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10 Ways To Take Care Of Your Mental Health

May 14, 2014 By

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1. Put yourself first from time to time. I’m not saying you should abandon your children in a deserted warehouse while you go off on a Mediterranean cruise. I’m just saying that sometimes it’s OK to take yourself out for coffee or go for a run – whatever it is that you like – even if it means <gasp> making your kids wait for whatever they want.

2. Stop and smell the roses. I mean that literally – if you see something beautiful, slow down and give yourself time to appreciate it. There is a small patch of tulips about three minutes’ walk from my house. Every Spring, my heart is lifted by the sight of them starting to bloom. Even on my worst days, when I feel horribly depressed, looking at the tulips has the power to uplift me.

3. Exercise, even if it just means going for a walk around the block. When you are in the depths of desperation, exercising might be the last thing you want to do, but it is almost certain to help. There are physiological reasons why physical motion helps people who struggle with mental illness.

4. Start your day with an accomplishment. For me, this means going for a run. For someone else, it might be finding a recipe for dinner or putting on a load of laundry. It doesn’t have to be big: for a period of time last summer, the simple act of brushing my teeth counted as an accomplishment.

5. See a therapist. Many people see this as a sign of shame or weakness, but honestly, it’s fine. Life sometimes throws things at us that we cannot and should not cope with alone. I’ve been seeing my therapist for almost four years now, and my only complaint is that I took so long to take that step.

6. Be aware of your self-talk. People who struggle with depression or anxiety have very strong powers of persuasion, and they persuade themselves to believe all of the wrong things. Negative self-talk can send a person into a downward spiral faster than the speed of light.

7. Recognize that sometimes it’s OK to fall apart. You don’t have to be strong and composed at all times. If life is overwhelming you, take yourself to a safe place and cry big, fat ugly tears.

8. Get enough sleep. This can be a tall order, since depression and anxiety seem to go hand-in-hand with insomnia. There are various strategies that can be used to help you relax. My therapist taught me the technique of tensing and relaxing all of my muscles, one body part at a time. That works quite well for me. Someone else might prefer visualization techniques, reading or listening to relaxing music. The point is that if you struggle with sleep, you need to try and find something that will work for you. The world is a frightening place: it’s even scarier when seen through the fog of sleeplessness.

9. Eat properly. Again, this means different things to different people, but you need to fuel yourself properly to function well both physically and mentally.

10. Know that mental illness is not a source of shame. It’s not something that you can just snap out of, it’s not your fault and it’s not something you should feel bad about. It’s an illness, just like any other illness, and it should be treated with the same respect. Recognizing that can help you come to a greater sense of acceptance for yourself.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle, written for Mental Health Blog Day.

Filed Under: anxiety, Depression, Mental Health, Mental Illness Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Tidal Waves of Anxiety

September 27, 2012 By

A few nights ago I had an anxiety attack. I have these attacks from time to time and they vary in their intensity, and this one was a real doozie. I woke up abruptly in the dead of night with my heart pounding. I sat bolt upright with a gasp of horror, clutching my chest just like they do in movies. Then I was clawing at the bedsheets, trying desperately to free myself. I got myself out of bed and threw on a bathrobe, ran out of the room, launched myself at the stairs and flung open the back door to let myself onto the deck.

It was some ungodly hour – two or three in the morning – and it was cold and I wasn’t wearing any shoes. But the only thing I could think about was getting air into my lungs to get rid of the feeling of suffocation. I gulped in one lungful after another, and gradually, I came back into focus. I stayed out there for a while to clear my head, and by the time I went back inside and crept into bed, I was kind-of sort-of OK again.

The whole thing was more than a little scary, but not entirely unexpected. There has been so much going on lately. I’ve been working  crazy hours and sacrificing desperately needed sleep just to go for my training runs. Things have been busy with my husband’s business and there has been a lot of family-related stuff going on.

