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captainoftheseaqueen · 7 years

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May is Mental Health Month!

Tumblr has a blog dedicated specifically to sharing your story to help others, Post It Forward, and they have put forward a theme for each week. This week is talking about your personal self-care.

So, I’m going to talk about my experience with self care before and after I received treatment for my depression.

Now, to be honest, I’ve wondered one to share,

but the truth is my self-care sucked for quite a while before I started taking medication for my depression.

I either didn’t eat or I compensated by overeating,

I couldn’t sleep or I slept too much,

I could not focus on any projects

I was disinterested in things I’d once loved

I couldn’t even play video games, even though I wanted to

A lot of self-care posts on tumblr end up being very cutesy. And those are things I can do now, remembering to get up and stretch, or get out of the house, but the fact of the matter is that at my worst--and I dealt with my depression getting worse over the course of the years--I just couldn’t do it. And I tried.

My depression-addled ass would do stretches and strength training to work out, since I lived in Vegas and could not bring myself to do something as intense as cardio. Strength training was at least stationary, mostly.

Oh, it helped, a little. I put on a lot of muscle in that time. I’d do it when I was miserable or just apathetic because people said it was supposed to help, right? Exercise was supposed to make it better and help it go away, right?

Spoiler: Exercise didn’t cure my depression.

Spoiler #2: There is no cure for depression and cutesy posts are lying

In fact, my schedule for training was uneven because sometimes depression was just too much. It saps your energy. Sometimes I had more physical energy, and sometimes I’d have a briefly more positive outlook because of endorphin, but the fact of the matter is that unless all I did was exercise, there would be no compensating for the illness I was experiencing.

And I blamed it on stress. I mean, understandably. I was under constant fear of being homeless, I was working a job as a waitress for a year and a half that I got no money from--it had to go straight to bills and buying food for the family, I had no self-confidence, and I was regularly getting to see one of my parents go through life-threatening medical things, among other things. And the family stress wasn’t new. I’ve been dealing with medical horrors since I was in fifth grade. In fact, in ninth grade, I couldn’t fail due to absences because I would suddenly leave school to take care of my dad and bother. He had a stroke and heart attack in one week in said grade. There are other, worse things, but to keep this post from growing too grim, I’ll hold onto them for another time.

So, as for why the medical stuff is worth mentioning, I’ve got an olfactory trigger I’ve developed over my lifetime because of it. There is a particular medical grade disinfectant that the very smell of triggers panic attacks in me, and the idea of going to a doctor, let alone hospital, makes me physically sick.

My job at the bar sucked because one or twice a week, always on my shift it seemed, the bar bathrooms were cleaned and that same disinfectant was used. Anxiety spikes at a job that already sucked were not helping. And even still, I was telling myself that the only thing wrong with me was that I wasn’t trying hard enough.

Spoiler #3: No amount of ‘trying harder’ would have made it better.

We moved. We were homeless for two months, but we moved. And then we went to a new house, I wasn’t working. The weather was better. My dad’s health seemed to be better. I was no longer regularly being subjected to my trigger. The reasons for my stress were gone.

What wasn’t gone was my depression.

And that made me feel worse, believe it or not. Because before, I could blame it on things being rough and just assuming I was having a hard time juggling all of it. Without the stress, I panicked because I wasn’t doing any better and I was sure I should be.

So I tried working out more.

It didn’t help.

I tried focusing on happy things. But I couldn’t focus on anything so that did me no good.

I tried all that cutesy self-care shit. It didn’t do me any good.

And that made me feel worse because clearly, I thought, I was doing it wrong. Somehow, some way.

And then I went to the doctor to talk about having no energy, and before I went in, they had a quiz to fill out about mental health. My results were... not great.

So she asked me to go see a therapist.

Now, for several reasons, I haven’t gone back since my first appointment. But that first appointment, he emailed my doctor and had per prescribe an antidepressant for me.

