Tag: meds

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Frustration

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with the way the world celebrates the trivial and glosses over real issues.  From time to time, I’ll share a funny cartoon or video to my timeline on Facebook and receive amused response.  I add a photo of me at the beach and get lots of likes and comments.  But when it comes to a serious issue?  Silence.

I posted the following on World Semicolon Day:

Enjoy the memes, and make a #worldsemicolonday post to share resources and raise awareness if you know (or are) someone with a mental illness. And with 1 in 4 people experiencing mental illness at some point in their lives, chances are that you DO know at least one person.  #endthestigma #mentalhealthawareness #1in4

The post included the list of resources that can be found along the side of my blog as well, and a couple of images that I will include at the end.

Only a few very close friends even reacted to the post.  I saw no one in my entire friend list go on to make a World Semicolon Day post of their own.  And that’s their choice… but at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of these people willing to post over less significant stuff, like “Happy Pancake Day, guess I’ll have to make pancakes lol,” and I just don’t understand why something important and potentially life-saving doesn’t merit a few seconds of attention for a similar post.

The situation reads to me that most people don’t care that people all around them are struggling silently on a daily basis.  And I realize that in general it is ignorance not callousness leading to this carelessness, but it still hurts.  I’d like to challenge people on social media that if they can invest a few seconds in changing the filter on their profile for some disaster or another (a move which has little actual benefit to the people they are supporting) then they ought to be able to invest the same to share resources and encouragement for the many people all around them who are fighting illnesses the world shames and ignores.

Why is it the suffering who are left alone to fight the battle of supporting each other?

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Happy New Beginning Day to Me

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

Today marks the one year anniversary of my release from the hospital.  I’m incredibly torn.  Part of me feels frustrated and let down that ever since I left the hospital, my family has put in their best effort to pretend none of it ever happened.  They don’t seem to understand how significant the day is for me, or that I might want to be open about how I am feeling in my own home.  Over the year as well, my folks have made hurtful and ignorant generalizations about mental illness not seeming to have gained any understanding from what I’ve been through.

On the other hand, part of me wants to celebrate.  The day I left the hospital marked a brand new beginning where I was much more equipped to tackle life on my terms rather than on my illnesses’ terms.  I went through hell and emerged on the other side victorious.  Why shouldn’t I celebrate that?

I wish I lived in a world where I could celebrate out loud and not be judged or feared, ridiculed or looked down upon, scorned or invalidated.  I want to shout to the cosmos that one year ago today, I got a fresh start on life.  For now, I’ll settle for a few words on the internet on an obscure blog.  Chances are that only those who understand will ever read this, and that’s okay.  I don’t need the world’s permission to be proud of who I am and how far I’ve come.

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Rediscovering Me

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

One year ago today, I was admitted to inpatient mental health treatment.  My stay led to finding a medication that actually worked for me, giving me my life back and sending me on the path of recovery.

Before all of that, I struggled with undiagnosed mental illness for years.  Looking back, I am fairly certain my chronic depression developed in late elementary or early middle school.  Despite persistent and chronic symptoms, with so little frame of reference I had no idea that my experience strayed from what was usual and healthy.  For a young female with an early puberty, chronic fatigue and oversleeping are attributed to the growth spurt, and moodiness is explained away by PMS.  Only when these issues persisted into adulthood, growing worse instead of better, did I seek out answers on my own and reach out to the health center on campus for medical help.

Consequentially, I’ve lived more than half my life in the shadow of untreated mental illness.  After having my experiences and perception affected for so long, I have spent most of this past year rediscovering who I am.  Some things, the things that carried me through the dark years, have stayed true and steady, but other things that I had forgotten brought me joy have emerged from the shadows.  Some dislikes faded and changed as I redeveloped the energy to invest in life beyond survival, and others proved to be facets of my personality.  It’s interesting and challenging and scary all at once.

Sometimes I feel frustrated that while others spent the decade figuring themselves out, I spent it trying to survive.  But I am trying to focus instead on celebrating my becoming in the now.  I have fought battles few can understand, and by God’s grace I have emerged victorious.  I am triumphant, I am strong, and I am becoming new.

“But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.’

‘Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.'”

