Meredith Arthur's Blog, page 8

I'm a Stubborn Middle-Aged Guy With an Anxiety Disorder

Photo of the author

I am a stubborn, idiotic, typical guy, age 40. That’s the best way I can describe myself. Sounds a little harsh, I know, but ever since I can remember I have been so rigid in my ways, and so stubborn in my outlook on life, especially when it came to my anxiety disorder.

Imagine your typical guy, drinking 3–4 days per week with his buddies, working a regular 9–5 job (not particularly headed anywhere), avoiding the doctor at all costs, scoffing at any advice given, eating whenever and whatever I wanted, working out sporadically, just struggling through life strapped with a bad anxiety disorder. I think the one quality I inherited from my father was this incredibly stubborn personality, and the thought that a “real man” did not need doctors, or that mental health even needed to be addressed.

The underlying anxiety disorder that I have had since I was a child was always there, in the background, popping up in waves, and I was resistant to even acknowledge it, let alone do anything to make it better. The situation just kept getting worse and worse, panic attacks more frequent and longer lasting, and me just increasing my self-medication with more avoidance, more alcohol, more drugs. Then, the tipping point came. I had a full-on panic attack breakdown, while massively hungover at work facing a day full of meetings with new clients, boss right next to me, I just completely broke down. I was a sniffling, crying, shaking, heart-pounding, borderline heart attack complete mess. I think the hangover was what pushed it over the edge, or maybe the fact the day would be so long, or the fact that meeting new people always puts me into anxiety mode, but I was forced to bolt, escape, run away. I made up some bogus excuse about not feeling well, not sure exactly what I said to tell the truth, but I think my boss could tell something was up, especially since I still had some tears in my eyes from full on cry-barfing minutes earlier, who knows, maybe he smelled the booze from the night before. I raced home, took a few shots of Jameson and a couple Xanax I had from a friend and proceeded to hide under my covers for the rest of the day wondering if I should go to the ER. I called out the following day as well. It was a feeling of complete and utter hopelessness, filled with dread, heart racing, just wondering what the future would hold for me. I could not stop thinking about the future and the anxiety ruminations continued on and on for days. I was forced to conclude that I needed to find some help, I could not live like this anymore. It was either find help or find a way to off myself in a painless, cowardly way.

I am now able to say that I am obliterating my anxiety disorder, like a Ferrari racing against a Saab, destroying it. Here are the steps I took, and what I changed to make this happen.

Stubborn Idiot Seeks Help

This was perhaps the toughest part for me. I do not like doctors or their stupid, sterile, boring offices, with their old magazines on the rack, and bad attitude receptionists. Not to mention the smell, what is it about all doctor’s offices that make it smell like someone just cleaned with ammonia and formaldehyde? I had not been to the doctor in years, and the last time was at an urgent care clinic just to get some drugs for the flu. Where to even start? Headed to google, looked up: “competent psychiatrist in my area.” I think google can see through my sarcasm and cynicism and just presented a list of shrinks. I honestly looked for the one with the nicest website. If they could take the time to make sure their website looked sharp, was well put together, maybe they can actually help a stubborn Idiot like me. The one I finally landed on was perfect, even had pictures of their doctors so I could start my uneducated judging of them immediately, reading biographies, looking at their faces, their clothing, trying to hand pick who I could stomach. Found one, called, made appointment, done. For now.

Appointment day came and I managed to drag myself into their office with worst case thoughts in my head the entire time. I even knew what the office would look like already, image in my head right down to the type of couch. I can say, I was pleasantly surprised when I showed up, no sterile smell, the area was warm like someone’s living room, receptionist was friendly and they were playing Bob Ross on the big screen in the waiting room, no stupid magazines. I even asked the bubbly, smiling receptionist about the Bob Ross, and she replied, studies have shown he has an amazing affect on calming anxiety and improving depression. Maybe it is his cadence, or the art, or the afro. I was pleased. Appointment went well, I guess we covered the basics that everyone does at their first meeting with a psychiatrist, but we agreed to keep meeting and he was able to introduce me to a therapist in the same office that I could meet with immediately, just to talk. This was positive. I know not everyone will luck out like this but going into it with my piss poor attitude did not bode well for the outcome, and everything worked out anyways. I guess the moral to this story could be that it does not really matter where you start, or who you meet with, you just need to get help from someone and go from there. I have kept the same therapist and psychiatrist for 2 years now, and while they have their faults, I am still too stubborn and rigid to try anyone else, that part of me has not changed and probably will not. He could have punched me in the face in our first meeting and I would probably still be seeing him. They both help, they both give me good advice, and more importantly, have set me on a medication plan that is far better than Jameson and hand me down drugs from friends.

Stubborn Idiot Tells Everyone about his Anxiety

Tell everyone. Suck up your stupid pride, put away your guy’s-guy attitude about being tough and untouchable and tell people about your anxiety disorder and what you are dealing with. Despite what I thought, I was amazed at the compassion and understanding I was met with when I opened up and told people what I was dealing with. When I told my boss, he was completely understanding and even told me he knew something was going on. He went over what we can do to move forward and told me about what our company offers for mental health. When I told my buddies, they gave me a hard time at first, some slight ribbing about being a psycho, but ultimately let me know that they were there for me and would help with anything I needed. When I told my favorite bartender, she told me she would help me cut back on alcohol and even started automatically serving me sporadic “water shots” and ginger ales. When I told my girlfriend, she broke down in tears and felt I should have told her sooner because she loves me and wants to make my life better. When I told my parents, they opened up and told me they both dealt with the same issues, and it was probably hereditary, we went over all the things they do that helps them. I felt completely relieved that I was not “in the closet” about my anxiety anymore. Now, if I am having a bad day, I don’t need to say much more, or make up an outlandish excuse about why I can’t make it to the (insert event here) they all understand and let me know they care. It is an amazing feeling not to hide anymore and need to self-medicate.

Stubborn Idiot Cuts the Bad From Life

On the advice of the aforementioned therapist and psychiatrist that I now meet with monthly, I have begun to cut the bad things out of my life. What I thought was good for me and provided a release was in fact exacerbating and making my anxiety worse. This primarily meant: Stop drinking so much! As a self-proclaimed guy’s-guy, this was difficult, but was not impossible. I did not stop cold turkey, in fact did not even stop drinking really, did not stop going to the bar to meet with my buddies. Due to my stubborn, borderline OCD tendencies, I could not just stop completely, I did things my way and changed it up. You can do the same, in your own way. First instead of going to the bar 3–4 times a week, I cut down to 2 and divided my week up the way I wanted, also predetermined by sports obligations and UFC fights. While at the bar, I promised myself to start mixing my beer and shots with water and ginger ale. I paced myself at first, slowing it all down, drinking slower, not taking up every offer for shots, and most importantly not stumbling out of the bar each time. I have now gotten to the point where I only visit the bar 1–2 times per month, and I only drink about 3 beers each time, with no shots. This way, I can still keep up with my buddies, still see my favorite bartender, and still feel like I have a life outside of work. I found that the alcohol was numbing me from feeling anything and have learned that in order to obliterate anxiety, you need to face it head on, not avoid it. Acknowledge that it is there, and it is just a feeling, that you can control and push down, or push away. Not too mention, Hangovers are incredibly anxiety inducing, avoiding those at all costs has helped immensely.

Stubborn Idiot Adds Good into Life

Now, what I thought was the good in my life, eating, drinking to excess, binging TV for hours, needed to be replaced with things that were actually good for me. I have always deemed myself quite artistic, just never took the time to explore where this took me. I have started to draw and paint a few times a week. I have found this as a cathartic activity that allows me to shut off my mind for a few hours and tap into my creativity, halting ruminations, clearing the mind. This hobby, (or any hobby that you can take up), has allowed me to self-medicate in a positive way instead of my other nefarious ways of shutting off my brain. My Therapist has also suggested finding some “brain candy” that I can also use to occupy my ever-cycling anxiety-stricken brain. My brain candy consists mostly of comedy videos. Anytime I need a small break from reality, I can search for a quick video online and hopefully squeeze out a few previously suppressed laughs. You would be surprised how helpful a little laughter, even in the bathroom stall at work, can be. The therapist droned on about how it creates dopamine in the brain and acts as an uplifting drug for your brain, hence “brain candy”. You can come up with your own method, be it comic books, reading positive articles, searching social media, whatever, just come up with some “brain candy”.

