Here to help

I have been doing a lot of self care lately and have alluded to it in previous blogs, but I thought perhaps it would be useful to share some of it, in case it helps you, the reader.

I suffer with depression and anxiety. I take antidepressants and have absolutely no problem doing so, they make me slightly more normal. By normal I mean less prone to bouts of despair, anger, insomnia and other things beside. I wold never actually class myself as normal, and I suspect neither would my friends, but n a good, quirky, kind of way.

I changed meds a few months ago because my previous meds were no longer effective and I knew this because my depression and anxiety were unmanageable. It did not come as a surprise, my partner and I had been put through hell for two years and couldn’t see a way out. Turns out though that the way out, as distressing as it was was transformational in may ways, for both of us, and we are now content and there is peace in our lives. Maybe it is true that things have to fall apart for other things to come together. I am currently reading a book on synchronicity and one paragraph struck me:

“You will want to remember that on a path of transformation, you reach a point where you break down or you break through and sometimes the breakdown comes before the breakthrough”

I can honestly say that I broke. My partner too for that matter. I was broken and could not see how it was possible for the pieces to ever be reconstructed into something resembling a whole. I was in a black hole and when I reached the bottom, the night I sat in bed for hours in  the a.m, alone, crying and repeating out loud to myself ‘I just need help’ I decided that I actually needed help. From people.

When I went to the doctor about changing my meds he referred me to a psychiatrist. I attended a few sessions and between us, as the meds were now working, I was referred to a local resource called Healthy Minds. I attended four or five sessions for low level therapy and have now been referred to counselling. The low level therapy has provided me with some fantastic tools which I will share below.

I also attended an 8 week mindfuless course/study. This was part of a student’s PhD thesis and required me to complete some tests and have two brain scans, but as part of this was two hours of mindfuless once a week. Initially I didn’t practice much outside of the sessions, but it was during the time of utter hell and before I broke down.

The reason I have opted for counselling is because I still have some unresolved issues which I need to talk about and address. I have quite a large amount of guilt about my ex husband and the fact that he was so hurt when we separated. I am carrying self esteem issues with me as a result of never feeling good enough. I have humongous amounts of anger inside about my partner’s ex and what she did to him, to me and to us. No amount of self help is going to eradicate these things completely, although it has lessened. Essentially I need to be able to move on, I am still stuck somewhat with these things and want my life to move forward.

So, it began with the mindfulness. I downloaded an app called Calm and hoped it might help me sleep. It has done far more than that. I meditate or practice mindfulness once a day at least, before I go to sleep, and sometimes meditate in the morning, on my commute, when I am walking to work. being mindful and being still during those times is permission to give myself a break. I am also trying to incorporate mindfulness into my every day tasks. To just concentrate on the thing I am doing at that time, to stop the overthinking.

I then decided, after I had opted to see Healthy Minds, to download a course about overcoming self sabotage. It doesn’t take long but it provided me with food for thought about getting the answers from inside myself about why I self sabotage, as well as some tools to allow myself to stop it. These include writing a letter about my limiting beliefs and then destroying it, and consequently them. I have also been prompted to carry out what I would call a sort of karmic unburdening or an ‘I never said I was sorry’ letter to anyone I have hurt and wish them happiness in their lives, in the hope (yes, it’s a bit dippy hippy, but then I used to be too!) that my apology will go out into the universe and I will have made peace with the universe and the universe will bestow happiness on those people.

At around the same time I started to see Healthy Minds and the lady I saw concluded that I have some serious self esteem issues. As part of this she provided me with some work booklets as homework, partly to understand low self esteem and partly to understand where my low self esteem comes from, which was an eye opener. I now keep three journals (any excuse to buy stationary frankly!).

One is a list of the things I have done each day, no matter how small, as a record to show that when I think I have done precisely fuck all, it is not true.

The second is a thought diary. When I have a thought about myself being worthless, I write it down. I follow a list of questions; what was I doing when I started to feel bad about myself? What were my emotions and bodily sensations? What exactly was going through my mind when I began to fell bad about myself? What was my self defeating behaviour as a consequence of my critical thoughts? Where has this critical voice come from? Me? Someone else? Is it fact or opinion? What would someone else see or make of it? Is there another way of looking at it? And the real game changer, what would I say to  friend in the same situation?

The third is a list of things I am positive about each day. Things I am grateful for each day and things that have given me joy each day.

It has all really helped. I now try to think about what I am grateful for before I sleep and when I wake. I try to do a short muscle relaxation before I get up. I have even bought various herbal teas for morning, perking me up during the day and before bed. I have recorded a few affirmations that I play back to myself twice a day (I am not here talking about affirmations to try and ‘attract’ wealth, more that I am grateful, that I am good at my job, that I am worthy of love . . ). Sounds silly, but hearing them out loud not only makes you start to believe them but also makes you think about the truth of them and ways in which you can make them true.

 

All of it has made me see two important things; first, we tend to over analyse things and look too closely for our flaws. We all have many things to love about ourselves, we are beautiful human beings and we matter and deserve to be happy and loved. Second, I want to be a better person, to others, to myself, spiritually, generally. I want to take better care of myself and others in my life, to be happy and spread that happiness everywhere.

It takes some dedication and often feels self indulgent, but if I can get to a point where I am happy with who I am then spreading happiness should be easy.