To put it simply, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, and when I get overwhelmed, I invariably reach a point of critical mass – that point at which I just cannot take anymore. I have some kind of meltdown that, while being terrifying to live through, does seem to press a kind of reset button in my head. I feel emotionally bruised for a couple of days, hit a point of exhaustion where I sleep for twelve hours straight (this is not voluntary – it’s kind of forced on me by my body), and then wake up feeling strong again, and ready to tackle whatever needs to be tackled.

Sometimes I can go for months without having a single anxiety attack. Other times, the cycle is continuous, with a new attack starting before I’ve even recovered from the previous one.

Imagine being in the ocean and getting hit by a wave. You get knocked down, and you may accidentally inhale some water. Before you’ve managed to right yourself, while you’re still coughing up that lungful of water, another wave hits – an even bigger one that you didn’t see coming. Too many waves coming at you too quickly, and you feel as if you’re drowning.

It’s the same with the anxiety attacks. I can get hit with one after another after another, in quick succession. There’s the same sense of suffocation, of being in over your head.

The solution, of course, is to make sure you know how to swim and to check the tides before you go into the water. But that only works with the ocean, and even then, the most seasoned swimmers sometimes get caught off-guard.

With the anxiety attacks, it’s not so simple. There may not be a ripple in sight, and before you know it, you’re trying to dodge a tsunami. I cannot always predict how and when they are going to happen, so I’ve figured out that a better course of action is to find ways of dealing with the aftermath.

In the end, though, I am a survivor. There’s no way I’m letting a bit of anxiety beat me down.

Do you suffer from anxiety/panic attacks? Do you live with someone who does? What coping mechanisms do you have?

(Photo credit: the bridge. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: anxiety, Mental Health, Overcoming Difficulty Tagged With: , , , ,
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GUEST POST: Fighting With My Shame

June 6, 2012 By

Kerry White has a few things in common with me. She was also born in South Africa, and she also lives in North America (Texas, to be exact). Like me, she knows what it’s like to parent a small energetic boy. And like me, she knows what it’s like to live with mental illness, including depression and social anxiety.

I first got to know Kerry through a now mostly-defunct Yahoo group called Homesick South Africans. During its heyday, this group was the venue of some lively discussions – a few of them controversial, many of them humourous, almost all of them supportive. Several friendships that formed during the group’s active existence have continued through social media. I am so grateful to the Internet for existing, because without it, my friendship with Kerry would not have evolved in the way it has. This is a woman for whom I have a great deal of admiration and respect.

As I strive to talk about my own struggles with mental illness, I am immensely grateful to Kerry for this post, in which she frankly and courageously shares her own journey.

So I think I’m crazy. Absolutely strait-jacket-heavily-medicate-me-and-lock-me-up crazy! I have felt this way for a very long time, probably since I was about ten years old and reading my first Stephen King books. I recognized the signs of madness in my mind from the characters in some of his books.

As a much more jaded adult, I now recognize myself for what and who I am. I have severe depression, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and it all comes bursting forth in the less than neat and tidy package of major panic attacks. I live with mental illness, and I am terribly ashamed of it. I feel broken, less of a person, less of a woman, and worst of all I feel like a terrible mother because of it.

Growing up in South Africa in the 80s, my mental illness was not recognized for what it was. My anxiety, and shyness, and my odd acting out behaviors gave the impression that I was a difficult child; not that I was a child in dire need of some thought of help.

Don’t get me wrong, my childhood was not unpleasant at all. My parents were hard-working and loving individuals who did the best they could for us during rocky financial times. But there was no such thing as depression, anxiety, panic attack, mental illness. There was just doing what needs to be done, threatening electroshock therapy when I refused to communicate about an assault when I was a teenager, and threatening to send me away to a mental institution. At 16 I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for teenagers who are in crisis. I felt normal! I felt accepted! I felt safe! I was there for two weeks and then released, but promptly tried to kill myself because I didn’t get the support I needed at home. I spent another several weeks in there, but soon learned that I was better off shutting the part of myself I thought to be crazy away. I was never going to get support outside of the walls of that mental health hospital. I was always going to be told to just suck it up and get over it. Because that was just the way things were handled.