Stubborn Idiot Submits to Exercise

Let me preface this by saying the stubborn idiot in me hated to work out, previously only working out to tell people that I did it, or post on social media about a work out to see what kind of likes I got. I was forced to admit that I did actually feel better after a workout. I started small, walking around the neighborhood after work with the girlfriend. These little walks gave us time to talk, get closer to each other and I was able to get things off my chest, she didn’t even need to respond, I could just put my thoughts out into the universe, and it helped. Our walks slowly turned into going to the gym, lifting weights and doing cardio. I even get into a little Yoga now and then, which focuses on breathing, this is a huge help and taught me how to control my breathing in times of anxiety. Now, the Stubborn Idiot takes over and this has become part of my routine, I even get upset when I am unable to work out. The benefit has been, I dropped 60 pounds and feel like I have a secret weapon against my anxiety that I can jump into after work. Start small, even stay small if you want, but do something to expel the negative energy, it really helps.

Stubborn Idiot Starts Eating Better

All those articles I read about eating better, used to just piss me off. Yeah yeah yeah, I know I should eat better, I know I will feel better, but eating what I want also makes me feel good. I again started small on this one, replacing the pizza night with salad night at first. It was tough, I love pizza, I love wings, I love beer. I still give myself all of these things, just not all the time like I used to. From there, I started replacing items I indulged in with healthier options and smaller portions. Instead of a steak and mac and cheese meal, it turned into lean meat like chicken and a vegetable side. I am not saying this needs to be every night of the week, but making some small gradual changes believe it or not, helped my mental health. I do not feel like taking a nap after dinner, I feel like I am giving my body fuel, and nutrients that it needs to work positively. Even writing this out sounds corny as hell and I am aggravating myself, this stubborn idiot feels like a fraud and hypocrite, but trust me, this helps, even in small steps.

Stubborn Idiot Does All the Crap You Read About

Hypocritical, it still feels horrible to admit, but all that crap you read about, meditation, breathing exercises, mindfulness. It all works. You just need to find your niche and your way to do it, no matter how big or small. I reluctantly started to meditate, at the insistence of my girlfriend, each night for 5–10 minutes before bed. My favorite are the short clips online that have someone without a dumb voice, or ridiculous premise. I have found a few favorites that I can repeat over and over. I do this in bed, laying down and ready to go to sleep. The quick 5–10 minutes helps calm down my mind, stop my ruminations and most importantly helps me fall asleep easier. Breathing exercises follows the same idea, but this technique I can use anytime throughout the day. If I am feeling the anxiety creep in during a workday, I can take 2 minutes and start breathing deeply, bringing me back to normal. I do this either in the bathroom stall, at my desk, or in my car. Look up your own exercises online, but they are all pretty much the same, in through your nose for a count of 4, hold, then out through your mouth with pursed lips for a count of 6–8. The stubborn idiot still feels dumb about mindfulness, and I do not practice as much as I should, but when I do, it centers me. I can stop ruminating about the future, cycling crazy scenarios over and over in my head and bring my self back to the moment at hand. I find that if I don’t look to the future, or what could come with it and just focus on the exact moment I am sitting in, I can push the anxiety aside, even just for a little while.

Stubborn Idiot Handles Anxiety in the Moment

This might be the most important section, and I am saving the best for last. At this point, I have fully submitted to my anxiety disorder, it is part of my life and is not going anywhere. It will still arise at times I least expect, or times I fully expect and bring on myself. In the moment, I can obliterate it with any of the weapons I have developed. I can watch a quick video to bring a soothing laugh, I can breathe a little, I can try to be mindful but mostly, I use the S.T.O.P. method for eliminating any anxiety in the moment. This all came from my therapist and is an extensively used CBT method, super-duper corny, and textbook, the Stubborn Idiot wants to reject this BS, but it works. “S” Stop what you are doing and take a moment to pause everything. Step away if you need to, go to the bathroom, go outside, whatever, just Stop. “T” Take a few deep breaths and bring yourself back to center. Acknowledge the anxiety and realize that it is just a feeling and you can push it away. “O” Observe what is going on, within your body, your mind and bring yourself back to reality. Is this thought or feeling a reality? Most likely I am imagining a worst case scenario and not the real situation. Thoughts are not reality. Assess and Observe how you are feeling. “P” Proceed with what was going on, or do not proceed. Take what you learned when you Observed and correct your actions accordingly in a manner that makes you feel better.

Take it or leave it, I have used all these methods to take my anxiety disorder from something that controlled every moment of my life and was leading me down a path of self-destruction, to an element of my life that I can obliterate at any time, taking back control. The stubborn idiot in me will never leave, but the anxiety is not going to leave either. I needed to find a balance between the two, otherwise the stubborn idiot method would likely end in disaster. So, I guess at this point, you could call me a strong willed, mindful, typical Guy with anxiety that he is destroying in his own way. I hope you can find something useful out of my story and it helps you.

Michael Joslin is a 40-year-old guy, originally from NY who has been living in Hawaii for the past 15 years.  He struggles with depression, anxiety and ADHD and enjoys writing about life, mental health, love, and daily musings. He says, “I am a new freelance writer getting my feet wet in this business.”

How Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Has Affected My Mental Health

Photo credit

As a child, I couldn’t hide the symptoms, no matter how much I wanted to.

I read the comments on my recently posted picture. I sighed with a sense of relief. It wasn’t all bad. They found me happy. They found me cute. The filters were working. 

Then I got a notification about a message from an old school mate.

“Still the same fat girl, huh?” The face filters could not hide the extra pounds on my body.  Fat. Three lettered word. Storm of emotions.  The skin tears wide open. The wound begins to bleed again. The pain brings my attention to the open wound. I realize it never healed since it happened. 

Taking in a long breath, I type down, “Still the same sizeist, huh?”  I press send. It felt good. I had stood up for myself, right? I take some cotton and dab the wound. The piece of cotton turns red as it absorbs all the blood, but the wound remains fresh. I continue to bleed…drop by drop.  Oh, his guts. After all these years…

Maybe people never changed. I could almost see it as if it were happening before my eyes that very minute. The crowd of students jeering behind my back, calling me names. I had run into the washroom; head bowed down. School kids had interesting ways of entertaining themselves. It involved observation and undesired attention to every ‘ugly’ feature in me. It started from the most visible one – the obesity, to the most minute details – the hirsutism.

My younger self had looked at her reflection and cringed in the empty girl’s washroom. The acne breakout burned red under the heat. I could feel the sweat glistening on my bushy eyebrows. Her body frame barely fit in the tiny bathroom mirror. “Couldn’t just blame them... I look hideous.” I had thought to myself as I searched the school bag for the pills. 

The doctor’s voice had rung in my head. “Three pills three times a day, PCOS can be controlled with the right medication and diet and exercise.” 

My mother had seemed worried all through the doctor visits, and for good reasons. I was the first in the family to present such a diagnosis. They had barely heard about this lifestyle issue that was surprisingly prevalent among millions of teenage girls around the globe. I recalled how the risk of heart disease or cancer at an older age, or even the risk of infertility had meant nothing to my younger self back then. 

My only concern, back then, had been the person I saw in the mirror every morning... and how all the students in school also seemed to notice only what I saw in the mirror. An ugly misfit.  I leave the wound open. I carelessly brush it against the walls and pointed edges. The wound grows bigger and deeper. 

I looked in the mirror. My present-self glowed in the mirror. Despite my low cooperation, all those doctor visits and medications over the years had had an impact. But I could see right through the façade. The hidden extra fat under the clothes, the acne marks, the smile with the crooked teeth. I fought only the unseen symptoms now... the mood swings, the anxiety, the binge eating. I looked at my reflection and saw the source of my misery and pain. “This body will continue to haunt me forever.” The wound festered, slowly turning into a toxic infection.

I brushed aside the messages. Put on a smile and told myself that there were more important things that required my attention. I was not going to let the bullies win again. I could not give them the satisfaction. I washed the wound. Applied ice. Put on a band aid. I moved on and forgot about the wound…. Again. 

Another day, another comment, I found myself in front of the mirror again. Only this time, I broke down crying. My blurry eyes fall on the picture of my 5-year old self, that is stuck to the edge of the mirror, the girl with a chubby face and a hearty smile. That young girl didn’t seem to worry about what others thought of her. She didn’t seem to have contemplated a million times before posing for the camera. She seems happy with herself, her little chubby hands and feet, and how she could put a smile on any face in the room. I rip off the band aid. The wound still appeared fresh. 

My reflection appeared tired. Fatigued after all these years of seeking approval.

When did that young girl grow up to be someone I hated? Since when did my own reflection give rise to feelings of hatred and shame in myself? Aren’t I enough as I am? Am I going to let a diagnosis define me? Am I eventually going to let the bullies win? After all these years of covering up my scars and wounds, I realized I did not have the energy to carry this shame anymore. I touch the wound, I could feel the insides burning. I dig deeper as the pain shoots through my body. But I dig until I take out all the pus, dirt and debris. 

