thirteen things i do to stay okay

Facebook is not a good place to linger. It’s nice to share in people’s joys as they display their highlights reel, but the second thought after joy for them is, ‘but what about me?! Why have I not been in a photo shoot, graduated, got pregnant, made something original, been to europe or thought of something funny to say?” This addiction ends in greater sadness at my own lot. 

Sunshine is an antidepressant

Crying is an anti depressant

Tea is an anti depressant

Antidepressants (the official kind) can be wonderful and terrible, but it is not embarrassing to be on them. Nor is it embarrassing to sit in the office of a psychiatrist and fight back tears while you tell him that you are scared of holding cups in case you drop them. The mind is complex, and it’s ok for it to get sick, just like your body.

If you find a nice medic, don’t move away or let them retire. If you find a nasty one, cry a bit and get the courage to disengage them.

You can be happy even when your health gives way and your dreams are put aside. You can’t be happy if you hold onto the way you thought things would go. You actually have to surrender, maybe multiple times a day if you’re like me.

Do whatever you need to do to make life manageable. Dare to be unlike those around you and dare to be unashamed. 

Young marriage may seem like a horrifying idea to the majority, but the joy I get from knowing that we are stable when the rest of my life isn’t is indescribable. For me there was nothing more beautiful than the guy I love wanting to commit himself to me, despite my lack of health, career or certain future. I am slightly scarred from all the comments about how we’re still babies, but I’m getting over them.

On that note, lots of people will say/do lots of unkind things to you in your life. Or stupid insensitive things. The longer you are alive and the more comments you hear, the stronger and more bullet proof you become. Crying, again, is reccomended for a short spell. {ps. one benefit of an unpopular blog is lack of mean comments.}

  

Being at home all day long makes you want a baby desperately, despite physical limitations. Try to be uncommonly rational in this situation (picture babies crying at 2 am) and get a dog or cat if you are struggling.

Things can be true even if you do not understand them. I think my life is valuable even though i stay in the lounge on the couch most of the time. I think I could get better, despite not knowing how.

Every single day, God gives new mercies. Don’t worry if you are empty the night before, because they don’t come till morning. 

punching bags and therapy

I haven’t seen my psychiatrist for a month.

Please understand that this is a really really long time. I miss the lump-in-the-throat rants about things great and small with my unshockable, poker faced shrink. He is a wise old owl. “What’s been on your mind?” he unfailingly asks every week, and I begin to blabber on about anything from carpet stains to the uncomfortably intimate, all in his full confidence. He doesn’t laugh at anything I say, he never blinks an eyelid.

But not only have I been counselling free since just before I left Melbourne, I have also been mood-altering medication free. Right now, I am living life as raw, unrestrained Danielle Skye. I’m sure you can appreciate the difficulties. 

This equation of no medication + no counselling + new city + guests (curious? read this one too) = I needed to hit something by the end of the week. Really hard.  Repeatedly. 

As I’ve said before, when I get anxious, I nearly explode. Implode. Whichever. It’s a peculiar feeling. I tell my husband that I need to punch something. To which he always replies, “You can punch me.” To which I always say, “ No, I don’t want to hurt you.” (And then he privately thinks, “you couldn’t even if you tried.”) On particularly desperate occasions when I have declined his kind offers, the dining room table has suffered, from a rather irrational woman.

picture source

 It would be ideal if I could just run to my psychiatrist every time I was losing it, for he has the most rationalising effect on me. Calmly, firmly, he reminds me that yes, I can say no to people, that yes, I can set boundaries to let myself cope, to recover my health, to foster the stability of my home.

He is now five hours away. Alas. 

I have discovered the most effective solution to this no shrink + no drugs + people issue.

 Bodycombat.

I would advertise this class as just as effective as anti depressants and excellent for sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). We need to get it into the DSM manual.

I was nervous before class. These classically trained arms of mine are on the slender side of things and people have bluntly told me that when I am punching something, I don’t look like I’m punching at all. I regret not tuning into the boxing on telly a little more. Shall I admit that my greatest fear was punching myself in the head? It has happened before, in a class. Once I start hurling my twiggy arms around pretty much anything could happen.

Well, I had a ball. I had a wild, ugly, monster kind of a good time. The brutality of the class had me in unstoppable giggles. It was utterly vulgar and rough, and the contrast to my years of ballet training was deliciously stark. Sometimes we were punching men; I assume they were potential assaulters of the opposite sex? “C’MON, make the blood trickle”, yelled out our ‘inspiring’ instructor. I sometimes made Mr. Foe my Trichotillomania or GAD. I put my disorders in a lot of pain. My favourite move, apart from the high ninja kicks, was one where we walked along like beasts, wielding a club from above our heads to the monster we were sleighing on the ground. We were staggering along in a line, swinging wildly, like massive hairy Vikings on a bloody hunt.

 It was violent and uncivilized and I was delighted. Next we ran into a circle and apparently captured some other fiend. There was nothing pretty or polite about this class of middle class girls in designer gym gear. We screamed “YEAH” as we kicked our air opponents you-know-where. I let it all out, all those perfectionist, people-pleasing horrors, which make it so tough for me to care for my body. I served them an almighty blow, and goodness I felt good at the end of class.

A great deal of mental stability came about without me hurting my table, punching my husband, seeing my psych, popping a pill or having a sob. 

Will I be back? 

Yes, for sure.