In my case, this is what I needed.

Yes, I still have issues every now and then, but it’s a completely different ballgame from the one I was playing before. Rather than being tied up to a pole with people batting baseballs straight for my head, I’ve got a bat now and I can try and knock them back.

The cutesy shit can work for me now, sometimes, but the fact of the matter is it didn’t and couldn’t before.

All I could do before I got help was just survive. And that’s okay.

So I am putting this out there for those that are suffering.

It’s okay if all that stuff you see doesn’t do much for you. It’s okay if all you can do right now is survive. Surviving means you’re alive, and having been there, having been suicidal and having honest-to-god stood at the side of the road and watched cars go by, wondering how much being hit would hurt, let me tell you and promise you right now that surviving is enough.

Surviving means you can get better.

Surviving means there is a chance.

And having gone through eleven years of progressively worse shit, it’s enough.

Surviving is enough for now. Help is out there. I promise.

And sometimes what helps you cope will change.

Sometimes it will be clinging to a fandom, show, book, or game because it’s all you feel like you’ve got at the time. And that’s okay. Sometimes it will be looking up silly videos online to get your first laugh that day. Or it will be subsiding off of prepackaged or easily made meals because you don’t have the energy for anything else.

If these keep you alive until you can get the help and support you need to get your demons and problems under control, then that’s okay. Just remember that there are people who can help.

I may not know you, but I love you. I love you because you are unique and irreplaceable, even when you think that’s a lie.

I want you to be safe, and if you aren’t happy now, if being happy feels like a far-away dream, I just want you to know that it’s not. And you can be happy again. You just have to hang in there. I believe in you.

#long post is long but important #post it forward #depression

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coldtomyflash · 7 years

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Could you do Snart sibs or Snarts sibs + Mick for sibling meme. 1) Biggest favor for the others, 2) Thing they won't let the other forget, 3) Wakes up first, 4) Favorite way to annoy the other, 5) Habit the others hate, 6) Tickle cheer up, hate/like it to who? 7)Fav show or Hobby they share, 8) Who cooks 9) Gives tmi about.. 10) Sings in the shower?

This is a bit odd for me since I seldom do meme things like this and this is a bit more of an involved one than just “who does x” but… I’ll do my best :)

1) Biggest favor for the others

Len gives his entire self to the few people he loves. Biggest favor? Raising Lisa and dying for Mick.

Hard to say for the the others, sorry.

2) Thing they won’t let the other forget

There’s a lot that Lisa won’t let Len live down. Little sister privileges.

More seriously, it’s hard to pinpoint one exact thing they won’t let the other forget, because it all comes back to this: we’re a unit. We have each other. We love each other. The world can’t stand in our way.

So whatever specific memory or thing they can’t let the other forget, it comes back to that sentiment.

(This applies to all three, btw)

3) Wakes up first

Well, Len is up all night making plans for heists and lost in wikipedia spirals on the oddest topic, not to mention he just has overall difficulty sleeping plenty of nights. So not him.

Mick will nap as often as you let him, will wake up at 2am, will go back to bed until 11am, really just… likes sleep. He’s high energy and intensity, so the times where he feels drowsy and not awake yet? Relishes it. Sleeps in. Because when his energy kicks in, it keeps going.

But Lisa? Is sharp. And sharp means that keeps a schedule (it helps her feel control over her life, not dissimilar to Len counting seconds and timing things to the minute). And keeping a schedule means she’s ready to wake up early and kick ass. So her. Definitely her.

4) Favorite way to annoy the other

Mick flicks his lighter as a compulsion but sometimes just to be a shit and annoy Len. Talks about how much he adores the flames to make Len grumpy. Making Len annoyed isn’t really all that hard. Lisa will needle him with questions or point out when he’s being presumptuous to accomplish the same goal. He hates it when Lisa and Mick team up to do this.

