recovery

Mental Health Monday – Do What You Can

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I try to post these Mental Health Mondays during the awareness months, like mental health awareness in May and suicide prevention awareness now in September, and throughout the year when I’m feeling that I need some reminders and tips to keep moving forward.

In this month of suicide prevention, I do post more about mental health than suicide prevention or ideation. That is mostly because despite the desperate need that brings some of us to the brink of suicide there is also the mental health aspect that affects us all in one way or another, at various times, whether we are officially diagnosed or in therapy for other reasons. We all have those  moments that life is just too much.

My suicide ideation came at a difficult time in my life, full of stress and downturns, and other despairs. Or did the stress, downturns, and despair come out because of the suicidal thoughts. Mental health is inextricably linked and often mental health and chemical imbalances result in physical health deteriorating.

I came through it.

You can also come through it.

Some days are better than others, but when the day begins again, each tomorrow is a new day, a new chance to start again, a new opportunity to be better and to make it better, whatever that ‘it’ is in your life.

I’d love to hear some of the ways that you make it through to the next day and begin again.

For some of my ways, look back at the mentalhealthmonday tag; search it in the search box on the left-hand sidebar or click on the tag below.

Let’s help each other. Getting through the tough times is the first step, and every step after that is a success.

Writing Prompt

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[I’m checking out a new book of writing prompts. To be honest, I usually find these unhelpful because, as a writer, I can usually write my own prompts, but in previewing this book, I like how it’s set up, and thought I’d share a few of them with you over the next few weeks.]

This prompt comes from the book, 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Creativity and Spark Inspiration by Tarn Wilson, currently on sale in the Kindle Store for $1.99

Prompt 40

Adventure, Plot

Brainstorm ways characters could be confined in a space together (stuck on an island, in an airplane, in a stopped elevator, etc.). Choose one. Decide which characters are in the space.

Continue the Story Write a scene in which they are in conflict.

[Note: Exercising my right of personal preference: By the time this prompt posts, I will be almost three weeks post-op from my torn Achilles tendon repair surgery, which means for the last three weeks, I’ve been more or less in bed, staring at my family who has been helping me, which is kind of like being confined in a space together since my bed was moved to the first floor, etc., so I might be writing about this experience. Time will tell, as you’re reading this in the future from my writing it in the past. Have a good week. Welcome (soon) Fall, but not literally, let’s just say Welcome Autumn.]

Mental Health Awareness Month

Green rubber bracelet with the words: Mental Health Awareness Month, resting on a wooden, finger labyrinth
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An Overview of the Month Ahead

Today is the first of May. It is the first day of Mental Health Awareness Month.

Mental Health Awareness Month has several facets. The two that I find most helpful are

  1. make the outside world aware of what mental health is, what struggles we all face, what can be more difficult struggles some of us face, and letting go of the stigma, encouraging talk and sharing coping tools.
  2. Make yourself aware of your own mental health. Where do you struggle? What are some of your coping plans and tools for getting through a rough patch? Or even just an annoyingly mediocre patch? What’s in your toolbox that still works for you?

In other words, assess yourself, share your struggles, challenges, and successes and be there for others in explaining mental health, coping, and the ongoing recovery. Be there for yourself and for others. Some days you can only do one of those, and that’s okay.

Beginning on Monday, I will be publishing a weekly column called Mental Health Monday. I have done many of these throughout the previous several years. Search through the tags to see older but still valuable approaches and coping tools. Sometimes, we forget and rereading and reestablishing some of them again is a valuable tool.

Reassessment in recovery, I find, is ongoing.

None of the strategies and coping tools that I post this month are intended to suggest you forego medication alternatives. I take medication – both prescription and supplemental, all with my doctor’s input and approval. I wouldn’t be here without medication. Don’t let anyone shame you for taking care of yourself. Just like getting from point A to point B, there are many different roads to travel. Very rarely is there just one way, and one (or more) of them is the right way for you. Changing direction is okay, too.

Recognizing a better way and adapting.

Just as a counter has a take a penny, leave a penny dish, in mental health, take a strategy, leave a strategy.

We are all here to help each other.

The tag “mental health monday” is your dish to choose from.

I’ve always thought of my depression, anxiety, and mental health struggles as a journey – a period of recovery with no tangible cure; only moving forward in my mental health, my mental space, my mental recovery.

This is my path and sometimes we cross paths. This is us crossing paths and offering insight, motivation, and ways to keep getting through.

New Year Intentions, Part 1

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Every year, dozens of articles, posts, podcasts and the like tell us what we need to do to make this a successful year; the one year we will finally get things done, handled: lose weight, clean the house, raise healthy, well-adjusted children, start our own businesses, and whatever else that will make us content this year.

I have never figured out what it takes to make new year’s resolutions that will stick. I try. I’ve tried renaming them: goals, plans, focus, changes, intentions (my personal favorite and the one I will continue to stick with), and aspirations.

