sitting an exam in how well I can manage my mental health. Whatever happens, I come away knowing something I did not know for certain before.

Why the word matters

Change can be a heavy word. Even when it describes something we want, it can sound permanent. It feels like a commitment to a new way of thinking or behaving before we have any idea how that will feel. A collection of familiar pressures can soon creep in. But an experiment feels smaller. I can try something without first having to believe in it, and I am free to look at the result before deciding whether I want to continue.

I have begun to realise how easily the things intended to help us can become new ways of judging ourselves. Apparently, we can now be bad at meditating, inconsistent at journalling or unable to relax correctly.

We can berate ourselves for forgetting a breathing technique or for having a relationship with someone that doesn't conform to societal expectations.

Calling these things an experiment takes some of that pressure away. Instead of measuring success by whether my life can now be considered complete and successful, I can pay attention to just what I noticed and learn from it.

Sometimes a technique helps. Sometimes it works beautifully on Tuesday and irritates me by Thursday and sometime it does absolutely nothing. That is all worth knowing.

Curiosity creates a little space

There is another reason I am increasingly drawn to this language. Curiosity seems to create a small gap between me and whatever my mind happens to be doing.

When I am caught inside an anxious thought, it doesn't introduce itself as one possible interpretation of events. Anxiety often decides it is factual information.

This will be a disaster. I will not cope.

This means my attention usually goes straight to the danger, but experimenting with my anxious thoughts can be a curious way to downgrade that danger.

An experiment leaves the answer open. It gives me a way to take a thought seriously enough to examine it without immediately organising my behaviour around it. Even that small change of position, from being entirely wrapped up in the thought to also being interested in it, can reveal things that are hard to see from the inside.

We are experimenting already

Many of us conduct small experiments with our mental health without giving them that name. We cancel an arrangement and see whether an evening at home helps. We go for a walk in the hope that moving our body might shift our mood. We put the phone down, talk to somebody, postpone the email or finally send it after three days of thinking about it.

The trouble is that we do not always treat the outcome as useful information. If the walk or the night in fails to help, it can feel as though nothing will.

Choosing my own experiment

While studying counselling and CBT, I tended to think about experiments in relation to clients. They were ways of helping somebody test a belief, interrupt a familiar pattern or discover options they had not previously considered. More recently, I have started thinking about what it means to choose one for myself.

The experiment occupying me at the moment concerns anxiety.

Next week, I will tell you all about that and what I've learned!