How are you?

How are you?

Three words repeated over and over again, a platitude - learned behaviour. I’ll tell you what I do. I put my smile on and I say

            FINE THANKS

            and keep moving if I can.

            OR I sigh lightly and laugh a little and say surviving. I’m surviving. Like I’m some kind of creature whose out in the woods and getting by although it’s dirty and mucky and sometimes cold.

            Then I always say “How bout yourself?” and they say something similar although maybe there’s too much work or something going on with their Mother-in-Law and they’ll fall in to telling me.

I tend to keep the things that I actually want to talk about until I actually want to talk about them.

            This greeting isn’t meaningless, not quite. Sometimes it can have huge power. When my close friend came round to see me, after her husband had been diagnosed with a chronic illness I asked her how she was and she wept, saying no-one had really asked her. I thought maybe they had but you wouldn’t want to open up about that to just anyone. 

            The thing is, actually, probably the most important thing you can do is ask your very own self - “How are you?” and if you’re good then great - if you aren’t then you should give yourself a hug and ask why not and is there anything you can do to help.

            Deciding to be a friend to myself could be the best thing I have ever done.

            I encourage to do the same and remember that at the very crux of it - YOU ARE NOT YOUR EMOTIONS. YOU ARE ONLY EXPERIENCING THEM.

Write Now (Part 2)

Hello friends,

A little while ago I wrote about the barriers to writing that I believe my depression - and to some extent my personality - cultivated. Now I am setting myself a challenge - a week long writing course where I have nothing to do but write. Of course I am excited, exhilarated, wondering where this great adventure will take me. Who, out of the fourteen other people might become my friends. What my week will hold - and what I can create. The place I am in is stunning, rolling mountains - peace and quiet enveloping the overawing grounds.

It seems a bit luxurious doesn't it? So many other people, other writers, just got on with things - writing at their coffee tables, on trains, in every free moment. I don't have that kind of personal motivation. I get stuck in the uselessness of how it feels to be me. This for me is an opportunity to push myself beyond the what ifs and how comes and why don't yous. I am grateful and lucky to have it.

Writing is the way that I express myself and I believe that whatever medium you are naturally drawn to is important to nurture. I have wanted to do this for a really long time. Now what's stopping me? Aside from the fact that I am currently writing on my blog instead of continuing a short story?

As ever only myself.

Miss D xx

The Everyday Yay!

Hello friends. We all need cheering on a daily basis - that's not something I just attribute to anxiety or depression or another mental illness. It's how we are. We need to support each other.

Here, everyday, you can find something to be happy about. This is not trivialising the anguish you might be in - simply taking a moment to reflect and relieve it. 

Today's daily YAY! 

Replace this: 

With this: 

It's ok to not be ok.

Why Yoga is it's Own Little Miracle

A year and a half ago, when I was going through what turned out to be the point in my life where I was finally diagnosed with depression, I started doing bikram yoga. I had tried another type of yoga before but I thought this one, undertaken in a forty degree heat would be more worth my while.
For a long time exercise was my way of coping, and at times became an obsession. I'd gotten tired of the cycle - going for a run, going to the gym, going to a class - it had all begun to bore me. Bikram was different.

Firstly there are mirrors. So you have to look at yourself, for 90 minutes of intense poses, working external and internal organs. You see every slouch of your shoulders, every slump of your thighs. Sounds awful? Probably, but it's not I promise you. You see what you are doing wrong and then you correct it. You go as far as you can then you breath. You don't push into pain. All of that helps. Just think about it - shouldn't we all be doing that with our minds too?

Now I do a lot more yoga at home, although I still do Bikram every week. I sleep better and I always feel better after I have given myself time for yoga. The video below is by awesome Adriene, who does wonderful, supportive sequences.

This is one I found particularly up-lifting. Namaste my friends x

The Best Advice I Can Give You

I was talking to someone a couple of days ago about mental health and anxiety. He was struggling with their current situation, which wasn't at all unhappy. The only thing I could say to him was this:

IT'S OK NOT TO BE OK

More than that, for the majority of the time it's just how we (those millions of people who live with mental health issues) are. The pressure to be happy in the life that you have - when nothing is technically wrong - can be crushing. 

I lived with the question for more than a decade: "Why aren't I just happy?" I'd cry over it frequently, feeling like a failure because everything I had in live wasn't enough for me; feeling ungrateful because I had so much; feeling horribly confused because at times I could be so very happy, then the emptiness would come. As much as I wish I known my diagnosis and understood my symptoms sooner I suppose it's a part of me that made me stronger. I did fight through it. I still got up every day. I had an incredible job and incredible friends. In a way that almost made things harder: my symptoms weren't severe enough to really be noticed. 