On Sunday, I scrolled through my emails and opened the Target ad, and in a few minutes of turning pages in this first advertisement of the new year, I saw what Target and their advertising consultants think we should be focused on in our resolutions for beginning and following through on in this year:

  1. Healthy food
  2. Vitamins
  3. Skin care
  4. Exercise equipment
  5. Exercise clothes
  6. Self-help books
  7. Tax Software and Office Supplies for Taxes
  8. Storage containers
  9. Cleaning supplies
  10. Laundry supplies
  11. Food Storage
  12. Small appliances – air fryers, roombas, vacuums

A thirty-page ad.

How long will many of the consumers stick with the new exercise regimen? No between meal snacks? Brushing teeth at lunch? Not ripping off a piece of tin foil and covering the dinner plate instead of using those expensive (and very clean) containers?

To be honest, I already have three doctor’s appointments scheduled plus my physical, so I guess I’m ahead of my own procrastination. I’m also planning on replacing all the glasses (eyewear) in our family this spring.

This year, though, my focus is on my writing, expanding my writing adjacent activities, and my faithfulness and becoming centered on my spiritual life. I’m not sure precisely what that means; I’m still defining what I’m looking for, what I need in my world, and what my specific intentions are. I plan to form them in the next week and share them. This is also one reason that I reevaluate my goals and intentions throughout the year. It works out not quite quarterly: Back to School/Jewish New Year, Lent/Easter, Secular New Year. While these times are somewhat etched in stone, I still leave room for reevaluation.

This year is beginning with a few points of stress. My therapist is retiring, and I am in the process of searching for a new one. I begin that tomorrow morning, after Mass. For the last couple of years I’ve wondered if I still needed to go regularly for therapy, but in contemplating stopping, I realized that just simply having it on my calendar gives me a conversation to look forward to, a time to see, and that alone seems to curb my anxiety. Nothing is cured; anxiety doesn’t work that way, but it is part of my recovery. Those little things add up and make a difference; they give me a focus, they offer a routine, a schedule that I can look forward to and as it did when I started (with both therapy, writing, and mass) it gave me a schedule to follow. Many of these techniques remind me of posts from neurodivergent folks and how they live their lives. I wouldn’t call myself neurodivergent, but who knows. There’s something to be said for trying something new. Letting chips fall where they may and seeing what works. Including reusing cliches.

Something I said to my husband about one of our children – if this child was diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum we would make allowances, we would accommodate some of their needs and expectations. Just because they don’t wear the label doesn’t mean that we can’t still make the accommodations that they need, whether we call them quirks or personality or neurodiversity.

There is no reason that I can’t make those same allowances for myself or to expect those same allowances for myself if it makes me, helps me function better. Whatever that means for me.

I’m going to take a break, read a chapter, play a game on my kindle and work on getting dinner ready. Later in the week, I will share my New Year’s intentions. I hope to see many of you along on the journey, whether you’re here as a spectator or a participant. No change is too small. No intention too minor.

Mental Health Monday – Mental Health Awareness

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May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we’re kicking it off with the first of a series of Mental Health Mondays.

Mental Health isn’t simply an awareness tool for those with mental illness or issues, but for all of us. We all have mental health, and we consistently ignore it, and as we’ve found during this last pandemic year, ignoring our mental health isn’t good for our…mental health. Or our physical health for that matter.

Right before I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety I was having knee problems. I went once a week (it should have been three times a week, but I couldn’t afford that even with “good” insurance) for physical therapy, and it did help a little bit, but it was really the action of going to the physical therapy building and having the schedule more than doing the exercises. I’m sure the exercises helped my knee, but the schedule of the appointment helped just as much. Once I began talk therapy, medication, and discovering my own self-help tools, my knee pain virtually disappeared.

I’m not suggesting that taking care of your mental health is all on your shoulders. I could not have come out on the other side without medication and therapy. Depression and anxiety (and a host of other mental health issues that I’m not qualified to speak on) are almost all chemical imbalance, and oftentimes, regardless of what some may insist, the only option is medication. And that’s okay. I take medicine for my diabetes and my high blood pressure. No one would suggest not taking it and just “relaxing” and/or “cheering up.” That’s not how recovery works.

And everything that’s working for me now may not work in the future. Being self-aware is important to know when to ask for changes, whether it’s for more therapy in the week or month or a change in medication. Schedule changes, eating habits, stress – all of these can contribute to changes in your mental health and may necessitate changes in your treatment.

For this first week of Mental Health Awareness Month, I would suggest sitting down with yourself in a quiet space and reflecting on what your feelings lately are. Take the time to sit with it and see if things are better or worse than they were a few weeks or months ago. It’s also important to accept that there may be temporary changes that will go away, especially if those changes developed during and because of the pandemic and the lockdowns. In your isolation, what worked for you? If you continued working, how did that effect you? Do you have needs that need addressing?