Step one—Disinfect the wound. 

I wiped her tears. I apologized to my reflection for years of unkindness. I took a long hot shower. Put on my favorite clothes. I beamed at myself in the mirror and told myself– “You are beautiful and you are enough.”

Step two—Stitch up the wound carefully. 

I took a picture of myself. Unfiltered and raw. I put it up on my feed. And when my best friend commented, I smiled and replied, “thank you.”

Step three—Keep the wound clean and dry in the coming days.

I continued to listen to my body, giving it water, food and importantly, love. I reminded my body every day that I loved it no matter how it looked. I thanked my body for everything it did for me, day in and day out. Wounds don’t heal with time. Tissues grow over them. The pain lessens. It scars.

Step four—Avoid picking at scabs.

I discovered the block feature in my social media accounts. I wrote more about body positivity and acceptance. I began reading and following healthcare for PCOS. I learn to live with the scars.

Step five—Let the air in.

I smiled at myself in the mirror every morning. I was looking at my favorite companion. I looked down at my arms, the scars were not visible anymore.  

“Look down at your body

whisper

There is no home like you.”

– Rupi Kaur

Millions of young girls around the globe suffer from PCOS at a very young age. But many do not know enough about the condition or its consequences. 

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age. Women with PCOS may have infrequent or prolonged menstrual periods or excess male hormone (androgen) levels. The ovaries may develop numerous small collections of fluid (follicles) and fail to regularly release eggs. The exact cause of PCOS is unknown. Early diagnosis and treatment along with weight loss may reduce the risk of long-term complications such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Bullying can lead to invisible scars. Both of these topics are very close to my heart and I have wanted share my experiences with it for a long time. Please give this a read and share your feedback. 

Educate yourself, keep yourself informed and look out for the signs, in yourself and in others.
If you ever need to talk, I am here to lend an ear

Criticism Stopped My Writing For a Decade

Photo credit

Criticism made me quit writing. Never let that happen to you.

“I read some of your book. It sucked, man,” was the first feedback I got—from a family member—on my self-published book. If someone from the one group that typically propped struggling writers up with emotional support was giving me that feedback already, it really must suck.

“What the hell does he know about parenting? This is stupid.” This was my second review from a coworker’s wife.

This all happened back in 2008 when I decided to take all I had learned about leadership as a Marine and apply it to my new role as a Dad. Not the “scream-in-your-face” stuff that Boot Camp is made of, but the real and deep leadership principles that apply to any position of loving authority. I spent about a year and a half writing stories and collecting quotes to back them up. I designed a cover. I hired an editor to proof-read and make suggestions for improvements.

I was proud of my accomplishment.

Was.

Then I started getting feedback like described above. I got some supportive feedback from family, but that’s what most family does, right? I appreciated the positive response, but it was biased in my favor so it didn’t hold as much weight on my scale of self-judgement. I got nothing positive back from people who didn’t know me.

After a while, as I sold a book or two a month, I imagined that everyone probably thought of me as my first two reviewers had. What did I know about parenting anyway? I wasn’t a family psychiatrist or anything. My only kid at the time I published was 2 years old. Maybe I did know some things about leadership, but what gave me the right to apply that to parenting?

I felt like a fake. Like an imposter. And I felt like on my very first foray into writing, I was immediately identified as a fake. A fake writer who self-published and a fake parent who had no real experience.

I started to become embarrassed that I had even written a book.

When people brought it up I quickly changed the subject.

So I stopped writing. For 10 years.

Then I read something that my friend wrote about relationships. It was beautiful. It moved me. We were similar in how we saw many things in life back then, but especially now that we were “grown-ups” and family men. He could write about the simple beauty that surrounds us with such flowing words that it seemed semantics were no obstacle for his ideas to flow directly to my brain. I was inspired.

Inspired enough to start writing again. So I did, and I’m so glad I did. I have been having an absolute blast. I look forward to writing every day. Some people have said I have even genuinely helped them with my writing. This is priceless to me. It feels like writing was meant to be part of who I am.

I recently wrote about how persistence is so important to writing. And it is. I wish I had persisted through the criticism and Imposter Syndrome 10 years ago. Who knows where I could be now. But regret is a waste of time. Hope is time better spent.

I kind of feel embarrassed as a “tough” Marine that I let a few words from a few people steer my actions for a decade. I was able to defend myself against armed enemy combatants, but words of criticism pierced right through my armor with ease. Criticism of my creation crippled me.

But now I can move forward for many reasons. I realize that in a way, all humans are impostors. We are all new to life relatively speaking. When we just begin to figure it out, we die of old age. Why should we let someone else’s opinion be more valued than our own?

We must impose ourselves upon new areas of life if we want to grow. Stepping into formerly unknown roles generates those impostor feelings. It is natural. It doesn’t mean we don’t belong there. Someone who never feels this way is usually stagnating, like I did for a decade. Anyone who has the courage to create or to do important things at all will run into criticism and feel like an impostor sometimes. These are social growing pains.

So I decided to write this article to encourage you. You who may feel like you have nothing worth hearing. You who feel your words aren’t worth sharing or you have no right to say them. You are wrong. What you have to say is worth hearing. Please keep saying it. I want you to push through.

Don’t make the mistake I did and quit. JUST. PUSH. THROUGH.

Looking back, my book did kind of suck as far as format and writing. And even though that was 10 years ago, I’m only 3 months further into my writing journey, so I’m not that much better yet. But my ideas in the book were good. I was right about leadership and parenting. I shouldn’t have let criticism devalue my belief in those ideas. If I had kept writing, that suck factor in my writing would have decreased. But I didn’t stick around long enough to make that possible.

Persistence seems to be the key when I read advice from the best writers. If you can stick around, ignore negative criticism, welcome constructive criticism and always improve your skills, then you may have a chance. Then, and only then, might you have a shot at being a successful writer.

And even if you do reach success, the feeling of being an imposter is always there and criticism will be there with it. I think maybe all of us who create may always feel these things from time to time.

Maya Angelou said “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now! I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”

John Steinbeck said before publishing The Grapes of Wrath “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” If Maya and John have had this feeling, we all will.

Imposter Syndrome and criticism should be signs of growth to us rather than stop signs.

They stopped me for 10 years.

I’ll never allow that to happen again. I hope you don’t either.

Max Klein has an MBA, makes wine, and is a veteran. He’s also a writer. This piece originally appeared on Invisible Illness.

Criticism Stopped My Writing for a Decade

Photo credit

Criticism made me quit writing. Never let that happen to you.

“I read some of your book. It sucked, man,” was the first feedback I got—from a family member—on my self-published book. If someone from the one group that typically propped struggling writers up with emotional support was giving me that feedback already, it really must suck.

“What the hell does he know about parenting? This is stupid.” This was my second review from a coworker’s wife.

This all happened back in 2008 when I decided to take all I had learned about leadership as a Marine and apply it to my new role as a Dad. Not the “scream-in-your-face” stuff that Boot Camp is made of, but the real and deep leadership principles that apply to any position of loving authority. I spent about a year and a half writing stories and collecting quotes to back them up. I designed a cover. I hired an editor to proof-read and make suggestions for improvements.

I was proud of my accomplishment.

Was.

Then I started getting feedback like described above. I got some supportive feedback from family, but that’s what most family does, right? I appreciated the positive response, but it was biased in my favor so it didn’t hold as much weight on my scale of self-judgement. I got nothing positive back from people who didn’t know me.

After a while, as I sold a book or two a month, I imagined that everyone probably thought of me as my first two reviewers had. What did I know about parenting anyway? I wasn’t a family psychiatrist or anything. My only kid at the time I published was 2 years old. Maybe I did know some things about leadership, but what gave me the right to apply that to parenting?

I felt like a fake. Like an imposter. And I felt like on my very first foray into writing, I was immediately identified as a fake. A fake writer who self-published and a fake parent who had no real experience.

I started to become embarrassed that I had even written a book.

When people brought it up I quickly changed the subject.

So I stopped writing. For 10 years.

Then I read something that my friend wrote about relationships. It was beautiful. It moved me. We were similar in how we saw many things in life back then, but especially now that we were “grown-ups” and family men. He could write about the simple beauty that surrounds us with such flowing words that it seemed semantics were no obstacle for his ideas to flow directly to my brain. I was inspired.

Inspired enough to start writing again. So I did, and I’m so glad I did. I have been having an absolute blast. I look forward to writing every day. Some people have said I have even genuinely helped them with my writing. This is priceless to me. It feels like writing was meant to be part of who I am.

I recently wrote about how persistence is so important to writing. And it is. I wish I had persisted through the criticism and Imposter Syndrome 10 years ago. Who knows where I could be now. But regret is a waste of time. Hope is time better spent.