I suppose it might possible to fight your own way through depression alone, without acknowledgement or support, but it's a hell of a lot better not to. 

It's ok to not be ok. Most of us aren't. 

The Lives of Others

Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes.

The truth is a powerful thing.

The thing I have found most startling since I started actually talking about my own mental health is how it almost always leads to somebody telling me something similar, or something worse, about a relative or a friend or themselves. Again and again we all keep it quiet, don't mention it until we are pushed.

And it's not in the way that you might if you were talking about a more physical illness - like cancer. I mean sure you might wait until your comfortable to tell someone about that kind of a struggle. But there is a precedent for it - books, films, TV shows and by enlarge you would only expect a swelling of (perhaps hard to deal with in itself) sympathy.

There is still a huge disparity when it comes to mental health issues. Instead of waiting for something positive or empathetic you wait to be judged. You wait for people to look at you differently, or try and skirt over it politely. I'm lucky in that very often this hasn't been the case for me - it's happened only a few times. Instead I've found people sharing their own stories. I remember telling one of my oldest friends about it after she had been through an episode of her own and she was stunned. 'Everybody hides stuff' was what she said eventually. Of course we do. Why? Because your brain, after all feels, like your responsibility. Perhaps the only responsibility that will make a difference is the ability to tell the truth about it.

Rain or Shine?

Hello there

I feel like I haven't written here in a long time, longer than it actually is. Perception is puzzling. That's what we deal with I suppose, working out if what we think is an actual truth. And if not then why do we think it. Or at least that's how it is for me. It's like this bunch of daffodils.

This is how they actually look; a sunny yellow burst of happiness.

Play around with them on a photo app and this is how you can make them look:

Rainy, troubled and withering. 

I think it's the same with my brain. Things happen and I change them. It feels unconscious but I have to question myself, or at least that's what I hope I have started to do. 

Right now I am going through a time in my life where I am trying to change bad habits. I know what they are, why I do them and why they are bad for me. The problem it's learnt behaviour - imbedded deep down in me as a false way to cope. So that makes it hard to change. My perception is that I do these things, that they are part of me. I don't know how to be without them - and I'm worried that a storm will come. Just writing that makes me think about it more. It's the truth, they are like my crutch, my solid support even though they also hurt me. Weird huh? 

I think you have to accept that there is no magic wand. What I try to do now it take a step back from myself - recognise how I am feeling and ask myself if it's really true. Question your brain and why you are seeing rain. Maybe, just acknowledging that you create it internally is some kind of help. 

Trigger Unhappy: Weight

Today I made the decision to weigh myself. I knew that the news wouldn't be good - just after Christmas is always a damage limitation zone. I also knew that I wasn't being a very good friend to myself because I knew how it would make me feel. If there is one thing that can bring my mood crashing right down it's knowing that I weigh more. I did it anyway. I suppose it's partly because I felt I had to know, partly because it's what I have always done and partly to give own self a scolding.

Rationally I don't know why I place such meaning on the flickering number on the scales - when other people gain weight I almost never think they look bad. That said, I always notice. I used to be obsessed with watching other people eat. I still parallel the people I'm with, berating myself if I eat more than they do, stiff with sadness if I have to make up excuses as to why I'm not hungry.

After everything I've been through there are some things I know. Firstly I know that this is a learned behaviour from a long time ago, when I learnt thin = good. I was a twelve year old writing in my diary about how I needed to lose weight. When you do people tell you look great. 'You've lost weight', unless you are suffering from an illness, seems always to be a compliment. The same magazines that tell you to be proud of your figure advocate weight loss and dieting. I stopped reading them along time ago, but the message rolls around at the back of you. Thin = good, not thin = not good.

I weigh more than I did and I am not happy about it. If I hadn't been through almost two decades of this, if I hadn't gotten help, I know what I would believe. I am not thin (although it must be said no matter how much I weight I lost I never felt content and never believed I was thin) therefore I am not good. That's what I would be thinking right now. It would curl up in my stomach and purr cruelly at me every time I even thought about eating. The thing is now I don't feel like it matters so much. And I'm not sure how I feel about feeling that.  I'm not driven to hurt myself the way I used to, because my depression is under control. Mostly. It makes me nervous knowing that some of the habits I had then, when I spoke to myself in riddles of hatred, I might have to use now. Dieting after having an eating disorder is like walking on the side of a bridge, praying that you fall inside it - not off it- if you stumble.

"What a strange illusion it is, that beauty is goodness."

