Celebrating the good and bad

This morning as I sat in my mindful movement class and we discussed the theme for the session I found myself thinking back on the year. In each class, we take 10 minutes to freely write anything that comes to mind and then let it go. The theme for today was celebration and we discussed the yoga positions we enjoyed and disliked. When I started writing so much came out and too soon time was up so I decided to write about it some more for all of you. I hope that many of you can relate, find encouragement and possibly look at things slightly differently after the read.

As you will all know through the posts I have been doing this year, it has not been a great one for me. Starting in February when I had a Bipolar/Borderline episode and the continuing struggles following that. The death of my grandfather while I was still in clinic and then soon after the suicide of a close friend. Suicidal tendencies, darkness, rage, anxiety and continually feeling overwhelmed are some of the intense emotions that fluctuated in and out of my life over the year along with medication changes including unwelcome side effects, lack of sleep and general apathy towards life. But, I also travelled overseas and had my first holiday, watched friends get married, developed a love for camping, found enjoyment for physical activity again and many other things. So here are my celebrations for the year.

The first thing I have cause to celebrate is the amazing people that surround me. The support, understanding, patience and love I have received this year has been phenomenal. Not once through everything that has happened have I felt alone, unloved or misunderstood. My family, although not always understanding, continue to be by my side and support me in every way that they can. My friends have stood by me in every single moment, shown immense patience with my fluctuating mood and given me space or company as I have needed it. The company I work for has held my job for me, given me flexibility and allowances as I need them and always encourage me to put my mental health first. This year has pushed me to be honest with the people around me and has taught me that when I am open and share what is truly going on for me people have more compassion and understanding than when I try to hide everything. So another thing here to celebrate would be my own growth in opening up and sharing.

Which leads nicely into the next item to celebrate, the self-awareness I have accumulated over the year. After 6 years of relative stability, I really thought that I had achieved great self-awareness and understanding of my mental illnesses. The truth is, that it was simply easier for a while, that the understanding I had achieved was just preparing me for the next step in my own development and realisation. I learnt so much this year about myself, my mental illnesses and my relationships with other people. I have realised over the year that those of us that struggle with mental challenges may never get everything 100% sorted but each episode we go through each fluctuation in mood teaches us a little more (if we let it) and sets us up for some further life lessons. This year I have finally acknowledged the introverted side of myself, I have learnt that it is okay to not be okay and that I am allowed to say no to things because I am not in the space to deal with them. I have learnt about a deep inner strength that helps me survive the moments that seem impossible to get through. Lastly, I have realised that I am not alone, there are so many people who love me unconditionally and I have an amazing God that never walks away.

I also got to really experience travelling this year with the most brilliant trip to the United Kingdom. I got to hang out with old friends, make new ones and enhance relationships that I have missed. Travelling to a different country and experiencing a new culture was beyond my wildest dreams. Walking the streets, eating the food (some of which I will never eat again), shopping in the malls and markets – WOW, just WOW. My time in the United Kingdom was an experience I will never forget, an experience that rejuvenated me, an experience that changed me. I fell in love with another culture, I regained an interest in things outside my sphere and I learnt that I deserve to have time to enjoy myself. I cannot wait to go again and it won’t be too long.

This year I started new things, joined new groups and met new people. I am so grateful for these new things in my life this year and I need to acknowledge that I would not have any of these without the bad moments and mental challenges that I went through. I love the idea that we can celebrate the bad along with the good. So often we only look at the negative as being negative and don’t look any further to see the positives that it has brought into our lives. It has been a hard year but I cannot say that it has been a bad year. Too much good has come out of the year, too many new experiences, lessons and relationships for me to ever look back and wish to forget 2019.

I restarted my blog this year and it has been such a privilege to share this journey with every person who has taken the time to read them. I haven’t quite stuck to the schedule I set myself but I am happy with the benefits I have gained from sharing my life with known and unknown people. All I have wanted to achieve is a place to put my voice out there for people to know they are not alone and for others to gain a little insight into the lives of people they love who struggle. 2020 is going to be an interesting year. I have some interesting projects I would like to start, some old projects I will be more active in and I am sure there will be many ups and downs to negotiate along the way. This is where I leave you for this year and look forward to sharing more of my journey with you all next year.