I have spent the better part of my adult life trying to just get over it, trying to avoid the idea that I have a problem that no amount of “getting over” will fix. I have tolerated abusive partners, abusive bosses, and abusive coworkers; because I felt I wasn’t worth more.

When I had my son, my depression and anxiety kicked into high gear – but I expected it to. I refused to take the prescribed antidepressants, in case they made me worse (as others have done in the past), or someone saw me as too weak to raise this child. But I do recognize now that I should have not only taken the medication but sought out help. Help wasn’t offered for my “baby blues” and I didn’t go find it. It got to the point, several times, where I wanted to end my life because I was so miserable and felt like such a failure.

I’ve found myself mentally standing on a ledge, with nothing behind me, not even one hand to reach out and pull me to safety. But then the knowledge of the small body pressing against me, raising out a hand and calling out for “mommy” reminds me that if I jump off of this mental ledge then he loses himself, too.

As my son’s needs have changed, so has my mental illness. It has to. I have to get us dressed and get him to daycare so that I can work. I work at home, which just encourages my social anxiety. We need to go to the store and get milk and the occasional toy car, so I steel myself and leave the house. For him.

I’ve made myself get on a plane to visit family; I’ve made myself go visit friends. But it is hard. I have to find a way to change this, for my son.

So what is my next step then? I have more anxiety than will allow me to even see a therapist. What if they deem me to be as unfit of a mother as I feel some nights when sobbing over a panic attack or crying in my office when he is at school? I can’t just “suck it up and get over it.” I have tried. Believe me, I have tried.

I feel crazy. Insane. Broken. But this is my normal. I just wish I didn’t feel so much shame and fear along with it. How do I find the inner strength I need to get help and not feel so broken? Help that will not judge me as being weak or unfit as a single parent?

My heart breaks for others who feel like I do, and I do my utmost to help them. I even write helpful blogs and books for a counselor who helps women like me!

Why then can’t I find what I need in order to help myself work through this? At what point will my son notice that his mommy isn’t like other mommies? I do not want to continue trying to bury my mental illness, but I do not know any other way to function. I am not strong, I am doing what I need to do in order to provide for this boy that the universe has seen fit to place in my care.

To find out more about Kerry and the children’s books she is writing, visit her website!
 
(Photo credit: Kerry White)
Filed Under: anxiety, Depression, Guest Posts, Kerry White, Mental Illness, OCD, parenting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Autism Through A Child’s Eyes

April 8, 2012 By

I am participating in the Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, in which I publish a post every day for the month of April, based on health-related prompts.

April 8 – Best conversation I had this week: Try writing script-style (or with dialogue) today to recap an awesome conversation you had this week.

I’m not much of a person for conversations. I suffer from social anxiety, so talking is difficult. I tend to be more comfortable finding my voice in the form of the written word.

Obviously, this is less of a problem when I am among friends and family. I am married to a man who, in addition to having a totally off-the-wall sense of humour, has no “inside voice”. The conversations I have with him range from the baffling to the downright hilarious.

I also have some great conversations with my younger son, James. For a six-year-old, his vocabulary is astounding, and his imagination knows no bounds. He weaves in and out of topics at will, and you can never tell where the conversation will go next. One moment he seems to be wise beyond his years; the next, we are reminded that he is still a kid finding his way in this world.