I kind of feel embarrassed as a “tough” Marine that I let a few words from a few people steer my actions for a decade. I was able to defend myself against armed enemy combatants, but words of criticism pierced right through my armor with ease. Criticism of my creation crippled me.

But now I can move forward for many reasons. I realize that in a way, all humans are impostors. We are all new to life relatively speaking. When we just begin to figure it out, we die of old age. Why should we let someone else’s opinion be more valued than our own?

We must impose ourselves upon new areas of life if we want to grow. Stepping into formerly unknown roles generates those impostor feelings. It is natural. It doesn’t mean we don’t belong there. Someone who never feels this way is usually stagnating, like I did for a decade. Anyone who has the courage to create or to do important things at all will run into criticism and feel like an impostor sometimes. These are social growing pains.

So I decided to write this article to encourage you. You who may feel like you have nothing worth hearing. You who feel your words aren’t worth sharing or you have no right to say them. You are wrong. What you have to say is worth hearing. Please keep saying it. I want you to push through.

Don’t make the mistake I did and quit. JUST. PUSH. THROUGH.

Looking back, my book did kind of suck as far as format and writing. And even though that was 10 years ago, I’m only 3 months further into my writing journey, so I’m not that much better yet. But my ideas in the book were good. I was right about leadership and parenting. I shouldn’t have let criticism devalue my belief in those ideas. If I had kept writing, that suck factor in my writing would have decreased. But I didn’t stick around long enough to make that possible.

Persistence seems to be the key when I read advice from the best writers. If you can stick around, ignore negative criticism, welcome constructive criticism and always improve your skills, then you may have a chance. Then, and only then, might you have a shot at being a successful writer.

And even if you do reach success, the feeling of being an imposter is always there and criticism will be there with it. I think maybe all of us who create may always feel these things from time to time.

Maya Angelou said “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now! I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”

John Steinbeck said before publishing The Grapes of Wrath “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” If Maya and John have had this feeling, we all will.

Imposter Syndrome and criticism should be signs of growth to us rather than stop signs.

They stopped me for 10 years.

I’ll never allow that to happen again. I hope you don’t either.

Max Reid has an MBA, makes wine, and is a veteran. He’s also a writer. This piece originally appeared on Invisible Illness.

How I Hacked My Thinking to Improve My Mental Health

Photo credit

Changing your habits can affect other parts of your life

I’m practicing to become a habit-changing maven. In the last eight years, I’ve revamped my fitness and nutrition habits several times to manage various medical conditions. I’ve decided to start using the same strategies I used to teach myself to lift weights at 5:00 every morning, love running, and enjoy eating kale to tackle some other areas.

Here’s a list of the habits I’m working to cultivate right now:

Make my bed every morning.

Meditate to start my day.

Journal each morning.

Three is enough for any given time. If you focus on too many areas at once, you can get overwhelmed. I have several strategies in place to cultivate these personal habits. I write them in my planner, journal about how I’m doing with each one and set reminders on my phone.

Those are all excellent strategies for changing habits, but none of them are going to get you over the fear of making a change. Do do that, you have to talk to yourself differently.

Humans are unwilling to change because of our biology

We are social, and changing our habits can disrupt our social lives. If you’ve always been a person who says they hate to exercise, a lot of your friends probably feel the same way. We identify with people who are like us. Your subconscious is afraid that if you suddenly start training for a 5K, your social ties will weaken.

People like the status quo because it’s comfortable. Changing involves risk and activates our flight or fight response. Spending your evenings numbing out on television is more comfortable than hitting the gym. Hitting the gym will hurt. Couch surfing doesn’t hurt.

Just because you’re human and risk-averse, doesn’t mean you have to allow that to run your life. You also can use reason rather than emotions to make decisions.

Change your internal monologue

Let’s start with making my bed. I’ve always said things like ”making my bed is pointless” or ”I wish I were the type of person who made my bed every morning” or my personal favorite ”I don’t have time to make my bed in the morning.”

Here’s the actual truth.

Making my bed isn’t pointless because I love slipping into a well-made bed at night. If we look at the data, the national sleep foundation reports that people who make their beds are 19% more likely to get a good night’s sleep. (Humans love data, so don’t be afraid to use some of it to prove your point to yourself.)

I am the type of person who does anything I decide to do. If I choose to cook crispy duck with orange glaze and caramelized onions, I’ll do it. If I decide to run a marathon, I’ll do it. If I decide not to make my bed, I’ll do that too. I can help myself accomplish anything, or hold myself back.

I wasn’t prioritizing making my bed in the morning.

The first step to making a habit change is changing your internal monologue. I made a conscious decision to stop myself when I said “I wish I were the type of person who…” and say out loud, into a mirror, ”I make my bed every morning because I enjoy having it ready for me at bedtime.”

Then I make my damn bed. I even timed myself once to quiet that voice that tried to say I didn’t have time. It turns out it takes less than a full minute to make my bed (more data, people like that).

Obviously, I’m picking a somewhat silly example to prove the point. But, you can attack any habit change by first addressing the conversations you have with yourself. You wouldn’t tell your children or your spouse that they weren’t smart enough or strong enough to accomplish something, so why are you saying it to yourself?

What lies are you telling yourself? Make a list, and then turn them into truths

Once you’re talking with yourself in a way that will spur you to take ownership of your current condition and inspire a change, you’re ready for an action plan. Change the way you talk to yourself first: the action plan can come later.

Maria Chapman is a freelance writer who has contributed to Elephant Journal, bizcatalyst360 , and Valnet.

She first published this story on the Beautiful Voyager Medium publication .

If you enjoyed this, subscribe to her  newsletter  for periodic updates on her work and the work of authors she admires.

I Get More Migraines in Spring, and I Bet I'm Not Alone

Whether or not March comes in like a lion, March comes in like a lion…Photo credit

"Migraine March" is here again, and I'm not loving it.

“I have a terrible headache, I think the demons are trying to get out again.” — Unknown

For you lucky and blessed people who don’t get migraines, the month of March is wonderful, I’m sure. The hint of spring, the melting snow, the beautiful sunshine: Ahhh, spring is here at long last.

“A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.” — Catherine the Great

Not so fantastic for us migraine sufferers. After enough years of having migraines throughout most of March I’ve coined it “Migraine March”. Oh the cruelty of the roller coaster barometric pressure changes in March! Even if March doesn’t come in like a lion, the ups and downs are brutal.

“Migraines -the only time taking a hammer to your skull seems like an appropriate solution.” Unknown

This is my chronic migraine month. At other times of the year they taper off but I still have to be vigilant though about what triggers migraines for me.

My Migraine Triggers

Salty and aged foods including cheeses and processed meats like salami.

M.S.G. or Monosodium glutamate. A popular preservative in foods you would not even think needed preservatives.

Foods that contain the additive tyramine.

Skipping meals

Drinking alcohol and caffeine. Also eating chocolate — which has caffeine. (sorry ladies — chocolate is your enemy if you get migraines-so is red wine!)

Artificial sweeteners like aspartame.

Stimulating lights, loud noises, strong smells- too much sensory stimulation can trigger a migraine. (The bright sunlight of March is a killer for me- it can trigger a migraine or it can exacerbate a migraine.)

Certain perfumes or fabric softeners. (I have walked past someone with a perfume or cologne that has instantly caused me a headache. It’s not necessarily the smell itself, but a chemical ingredient in the product that you are sensitive to. I’ve had to explain to people that it wasn’t that I didn’t like the smell—it was an ingredient in the product that gave me an instant headache and a sick stomach.

Second hand smoke.

Hormonal changes- prior to menstruation, during pregnancy and during menopause. (Yeah- it’s so fun to be a woman!) Changes in estrogen levels can be thanked for these migraines.

Medications with hormones such as birth control and hormone replacement therapies. (Sometimes these meds can improve migraines however)

Uncontrolled stress.

Physical stress including extreme exercise, and physical exertion including sex.

Poor posture, neck and shoulder tension.

Jet lag.

Low blood sugar.

Dehydration.

Irregular, too little or too much sleep.

Changes in barometric pressure and weather changes.

If you live in Edmonton, Alberta and you are prone to migraines you probably have one right now. How can I say that with certainty?

Because I have one and have had an almost freaking constant migraine since March 1!

“And then a throb hits you on the left side of the head so hard that your head bobs to the right…There’s no way that came from inside your head, you think. That’s no metaphysical crisis. God just punched you in the face.” Andrew Levy

All migraines are not the same.

In the United States over 30 million people suffer from migraines.

Did you know that your migraine headache will never be the same as anybody else’s migraine? Mine aren’t even like a headache — on a really bad day they are like someone is tapping into the side of my head, just above my ear, with a pickaxe. It’s grueling and painful.