Some of the best moments of the year

Managing day to day

Over the last four weeks, I have been taking part in a process group looking at depression. This group came to an end on Monday night and the last part of processing that we did was write a letter from a ‘future self’ to our ‘present self’. I went about writing my letter in my usual ‘have to get it perfect’ way and ended up writing some actual (what I think) are useful tips to deal with my mental illnesses on a daily basis. I thought I would share all of these with you. Before laying them out I do need to state that knowing them and applying them are two different things and so while in my head I know all of these tricks are useful, I also completely understand and relate to when we are unable to put them into action.

Anyway, here are my top five useful hints in dealing with mental illness on a day-to-day basis:

1. Believe in something bigger – This is probably one of the most helpful things in going about long term management of my mental health. Believing in something bigger than myself (whatever you may want to call that) allows me to have some kind of hope in life. Too many times I lose hope and often life is not worth living. When I started believing in a higher power I found that even though times often got dark I didn’t always become hopeless as much. I found an ability to persevere in the blackest of moments. Hope has become such an integral part of never giving up for me. I seem to struggle the worst when my spirituality is at it’s lowest.

2. Be grateful – Whenever I start to feel low or find myself slipping down the depression hole I try to be grateful. Gratitude reminds me of the things I have in life, what I have achieved, the people who love me, etc. This is important because so often I really do want to give up and say goodbye or fall into the mindset of life is not worth living. Writing a gratitude list when I feel my mood spiral sometimes provides an instant shift. I have found that just writing a list doesn’t always work though and the next thing to do is take action. Gratitude doesn’t just have to be a thought, it can also be behaviour. When I act on my gratitude, the darkness just doesn’t seem as dark and the hole not as deep.

3. Keep talking – My first instinct when the world becomes overwhelming or my anxiety takes over is to shut up and shut out. What I mean is I stop interacting on any deep level with people around me. When these feelings rise up I remind myself to keep talking. Get an appointment with my therapist, phone my sponsor or a good friend, find a support group to attend. Keep reaching out, because I have realised that the more I keep talking the quicker the feelings pass and my world semi returns to normal again. Don’t ever stop talking as this is often the only lifeline we have for people to support us.

4. Hit the reset button when needed  – Once I am in my head it is almost impossible to break free unless I reset. This is actually easier than it sounds and the best part is you can reset as many times as you need to. Sometimes, I will come home from work or from being out completely overwhelmed and on the verge of panic. I stop thinking clearly and begin slipping into depression or, I feel myself getting more hyper, I stop eating properly, don’t want to sleep and my brain is racing. Whatever it is, the moment I realise my brain is overworking I hit the reset button. Sometimes, it’s getting into bed early and sleeping until the next day. Sometimes, it’s hanging out with close friends who will distract me and sometimes it’s just reading a book or watching a series but I have to reset so that I can start thinking clearly again.

5. NEVER GIVE UP – this is the hardest thing to do and I don’t blame anybody who has but in this battle against mental illness it is also the most important. We all deserve to live, we all deserve to find peace and healing, we all deserve to be loved. Live for the moments where things are fine, where your emotions are not running wild and you feel content, even if it is only for 5 minutes. We are in this together and cannot give up on ourselves or each other.

These are just my thoughts and some basics that help me live with the different mental health issues that I have. It’s not easy and it’s not simple but we can fight mental illness together. Let’s share our tips with each other, let’s encourage each other and build each other up. So few people understand what we are going through but I want you all to know that I understand, I see and I feel what so many of us experience. Know that we are strong enough, brave enough, worth enough to win this daily battle.

Let’s do this together, just for today.

