MENTAL HEALTH
MIGHTY FORCES OF NATURE
I, like many, experience episodes of anxiety and depression. Sometimes those episodes are very mild, and at other times in my life they’ve been traumatic experiences that I’d love to forget but have been cursed with the memory of.
After living with these forces of nature all my life I’ve developed ways to weather the storms. If you too suffer from these disorders, then you know that in order to get a sense of what your triggers are, you have to live life, take risks, and get a feeling for them. You’ll get the experience you need to fight these things long term, but you’ll have to accept that you’re going to live through some very emotionally difficult periods in order to gain that experience.
On this page I’ll try to lay out some of the resources and techniques I use in order to douse my brain with calm waters when I feel like it’s on fire.
N.A.M.I
N.A.M.I: National Alliance on Mental Illness (website)
Totally free and volunteer staffed. Find a N.A.M.I chapter, and start going to virtual or in-person support groups. They’re anonymous, and if you don’t want to have your microphone or camera on during a virtual meeting, I’ve not once seen it become an issue. Sometimes people feel better when they’re around others who are going through the same kinds of things they are.
N.A.M.I can also help set you up with a patient advocate who can help you talk to medical providers, sometimes help with setting up appointments or tests, or helping you understand your patient rights and the resources that are available to you.
N.A.M.I also maintains several “warmlines” across the United States, and has a directory of those lines on the website linked above. The “warmline” is meant to support people who are experiencing mental health challenges, but who’s situation hasn’t yet become a full blown emergency. It’s a social support resource to help prevent that full blown emergency.
PROFESSIONALLY ADMINISTERED THERAPY
Developing a healthy relationship with a professional therapist will help you to manage those moments where you might feel more out of control. For instance, if you find that you’re running circles around the same thought in your head, a therapist will be able to help you break that cycle faster than if you were to do it alone.
If you have past traumas that still disturb you, perhaps on a very deep level, a therapist will be able to help you dispel those disturbing feelings by sitting with you in and evaluating them. They may also have resources available that you aren’t aware of, or may be part of a practice that can refer you to an in-house psychiatrist for medications that may help you manage your mental health challenges far more effectively
The bottom line is, if you have a mental health challenge you’re trying to face, then a therapist will be able to help you recognize and treat those challenges at their core, which will help to hopefully lower the intensity of future episodes.
Please go outside
If you can, please go outside and take a walk, short or long. I don’t know all the psychological reasons behind it, but I’ve personally experienced, and have heard others extoll the benefits of, spending time outside if you’re experiencing depression.
Maybe it’s the sun, or the fresh air, or the birds, or the little bit of exercise you get, or maybe it’s a combination of experiencing several of those things all at the same time. Whatever it is, it might just make you feel better.
At the very least, it will offer up some stimuli that isn’t mostly inside your head, which is good because there’s probably a need for a balance to be struck. Try to take in some life instead of worrying about what it’s going to bring, if only for a moment.
SCHEDULED physical ACTIVITY
Investing time into scheduled physical activity has heartily improved my mental health. It’s the primary reason I continue to maintain a gym membership. I may have increased my physical activity for weight release reasons, but I found out after a few months that it was having a dramatic effect on my overall mental health and self-esteem.
Maybe working out with people in public is a terrifying prospect to you. I know it was for me. Getting stared at was bad enough, but to invite it by wearing sweats and a t-shirt while working out seemed like behavior only a masochist would indulge in. The reality was that my anxiety over what I had envisioned in my head was far more intense than what actually occurred, which wasn’t much. Most people are concerned with themselves in the gym, and also tend to be fairly friendly because they have endorphins flooding their bodies from all the physical activity.
To address another issue that weighed on my mind, I was worried about “jocks”. People who used to make fun of me when I was a kid seemed to regularly participate in the gym culture, so there was a strange sense of self-betrayal in pursuing better fitness. Maybe you’re feeling the same way too, and if you are then consider this; There’s probably a correlation between the people who don’t want to go to the gym for fear of being made fun of, and the adults who would actually make fun of another adult publicly for their size, and they’re both held prisoner by fears and prejudices that aren’t worth putting energy into, and they’re both very extreme viewpoints that don’t represent the vast majority of those pursuing better fitness. For a while, you may be big enough to be viewed as a novelty, and then after a couple weeks you’ll just be another person trying to get through a workout.
thoughts aren’t facts
That’s not to say that your thoughts aren’t valid, they are, but try to be mindful of where you let your thoughts wander.