There are two major categories of migraines. (Yes of course there can’t just be one kind- we migraine sufferers are blessed with two major kinds, plus all of the sub-types of migraines.)

Migraines fall into one of two categories: Aura, or no aura?

The first is “Migraines with Aura, or Complicated Migraines.”

“It was like there were clear cut and sharp crystal prisms of light on the outside edges of my vision.” Photo credit

A kaleidoscope of visual symptoms, such as lines, shapes or flashes, seeing black dots, or tingling numbness on one side of the body happens before any head pain begins . This usually starts about 10–30 minutes before the migraine and usually lasts about an hour. About one in four people get this type of migraine.

When I had my first aura I didn’t know what was happening as I had not heard of a migraine ‘aura’ before. Scared the shit out of me. It was like there were clear cut and sharp crystal prisms of light on the outside edges of my vision.

You can temporarily lose part of your vision, or your total vision with an ‘aura’, and can also have pins and needles in your arms or legs as well as a stiff neck, shoulders or limbs.

If you experience abnormal migraine symptoms such as loss of sensation or difficulties with speech along with visual disturbances or an extremely severe headache do not ignore these symptoms. See a doctor immediately.

The second is migraines without auras, or common migraines.

These types of migraines account for about 70–90% of migraines. Nausea and vomiting accompany these migraines as well as the ‘aura’ migraines. Symptoms can include throbbing pain or pulsing on one side of the head.

There are also sub-types of migraines.

Chronic migraine: If you have a migraine for more than 15 days in a month.

Menstrual migraine: A pattern connected to the menstrual cycle.

Silent migraine: Migraine without head pain. This is classified as a typical aura without headache migraine, and also includes dizziness, nausea and other visual disturbances besides aura.

Hemiplegic migraine: Causes temporary weakness on one side of the body. A person having this type of migraine may has visual auras and pins and needles. This migraine can almost feel like a stroke.

Abdominal migraine: A newly recognized one that affects children under the age of 14. The migraine attacks are connected to irregular function in the abdomen and gut. Other symptoms tied to this migraine can include attention deficit problems, clumsiness and delayed development.

Brainstem aura migraines: Sounds brutal. Visual, sensory or speech and language symptoms plus two of the following: vertigo, slurred speech, tinnitus, unsteadiness, double vision or severe sensitivity to sound.

Vestibular: A migraine that includes having vertigo. The spinning sensation of the vertigo can last from a few minutes to hours.

Retinal migraine: When a headache causes temporary vision loss in one eye. This migraine happens to women of childbearing years, causing blindness that can last from a minute to months. Usually this blindness is reversible. For any woman who experiences this type of migraine it is strongly suggested that a specialist is seen to rule out more serious issues.

Ice Pick Migraines/Headaches: These are the ones that I get. While the stab of pain is fleeting, the duration of these repetitive stabs of pain is killer.

Cluster Headaches: According to the American Migraine foundation, this type of migraine is sometimes referred to as “suicide headaches”, because the pain is severe and the symptoms are extremely irritating. The symptoms include burning pain that starts above or around your eyes that can move to your temples and to the back of your head. Along with this is a runny nose and red, swollen eyes.

Cervicogenic headaches: With these headaches the pain is caused from the neck or even possibly a lesion on the your spine. Physical therapy is usually needed along with medication to treat this type of migraine.

Opthalmoplegic Migraine: This is most likely to occur in children and young adults. This causes intense pain behind the eye along with double vision. Paralysis of the eye muscles can cause a droopy eyelid. Vomiting and seizures can also accompany this migraine, and a doctor will most likely check for an aneurysm because of the severe symptoms.

Status migrainosus: A very rare and serious type of migraine. These can last for over 72 hours and most often the affected person will need to be hospitalized. Hospitalization is necessary because the prolonged vomiting and nausea will cause dehydration, so intravenous treatments are required.

(I didn’t realize that there were so many different types of migraines when I started doing my research but I had to continue to list them all or I would have an incomplete story! I’ll try to keep the list of treatments shorter.)

Popular Migraine Treatments Including Pain Prevention and Pain Relief

I did not get my first migraine until I was 30. After a weekend of camping, eating chocolate, drinking some red wine and then going out for Chinese food I had my first doozie of a migraine. (And I don’t even like red wine -not sure why I was drinking it!!) I have repeatedly told people that I can’t drink red wine, and I can’t eat too much chocolate, but sure enough I get the usual boxes of chocolates at Christmas, or I am handed a bottle of red wine as a hostess gift. Free regifting items is what they become.

Migraine Pain Prevention:

Learn to recognize your migraine triggers. Unfortunately the one thing you can’t control is the weather, but you can begin to take medication if you feel a migraine coming on or you can take daily medication if you have chronic migraines.

Avoid sensory overstimulation -remove yourself from an overstimulating environment.

Turn off the lights, turn off the tv, turn off the music if you feel a migraine starting.

Try using ice packs for a numbing effect, and hot packs to relax tense muscles. Use a warm or cold shower the same way. (I once had a migraine where the side of my head got hot. Using ice packs was a must to relieve the pain.)

In the early stages drinking a small amount of caffeine may help ward off a migraine.

Unwind at the end of the day -have a relaxing bath, listen to soothing music.

Eat and exercise regularly.

Simplify your life to manage stress - adopt some stress management techniques like deep breathing or meditation.

Prescription Drugs for Migraine Prevention:

Cardiovascular drugs (beta blockers)

Certain antidepressants

Anti-seizure drugs

Injection therapy

NSAID’S -nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, naproxen (eg. Aleve)

Botox injections are also used for chronic migraines.

“I’ve taken Midol before. My daughters find that hilarious. I had a headache and cramps, and there were no other pain relievers with caffeine in the house.” Bob Saget

Pain Relievers:

Over the counter pain relievers such as aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen.

Prescribed triptans or dihydroergotamine (injection)

Prescriptions for nausea

Opiods or glucocorticoids (prednisone)

I take a triptan when the over the counter pain relievers are not working. However there is a very limited dosage allowed to be taken each day, so you need to be cautious if taking a triptan. They also knock me out, so I have to plan to be able to sleep for a bit if I need to take this medication. Plus they don’t always work.

Unfortunately sometimes you just have to suffer the pain of migraines.

“You look fine!” “Yes because migraines are invisible.” Unknown

Migraines suck. It has taken me three days to write this article, and only with taking lots of meds! I am thankful that I don’t often get the extreme nausea or sensitivity to light that can happen with migraines. They are a bitch to cope with.

Learning what your migraine triggers are, trying to stop a potential migraine in it’s tracks, and finding a treatment that works for you will help you get your life back from this debilitating invisible illness.

To all you migraine sufferers, I wish you relief from the pain and I am sending you hugs!

Are you a migraine sufferer? Do you get more migraines in the spring? Share in the comments below.

Corrine Roberts is a wife, mother, avid reader, artist, and aspiring writer. She originally published an earlier version of this piece on Invisible Illness. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Sources: Mayo Clinic , American Migraine Foundation ,  WebMd , Healthline , Practical Pain Management , HealthLinkBC 

How I Manage My Compulsive Overthinking

Photo by Talles Alves on Unsplash

At some point or another, we all encounter things that throw us a little off course. It could be something as small as what to say when it is our turn to speak, or as big as a major impending life decision or hardship in our personal lives. Some people handle these with ease (or so they make it seem!), while others can’t help but heavily fixate on these issues.

Biological, social, and circumstantial experiences affect our mental health and well-being through their impact on how we interpret the world. Overthinking boils down to our perception of what we experience.

Think of our perception and interpretation like a tolerance level.

We all have varying levels of what we “can or can’t” handle, how we interpret and respond to stimuli, and how intensely we are affected by our experiences. Your mileage may vary.

I believe that overthinking happens to those of us who think very carefully about how we navigate and interact with the world. We are hyper-aware, which is good and bad for different reasons. Some of us pay so much attention to the finest of specifics that our brain never seems to rest. You could be walking in a large crowded space and feel as though you must plan out which way you will cross paths to get past someone — to the left or right of them? You might plan out how you’re going to ask someone where the restroom is, so you don’t end up fumbling over your words and saying something embarrassing. You might not get up to go to the bathroom during a meeting because you don’t want eyes to be drawn to you as you get up to leave the room. Overthinking can become so manifested in our everyday background thoughts that we might not even realize how much it’s consuming us.

Sometimes I won’t even know how to relay the process of my thoughts to someone else because I realize how anxious I sound. I don’t want them to catch on to my overthinking habits. I don’t want to present myself as anything but normal to people I don’t know.

Managing Compulsive Overthinking

There are two distinct components to overthinking: ruminating and worrying.

