“And, good Lord, in this day and age a kid has to have something to get worked up about, skimpy though his material may be. So the emotion that walks like a burglar through our house trying all the doors has found mine the only one unlocked, indeed wide open: for there are no valuables inside.”
I never understood this until now. I was always pretty open with how I felt. I guess to a certain extent I still am. But until now talking about this has felt so, so scary to me.
There are a number of unfortunate truths to my reality. I've been a jerk, a know-it-all, I've backstabbed, I've been two-faced, a flake, a bad friend. I think its fair for a significant period of my life to say I was a pathological liar. I am not a good person. I'm trying to be better, but I still do things that make me go "what the fuck was I thinking?" all the time.
I've been rambling on for a while, not really making a point, mostly avoiding what I want to say. Here it is.
I am depressed. maybe I was depressed. maybe I'm not any more. I honestly am not sure where I am now.
What I do know is this: In February of this year I was suffering from clinical depression. I was also told I a generalized anxiety disorder, I was exhibiting symptoms of obsessive compulsive behaviour, and, most shockingly, I was showing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I really am not ready to talk about what got me to that point, other than to say I had become a person so terrible that I had hated myself into it. Some of it was me, most of it really. Some of it was others. It doesn't matter.
I'm not about to ask for forgiveness, to apologize to everyone I've wronged...I'm still an asshole. I still harbour a great deal of resentment and I still blame other people for my pain. The thing that I need to say now is that SO many things played into me getting out of bed. all of the were important, and I needed them all.
Though chronologically it may not have been the beginning, its easiest to start here: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT is a theory of psychiatry wherein patients are assisted in "retraining" their thought processes to help them avoid circular or negative thinking and allow them to think more rationally. CBT is commonly used with patients suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, crippling phobias, and even depression.
I've been a CBT patient for 9 months. It is hard. I'm still struggling with it. I find it exhausting to have to consciously work at thought processes that are second nature to most. But every now and again I catch myself doing it instinctively, and I know its helping. My Psychiatrist has obviously been a huge player in my life lately, and our process together has been worth every penny to me.
The hardest part about CBT is that your mind has to be ready for it. I know first hand that when you do not get out of bed for an entire day your mind will not be open to new ways of thinking. Your physical self needs help to get there. Depression is like exhaustion - when things get too bad, your mind cannot do it alone. So here the pharmacology piece plays in. I have been on a number of medications - some that helped and some that hindered. Now I am down to two - an anti-depressant, and an anti-anxiety medication with a mild sedative to help me sleep at night. These were the things that helped me get up and out of bed, and to open my mind just wide enough to be able to train it to think differently.
I do believe that mental health is biological. This includes depression and anxiety. I've seen mental illness in others and myself that makes me feel this is true. I do agree with the scientific research that suggests that there is biology to back this up. I know it involves neuron receptors in our brains, and what they do our don't absorb. I know that my medication works to inhibit the reabsorption of serotonin in my brain, which allows me to feel more balanced. I don't know enough about this to make an unbiased decision about its effectiveness, but I can say from my first-hand experience taking an SSRI that I feel better and I struggle on days when I forget to take my medication. This is not to be misconstrued as reliance on a drug. I'm simply just not strong enough yet to cope without it. My CBT counselling helps with that.
For a person in my situation, a short run on an SSRI medication is one year, but most people will continue to take medication for a few years. I've only been settle into a consistent dosage and combination of medications for a couple of months, so I know I've got a long way to go. I don't like being medicated, but I know it helps me and so I plan to stick with it.
Despite medicine being "science", humans don't know everything about it, as is the case with the whole entire world. Part of my reluctance to sharing what I've been through so far is that there is a great deal of backlash against western medicine right now. I'm not going to get into all of that, but this is how I feel from my experience. I know medicating is a risk because I will never fully understand the implications of it. I know its a risk because doctors can't guarantee what will work or won't work or will cause side effects or won't. I took the risk because I was desperate to stop hurting. Its working for me, and so far I haven't had any life threatening side effects. I don't think I could have carried on the way I felt before, so whatever might happen as a result of my decision to take SSRIs has been worth it.