A really useful graphic appears below (with attribution). Read through it and ask yourself the questions that apply. Think about the suggestions, and seek out a professional for help. I am not a professional; I can only share what I’ve done, and what has worked and not worked for me. It may not seem it but our mental health is a community effort. As I heard on a retreat last week: Take what you need; leave the rest.

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The Road to Recovery is Paved with Good Intentions or Something Like That

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​The biggest difference between a recovery and a cure is with a recovery there is no end. Whether that’s with chronic or terminal illness, alcoholism, or depression.

People who don’t have first hand experience with depression think it’s a mood that can be changed by a good night’s sleep and a journal, a glass of wine and a walk in the woods, shopping therapy, but it’s really so much more complicated than that, and the person with the depression is tired of explaining it and the person listening is tired of hearing it. 

I can do this; why can’t you?

Even when they  don’t say it, it is heard.

And then there’s that one person who’s like but you’re on medication or they didn’t need medication or some other sabotaging dig that really means buck up, pull up your bootstraps, we all have depression.

It’s been two weeks, and it wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say or a planner filled with mediocre posts for you, but I just couldn’t sit down, couldn’t clean off the table, couldn’t wake up early enough, and it wasn’t that I ignored all of this and didn’t care, but I can’t say that I mulled over it either. It wasn’t until the first week blended into the second that I recognized this for what it was.

I still had stuff to do.

Kids had to get fed.

Doctors had to be visited.

My annual GISH scavenger hunt was this week, and I was not feeling it.

This weekend is a retreat at my favorite place, and while I was looking forward to it, I am also so, so tired. The kind of tired that sleep won’t fix. I forgot my notebook to take notes in, and my tea (!), and my hairbrush, and without a recent haircut that is practically a necessity. I’m usually quite organized, especially about packing, and i literally tossed everything into my suitcase and zipped it up. Half of it wasn’t folded, and I’m not sure if I have enough shirts and I definitely don’t have enough pants, but for some reason I have six pairs of underwear, so I guess I’m ready for next time.

Maybe I could change my meds, but I don’t want to change my meds. I’m pretty self-aware, and this retreat is all about self-awareness and mind-clutter as well as physical clutter and it’s exactly what I need, and maybe meds do need to be adjusted, but I think I can muddle through for the moment.

Lists are being made, and some are being ignored. Bills are behind, and have been, and that’s part of that helpless feeling.

I think I can force myself to be somewhat productive this coming week, and I’m hoping that might jump-start a little something.

Between now and Tuesday, I plan on catching up on my posts – the July quotation, the August blurb, possibly a travel post, and on Tuesday, as much as I know it contributes to how I’m feeling, I will have a resource post to add to the political one from a couple of weeks ago – a few more recommendations of reliable political thinkers and speakers.

I know it can be draining, but stay aware of the world around you. I’m sure you have been tempted, as have I to hide under a rock for the next two years or more, but we are needed, here at home and in community.

Just being here lightens my load. Now to see how to bottle it and take it with me when I leave.

Stroke Awareness Month

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In 2013, at age 43, actor and musician Rob Benedict suffered a stroke at a fan convention in Toronto, Ontario. Thanks to the quck thinking of his Supernatural co-stars, Richard Speight, Jr., and Misha Collins, he was given medical help and is now doing very well, back to touring with Louden Swain, writing scripts and songs, and performing at Supernatural fan conventions across the world.

He has brought attention to the symptoms of stroke since then.

The acronym to remember is FAST:

Click picture to be taken to Stroke.org’s website. Their copyright. (c)2018

Get the word out

Click picture to be taken to the National Stroke Association.

Mental Health Monday – Keeping a Journal

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Living with mental illness or mental health issues or as I like to refer to it, recovery lends itself to keeping a journal. You don’t need to be a “real” writer to keep a journal. My kids all keep notebooks of some kind, and I’ve kept travel journals for trips and retreat/spiritual journals. I’m about to embark on my second Lent journal.
There are also so many options out there for any style of journal-keeping, whether longhand, calendar diary, record-keeping, bullet points, or sketching. Or you can dabble in all kinds, both to keep it fresh but also to experiment and see which type suits you better. I do several types all in the same physical book.

Pinterest is a great place to find and explore the varieties of journal styles that are out there as well as discovering journaling prompts to help you along. We can all use a little push now and then.

You can buy premade journals for specific areas or fancy blank journals or create your own with a small three-ring binder. These can be found online at Staples, Target and online as well as local boutique shops.

The possibilities are nearly endless.

Types of Journals

Bullet, Bujo (this is a brand and a style), Dear Diary, Travel, Sketchbook, Prayer, Memoir, I even have a writer’s planner journal

Evernote is a good way to keep a journal digitally.

Things to Record:

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