Category: self-love

Dear Abby; Signed “Disheartened”

I used to love reading Dear Abby when I was a kid as I’m sure many of you did too (but it’s certainly okay if you were more of a closet reader). I had no idea until this week that Dear Abby was still such a thing, I mean never mind the fact that she died about 6 years ago at the age of 94, but who actually takes the time to sit down and write a letter with a pen and paper these days? (But kudos to you if you do!) Well the good news is that upon further research I discovered that you can still write to Dear Abby with a pen, a piece of paper and a stamped envelope or you can also visit her Facebook page (or website) and send your letter via email too! Phew!! Oh and I should also probably point out as well that her daughter Jeanne took over her very publicized advice column many, many, many moons ago.

So now back to why I started writing this in the first place (I tend to lose my train of thought quite easily these days). As I mentioned above, I happened upon one of Dear Abby’s millions of letters she receives as it pertained to mental health (but of course) and it popped up in my newsfeed from a site I follow and trust immensely. What I read was truly heartbreaking on so many levels, but from a mental health perspective her “advice” was both disheartening and alarming.

The letter was signed “Done With It”. In the letter the reader explained to Dear Abby that he had been suffering with severe depression and suicidal thoughts for many years now and that he was recently diagnosed with Cancer too. He wrote to her to ask her for advice as to whether or not he should share his Cancer diagnosis with his family as he felt that he just wanted to leave his Cancer untreated and let it end his life so he didn’t have to suffer any more.

How I believed Dear Abby would respond to her reader next and how she actually did were both shocking and frightening. I believed she would encourage him to reach out for help, lean on his loved ones and then give him some inspiring words of hope. But instead she did the unimaginable and erased every single bit of faith I had in someone with such an incredible opportunity to help millions of their trusted readers looking to her for aspiration. She told him that “if you have truly made up your mind to refuse treatment, I vote for not telling them, which could be construed as trying to put them on a guilt trip.”

A guilt trip? Are you kidding me? Opening up to others about your ideations of suicide whether they are passive or active ones should never be construed as a guilt trip. Take it from someone who lives with guilt every single day for feeling like a burden to those who love me and blaming myself for all that is wrong in the world while feeling like everyone would just be better off without me. It’s not guilt, it’s my reality, it’s my family’s reality and it’s the reality for millions of other vulnerable individuals reading Dear Abby’s “advice” and feeling shame for being alive.

Instead of using her platform to discourage a person from wanting to take their own life she all but encouraged him to just give up trying to beat both his depression and cancer. In my opinion she made him and many other hopeless individuals feel like it was the most practical option, like hey, what other choice do you have at this point, there’s no help for you and your life doesn’t matter to anyone.

So Dear Abby I have some advice for you this time; be careful how you choose your words next time. We have come so far in our fight to end the stigma against mental illness and you just took us back a generation or two with your isolating vocabulary. Maybe it’s time for you to pass the torch on like your mom did all those years ago, but hey if Dr. Ruth is still giving advice about sex at age 90 then maybe you aren’t ready for retirement at age 77! But the difference is Dr. Ruth’s advice isn’t a matter of life or death to someone you love.

Poem: I Want To Live, But I Want To Die

POEM: I WANT TO LIVE, BUT I WANT TO DIE

I want to live, but I want to die
It’s an endless struggle, I will not lie.

I want to live, but I want to die
My heart is heavy, there’s no denying.

I want to live, but I want to die
I find some comfort when I can cry.

I want to live, but I want to die
I dream of ways to say goodbye.

I want to live, but I want to die
My feelings are valid and very justified.

I want to live, but I want to die
Will I ever become that butterfly?

I want to live, but I want to die
I feel so confused and mostly terrified.

I want to live, but I want to die
So I need to ask the question why?

I want to live, but I want to die
It’s so hard some days to even try.

I want to live, but I want to die
I wish the two could see eye to eye.

I want to die, but I want to live
To show my illness what more I have left to give.

Get Me Off This Hamster Wheel

It’s been a really hard week for me. There isn’t just one thing in particular that has made this week really hard but instead it’s been a combination of many things much of which I will not disclose of today or maybe not ever because even though “I would love to tell you, then, I’d have to kill you!” Okay you know I’m just kidding around on that last part but sometimes I feel like I utterly can’t catch a break.

I’m sure you’ve all felt this way from time to time but when you are relentlessly battling with depression and anxiety like I do and continue to try everything in your power to make it through just one more day yet you are persistently being met with one roadblock after another it can make it seem near impossible. Trying to push through each day or find any motivation at all to do so is really hard when you just keep spinning around and around on that hamster wheel that just doesn’t seem to want to stop.

I wake up every morning (well not that I really sleep) to a brand new day and as soon as I get my body moving, my heart rate elevates and begins beating a mile a minute which more often than not will then lead to feeling nauseous and metaphorically speaking my hamster wheel is only just warming up for the day ahead. On a typical day the wheel will spin uncontrollably, getting faster and more worn down as the day gets on leaving me so physically and mentally exhausted.

Where do these hamsters think they are going? Who is threatening them? What are they running from? Why are they spinning around and around with no end in sight? How do they do this night after night? Don’t they realize that they aren’t actually getting anywhere so how are they to ever catch a break?

These are all questions I wonder about as I spin on my hamster wheel day in and day out while trying to figure out how to make the damn thing stop. I mean it’s fricken claustrophobic on that wheel and boy oh boy is it ever tiring to say the least. I mean when you think about it, even those sweet little rodents catch a break to sleep sometimes. Don’t I deserve to catch a break too?