Isaiah 43:1-2, 18-19

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Anxiety, Worry, & Fear

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

People often confuse anxiety with worry.  They mistake anxiety for fear.  People say, “Stop worrying so much,” or “Don’t get so worked up over nothing,” like anxiety is a choice, a result of too much brooding on life’s problems, a consequence of being too negative of a person.  In the church, anxiety can be misdiagnosed as a lack of faith.

In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth.

To battle my way through the worst of my anxiety, I have to be a more positive person than I ever would have had to be without it.  I have to put so much more effort into hoping to keep myself from drowning.  I didn’t choose to have anxiety.  What I did choose was to seek help and treatment because anxiety is an illness, not a character flaw.

My ability to deal with the stressful, the unknown, and the scary has grown and been strengthened by my battles with anxiety.  I learned to survive with feelings that weren’t mine, intense surges of panic seemingly without relatable cause, extreme physical reactions to ordinary things, and intrusive thoughts.  My brain is an encyclopedia of coping techniques gleaned from counseling, reading, conversations with others, and my own experiences.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my anxiety and depression, and how my medication has been managing my symptoms pretty well for about 8 months now.  Despite those positive things, I’ve found myself starting to slip into worry.  It’s a vastly different experience from the anxiety I remember.  What if my depression comes back?  What if my meds stop working?  What if I have to go back to the hospital?  What if I can’t keep up with my work?  What if I just keep cycling through new meds and bouts of mental illness for the rest of my life? 

In times like those, God lays on my heart reminders of how He carried me through the worst of my anxiety and depression in the past to calm my worries and guide my focus back to Him.  If a relapse of mental illness is in my future, God has a plan and can work through it.  And as scary as mental illness can be, I can work to maintain my mental health and do my best to prevent future crises without needing to live in fear of it.  I hit bottom and God provided the help and support I needed via medical treatment and brought me through it.  Was it awful?  Yes.  Do I ardently hope to avoid that pit in the future?  Yes.  But knowing I’ve experienced my own “worst-case scenario” in the past, I can count on God to bring me through whatever the future holds.

“Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me.”

Psalm 23:4

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Thank you, meds!

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

A list of things that have changed since I got on a medication that was right for me:

  • My sleep schedule is regularized and so much healthier.  I go to bed and wake up almost the same time every day without developing high levels of anxiety at bedtime or being pinned to my bed in the morning by the futile weight of depression.
  • The feeling of anticipation has returned.  Weird as it may seem, anticipation is a big indicator for me of my mental health.  When I’m depressed, everything on my list of events carries a similar bland, uninspiring flavor.  Whether I needed to get to a boring lecture or I had planned on attending a Christmas party, my plans had the same lack of drive.  Now, that sense of looking forward to something brings the impulse of excitement that most people would never expect could disappear.
  • I can drive without having an anxiety attack, which is huge for me considering I had previously never been able to do enough practice driving to get my license.
  • I developed my first celebrity crush–it may seem silly or unrelated, but realizing it hadn’t happened before suddenly showed me how my mind really hasn’t been functioning properly for years.  I had started to believe the fun, fluttery, crush-y feelings of my very early adolescence were imaginary since they had been gone so long.  (Before you ask… Matthew Gray Gubler’s character on Criminal Minds.)
  • I’m not constantly battling intrusive and frightening thoughts, including suicidal ideation.  It should never be normal to be forced to maintain an ongoing battle with your own mind in order to stay afloat and function, but for a while, it was my “normal.”
  • I’ve recognized that some people who were in my life were toxic and emotionally abusive.  Being mentally in a better place showed me that I did not deserve or warrant their treatment, and that it was okay to cut them out of my life.
  • I have the energy and motivation to take other steps for promoting my health.  For example, I’ve started learning martial arts and work out twice a week.  The exercise is helpful for maintaining my health both mentally and physically, but I did not have the stamina or strength to get myself doing anything like that before getting on the right medication.

Because of the stigma against medication for mental illness, I fought against going on meds to help treat my depression for a long time.  Now, however, I recognize and celebrate them for what they really are–an important weapon in the fight against mental illness that, for me, was an essential part of recovery.

“Return to your rest, my soul,
    for the Lord has been good to you.

For you, Lord, have delivered me from death,
    my eyes from tears,
    my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before the Lord
    in the land of the living.”

Psalm 116:7-9