A few days ago, we had this conversation while I was cooking dinner:

James: Mommy, can you buy me a water gun?
Me: Why do you want a water gun?
James: So I can spray Granny on the nose.
Me (after snarfing on my coffee): Why do you want to do that?
James: Because her nose is dry and that means she’s sick. Roger (a classmate) said so.
Me: Roger said that Granny is sick if her nose is dry?
James (looking at me as if I’m nuts): No. He was talking about his dog.
Me: Ummmm, James? Dogs and people aren’t the same. Granny’s nose is fine.
James: I think Roger’s dog has autism.
Me: What makes you think that?
James: He doesn’t talk and he knocks down Roger’s Lego towers. It’s not his fault, though. He doesn’t know what he’s doing because he has autism.
Me: James, that’s just the way dogs are. Dogs don’t have autism.
James: How do you know?
Me: Ermmmmm (thinking: the kid has a point)
James: Mommy?
Me (wondering about James’ sudden sombreness): Yes, buddy?
James: Will George always have autism?
Me: Yes, baby, he will. Autism is not something he can grow out of.

I want to pause this account briefly to say that where autism discussions with James are concerned, I find that honesty is the best policy. I don’t try to sugar-coat anything, and I answer questions without elaboration. This approach seems to be the one that works best with James.

James: That’s OK. I love him.
Me: I know you do. And he loves you too.
James: Yeah! Mommy?
Me: Yes?
James: Will George die from autism?
Me: No, people cannot die from autism. We just have to make sure we keep him safe.
James: It’s OK, Mommy. I’ll take care of him.

Yes, I cried.

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)

Filed Under: anxiety, autism, Children, Conversations, Empathy, Humour, Siblings Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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No More Teachers, No More Books!

March 25, 2012 By

George doesn’t want to go to school.

Big deal, I hear you say. He is, after all, an eight-year-old kid, and if I got a dollar for every eight-year-old kid who didn’t want to go to school, I’d be signing up to be the next space tourist.

His reluctance to go to school has escalated, though. It started mildly enough about five weeks ago. I was getting him ready for bed one evening when he said, “School is closed.”

“No,” I said. “School is open.”

He went to school without resistance the following day, but this became a nightly ritual. Each evening, the frequency of “School is closed” statements would increase, but as far as I could tell, there was no anxiety associated with it.

Then March break happened and everything changed. Over the course of the week-long break from school, both of the kids were sick. James recovered fairly quickly, but George had a bad cough that lingered, so I got him some natural-remedy cough syrup.

And what has cough syrup got to do with this story? Well, George hates taking cough syrup. In order to give it to him, I have to wrap him up in a blanket and give it to him with a syringe, a tiny bit at a time so he doesn’t spit the whole lot out at me. So when he reached for the cough syrup on Monday morning, indicating that he wanted that rather than school, we knew that this school aversion was serious business.

The following morning it got worse. George woke up very early and for over two hours, he constantly said, “School is closed. No school. School uh-uh.” All the time, his anxiety level was steadily rising. The pinnacle of all of this was George going into the bathroom and trying to force himself to throw up.

Despite all of this, when the school bus arrived, he got onto it without resistance, albeit looking absolutely miserable.

I sent an email to the school describing George’s behaviour and asking if anything was going on at school that I needed to know about. I didn’t think so: this is George’s third year with the same teacher, and she’s been absolutely fantastic for him. But there is, in all likelihood, something behind this and I needed to either rule out or confirm problems at the school.

Because she is so awesome, George’s teacher called me back within an hour of me sending the email. She reassured me that everything was fine, and that she would not have known that George was having a problem if I had not gotten in touch with the school.

Then she said something that was so obvious that I felt stupid for not having thought of it immediately. She said, “Did this start after you returned from your trip?”

Of course! I had been to South Africa for two weeks by myself, leaving husband and kids to hold the fort at home. The last time I had been to South Africa, when my dad died, George was 15 months old and James wasn’t even a gleam in my eye. My absence was a highly unusual state of being for both of the kids, and George, with his autism, must have had a very difficult time processing it.

And within a few days of my return, he started his nightly “School is closed” routine.  The idea that he is working through some separation anxiety makes perfect sense. The break in routine resulting from March break would have exacerbated the problem.