5) Habit the others hate

Mick doesn’t believe in doing laundry and it drives the other two up the wall to have his dirty clothes lying around.

Len can be a prickly pear and the others get annoyed at his sleeping habits because when he doesn’t sleep he is an even pricklier pear. They also get annoyed with his habit of not sharing information and making them just follow along.

Lisa drinks the milk straight from the jug and puts the empty jug back in the fridge to remind herself it’s time to buy more milk. Len hates the former habit (because no, Lisa, get a fucking glass) and Mick hates the latter (because he wanted some milk and dammit this jug is empty).

6) Tickle cheer up, hate/like it to who?

None them tickle cheer up the others. Len has touch issues, Mick has sensitivity issues due to his scarring, and the last person who tried to catch Lisa unawares to tickle her broke 3 fingers because of her knee-jerk response.

7) Fav show or Hobby they share

Watching hockey. Like hands down.

Well, that and stealing things… or maintenancing their weapons.

8) Who cooks

Len can fry a steak and is happy to heat up frozen pizzas. He can make pasta but tends to take the easy route and buy the sauce, and his intake of vegetables comes largely from prepackaged things, or else steaming them raw. He learned to cook on a survival-basis as a teen trying to feed his little sister and didn’t have time or energy for learning culinary arts in the slightest, though he can find a mean deal in the grocery store.

Mick likes to fry things and has trouble with the patience it takes to roast things in the oven or bake them. He knows a decent amount of different meat recipes and ignores vegetables on principle, but is actually pretty good at making them. He grew up on farmhouse (comics canon, now headcanon), after all. He knows what to do with base ingredients.

Lisa abhors cooking. She’ll either largely buy food or else eat raw food to avoid it, except for tossing some chicken or sometimes another meat in the oven to roast to have with her meals. She’s largely a grazer though, and will snack throughout the day rather than sitting down for large meals. She melts for a guy who can cook though, and is far more adventurous in what she eats than Len or Mick.

9) Gives tmi about…

About???

Len is not at all tmi. Mick probably is. Definitely is. He thinks it’s funny, sometimes, how squeamish people can be about basic things. Lisa is tmi but strictly for a purpose, and otherwise will play her cards close to her chest.

10) Sings in the shower?

In the right mood, Mick has been known to sing in the shower, belting it out, but it’s the type of thing that only happens after a perfectly executed heist when he’s high on life.

Len will hum a tune quietly sometimes and occasionally a few words escape, but not loud enough for anyone to hear.

Lisa doesn’t sing in the shower; it always felt dangerous to her growing up to bring more attention to herself than needed, and didn’t have Len’s art for being totally quiet. She’ll listen to music and hum while jogging until she needs to focus on her breathing.

#memes #headcanons #the snart siblings #and mick #leonard snart #lisa snart #mick rory #idk man #hope this was what you wanted #domestic feels #sort of #Anonymous #replies

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ontheedgeofrecovery · 6 years

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Big realization

I think I have realized that I am going to need to go back into residential treatment when my disability resets at work. I traveled out of town to visit a friend for a couple days and there were several illuminating aspects around that trip that made me realize that, while I may be functioning and holding down a job, that I am still completely controlled by the ED. Buckle in – this is going to be a long one.

Let’s break it down.

Thing #1: I had to pack all of my own food. I could not even begin to think about eating anything other than my normal day to day foods. I know I have mentioned it before on this blog, but I eat literally the same exact thing every day. And it’s not normal stuff. It is all pre-packaged things like Quest Bars and yogurts that are pre-measured and with calories counts on them. I don’t actually have anything that looks like a meal in my day right now. I know most people are excited to show a visitor around their city and bring them to all their favorite places to eat. Which, we did visit one of her favorite restaurants I guess. Two of her friends came and I just felt like a freak because everyone ordered something and I got a Diet Coke. And also, my friend didn’t really get to show all her other favorite spots to me, because it would kinda be pointless since I don’t eat anything outside of the food I had packed in my suitcase. So much of visiting a new city is the dining out experience and I just completely cannot handle that. I feel the need to eat the same thing every day because it also cuts out the need to constantly be tallying calories. If I start to deviate from my plan than the calories counting starts up hardcore and I just don’t have time for that.