Ruminating is fixating on what we have done in the past, often wishing we had said or done something differently. You’ve probably been in a situation where you were caught off guard by a rude comment, thinking “if only I had said x to them instead of y!”

Worrying involves future tense, where we are often negatively predicting or considering what will happen in the future. “What if I go blank during my speech? What will I do if that happens? How will I recover from that?”

If you’re a compulsive over-thinker like me, you are probably very familiar with both of these predicaments. And surely, you would like to know how you can manage these tendencies.

Awareness, Problem Solving, and Keeping Busy

These components, in order, are key to working to negate the sometimes all-consuming complications of overthinking.

Awareness: Trying to avoid, ignore, or bottle up feelings can backfire if this is your go-to coping tendency. Acknowledge what is bothering you and pay attention to your thoughts in response to this. This is especially necessary if you feel like several major things are coming down on you at once. If you recognize each event or issue that is bothering you, you can better organize your thoughts and prepare for the steps you might want to take to either tackling or moving past the problem(s).

Problem Solving: For larger predicaments, evaluate whether or not there is a solution to the problem. If there is, great! Go investigate which solution will have the best outcome that reaps the highest benefit with the lowest cost. When it comes to smaller, everyday predicaments like when to do laundry (or even whether or not you should go to the bathroom in a meeting like I mentioned earlier!), give yourself 30 seconds to make a decision. Recognize that these decisions do not require especially careful thought, so aim to come to a conclusion on them right away.

Keeping Busy: If there is not a clear solution or the problem is not something you can do anything about, I like to remember the metaphor “change the channel in your head.” While I am NOT implying that it is as simple as “just stop thinking about it,” (in fact I can’t help but internally roll my eyes when told this) it makes a difference when you associate a visual example with your goal, like changing the channel. Along with this, keeping yourself busy with meaningful activities you care about assists in less fixation on a problem you have no control over. Having positive activities and memories on your mind will help even out the good/bad thought ratio.

Implications of Overthinking

It is important to note that overthinking in and of itself has varying levels of intensity and does not always indicate a mental disorder at play. Though, those with anxiety disorders may be especially susceptible to these thought patterns. It’s normal for many people to think about what they’ll say before a meeting with their boss, for example. But what isn’t so conducive is analyzing and overthinking every little movement we make. Each step onto the next stepping stone should not be so perfectly rehearsed that it is all we think about.

Are you an overthinker? Do you tend to ruminate or worry more? Share in the comments below.

Alexa Davis is a psychology student specializing in neuroscience. Her goal is to share her knowledge about the ever-fascinating nature of human behavior.

10 Ways to Distract Yourself From Coronavirus

Photo credit

We’re in the middle of lots of news/fear/anxiety about COVID-19 aka “the coronavirus". The news of the spread of the illness is everywhere, and new headlines are pouring in about transmission and death rates. Just today, Twitter announced that they are sending all employees home, and they’ll be working remotely until further notice. When an event happens that changes how people behave in their daily lives, it’s destabilizing. As I often do, I’m writing to help distract myself. If any of these ideas are helpful for you to distract yourself from coronavirus, please use them!

Photo credit

Look at lots and lots of photos of dogs

I swear, I can feel the oxytocin hitting my blood stream when I just glance at a photo of a dog. Like many of you, I do most of my dog stalking through Instagram. Some of my favorite accounts include: LiamthePittie, CoppersDreamRescue, HopperthePitHeeler, RocketDogRescue, IloveFamilyDog, and GreyhoundAdoptionCenter.

2. Go to the nearest park and find a dog to love on

If you don’t have one already, I mean. Fine, if you’re a cat person, you can do that too. I can’t promise it will work as well as a dog. Bonus is that through meeting a new dog, you often meet a new human too, and that can help you get distracted.

3. Turn on music right now

If you don’t know what to listen to, start with the Beautiful Voyager official playlist. In particular, listen to Alice Coltaine’s Journey in Satchidananda. It’s immediately transporting. Or to change it up, try listening to bird music!

4. Take off a layer of clothing and cool down

RBG in cross-stitch by yours truly.

Note sure why it works, exactly, but it does. Esp if you are cooling down. I literally just took off my sweater as I wrote this. Full disclosure: This isn’t a new idea of mine. I’ve written about it before, and it comes up in my book, but it really is worth doing.

5. Open some messages in a bottle

I created this Lighthouse Map of Overthinkers for situations just like this! Click around to see all of the other people all over the world who are facing this global outbreak, and remember you are not alone. Look at the words they shared by clicking on a message in a bottle. I am going to do it now myself. It really does help to feel less alone.

6. Pick up a random-ass craft project

Why is random important? Cause you don’t have to be good at it. In fact, it’s better if you AREN’T good at it. Here are a couple of ideas from one Beautiful Voyager. I actually have started cross stitching lately and though I suck at it, let me tell you, it’s a real distraction.

This is an actual place I get to walk, as long as I haul my butt off the couch.

7. Trick yourself with a smile

I recently learned that you can trick your brain into thinking you’re relaxed and happy by smiling just a little. My colleagues and I call this the half-smile, and we’re always doing it to each other, weird as it may sound.

Try it by turning the corners of your mouth up just a little.

8. Take a 1-mile walk

I know that taking a walk is on every list like this, but it’s because it actually works! Over the weekend, I forced myself to take two long walks with my dog and it was incredible how I felt it in my body (like tingly relaxation).

Since I have an anxiety disorder it is even more important for me to try to take actions like this to relax my body, which in turn relaxes my mind. Yours too!

9. Wash your hands

It is literally the only thing you can do to stop the spread of coronavirus. It’s not as much about washing your hands as it if accepting that you can’t control this entire situation. You can only control your little corner of the world. Wash your hands and know that you are taking the action you can take.

10. Share your own distraction tip in the comments below to help others

Helping others is one of the greatest, most fulfilling distractions possible. If you’ve found something that helps others with anxiety in this situation, for the love of god share it below.

xoxoxo, Meredith

Letter From a Bipolar Mom to Her Children

My darling,

As I sit here and try to come up with a way to explain this to you, the first and most important thing I want you to know is that I am sorry. I am sorry that I failed you during this. I am sorry that for a short time, I wasn’t the mother that you needed me to be. I’m sorry that you’ve had to pay some of the price for my mistakes.
I am going to be very brutally honest in this letter I write to you. And the reason for that is because I want you to learn from my mistakes, and not make the same ones when you’re older. I believe you deserve the real truth, without any sugar-coating. I believe you deserve answers.

You see, mental illness is a dark and scary thing. It is not something easily explained. It is a manifestation of every bad thing that has ever happened to a person and every bad thing that ever could.

What I have is called Bipolar Disorder, which, by definition, is a mental condition marked by alternating periods of elation and depression. It is the excruciating pits of despair leaving you curled up in a ball on your bathroom floor, begging for someone or something to just come and save you from your own mind. It is the uncontrollable impulses that lead to bad decisions and reckless behavior. It is a constant battle within your mind. Two entities fighting for first place, with heartache as the only real winner.

There’s not a whole lot of things I’ve prided myself on in my life. But from the minute you were born at 1:14 am, being a mother was one of them. I liked to believe I was always kind and compassionate towards you. I was patient. I was empathetic. I was caring. I protected you at all costs. You showed me what true, unconditional love meant, and I will forever be grateful for that.

I’ve struggled with mental illness ever since I was a little girl, not much older than you are now. It has come and gone throughout the years. It wouldn’t be until you were about 5 years old that I would come to discover the real hardships that come along with being a mother and having mental illnesses.

It started out as depression here and there. I’d get sad, overwhelmed, lonely and then the dark thoughts would come over me like a giant wave that comes out of nowhere, takes you by surprise, and crashes over the top of your head while you’re playing in the ocean. I never knew or learned healthy coping mechanisms. I would always just shove the thoughts down as deep as they would go until I could feel “normal” again. The normalcy would only last for a short period of time though.

In May of 2017, I experienced my first true manic episode followed by a brutal, soul-sucking depression. The worst I’ve ever had. It started out as some minor careless behavior, that my friends and family noticed. Such as me spending money that I didn’t have, drinking more, using drugs recreationally, not sleeping, etc. Then I became a completely different person. I started sending you to your dad’s more often, partying all the time, doing reckless things that did not match up to my personality. People got worried, but I was on such a “high” that I didn’t want to hear it from anyone. Nothing could bring me down. I started spiraling out of control. I couldn’t control my impulses anymore, I was doing dangerous things, and digging myself into a deep hole, that I would soon come to find out would change our lives forever.

The worst night of my life.

