Hauling Mental Illness Safely

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Towing a 50’ utility pole on a pole trailer with a 30,000 pound line truck through downtown Atlanta without hitting anything is about as difficult as navigating daily life with depression and anxiety. Both require four essential elements to safely get anywhere. They are: awareness, skills, knowledge, and spotters. Let’s dive into each one.

Awareness

We all go on autopilot at some point while driving, and we do the same throughout the course of our day. It doesn’t take much mental effort to repeat the same routes to work, and it’s just as easy to remain in negative thought patterns and use poor coping mechanisms. Accidents happen because it is so easy to slip into autopilot mode. This is as true in daily life as it is with our commute. How then, can we buttress ourselves from slipping?

One of the most effective methods for driving awareness was taught to me by my father: “Always look for an out,” he said. Easiest when there is an open shoulder or wide lanes, much tougher in the left lane of the highway next to the concrete median and a semi right next to you. Looking for an out keeps me engaged in the present. Yes, I want to get to my destination, but that will only occur if I drive safely in each moment.

I also carve out places I can bail with my mental illness. At the USA Lacrosse Convention in Baltimore, MD earlier this year, I identified quiet corners or the closest bathroom where I could be alone. Time and space for breathing exercises and a brief meditation works wonders on my mood.

Skills

Prepare yourself, I’m about to dump a bunch of DBT skills (with links!) on you. When I teach these thinking skills to student-athletes, they are often stunned. “Mr. Corsetti, this all sounds like common sense!” I agree with them, but since these skills are assumed to be either ingrained in us or expected to be learned along the way — no one explicitly teaches them. So theorizing psychiatrists and psychologists came up with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Willingness and Half-Smile - “a promise that you will take on whatever comes with grace.”

Radical Acceptance & Turning the Mind - “it is what it is.”

Alternate Rebellion - “nondestructive ways to express rebellion.”

To earn my Commercial Drivers License I spent weeks learning backing skills. Now I can back a trailer, alley dock it into a weird spot, and parallel park the thing without knocking over mailboxes. None of these skills came naturally, but with an experienced instructor and diligent practice, I got good.

Knowledge

To gain a license to operate a commercial vehicle you take an exam. Part of it includes inspecting several aspects of the vehicle: approach and engine, fuel door, trailer, cab, and air-brakes. I also do an inspection every morning on my bucket or line truck. I’m looking for fluid leaks, cracks or missing pieces in the spring brakes, fan belts that are loose, and really anything that appears out of place. Stuff you want to discover before you’re hauling a utility pole down I-75 at 60mph.

Knowledge of my vehicle’s current state is invaluable to properly operating it. Same applies to myself. I spend time each morning inventorying my body and mind, my “vehicle” if you will, for the day. Better to identify potential problems and take corrective action before I’m moving around. I use the following apps to check-in with me:

Stoic - journaling

Daylio - mood tracking

Headspace - meditation

Spotters

Moving backward is ALWAYS more dangerous than moving forward. Even more so when backing a trailer in a commercial vehicle. There are blind spots galore, and you can get so focused on putting the trailer where you want it that you can lose awareness of parts of the vehicle. This is why crews expand awareness with other crew members when backing vehicles. My spotter can see all the areas I cannot, and he can hold me up if an unexpected obstruction happens. A school bus driving down the block, a couple running, a biker turning the corner — all sorts of things can happen that the driver simply cannot see. So a spotter is employed to mitigate problems because it is impossible to expect the driver to be omniscient.

I also employ spotters in my life because I don’t always notice my depression or my anxiety coming around the corner. I gave my family and friends my tells: not answering my phone, isolating, cancelling plans, and staying in bed are the most obvious ones that others can notice, but that I tend to not realize I’m doing. I give them full permission to tell me when my behaviors indicate that my mind is running away from itself, and then I can pause to take corrective action.

With life spotters I increase my safety when life gets more perilous.

Mental Agility workshops are my distillation of several therapeutic modalities, biology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy to give students and professionals more tools to deal with the inevitabilities of life. I’m excited to travel to the following cities to speak to people about how they can think more clearly amid stress and uncertainty:

  • 2/26-2/27 - Columbus, OH

  • 3/5-3/6 - Cleveland, OH

  • 3/20 - Athens, GA

  • 4/2-4/3 - Cincinnati, OH