30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 3

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts. 


Day 3: What treatment or coping skills are most effective for you?

I'm still working on this, but I've found that writing down my feelings/thoughts and the triggers to be very helpful. Distraction also works, even if it's nothing major. My shrink recommended that if I'm feeling anxious, I start naming and describing random things in my surroundings ("that man has brown hair," "that taxi is yellow," and so on) to ground myself and come back to the moment. I've done that a few times and it does seem to help. I recently wrote about joining a chamber ensemble, which is in itself a distraction technique, because it gives my brain a few hours every week to be hyper-focused on music and music alone, which is almost like a little reboot. It's great.

More officially, I do talk therapy (semi-weekly, though there have been conflicts and holidays interfering) and take medication. I take Zoloft daily, and have Klonopin for as-needed anxiety help.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Day 2

I'm taking part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.  

Day 2: How do you feel about your diagnosis?

I'm glad to be able to give what is happening in my head a name, and diagnosing means being able to treat, so I feel good about having a diagnosis.

Do I wish like hell there was nothing "wrong" with me? Yes. But a diagnosis is an explanation. When reading up on my conditions, I actually felt a lot better seeing so many things I dislike about myself listed as symptoms, because then they aren't part of me, they're part of this problem that I'm working to contain.

30 Days of Mental Health Awareness: Intro and Day 1

I'm going to take part in the 30 Days of Mental Health Awareness Challenge. Every day I'll post in response to their prompts.

I will also use the tag "30 day mental health challenge" so you can follow the posts if you want.

Today is day 1.

Day 1: What is/are your mental illness(es)? Explain it a little.

 I have both depression and anxiety.

They manifest themselves individually a lot, though when I'm feeling one I often notice traces of the other, so maybe it's more that I feel each more strongly at different times.

If you haven't felt these things yourself, they're very hard to explain. Depression is beyond just feeling down in the dumps, or even an extended case of the blues. It's an all-consuming feeling of worthlessness, hopelessness, dread, etc. You can't get out of bed or eat or sleep. You can't control your reactions. Everything is foggy. There are periods of time I hardly remember because my depression was clouding me so much.

Similarly, anxiety is a lot more than just getting nervous or stressed. It's a constant sense of heightened awareness, coupled with feelings of dread and terror. A lot of my anxiety is social, which means for me that there is a block that goes up whenever social interaction happens, or could happen. Add romance into the mix and that block becomes three-foot-wide reinforced steel bank vault wall. It's double checking every last detail of an event over and over so I know exactly what to do so I don't look stupid. It's having fight or flight constantly activated and not knowing how to feel at ease.

Chamber Ensemble: Survival Tool

A few weeks ago, I started playing my flute again, something I haven't done since graduating from college in 2006. I joined the Classical Fusion Chamber Ensemble, a community orchestra that meets weekly in Manhattan.

I'm not really sure what made me want to play again. Maybe it was the stress of school. Maybe I associate band with a social life, since that's where I made almost all of my friends in high school and college. Maybe it had something to do with turning 30 and getting nostalgic. Whatever it was, earlier this fall I realized I had an intense craving to make music again, so I started looking around for amateur community groups to join.

I landed on CFCE because their repertoire was a fun combination of popular and classic pieces and, possibly more importantly, they didn't require an audition. I mean, I used to be really good, but that was more than seven years ago.

In the three rehearsals I've been to, I've noticed something: I don't worry or think about school or any other obligations while I'm there. It's great. I have this chunk of a few hours every week when my mind is totally distracted and occupied by something fun.

This is the sort of thing I really needed. It's like I get a total reset once a week. I'm hoping it will help me in the long run to manage my anxiety levels.

Lacto-Ovo-Guilto

Earlier this year, I embarked on a one-month experiment with veganism. I survived, felt great, and actually continued a few weeks past my end date, but ultimately I began adding egg and dairy products back into my diet.

And I kind of hate myself for it.

The main reason I stopped eating meat half a lifetime ago (seriously! I was 15, and now I'm 30) was because of a love of animals. Well, that and a Silverchair song. But mostly the animals.

As it is, I do my best to avoid leather products so I'm not wearing animals anymore. So how can I justify eating dairy and eggs? The animals may not be killed for them, but the process is cruel and inhumane, except maybe for the most tiny and ethical of independent farmers.

I keep thinking I should re-assume veganism. It wasn't that serious a leap when I did it back in February. My only concern is that the strictness of the rules made some old dieter feelings bubble near the surface. I'd like to be able to do this, but I need to figure out a way not to become disordered in my thinking and eating.