Oops I mean, HELL YEAH.

pick your devil

When I started taking anti depressants in January to aid my cognitive behavioural therapy, I knew there would be side effects. The effects I was unfortunate enough to receive were nightmares and night sweats. But oh, the sweet, sweet relief of having my anxiety dampened, my spirits lifted...I was prepared to put up with the night-time horrors because I didn’t want to farewell my newly found day- time bliss. My shrink told me to let him know when I got sick of the side effects and I could change medication. Seven months later I was exasperated. I just wanted to go to bed without getting killed or raped, to wake up dry, to sleep like I used to. 

But instead of suggesting a change, he suggested I try stopping altogether to see if I am now able to cope without it; to see whether my anxiety can be managed medicine free. After all, I was on a small dose. All the counselling may mean that I am in a position to deal with myself.

I was told that I shouldn’t feel too much, maybe a headache...but I have grown to know my body intimately these past few years and I doubted these words would be true for me. My body takes things abnormally hard. I am the person who has an adverse reaction when none is expected. I can’t handle perfume, I can’t tolerate drugs for insomnia, I can’t drink half a glass of alcohol without becoming weak, and I can’t eat a biscuit without feeling some fast and unpleasant physical side effect. I am the girl who nearly ends up in hospital from the drug that the hospital gave me.

It has been ghastly. 

It’s frightening to realise how acutely my body is missing this drug, how addicted I have become to it. Many times in the last few days I have thought about people who are dependent on nicotine, and alcohol, and drugs...and I know why they find it so hard to end their complicated relationship with these substances. Because they can barely survive without it. What support they need.

I’ve been experiencing brain zaps – nigh impossible to describe, it’s this horrid sensation of my brain falling away and losing all consciousness for a few seconds. This happens every time I move my head. It’s sickening. Last night I was more drenched when I woke up at 3 am than ever before, and again at 7am. I lie down and sleep for hours, and wake confused, disorientated, and feverish. It’s a far madder feeling than the illness which had me go on these drugs...the first day I was so irritable I thought I had lost my whole character. I asked Ben if he would buy me a punching bag, but he didn’t think it was practical. 

These medications seem like such a blessing – oh, but are they are curse? What are they doing to me? If it’s possible to survive without them, surely that is better. Pick your devil – the torment of mental illness, or the torment of mental illness medication.

Now I wait, and pray that in a few weeks (please no longer) once the withdrawal symptoms have left I will be in a position to manage my anxiety, medicine free. 

me and my brain

I’m in a dream- like state today. Last night I was still awake at 3 am, pleading with my mind to quiet itself and let me doze off. The night before I was begging my migraine to respond to the ibuprofen and paracetamol I had given it. The hours passed by so very slowly, and I grew tired of the music that played over and over in my head while my fingers played the tune on my imaginary keyboard. “Stop. Okay, imagine a beautiful field with yellow and mauve flowers covering it...you’re lying there, feel the sun on your body and let your muscles release”......Part way through this relaxation exercise, there it was again: that piece of music I had listened to over a hundred times already since hopping into bed. Please! I’m just asking for a vacant mind, why is this not possible? My fingers are busy playing the tune again without me realising, and I feel myself become frustrated. I stop them, and enjoy a second’s peace. Barely a thought hangs in my mind, and then in the blurry background I hear the strains of the music....and a conversation I’m weary of re-visiting. I’m infuriated. How many hours do I have to play this game of stopping the ceaseless noise inside me, to have it automatically restart seconds later? I wish I had some kind of control over my mind so that I could stop losing this battle. Sprinkled among these thoughts are fears for the following day – how will I manage on so little sleep? I tell myself that rest is good for me and yet I barely believe the words I have just pronounced. 

I could go some help right now...

This mental battle is one of the reasons I decided to go on anti-depressants...alongside panic attacks, depression and generally feeling overwhelmed. It was only in the past 6 months that I started to open myself up to the possibility of going on medication. Before, I thought I could manage the mental side of life with counseling alone, learning strategies to deal with myself – my post illness self. I feel that I was fresh and optimistic about how much I could improve without needing drugs. I didn’t want drugs. I didn’t want to be dependent on a medication to alter the chemicals in my brain for me to be OK. I saw that as a cop out.

Something changed, gradually. I became wearied by my mind and the toll it was having on me. I desire relief, even just a small reprieve from the fears and obsessive thoughts. Some peace, to simplify my life, to give me a chance at coping. Before I thought that learning a deep breathing technique for when I started hyperventilating was help enough, but now I am dreaming of not hyperventilating in the first place...not crying so often....even having a still mind from time to time. I know the meds won’t eliminate these things, but just a reduction in intensity would be good enough for me, especially as I work out the core issues with my psych.

I have started a new drug because the last one had side effects I wasn’t so keen on. The following warning was on the information sheet:

Persons taking this medication may be more likely to think about killing themselves or actually trying to do so, especially when first started or the dose is changed.

Admittedly it was not what I expected to see on an anti-depressant. Surely it was supposed to do the opposite?! But fear not, I haven’t experienced any such thoughts. I’m just listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto’s and drinking English breakfast tea – and I find it hard to believe I could feel suicidal while so pleasantly occupied. The fact that even that warning and all the possible side effects didn’t put me off show me that I really am quite desperate for some help. And so now I must just wait and pray that this one is a good match for me. I hope we’ll do very well together!