On the one hand, I am relieved to know that everything at school is fine. But on the other hand, I feel guilty about having been away, even though my presence in South Africa was so badly needed at that time.

I can only hope that with a bit more time and many more hugs, George will feel reassured. And if I ever have to go away unexpectedly again, I hope he will know that I am coming back.

Filed Under: anxiety, autism, School, School Bus, Separation Anxiety Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Autism Meltdown: Surviving The Storm

August 24, 2011 By

It all started when I turned on the light in the kitchen. My almost-eight-year-old son George sidled up to me and, as usual, said, “Turn off the light soon.”

George hates the overhead light in the kitchen, and whenever it is turned on, he glues himself to my side and repeatedly tells me to turn it off, like a stuck record. I am so used to this that I barely notice it anymore. I just carry on with whatever I need to do, which last night included unpacking and reloading the dishwasher.

Uh oh. The dishwasher. This is another source of extreme discomfort for George. He gets very anxious when it is open, and like a record stuck on a different track, he tells me over and over again to “put it back soon”.

This – the combination of the light and the dishwasher – was a precursor to the explosion that would happen later in the evening.

I was probably not helping, at least, not at that point. I was in an agitated state of mind, having just come home from a stressful workday. I was multitasking too much, juggling about six tasks simultaneously, and getting stressed because neither of the kids would eat their dinner. I was frazzled and fraught. There is no other way to put it.

The explosion gradually built up throughout the evening, and finally erupted when George turned on the kitchen tap and found the water hotter than he expected. He screamed in outrage and started running around in a panic. I caught him, and using an expertise borne of experience, I used my body to restrain him from thrashing around and hurting himself.

I determined that he was not burned or injured, and sat there wrapped around him while he screamed. And screamed and screamed.

It has been a while since George had a meltdown this bad, but I knew that there was not a thing I could do to diffuse it. This was going to last for as long as it lasted, and we were just going to have to ride it out. Fortunately, my husband was home, so I had someone to tag-team with. One of us would stay with George, while the other would comfort our younger son James, for whom these meltdowns can be mysterious and frightening. Every thirty minutes or so, we would switch kids. Anything else that either of us had planned for the evening was abandoned.

After two hours or so, George finally started winding down. My husband and I cautiously allowed ourselves to breathe. He went back to the work he had been doing on his computer, and I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea. I got the kids into their pajamas and gave them their bedtime milk. Because they were both still unsettled, I allowed them to chill out on the couch for a while before going to bed.

The period of relative calm turned out to be the eye of the storm.

The dishwasher had been running in the background without anyone paying attention to it. George, with his super-sensitive ears, heard the quiet click that heralds the end of the dishwasher’s cycle, and just like that, he was off again. For another hour, this poor child was experiencing an emotional storm that I felt ill-equipped to help him weather.

The worst part of all this was not the screaming. It was not the panicked running around and frantic scrabbling with the dishwasher. The worst thing by far was the look in George’s eyes. He kept looking directly at me, trying desperately to communicate – something. If the eyes are indeed the window to the soul, then my son’s soul was frustrated, unspeakably sad, desperate – almost tortured. It broke my heart to see him that way, to see him in such obvious pain and to be unable to help him.

Much later, when everything was finally quiet and when the entire household (sans me) was asleep, the question of why kept running through my mind. What happened to trigger the worst meltdown we’ve seen in about a year? Could the light and the dishwasher have suddenly morphed from a source of anxiety to a source of full-on panic? Was the hot water just too much for him to handle? If I had not been stressed and agitated, would the situation have escalated to such an extreme degree? In an interesting theory offered by my mother – one that resonates with me – could yesterday’s earthquake have unsettled George and made him more susceptible to stress?