So I will likely progress slowly, cutting things out here and there. I'd like to do this for my body and the planet, but I can't sacrifice my mind in the process.

I Will Not Excuse My Body

I'm sure by now you've seen, or at least heard of, that "what's your excuse?" thinspo* photo. If not, it's a conventionally attractive, thin woman wearing workout attire with her three kids around her and the caption "What's your excuse?" Basically, she's trying to say that if she has three little boys and still makes it to the gym, everyone else should, too.

Except, no.

See, no one should have to excuse their existence. The word "excuse" implies that you're trying to justify something bad. You need an excuse to miss work. You provide an excuse when you apologize for wronging someone. You don't need an excuse to do you.

I recently submitted this photo to the Don't Need an Excuse blog:

They haven't posted it yet.

The blog is doing a great thing, but I hate the idea that anyone feels they need to excuse or justify themselves because of one random lady in a photo.

I don't have the time to spend hours every day in a gym. I don't have the desire to, either. I like to exercise, but don't need to do it constantly. If you don't like to exercise, that's fine, too. My priority right now is school. Then work. Then pretending to have some kind of social human existence. I'll find time to go swim some laps if I feel like it, but I also won't beat myself up if I don't.

We just need to stop policing each other. No one owes you a reason or excuse for the choices they make with their own body. Focus on whatever is important to you. If it's exercise, fine, but if not, that's also perfectly alright. Let's cut out the shame and just live our lives.

*I'm calling it thinspo and not fitspo because the photo only exhibited the woman's appearance. There was nothing to indicate she was any fitter than anyone else.

Skipping 2013's NaNoWriMo

I've participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the past two years.

In 2011, I actually won -- that is, I finished writing 50,000 words in November. That doesn't mean the finished product is actually any good, or that I'll be the next big thing in writers. It just means I spewed forth enough content to make a roughly 100 page novel (or maybe at that length it's still a novella).

That first year, I went in without a plan. I had an opening line ("All I wanted was a cup of coffee and a goddamn muffin.") and nothing else. I was pantsing it, as it were. Flying by the seat of my pants, no direction, no set end in site. What came out was a probably-cliché mystery about an aging rock star, his missing son, and the formerly-depressed writer/fangirl helping him.

It's not hard to figure out that my protagonist (Agatha) was a fictionalized version of myself -- she was chubby with red hair, a writer, and like me in 2011, had recently come out of a serious depressive episode that damaged relationships.  It's the kind of fluffy little story that could probably sell decently as a low-priced Kindle-only release. And maybe I should put the time and effort into editing it so it can be published. I don't know. I've never let anyone else see it, so I don't know how to gauge if it's actually entertaining.

Last year, I had more of a plan. I started with an opening line, again ("There used to be a waterfall"), but I had also sketched out a quasi-outline and some characters. It was going to be an epic dystopian trilogy, a la The Hunger Games, Matched, or Divergent. Hopefully with sales and movie deals to follow suit. There would be enough social commentary to make me feel good (Overt feminism! Anti-deregulation of businesses! Teenagers that have sex and don't become completely damaged by it!) and possibly get it banned from high school libraries in at least a few of the red states. It was going to be awesome.

I didn't finish. School got in the way. I swore that I'd use my free time over the summer to work on it, but that didn't happen either. Now it's been more than a year since I started and I haven't progressed past where I was at the end of November 2012.

I've often wondered why it is that I can churn out nearly 2,000 words each day in November but my work languishes untouched for the other 11 months of the year. I guess I thrive on the pressure and the social aspect (you can log your progress on the NaNoWriMo website, plus chat with locals, and I'm in a small NaNo group with some friends on Facebook), which doesn't exist the rest of the year.

If only NaNoWriMo were at a different time of year, maybe I'd be more successful. I get that November is when the weather turns cold and makes people want to stay indoors. But it's also the time when people are preparing for the holidays and finishing up their fall semesters. The first NaNoWriMo, back in 1999, happened in July. I like that. I think that would be more fair to people who are in school. Much like how November's chilly rain makes you want to escape inside to a warm laptop and your heater, July sends you running for the air conditioner. It just seems like a better option.


So I guess what I need to do is participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. It's smaller, though, and people in my private writing group don't seem to participate. It's not the main event, so it doesn't have the same widespread push and publicity.

But maybe I'll try it out. It could be just enough peer pressure to keep me honest.