 

Never recovered

“Relapse, prevent trigger intent, now drown 
High strung, say X amount of words 

You’re solar, bipolar, panic disorder 
Seems harder and harder and harder 
Still, you try to control it”

X-amount of words by Blue October

My body tensed, teeth grinding and fists clenched. I want to hit something, I want to break something, anything to escape what I am feeling, anything to transfer the rage inside of me. Rage, anger, agitation, all at the most intense level I have ever experienced. Everything is too loud, too bright, too close. Please get me out of here, get me out of my head, my body, this world.

“I am feeling irritated’ I tell my friend calmly as I slowly breathe through my nostrils. My exterior does not match my interior, unsurprisingly this is actually normal. My exterior rarely matches my interior but I have been faking it for so long I fool even myself. For the last 6 years, I have been relatively stable, no spikes in my mood, no major depressions. Just little bumps as I go about managing my life and my anxiety on a day to day basis. Life itself is hard work but I don’t let it get me down and I don’t really dwell on it much. I do what I need to do and move on, I ignore – possibly deny – that I even have a mental disorder. I mean, I know I have one, and I know that I have to do certain things to manage it but I thought (told myself) that I had it covered. Come on, after 6 years without any real episodes you would tell yourself the same thing, wouldn’t you? Basically, I believed that I managed my mental health so well that I was essentially recovered.

This is possibly the biggest mistake that I could have made, that anyone with a mental disorder could make. We don’t recover, ever, we simply learn to manage life around it. We learn to accept that we will be taking medication every day, we learn to change our environment and put things in place that alert us to spikes and dips in our moods. We push a lot of people away and we isolate ourselves much of the time. We work in jobs that have flexibility as much as possible and we try to minimise our stresses where we can. I learned to work around my mood and personality disorders so well that I essentially forgot I had them. I had become so adept at managing my anxiety and hiding my quirks that people who had only been in my life for less than 5 years mostly didn’t even know that I had mental health issues. This isn’t a bad thing and it worked well generally except when it didn’t. I was definitely not recovered.

My little episode got me booked into a psychiatric hospital and my meds got changed and changed and changed until we found a combination that worked. Eventually, I landed up spending the full 21 days at the hospital to monitor the medication, balance out my moods and to my surprise work on some emotional issues, Much was brought to light and it landed up being hugely beneficial for me. I learnt many new things about myself and gained new insights into my coping mechanisms. I also realised that I will never be recovered or normal or mentally stable like people who don’t have mental disorders. I also learnt to be okay with that, I learnt to be okay with being different. This didn’t mean that I wasn’t frustrated, annoyed and even self-pitying at times but I did learn to be okay with having a mental disorder, again. I thought I was okay with everything but really I wasn’t I was only ignoring it and pretending to be okay.

I am not normal (and don’t get into the debate with what is normal with me) and that’s okay. My life looks different and I act different and I need to do some things differently to others. This is hard but it is not insurmountable. I can live my life the way I need to live my life. With things in place that help me manage the disorders on a day to day basis. What I can’t do is forget, I can’t ignore and I can’t deny that I have a problem. This problem is not my fault, it is in my brain. I have to live with it the best way I know how to and sometimes that won’t work for other people and that’s also okay but I can’t forget. People will accept it or not, they might understand and they might not and they may leave or they may not. Whatever happens, I realise that this is my life and all I need to do is the best I can. This means that some days I will be rude to you because I simply do not know how to interact with others, it might mean that on this day I don’t want to talk to anybody and it might mean that there will be times that I am simply not coping with life but I have to remember that it’s okay. It’s okay to be frustrated, it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to not be like others.

I write this because I want others out there like me to know that it’s okay. I want others to know that sometimes we have to get additional help like going to a hospital. It’s okay to have to take medication every day and not interact with the world like the rest of civilization. It’s okay to struggle and it’s okay to have good days. I write this because I want people who are not like me to begin to understand that we can’t always be and act like you, I want you to understand that what you see on the outside is not always representing what is happening on the inside and ask that you be patient with me, love me and support me. I have a mental health problem and I will never be recovered and I am okay with that. I hope you can also be.