Category: Love, Your Brain

drawing of landscape with tree and river and words about self-compassion

Art for Mental Health Awareness Month

Genevieve6 Comments

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Mental Health America has several initiatives to spread awareness during May. One of these is #mentalillnessfeelslike. Peruse different categories on their website, where MHA has compiled Instagram posts from people participating in the hashtag. It’s always comforting to find validation in others’ experiences.

The hashtag got me thinking about my own attempts to represent what mental illness feels like to me. This blog is mostly writings that describe my experiences with depression, anxiety, and their various treatments. So, for something different and a trip down memory lane, I thought I would take a jaunt through some of the art I’ve made on the topic of mental health/illness.

The following slideshow was my attempt to depict a strange sensation brought on by an antidepressant I no longer take. It left me feeling “better”, but in an artificial way, as if I could feel my depression just outside the boundaries of myself. It was sort of like being squeezed into a neutral mood that didn’t fit.

Depression 1Depression 2Depression 3Depression 4

And then we have The Potato Scale of Depression, born when I responded to “how are you” with “everything is mashed potatoes”. What I meant by that was that the world was dull, my senses felt mushy, and seeing past any of it felt impossible. The beauty of the potato scale is that it opens the door to describing your mood in a creative, silly way, while still communicating a serious topic. And, you get to have eye-opening conversations about how you and your conversation partner rank various types of fries. Of course, this is an abridged version of the scale; there’s a whole world of poorly-prepared potato dishes to choose from. (Soggy latkes, undercooked gnocci, etc.)

Potato Scale

Clearly, analogies are my favorite way to say how I feel. This next one is a good reminder for present me.

Balance

The rest are simply some depictions of what mental illness feels like to me.

 

collage-of-flowers-and-words-from-magazine-spelling-it's-going-to-get-better-with-watercolored-woman's-face

 

ink drawing of dandelion seed heads growing in grass

Observations From the Garden

Genevieve2 Comments

I got up at 6 and walked through my routine because that’s what I always do, depressed or not. I fed the dog, made the coffee, poured a bowl of cereal, and then stared into it while the dog did her rounds in the yard. But by 8, I was beginning to wonder why I ever got up in the first place. So, back to bed with the window open and my blankets pulled up to my chin.

Lately, depression has overtaken my days with sleep and restless boredom. What time is it? Doesn’t matter; every day feels like a week. At night, the anxiety comes. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin. Or like I want to reach inside my chest and pull out my lungs, let them spin out the twist in my trachea. Maybe then I could breathe.

To pass the time when the sun is up, I move between sleep and hobbies. Sitting outside in the backyard, my sketchpad page is still blank. Pen or pencil? I pick up the pen but am unable to draw more than a few dandelions from the scene I’m observing. A flock of house finches has found our backyard – it’s more dandelions than grass, and they’ve all gone to seed. The birds are foraging, bobbing their heads and moving among the unmown grass. One finch struts up to a tall dandelion, and, with an almost imperceptible flutter, attempts to perch on its vertical stem. The dandelion head begins to bow to the ground, and the finch rides the bending stem to meet the grass. Foot firmly planted to hold the flower down, the finch returns to bobbing and pecking.

There’s a sound behind me, and I turn to see a five-foot garter snake glide through the raspberry bushes, following a taste in the air. A busy robin chatters while it gathers last year’s grape leaves for nesting material. Stella digs a layer out of the hollow she’s claimed as hers, then situates herself in the cool dirt she’s uncovered. A hummingbird trill draws near, then it whizzes by on its frenetic journey. Everything around me moves, yet I feel like I’m in stasis. Animals and plants follow their daily rhythms, foraging, hunting, racing the sun to get enough calories, and I feel disrupted – out of sync.

I don’t know how to fix it. Usually, I keep up with my treatments — meds, therapy, ketamine — and simply wait for it to pass. I use what coping mechanisms I can—preferably the good ones, and let the turning of the Earth carry me from one day to the next. This time, I can’t help but feel the uncertainty of the time we’re living in. The disruption is not just to my mind, but to the world. When will this sense of weightlessness, of falling through empty space be soothed? When can we once again feel the ground beneath our feet, knowing by its predictability that it is moving us inexorably from today to tomorrow?