Miss D x

Life and Death

Sometimes things on the cusp of mortality hurtle in, swift winds riling the world with a full kind of sorrow. This week has been one of those weeks. On Saturday I discovered someone I used to work with tragically passed away: he was the loveliest man. At the same time my best friend had a beautiful baby boy, eight weeks before he was due. On Sunday they thought they'd have to operate on his tiny tummy. Then today there was a terrible, freak accident in Glasgow. It easily could have been me, or anyone I know, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A victim of circumstance. I can't imagine how those affected are coping, to me it still seems unreal. 

At times like this I have the same thoughts I always have - that I should be incredibly grateful to be living and to be safe. It's like I'm jolted out of things and my problems seem so minute, so trivial, that I become ashamed to think or speak about them. Then they lurk, at the back or me, growing slowly into darkness. This year I finally understood it. When you suffer from anxiety or depression it's all that exists. It's not trivial, because you can't see past it. It's also not a choice. 

That's why I know, perhaps today more than ever, how important it is to fight to make it better. Time, quality time, is up for grabs. 

Miss D x

How To Cope: #happything

Last February was when I cracked. I couldn't keep it in any longer, when my little sister asked me how I was I squeaked out "Not good", heated and violent tears tumbling down my cheeks. The next day she suggested that maybe if we shared one thing every day that made us feel happy it would help. Not a solution, but something. I found it centred me, rooted me more firmly to the ground. I still try to do it - here are some of my happy things.

How the sky looks 

Loving yoga 

Being kinder to myself

Buying a sunflower for my sister

#happything 

#memories

#hope 

Empty

Sometimes when I leave a conversation I feel empty

Like there's not enough of me, or them, to make it meaningful.

Like I'm touching just the top of it

Wanting it to be more than it is

Willing it into poignancy.

Time to Yourself

I don’t know why I have been struggling with this - being here, having time to myself. I thought it was what I had always wanted, to be able to write and read but there’s something about me - I don’t do well on my own. I mean I want to, I really, really do - but it’s like something’s blocking that; stopping it from being possible. 

Or is there nothing? I am creating a path, an expectation of a blockage, when it doesn’t really exist? I am my own limitation - I can achieve anything and yet I choose not to, to sit and feel completely lost and alone, to focus on that feeling and let it overwhelm me. I am not here to judge, only to observe my life patterns and how I let them coil around me.

26th September 2014

Christmas is Cruel

This is the thought I had today - there's a cruelty in Christmas. 

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly love Christmas. Every year it's one of my favourite times. Just hours ago It's a Wonderful Life made me whimsical and weepy. I don't love it because I'm madly religious; I'm not all and that in itself is a topic for another time. I love it because I get to go home, see my family, dress up nice and go out. I get to play games and watch TV - to do all the things I never have time for usually. In short, I get, to be indulged. 

Therein lies the cruelty. Indulgence breeds a kind of guilt.  Or it does with me. 

If you're like me and you have (or have had a problem with food) it's can pull you apart. Like the rest of my family and friends I love food. I love eating.  Every Christmas I can remember I've felt guilty about doing it. Sometimes before, mostly during, always after. The first time I made myself sick on Christmas day I felt relieved. Like I could be unaffected by surging all of it out of me, straining my heart. There'd be an acidic taste on my tongue and I'd dispense of it with more chocolate. And the circle continued. 

I don't know if there is a kind of hope here - maybe if you recognise what you're doing it's easier to stop it? I'll speak more about triggers soon but Christmas is one. It's something that hugs you tight then pull you back fast into darkness. 

Miss D x 

Hello there

Hello reader, 

Welcome to my blog. It's about living with Mental Health problems. Sometimes ones you might not know you have. 

You need to know something about the name, I think, to start with. When I was a teenager I remember one birthday present in particular - a Mr Men door sign 'Little Miss Sunshine'. My friend said to me "it's because you're always so happy".  I thought: inside I'm screaming and you do not know me at all. 

I've been living with depression for as long as I can remember, although I only realised what depression was about a year ago. Before then I thought I had an eating disorder, or at times just a really moody temper. Sometimes I'd get anxious. I always seemed angry. Then I started to cry too much. The same questions tugged at me - Why am I not happy? What is wrong with me? 

Cliche? Cliches exist for a reason. We all think we are wildly original when actually we go through the same things, the same kind of pain. 

It took me a long time to answer those questions. In the end I only got there because I was tired. So tired of years of it, coming at me when I least expected it. In between I had good times and great times. So I knew that things could be better. 

I spent most of my younger years covering it up, blaming myself for the way I was feeling - tearing myself apart physically and mentally. 

The reason I'm here is to share what I've been through and what helped me get better. 

I always wanted to a be a writer, but for a long time everything I wrote was a reflection of what I didn't want to be - myself. 

Here's hoping.
x