It started off just like all the other nights I had been having recently. I had the same group of people come over to party, the only difference was that you and your sister were there this time sleeping in the next room. In the early hours of the morning, everybody else had either left or gone to sleep. I started to come down off the drugs and alcohol, and the “high” I had been on for the last several weeks started to wear off. I was alone with only my thoughts now.

The thoughts came over me harder than ever before. They were deep and they were dark, they wanted me to feel the misery I had been trying to hide for so long. I looked at you and your sister sleeping, and everything started to surface at once. I suddenly realized the devastating effects of what I had been doing, and of the decisions I had been making. I felt an immense amount of guilt wash over me. “Who had I turned into? Who was this person staring back at me in the mirror?” I didn’t recognize her at all.

In that moment of desperation and confusion, my impaired thoughts and distorted thinking had me truly believing that you and your sister would be better off without me. So, I went into the bathroom and coped the only way I knew how to. I started to self-harm. I want you to know that no matter what anyone has said or thought, my intention was never to die. Honestly, part of me did want to die, but I knew I could never take myself away from you and your sister. My intentions were purely to hurt myself, because I thought I deserved it.

The following moments were a blur. Nana came over and called your dad to come pick you up. It was then, that I realized I needed some true, serious professional help, so I decided to check myself into the local psychiatric hospital. I spent four days there, detoxing, adjusting my medications, getting therapy, and learning new coping mechanisms.

The days following the time I got out were a huge mess. Your dad was livid with me for harming myself while you were there. He wouldn’t let me see you or talk to you. He got a lawyer and ended up gaining full custody of you. I can’t even put into words the devastation I felt when I got that news. I knew that while I got better, you being with your dad was what was best for the time being, but to completely lose custody of you broke me entirely.

It’s been a little over a year now that all this has happened, and I want you to know I have done everything in my power to get better for you and your sister. Since I got out of the hospital, I had also checked myself into an outpatient therapy program that I went to every single day for eight weeks straight. That was one of the best decisions I ever made. There, I got to gain an enormous about of knowledge about having bipolar disorder, what it really meant, and how to manage it. I got to work through past traumas, learn new therapy skills and coping techniques, and really work through underlying issues that I had had for so long.

I have also continued to see a psychiatrist once a month for medication management, and I still go to therapy once a week to continue to work on myself and grow.

But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies now either. I still have my bad days. There are still some days that I can’t even manage to get out of bed because the depression is so bad. And there are days when I feel like I am invincible and don’t always make the best decisions. I’m still human, and I still make mistakes. But one thing I know for sure is that I will never give up on myself ever again. You need me. Your sister needs me. And that is enough to keep me going.

I will have to deal with this demon that is a mental illness for the rest of my life. But the difference is now I have the tools and knowledge and healthy coping mechanisms to push through.

So once again, my love, I am sorry for putting you through this. If I could go back in time and do things differently I would in a heartbeat, but the truth is that I cannot. I can only learn from my mistakes, and better myself for my two beautiful daughters. I can only hope and pray that you both will learn from my mistakes as well and never have to go through the things that I’ve had to go through.

I’m still trying to gain custody back, and I want you to know that. I want you to know that I am fighting for you and I will never stop fighting for you. Not for one second. You are my entire world and I love you more than anything in this universe. You give me purpose. You are the reason I keep going and pushing forward. You are my reason why.

I pray that you will never resent me for this and will always know that I never stopped loving you, I just lost myself for a moment. I also pray that you will never resent your father for keeping you from me, because he was only doing what he thought was best. I pray that you will never have to fight these silent battles yourself and that if you do, you know you can come and talk to me and I will fight them with you. You are never alone in this world. You will always have me. You are my daughter, and I am your mother. Nobody can take that away from us and nothing will ever change that. I love you to the moon and back, baby girl. Forever and always.

What My Quarter Life Crisis Looked Like

A shot of author Elitsa Dermendzhiyska embarking on the Camino de Santiago trail.

Late one night on a hot summer five years ago I found myself in a room packed floor to ceiling with bunk beds and sweating human bodies. This was no prison or hippie commune, mind you. I had just embarked on the Camino de Santiago — a grueling journey of 800 kilometers that starts from a small village in the south of France, crosses northern Spain and ends a mere 90 km from the Atlantic ocean, in the town of Santiago de Compostela. In medieval times the road to Santiago (as the name translates to) was a major pilgrimage route culminating at the town’s eponymous cathedral, which, legend has it, holds the remains of Saint James, one of Christ’s apostles.

I am not religious but neither were most of the thousands of people who would walk the camino that summer. Unlike the ragged, world-weary, indulgence-seeking travelers of old, modern pilgrims come here clad in high-tech mountain gear and for reasons ranging from the lofty to the very prosaic. Among the people I met at various points were: Catholics looking for divine communion, garden-variety spiritualists on the hunt for energy fields and epiphanies, hedge fund managers in the throes of mid-life reckoning, recent graduates desperate to ward off adulthood for as long as they could, and a slew of curious, more practically motivated characters hoping for a soulmate, weight loss or cheap thrills.

As for me, what brought me to the camino that day in early June of 2012 was a sin I needed to atone for. At 21, I had a laughable history of actual delinquency (if you don’t count a recent jaywalking fine I’d conveniently “forgot” to pay or a number of ill-conceived attempts I’d made as a kid to get my younger sister disavowed from the family), yet I was convinced that what I’d done was odious nonetheless, perhaps even irredeemable. True, no one was coming after me, few even knew about it and even those who did, the ones who had suffered its consequences, saw it as an offshoot of my unnatural ambition. But I knew: somewhere I had gone horribly wrong. And I doubted anything could fix it.

The Camino hike is 800 kilometers, or 497 miles.

It was shortly after my college graduation. I’d come out of academia inculcated with ideas that might have made for an easy summa cum laude but that, it was beginning to dawn on me, would not survive contact with the real world, which I was now hopelessly stuck in. I had spent the previous four years under the spell of science — acing abstract math, devouring economics — with an outcome that resembled a Greek tragedy: every painstaking effort to avoid the undesirable leading inexorably straight to it.

Art along the path. Photo by Elitsa Dermendzhiyska.

Confronting the Hard Questions of Being Alive

Not that I was running from fate as a Greek hero would, but my lot was just as inevitable. Science, with its beguiling premise that things make sense, seemed to me both an answer and an escape from answering. I relished the notion of a world governed by natural laws, not one buffeted around by sheer randomness. I took solace in the idea that the giant, utter mess of existence had an inherent logic to it, could, in fact, be broken down, studied, distilled and contained in a clump of elegant equations. The promise that there was something to be had — an answer, a capital-T Truth, a meaning — meant that all the helplessness of being a child and the strangeness of being a teen and the expectations of becoming a woman would eventually amount to something. When an English professor asked the class once to think about our deepest fears, I had no trouble coming up with a ranking:

Meaninglessness

Myself

Public speaking

Science quelled my existential angst with a mantra I clutched onto rabidly. It went more or less like this: anything that can be measured, can be controlled; anything that can’t be measured, doesn’t exist. It was a tantalizing concept, that the world ticked with the soothing precision of a clockwork mechanism and if I could figure out the underlying calculus, I could figure out anything — from parametrizing hyperboloids to life itself.

The author with fellow hikers on the journey.

It’s here that things took a wrong turn. My newfound love of logic running into my old (and very desperate) need for certainty, I decided to take science out of the classroom and bring it to bear on my day-to-day life. In this I drew inspiration from a number of fields but mostly from economics. Its formulas and curves and diagrams put me in a state of awe for their sheer power of marrying mathematical precision and practical reality. Contrary to its reputation, economics — at least its academic rendition — wasn’t (just) about prices and interest rates. It was instead an enlightened endeavor in allocating limited resources most efficiently, a way of making decisions — from buying groceries to running a country — based on reason rather than sentiment and speculation.

[image error]

This, to me, was precisely what I needed. Emotion, after all, hadn’t served me well. (Back then, I could say this with a straight face, the flimsy empirical evidence of my 21 years on earth notwithstanding.) I always felt too strongly, loved too easily, dreamed too impossibly and thought too deeply — inclinations that had only got me down rabbit holes and cul-de-sacs and rock bottoms. Economics, on the other hand, stripped things down to a very simple, very sensible question: that of maximizing a limited resource — my time. How to spend my time in the most optimal way — now that was a problem I could solve without plumbing the depths of my psyche and dealing with the ensuing emotional hemorrhage.

And so from the second semester of my freshman year, I turned into a model Homo Economicus — a creature of cold rationality that draws decision trees and weighs the costs and benefits of every action and calculates the marginal utility of every hour spent doing one thing rather than another. This meant that nearly everything that gave me pure pleasure was now deemed an “inefficient” use of my “time resource”. Holing up with a book at the end of a day was out of the question. For a long time, I drifted off to sleep to the mammoth tomes of Macroeconomics I or II balanced on my sternum, their hard edges boring marks of crimson pink into my bony flesh.