Once these two things got me out of bed, I was able to change other parts of my life to feel better, too. I never would have been able to start down this path if psychiatry and prescription medication hadn't helped me, but now I'm able to further my repair because I'm up and moving.
My Psychiatrist always reminds me during rough patches to feed myself, take care of my base needs.
Sometimes I go get my nails done because it makes me feel good. Being self indulgent is not buddhist but it makes me feel better. I'm okay with that. Doing things to feel better is okay sometimes....just as long as thats not the only thing you do.
I changed the way I eat. I don't eat dairy and grains of any kind primarily, as well as starchy foods and legumes. I don't have sugar or caffeine. I'm not about to preach the way I eat to others. and I did not start eating this way to lose weight. All I can say is that eating like this made me feel less lethargic and stopped me from having adrenaline spikes throughout the day. It works for me so I do it. It probably doesn't work for anyone. The point of this is that eating well is part of base care, and by not stuffing my face full of potato chips even though thats really what I wanted to do I was able to push my self forward a little bit more.
I was able to sleep. Sleep is so important. Anyone who thinks they can function without sleep is not hitting their full potential. sleep deprivation makes you anxious, paranoid, depressed, irrational, illogical, among a litany of other symptoms. I still remember the first time I slept through the whole night. It had been a year and a half. I felt so good. I had a great day the next day. I can handle stress so much better when I'm well-rested. Its not the answer, but I know I can't move forward if I'm not sleeping.
I exercise. I never exercised. I had barely done a thing since high school. Now I run, I take fitness classes, and I am not afraid to jump at the opportunity to do something fun and athletic with others. Part of the reason I hadn't done anything was because of anxiety. I was so afraid of how out of shape I was and embarrassing myself in a class or in front of a friend that it made me avoid exercise even more. I needed the CBT and the medication and everything else to help me deal with my anxiety and feel like I could cope in a situation like a fitness class. It worked, I did it, and now I feel so much more confident in my athletic ability, the way I look, and my own attitude.
spirituality. I don't believe in God so this was a tough one for me. But everyone needs to feed their soul somehow. I may not believe in one higher being, one creator, but I do believe in the universe. Once I was able to accept that things happened in the universe for a reason, my life changed. The thing that made the biggest difference was something someone said to me. I'd had a series of strange events and asked "what sign is the universe trying to send me?" She told me, "whatever that sign is, you will just know. You don't need to search for it, because it will come to you." I just keep thinking about this. My life path will be what I need it to be. It doesn't stop me from wanting to control things, but it gives me just a teeny tiny bit of faith that things might work out alright for me even if I don't have the perfect outfit on every day. Thats what worked for me. I know other people think my ideas are cracked. I'm totally cool with that. The world has had endless wars for religion because we don't all believe the same things, so just find something you do believe in, hold on to it, and allow it to remind you that things are going to be okay.
okay. those are my key players. all of these things lead back to one: no one thing caused me to become bed-ridden for 4 months, and no one thing fixed it. Western medicine didn't solve it, neither did natural medicine. I don't attribute my all issues to GMOs, I also don't think my more natural diet resolved it all either. could have been a factor, but it wasn't the factor.
We just don't know enough about ourselves as humans to say definitively one way or the other what causes mental illness. we do our best but if we had the answer you damn well know things would be a lot different.
I get tired of the preaching and the protest and the right versus wrong arguments about what to do with our put in our bodies because no one really knows for sure. If you have a story of how you have been first-hand affected by something then share that! Our personal accounts are so useful in helping us evolve! but reposting or retweeting the same biased article written by a stranger doesn't.
Share your experience, say how YOU FEEL. at the very least it will help us all become more compassionate. We all experience the world differently and I think if we could each share our stories and be open enough to accept those of others as valid despite whether we agree with them, it might really help us get better.
Or at least help me get better. Because all I want is to get better.