How Do I Love Thee? A Haiku About Meds

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New bottle of pills

Contains capsules, not tablets

Let me count the ways

 

Three of my nighttime pills are tablets, and I like to take them all at once to minimize the horrible dissolving-pill taste as much as possible. One time, two went down but one got stuck to the back of my tongue and began to dissolve. It was like purifying the essence of every cruciferous vegetable and mixing them with charcoal, then pouring the horrific concoction down my throat. Immediately, my esophagus’s movement reversed direction and it took serious effort not to hurl right then and there. Instead, I had to force myself to chug water and think about anything but my poor tastebuds. To this day, the memory makes me shiver in horror.

And now, a change in the formulation of one of my meds means that I have received capsules instead of tablets. It’s the little things.

I Woke Up Cold: Thoughts From My Morning Coffee

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I put on a scarf at 5:30 in the morning because I woke up cold. It seems that I’m always cold these days. Months remain before the crocuses poke through the soil and the robins start to chirp. Months of ice and salt, of bitter wind and cracked skin. Of waking up cold. I step lightly on the wood floor in the dark and flick on the kitchen lights. It’s time for coffee, so I follow the familiar steps: a new filter, two and a half scoops, and enough water for a full pot. I don’t mind waking up so early; it gives me time to start the day slowly. If I try, I can get another half hour before I’m rudely awakened by a paw to the face– Stella has limited patience. So in the end, 5:30 is peaceful and silent, and I can sit alone at the table with my coffee while Stella smells the early morning air through the crack between the sliding door and the frame.

This morning is grey; the trees are grey, the sky is grey, the grass looks nearly grey. I can already tell that today will be a sluggish one. There will probably be a long nap, and I will likely struggle through work, only to wander aimlessly from one uninteresting hobby to another. I wonder if the ketamine is wearing off, but it’s only been two weeks since my last infusion. I want to will myself into a longer interval between infusions because two weeks seems rather short. I argue with myself when it comes time to rate my mood for the day on a scale of one to ten. (I get an automated reminder text on my phone and send the number as a reply. The results create a graph that my doctor can see.) I have this urge to fib- to make it seem like I feel better than I do. It takes some effort to not lie, and I always get a small twist of disappointment and shame when I send anything below a five.

What will today be? A four? Maybe if I get moving, I can make it a five or even a six. But frankly, today is grey and cold, and I don’t feel like doing anything. My depression is not seasonal; it stays all year. I’ve noticed, however, that the quiet arrival of spring sometimes tows along my missing optimism. The return of new growth and green things makes me feel a little more ready to come out of my shell. Anticipation tinged with anxiety will begin to stir in me as winter comes to an end. Anxiety because there will be more to do, and I worry that I won’t be able to drag myself out of bed to do it. Anticipation because I desperately want to.

For now, I am lost in January. Sometimes, the best I can do is curl up in the cashmere blanket my mother made for me, still wearing my scarf, and sleep. And hope that I won’t wake up cold.

green-mug-with-steam-rising-sitting-on-side-table-with-rumpled-sheets-on-bed-in-background

Taking Stock of My Life with Depression

Genevieve2 Comments
text about not having energy for anything
Not my meme. Not sure whose.

In my experience, severe depression creates a kind of tunnel vision whereby the non-essential tasks of life get shuffled to the edges and only the act of surviving can be focused on. It’s not that you don’t know what’s on the edges, you just don’t have the energy to expand your field of view and look directly at them. I’m in an increasingly healthy place right now, and I’m taking stock of the state of my life with depression. I always knew that I was “falling behind” in my self-imposed timeline. In fact, I’m acutely aware of how much time has passed without me accomplishing the milestones and achievements someone my age is expected to be doing. My life looks very little like what I hoped it would by this point, a fact that is heavy with self-judgment and regret.

I still struggle to believe that depression happened to me. That it wasn’t poor planning, laziness, or a lack of ambition that kept me from moving forward, but an illness. I think that there are two helpful ways of looking at this. In one, the state of my life is a result of severe depression, a disorder that has kept me from functioning at the level I used to. This view helps stop me from blaming myself for every perceived inadequacy and from expecting too much from myself too soon; I do, after all, still have a serious mental illness that requires daily management.