Just Breathe

The last few days have been particularly difficult for me and one of the most important things I need to remember when I am feeling especially vulnerable is that I need to breathe. Most people take breathing for granted as it’s just something we do without giving it a second thought but for me when my emotions are running awry breathing can take a great deal of effort. There are so many days that I wish I didn’t have to breathe at all and when my emotions become exceptionally clouded where I feel an overwhelming sense of powerlessness to this disease, finding the right tools to help me breathe are more important than anything. I know that it’s okay to not be okay, I know that it’s okay to reach out for support when doing it alone just seems too hard and I also know that I’m not alone when it comes to my emotions so I have added some videos below which were created by a friend of mine to help anyone looking for that additional support, teaching us the proper techniques on how important it is to just breathe.

Sticks And Stones

I’m pretty sure we have all been guilty of doing this at some time or another in our lives but as we try to collectively move toward a stigma free society we need to start by remembering that mental illnesses are not adjectives. An adjective (for those of you who may have forgotten their grammar lesson from grade school) is “a word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it”.

When we use words or phrases to negatively describe another person that may be suffering with a mental illness or whom you may feel ill-will towards we are only enhancing the stigma surrounding it. We all know that using politically incorrect jargon, harmful expressions to describe a person’s disability or gender-specific stereotyping to describe another person or group of people are both offensive and very hurtful but yet when it comes to using those same offensive and hurtful words associated around mental illnesses many people don’t seem to bat an eyelash.

Whether or not you are using the words or phrases to describe yourself or someone else or whether or not you are doing it intentionally or in a malicious manner, the negative connotation is still the same. Using words like psycho, schizo, bipolar, loony and mental as adjectives are all words that can cause further damage to how we see mental illness.

It can also be just as destructive to someone suffering with a mental illness to hear phrases like “You’re so OCD!” or “I’m so depressed that my favorite tv show was cancelled” or worse than that is when you hear someone say something like “I just broke my nail, I think I’m gonna kill myself!” All of these phrases may be in jest but to someone who is actually experiencing these emotions or has been diagnosed with any type of mental illness including OCD it only further exploits the individual suffering.

Living with any type of mental illness is challenging enough so choose your words or phrases wisely and remember that adjectives help express the quality of a person so let’s try and build each other up instead of tearing each other down.

My Neurofeedback Journey Has Come To A Close

This week after many weeks of overwhelming anxiety I decided to discontinue my Neurofeedback treatment. I made a promise to myself (and to the clinic) from the onset of my treatment that no matter what, I would complete the first 10 sessions as difficult as it may have been for me. And it was way more difficult than I imagined with lots of setbacks (which has included the worst winter ever!)

Originally they asked me to commit to coming 3 times per week which right away proved to be beyond challenging for me so we decided pretty early on to only schedule 2 sessions per week where some weeks I could only make it to 1. I did what my body and mind allowed me to do and they were more than willing to accommodate me as best they could in order for the treatment to be a success. But as each session finished I was still not seeing any improvement or feeling any different.

Ten was their starting point but truly they were hoping I would complete up to 40 of them. They told me that many clients begin to feel some sort of shift in the way they feel as early on as after 4 sessions with a majority of them feeling that shift sometime after 8 sessions. I got to 4, then to 8 and then to 10 and I felt no change at all and my husband saw no change at all and I began to feel more and more hopeless again, more and more like a failure again and more and more worthless again. And not to mention the guilt of how much money this treatment was costing us.

Like with everything else I have endured along my journey I try my darndest to find that glimmer of hope when a new opportunity or remedy comes my way. I spent a great deal of my time and even with my limited resources and energy I researched Neurofeedback until I felt this too was worth a try. That’s the thing though, I do keep trying and I can always say “at least I tried” no matter how big or small it may seem to others because I have tried a shitload of treatments etc., but I beg the question now; how many ways can someone keep trying before you just give up? Before you just say I can’t do this anymore. What’s the magic number or better yet is there a magic number

Self-Love

Lets call a spade a spade. Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a commercialized holiday that is celebrated among couples. A day set aside each February to show your significant other just how much they truly mean to you by showering them with presents and cards. The concept itself seems pretty harmless in many ways but of course that’s only true for those of us “lucky” enough to be part of a couple.

For many people Valentine’s Day is merely a sharp reminder that they are lonely, that they have failed at a relationship or that maybe they feel that they are undeserving of having a healthy, happy loving relationship at all.

It isn’t this way for everyone of course, in fact many people choose to be alone while others have the confidence to be in a healthy, happy and loving relationship with themselves. Self-love can be very powerful and can help set the standards for how we want to be treated in all our relationships both with ourselves and others. People who truly love themselves first (and not in a narcissistic President Trump kinda way) will in turn benefit from the happiest, most valuable relationship of all.

Of course this is not me. This is the most opposite of me that you can get. I shame myself daily, I put myself down daily and I berate myself daily almost to the point that “figuratively speaking” I have left many bruises and scars on my body and in my heart.

If you were to ask me to name all the things that I love, my list could be endless, I mean the top three of course are a no brainer; my amazing husband, my 3 beautiful kids and my adorable puppy (well she’s not a puppy anymore but whatevs) but even after the top three I could still go on and on naming more and more things that I love but you can be rest assured that upon conclusion of my list I will not have named one very important love; myself, no matter how many times a day I try to crush my inner voice and tell it to stop shaming me, to stop putting me down and to stop berating me.

Trust me it’s something I work on daily trying to shut those damn voices up any way I can and I just want to let all those struggling today to shut down that same inner voice, whether you’re feeling lonely right now or you’re “lucky” enough to be in a loving relationship it’s so important to celebrate today by being kind and loving to yourself first; and I will even bet you that you won’t want to return that gift you gave yourself either!