As with most things autism-related, there are no definitive answers. Every question just spawns more questions. All I can really do is go with my instincts and strive to be the best mom I can be.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powazny/3782692376/. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: anxiety, autism, Meltdown, parenting, Special Needs Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

January 17, 2011 By

Before I go into the story of what happened last night, I should set a bit of context.  When Gerard’s Dad died almost eight years ago, we moved in with Gerard’s Mom, who at the time did not want to be alone. We live downstairs, she lives upstairs, and each of us has own own fully equipped kitchen and whatnot, so we can live completely independently of one another and yet still be in the same house.  For a while, things were kind of tumultuous, but now they have settled down and we are all getting along famously.

My mother-in-law – or future mother-in-law, if you want to get technical about it – is making my wedding dress.  The woman is a phenomenon with a sewing machine, and she is going to create something spectacular – far better than anything I would find in a store.  I am not even intimidated by the fact that my wedding is the day after the British Royal Wedding.  My dress is going to be much prettier than Kate’s.

Last night’s drama started because my mother-in-law and I needed a mirror. A full-length mirror that we could prop up against the wall in her sewing room, that would allow me to see the dress in all its full-length glory during fittings.

Gerard and I just happen to have a spare mirror.  I think it was originally part of some long-gone piece of furniture, and for the last three years or so it’s been propping up the wall in an impractical spot in George’s room.  No-one ever uses the thing, so last night Gerard took the mirror upstairs to the sewing room (after the work-in-progress that is the dress had been securely hidden away, of course).

To say that George got upset would be like saying Donald Trump has a little bit of spare cash.

The kid exploded.  This small change to his immediate environment made him go into utter meltdown.  He was frantically running around in circles, screaming, “Put the mirror back!  Put the mirror back!”  It wasn’t angry, tantrummy screaming.  It was the kind of screaming borne of frustration and anxiety.

You see, George doesn’t cope with change.  When the slightest thing changes – a lightbulb burning out, the laundry hamper in the wrong place, the cordless telephone not in its docking station – he gets really stressed.  A few weeks ago we thought our dishwasher was leaking, so we pulled it out to take a look, and this sent George into such a flurry that it was days before he would set foot in the kitchen again.

The mirror being taken away sent him right over the top, in a way that nothing else has before.  I’m guessing it’s because the mirror was in his room; that it was his own space being violated.  It’s not that he looks in the mirror, it’s just that he’s used to it being there.  And when something he is used to is taken away, it represents a wrinkle, an interruption of stability.

At some point during this wild, frenzied activity, George ran up to his Dad sobbing, and beseechingly wailed, “Put the mirror back, please!”  He turned and looked at me, and in his eyes I saw utter desperation and fear bordering on panic.

Some people might argue that we should have stood our ground, that “giving in” to George would set a bad precedent.  They might say that the only way to get George to cope with change would be to desensitize him to it, to expose him to change and weather the storm, no matter what.

But you know something?  Sometimes, it just ain’t worth it.  Nothing is worth seeing your child in that much pain and anguish. Gerard and I agreed that we would just pay twenty bucks for a new mirror, and he went back upstairs, retrieved the mirror and put it back in its place.  When the mirror had been restored, we picked George up from where he had been cowering on the couch, and took him into his room.  He refused steadfastly to look at the wall, but he must have seen the mirror in his peripheral vision, because that heartbreaking wailing came to an end.

At that point, the stress of what he had just been through must have caught up with him.  All of a sudden, he jumped up off his bed, ran to the bathroom, and threw up.  A lot.

I wanted to cry.  My poor beautiful boy was in such a state of stress that he actually threw up?  That is awful. Do you know how stressed you have to be for it to make you physically ill?  No mother wants to think of her child going through that level of anxiety.

I gently cleaned my son’s face and dried his tears, and then I turned out the lights and hugged him as lay in his bed.  Right before he drifted off to sleep, I asked him how he felt.

“Happy,” he whispered, as he closed his eyes.

That’s all a parent really wants for their child.

(Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License)

Filed Under: anxiety, autism, postaday2011 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,