On the other hand, I try to consider the state of my life to be in spite of severe depression. I didn’t do nothing while horribly depressed, I fought for my life. I studied and graduated, I worked part-time, and I adopted a dog. I went to therapy and tried medications and pushed myself to do things when I just wanted to sleep. Most importantly, my life – even as a life with depression – has continued. The things that I consider important for young adults to do or have mean nothing if there is no life to be led.

If you’re struggling right now, give yourself some credit for the courage and persistence it takes for you to show up for yourself every day. There is no timeline.

envelope labeled 2020 with golden streamers and small potted plant

My Mental Health Resolutions

Genevieve2 Comments

In December, I gave myself four goals to test before the new year rolled around. I wanted to give myself a chance to work on some (mainly) mental health resolutions without the pressure of an entire year ahead. It wasn’t wildly successful, but it wasn’t a flop, either.

These were my goals:

  1. Keep running, be able to go five miles somewhat comfortably: Done!
  2. Reestablish skincare routine: Sort of done! Currently on track, but it wasn’t a straight line.
  3. Start volunteering: Sort of done! I’m signed up to start in January.
  4. Begin relearning German: Not at all done! Yeah, nope. Didn’t even start.

Even though I didn’t check all the boxes, it felt pretty good to have a list of actionable goals. My overarching goal with all of them (except maybe relearning German) was to improve or support my mental health. In that, I think I succeeded! It was motivating to remember that I only had one month to make progress on my goals, which helped me not get complacent and stuck in bed with depression. As with any vague intention like “improve my mental health,” setting out some well-defined steps is vital. I needed to know where to start and how to do it.

2019 was really, really hard. I plummeted even further into the pit of depression than ever before and ended up hospitalized. I continued on my quest to find medications that work for me, and most of the time, I felt entirely discouraged and worthless. But, I kept going. I kept myself alive, and that was a huge accomplishment. Now, with the assistance of moderately helpful medications and much more helpful IV ketamine infusions, I feel like I’m inching my way out of my blanket burrito of sadness. To continue that progress, I’m aiming to carry on my mental health resolutions from December into the new year.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year’s Eve and a wonderful year ahead.

Anonymity and Mental Health Stigma

Genevieve6 Comments

IMG_2405

When I started this blog, it was deliberately anonymous in an effort to avoid any mental health stigma from reaching my real life. I didn’t have my name anywhere on it and I made a conscious effort not to mention anything about my life outside the sphere of mental health. I don’t think I even told my immediate family about it until a few months in.

I liked the freedom of writing anything I wanted without overthinking it. Those fears of what will people think? were almost nonexistent because nobody knew who I was. Over time, I began sharing it with people I knew. My immediate family and friends, then my extended family, my therapist, and others involved in my treatment.

I know that putting my name on my blog doesn’t change much for you, the reader. It does, however, signify a big change for me in the context of internalized mental health stigma. I’m finally coming to terms with my diagnoses and feeling more comfortable talking and writing about them as myself, with my real name attached.

Everyone has their own reasons for keeping their online presence anonymous. My reason was rooted in shame. I was afraid that if people knew I was writing about topics like depression, self-harm, and suicidality, they would never again see me for the things that make me, me. The reality is that people I know tend to notice the things that shine through the overarching topics. They comment on my love of writing and my sense of humor before they mention the content of my posts. And when they do broach the subject of my blog, they express their happiness that I’m still working towards stability. It helps, of course, that my family and the people surrounding me are very understanding. Not everyone has that, and I’m so thankful that I do.

Anyway, there you have it. My name is Genevieve (Gen), I’m 23 years old, and I live in Colorado. I got my bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, where I studied Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as well as Evolutionary Anthropology. I work from home as an editor and freelance writer (not at all related to my degree, but whatever). On my blog, I write about my diagnoses of sensory processing disorder and major depressive disorder. I like reading, making art, and being in nature. This is starting to sound like a cross between a cover letter and a dating profile, so I’m going to wrap it up.

Lumpdates is still lumpdates, but I’m pretty dang proud of myself for standing up to mental health stigma by typing the nine letters of my name into my username settings.

Wishing you curly fries,

Genevieve