The thing that you’re worrying about may only ever manifest as a worry, especially if base aspects of that worry aren’t actually occurring in the moment, or haven’t been set in motion to occur. For me, it’s easy to get carried away in a worry because my combustible brain gets ignited trying to formulate and suppress all the possible paths that pain and chaos might take to get to me.
After a lifetime of doing this, I finally settled on the fact that my sense of safety was coming at the cost of experiencing more life had to offer. It kept me inside, and trying to avoid pain and chaos is like trying to avoid the weather. Eventually, you’ll get caught up in it no matter what you do, so it’s probably better to try and develop ways to deal with the painful and chaotic things that are going to occur.
you live where?!
Maybe you’re having a bad day, or you think you haven’t accomplished much because you’re going through an episode of severe anxiety or depression, so here’s a friendly reminder of your place in the observable universe, paraphrased from a quote by author Douglas Adams.
Lets “zoom-out” for a moment.
You were brought into existence at the bottom of a gravity well that’s spinning on a celestial spheroid’s axis at approximately 1000 mph (1600 kph), while also simultaneously orbiting a colossal nuclear fireball who’s radiation you require and can feel the heat from on a daily basis. If for some reason that celestial spheroid you’re on gets too much, or not enough of, that radiation, then the majority of life on that spheroid will rapidly decay and expire. This is the foundation required for all human life to exist and a regular day to occur, much less a “good” or a “bad” one that’s subject to a fluctuating network of emotional, and survival based, relationships.
If you feel overwhelmed, that’s valid. Life was chaotic and strange before any of us arrived here, and it will remain chaotic and strange. Meaning at some point all of us need to take a step back and regroup. Today may be one of those needed days for you.
3-3-3 (seeing, hearing, feeling)
When my anxiety or depression is causing me to continually run around the same thought over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, it’s helpful to try and break the cycle by using a grounding technique called “three-three-three”.
I like this technique because I can use it anywhere I need to. I can say it out loud, or I can do it in my head.
It starts like this. Look around and name three things you see. Then look around and name three things you hear. Finally, move three different parts of your body and call out the parts you’re moving. An example might go something like this…
”I see a traffic sign, a green bush, and the sky. I can hear the sound of my voice, cars driving by, and my footsteps on the pavement. I’m moving my fingers, I’m moving my legs, and I’m moving my jaw.”
Settle into that pattern for a few minutes, and try to only pay attention to the things you can see, hear, and feel. Hopefully you’ll begin focusing on the pattern you’re establishing, based totally in reality that’s happening to you right now, rather than the thought you’ve been running around that hasn’t, or won’t happen.
Kinetic text
I came up with the “kinetic text” technique before I discovered the “3-3-3” technique explained above. It is, admittedly, a little wacky, but it works for me.
If you find that you’re running around the same thoughts, then turn on the radio or a podcast, but make sure you’re listening to something with a lot of talking going on.
Next, try to imagine all the words in your mind’s eye as kinetic text. If you don’t know what that is, a quick YouTube search should be able to show you the concept, which will be much easier on both of us as I would find it difficult to explain without pictures.
Envisioning kinetic text is a way for me to occupy my mind’s eye on my own terms instead of letting my current anxiety/depression episode dictate where my thoughts are headed.
water
Sometimes it’s useful to try and shock your nervous system in order to try and break the cycle of invading thoughts anxiety and depression present.
I use water to do this a couple different ways. The first is to drink it. My parents used to have me do this when I would get upset as a kid, and I just carried the behavior forward into adulthood.
The next way is to take a shower. Start off with warm water, get comfortable, and then think about blasting yourself with cold water for 30 seconds. If nothing else it will demonstrate that you’re mostly in control of making your situation immediately worse or better.
Finally, hold your breath and let the water hit you in the face for a moment, or submerge your face in water while holding your breath, and then un-submerge your face and go back to normal breathing.
Doing these things will give your body’s automatic reaction systems a chance to work for you, and hopefully distract you from your current anxiety/depression episode so you can get on the other side of it.