Trips to the movies, once giddy adventures, turned into such guilt-ridden affairs that at one point I stopped going altogether. The opportunity cost was too high: in the two hours it would take for the plot to unravel, I could have got through Orwell’s 1984 or a whole chapter on line integrals. But the final blow was to the tea party — part monthly ritual, part improvised therapy session my friends and I concocted in our freshman year. We kept the name even though what eventually transpired had none of the implied civility of a tea party and the occasion often featured vodka instead of tea. I remember many blissful Friday evenings, us flumped on some fading blue couch in a distant corner of the dorm, counting woes, comparing miseries. It always lifted my spirits, knowing that the others had it just as bad as I did, sometimes worse even. Suffering was glue, a badge of belonging. But then I stopped going to the tea parties. Long chats into the night simply didn’t factor into my new mental calculus. For optimization purposes, I told myself, I had to stick to eight hours of sleep, undertaken ideally before midnight, when the marginal utility of each subsequent hour supposedly begins its steep decline.

[image error]

"It can be too too pure."

No, I wasn’t happy. Try to live like that — no hour wasted, no Joule of energy unchanneled into some or other productive pursuit — and you end up losing your capacity to behold beauty. Not just to behold but also to bear it. I am reminded of an American tourist I once heard of who drove high up the mountains and the clean air so overpowered his lungs, clotted by big-city soot, it threw him into a violent coughing fit. He choked and rasped with pain, one arm clutched at his throat, the other grasping, blindly, for the car’s exhaust pipe. I don’t know if he really did that but the image is seared into my memory: the man sucking on the pipe, inhaling fumes to keep himself alive, to keep clean air from killing him. When I heard this story as a kid, I rolled my eyes at these Americans and their spoiled American ways. But I see now how one’s whole being can begin to reject that which must be essential to life — air or, in my case, emotion. It can be too too pure, too prickly for the person who has forged an existence on baby-proof corners and soft edges.

For me back then, happiness was not the point. Control was. And certainty. My chief motivation was to avoid the pain and the disappointment of unmet expectations, my ambition fueled not by desire to achieve but a fervent desperation not to fail. Fail what? I could never really put my finger on it. Failure, in my mind, was anything that would blow my cover, crack me open and put in front of me the questions that I knew were always there, that I yearned to forget. Who am I. What am I doing. Where am I going. What is this about.

View along the Camino de Santiago. Photo by Elitsa Dermendzhiyska.

I did forget those questions, for a while at least, thanks to the insulation from reality that my academic life so readily afforded. Science helped contrive a structure, construct a meaning, signpost experience and edit out the unexplainable bits. But once outside the halls of academia, that structure inevitably collapsed. The entire theoretic scaffolding that had held up my delusions of control crumbled, fast. No sooner had I shed my graduation gown than a million mundanities I was ill-equipped to handle had to be handled.

Such as looking for a job. I harbored some vague notion of what that job would be — something significant, something that matters — but there were no such jobs around that I could find. In my reality-distorting way, I saw myself as a kind of catcher-in-the-rye character, only instead of children I’d be catching countries in distress. From my perch at the World Bank. I’d travel to places on the brink of poverty (or, more likely, in the thick of it) and pull them out of imminent collapse, a stack of economic papers in hand. It took the straight talk of several good and patient people to disabuse me of my Holden-esque vision, to let it sink that things don’t work that way in the real world, that, to begin with, there’s always politics to muddy the spotless sensibility of economics.

Beauty along the way. Photo by Elitsa Dermendzhiyska

There was also a father who had sacrificed his own ambitions for a family and a good name, and who expected the same of his daughter, me. Our conversations, until then few and far in between, grew tense and urgent. When he talked about “job” and “family” and “house” and “prestige” — to him, the stuff of a life not wasted — the words got trapped in the air between us. They hung on heavy in the wake of another argument and lingered long afterwards. Against their unimpeachable rectitude, my own aspirations looked perversely small and selfish.

Photo by Elitsa Dermendzhiyska

I had no theory on hand to help me there. No equation I could solve for X, for “optimal route in life” or “doing well while feeling fulfilled while making Father proud”. More troubling, though, was the nagging sense that down the bone I must be a bad person. I watched as my few good friends left off, to families and new things, and watched, too, as the hallways in the dorms emptied out, people I’d seen but not really known walking past, lugging suitcases, saying goodbyes, their faces flashing in and out and away into the ether of the real world, and as I watched all this, I felt a sense of deserved abandonment. Did I, the economist, really think that invulnerability would come free of charge? That by embracing the natural laws I could somehow transcend the human laws or skip altogether the lawlessness of being a person in the world?

In hindsight, I didn’t go on the camino to find myself but to punish myself. That’s partly the reason why I went into it utterly unprepared (and also because I had no money). I took no guidebook (the route markers better be good), no hiking boots (my sneakers better hold up), no raingear (it better not rain or I’d be stranded in some godforsaken field miles from civilization or a tree). I would have even left my phone behind if it weren’t for the parents, who were told I was going on a one-month graduate school camp in Barcelona. (Every few days they’d call and I’d be sweating up a hill and they’d ask about things and I’d give them my ready-made spiel: everything’s good, Mom, we are studying Walmart’s expansion strategy into Southeast Asia and I’m just about to duck into class and really must go now, loveyoubye.)

Most of the time I just walked and walked and walked in silence. This wasn’t always easy with so many other people around, people you pass by and people who pass you by, and road etiquette demanding that you look up and greet them with a “buen camino” (literally “good path” or “have a safe trip”). I tried to wake up early and walk fast to avoid the conversations that here tend to skip over the small talk and go too deep too soon. I’d plod on in shorts and a T-shirt in the morning frost and the blistering afternoon sun, in the frequent drizzle and the occasional storm, for 30–40 kilometers of often barren land, my feet soggy from Vaseline and cramped inside two layers of woolen socks.

I remember this one village where we were summoned to evening mass. There was a beautiful old monastery built in the center of the village. There were bells ringing and a choir singing. As the other pilgrims flocked inside for mass, I dithered on the stone steps outside. I couldn’t bring myself to go inside; I didn’t feel I belonged there. In my diary that night, I wrote sarcastically about all the churchiness and holiness one encounters on the road and how I just wanted to be left alone, to ”dance with my demons”.

Photo by Elitsa Dermendzhiyska.

One sweltering afternoon about halfway on the camino I arrived in a nondescript village called Molinaseca. At its far end were two small albergues (the pilgrim equivalent of hostels) and as I approached with the dozen or so other pilgrims, it was clear where everybody would be setting up camp for the night. New and shiny, made from light polished wood, the first albergue stood in stark contrast to the second one — a dingy building whose owner might as well have jumped straight out of a horror movie.

Disheveled hair, wild eyes, one missing leg, the unmistakable smell of spirits on him, the ominous screeching noises of his cast — everything spelled trouble. And yet, as my fellow travelers filed inside the new albergue, I felt strangely drawn to that other place. Every one of my instincts shouted danger, every shred of common sense rammed into my mind told me to stay away, but a strange compulsion overrode my better judgement. I stayed . The hospitalero/bogey man made me wait outside until his official opening time at one o’clock. I sat down on my backpack and fixed my eyes on the anorexic dog by my feet while the man played checkers with his pal, mumbling indistinctly under his breath. At one he let me in. Apparently I was the only guest, although there were backpacks dropped on the dirty floor. I wondered what had happened to their owners. The whole place was dark, with the musty tang of a ghost house. The light in the bathroom didn’t work. The stairs creaked and I swallowed heavily as the man, leaning in the doorframe, pointed upstairs.

Later outside he sat me down at the flimsy table and he told me his life story — a story of love and a happy marriage, an accident that left him a cripple in his mid-twenties, the ensuing treachery of his wife, the heartbreak, the denial, the anger at God, the pilgrimage to Santiago, once, twice, thirteen times, until the demons had settled and he stayed in Molinaseca to shepherd other lunatics tangled in their own dramas. The man’s name was Elisande — which, he reckoned, made us namesakes (people call me Ellie) and kindred spirits of sorts.

I barely uttered a word the whole time he spoke and then his story ended and he stood up to bring some olive oil he’d made himself, and as he made for the outhouse in the back, he looked at me and he said “You are a good person, Ellie”.

Elitsa Dermendzhiyska is a social entrepreneur in London & the editor of upcoming book on mental health by 15 British authors, thinkers and comedians. This essay was originally published at Mindrise.co.uk . Gratefully republished with photos by permission of the author on Jan 19, 2020.