Mental bandwidth; one’s cognitive and emotional capacity for processing information, making decisions, and dealing with demands. As stated in my “Redefining Normal” post, there are many things in life that eat away at our mental bandwidth and force us to make choices about what we can take on. Because of this, our bandwidth factors greatly in determining the manner in which we respond to life events. It is easy to draw a link between our mental bandwidth and our mental health. Increased anxiety can negatively impact our bandwidth and lead to degraded mental health. Decreased mental bandwidth can lead to even more anxiety and a vicious cycle begins. In today’s post, I want to share some thoughts on mental bandwidth and where I believe my issues with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) began.
As always, please know that I have no medical or psychological training. I am just a person on the internet sharing their experience in hopes that someone will find my content relatable and helpful. If you are suffering with mental health issues, you should always seek professional help in addition to finding solace amongst those who’ve had to deal with similar circumstances.
To determine a potential trigger for what increased my anxiety and caused my issues with OCD, I have to look back to the time period discussed in my “The Day the Switch Flipped” post; this was in the fall prior to COVID 19. A few think my issues began with COVID 19 and that I’m afraid of germs because of the pandemic. This is false; I’m not afraid of germs. I have a history with chronic bronchitis, so I always avoid situations in which there is potential to come into contact with those who are under the weather. The only connection between my issues and COVID 19 is that I discovered that working from home allowed me to better manage my situation. This is also true of my struggle with migraines. Migraines; this is what I find to be the causal link.
My fight with migraines has been prolonged and dramatically derailed everything in my life for about 7 years. The pain and treatment of migraines ate away a ton of my mental bandwidth and increased my anxiety. Day in and day out, pain management was my focus; this left little room for anything else. Complicating matters, I had been misdiagnosed with hypothyroidism. This means it was believed that my thyroid gland was not producing enough hormones to properly regulate my breathing, heart, digestion, and mood. What had I complained about to be diagnosed with hypothyroidism? Fatigue and migraines. I told my doctor that I felt the same after starting the medication and that my migraine frequency had not changed. They said to keep taking it. I got a second opinion. They said keep taking it. I saw an endocrinologist after years of taking hormone replacement medication for my thyroid. They looked at my charts and said I should never have been on the medication and that it is common for family doctors to overprescribe thyroid medications. Looking back, I knew the medicine wasn’t helping me… Why did it take more than 5 years for me to question it further? And what were the downsides of taking a thyroid medication I didn’t need?
When I was tested by the endocrinologist, they said my thyroid numbers were on the high side of the normal range. So, what happens when you’re on the high side? For one, anxiety. Combining this with my natural tendency to overthink was a huge hit to my mental bandwidth. Worse yet, many of the medications prescribed to treat migraines are also prescribed to treat anxiety, depression, and OCD. You would think this would be a good thing, right? Was I not killing two birds with one stone? I suppose you could be blessed and have it work out this way. Unfortunately, as is the case with many drugs, sometimes they can exacerbate the very symptom they’re trying to treat. So, while these drugs, intended for both migraines and anxiety, treated my migraines with some degree of success, they also worsened my anxiety. Adding one final layer to this cocktail, I was also overusing multiple over the counter pain relievers. Essentially, I had a headache every morning and needed to take a pain reliever just to get moving for the day. All of these things are medically linked to OCD. I can’t say that any one of these medications “gave me” OCD; I don’t think it works that way. But I do believe that with what I was experiencing and how it was being treated, my mental bandwidth was being eaten away and with that came unrelenting anxiety and, eventually, OCD.
So, to make this less about me and more helpful for you, what am I really trying to say about mental bandwidth and anxiety? First, we need to recognize that every single one of us has a limited amount of bandwidth with which we can decide how to live our lives. Second, we need to understand which behaviors and experiences are negatively impacting our bandwidth. And third, we have to get that, sometimes, life will dictate how our bandwidth gets used up for us. The danger we all face is that if we do not have enough mental bandwidth to handle what life throws at us, or because we don’t manage our bandwidth with prudence, we will find ourselves facing ever increasing anxiety along with diminished bandwidth and potential. My message, then, is that we need to devise ways to lower our anxiety, increase our mental bandwidth, and leave enough left over to face the unforeseen. If we are able to do this, then we will have better mental health, be able to respond to people and situations in a positive manner, and will find ourselves living happier lives.
This leads me to my next and final post in this series in which I will talk about learning to live again. This means through acceptance of some limitations, but also through the relentless pursuit of freedom from anxiety and OCD. I will share where I’m at now and what moves I’m making for the future.
Thanks for reading, Matt
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The Bean & Seed 
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