Thing #2: Scheduling eating times. I eat pretty much twice a day – upon waking when no one is around and then after midnight when everyone is asleep. I get enough calories in because I cluster eat at night. It’s kind of like binging, but not really. I eat a series of small snacks over the course of an hour and get in about 90% of my calories for the day. I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed about the weird foods I do eat, so I don’t want to eat around people. I also don’t like to have to eat during the day because it takes up so much brain power and makes me so anxious that I cannot focus on my job and interacting with people. For some reason it also feels like it doesn’t totally count that I am eating because everyone is asleep (I recognize this doesn’t make sense). Furthermore, if I eat all of my calories right before bed, I can just go to sleep escape the obsessive thoughts that follow. This was a little weird staying with someone, because I essentially had to hide my eating at night, because it is embarrassing. Luckily I was with a friend that knows me a long time, so I explained to her that I would eat my snacks alone in my room once everyone had gone to bed and she understood. But it looked weird to her boyfriend and son.

Thing #3: I could not just sit and relax. I constantly feel like I have to be doing something – being productive – on the move. My friend is a much more relaxed person. She will lay down on the couch in the middle of the day and watch an episode on TV. That is completely foreign to me. I do not sit during the day (unless I am working and have to be at my desk). I have never watched TV during the day. I didn’t know what to do with this. I literally couldn’t sit still. Part of it was that I was in a new city and I genuinely wanted to explore and not sit around an apartment and watch TV. And part of it was that I just felt lazy, unproductive, and concerned that I was not burning calories. I have my intake/output down to an exact science. And the ED was concerned that if I was eating the same amount of calories I always eat and not going to the gym/walking to work/taking the dogs for walks that somehow there would be an imbalance in the intake/output and I might gain weight (sidebar – for me gaining weight is not related to my appearance, but change in my body. I cannot deal with feeling different. I even have a hard time switching pants from day to day because they feel different on me. I will wear the same pants for a week at a time to avoid having to get used to the way a different pair fits). I logically know the body is not that sensitive and that 3 days of less activity is not going to have an impact, but logic really only brings the anxiety down a tiny bit. I also just feel a moral guilt if I am sitting around during the day doing nothing. Which brings me to thing #4.

Thing #4: My friend wanted to have a really low key day on the second to last day of my trip. Her boyfriend took the car, so we had no means of transportation. She thought it was the perfect time to watch TV and then take a nap. I could barely keep it together. She has mentioned before she was going to take a nap that she was craving homemade mac and cheese. And I was like, “I will make it for you, please give me something to do”. And she was like, “I don’t have all the ingredients”. But, I looked and there was a grocery story that was a little more than a half a mile away. It was hot as hell out because it’s North Carolina in the summer, but it was a perfect opportunity for me to get a nice walk in. Well, first, I felt the need to take the roundabout way to the store on purpose to add another half mile to the walk. But I made it and then made it back to her apartment pretty sweaty, but feeling better that I got out and moved. Time to cook the mac and cheese. Which brings me to #5

Thing #5 Cooking pasta for the mac and cheese. Now, I haven’t cooked pasta in a very long time because I don’t cook anymore now that I live by myself and everything I eat is prepackaged and does not require heating (with the exception of oatmeal). I couldn’t tell if the pasta was done and I know that eating a piece is a normal and customary way of checking if pasta is done. I couldn’t do it. I took a bite of half of a piece of elbow macaroni and literally spit it in the trash. Half a piece of pasta. I had a moment where I realized, if anyone saw me do that and asked why I spit out the pasta my explanation would sound utterly insane. That the calories in half a piece of elbow macaroni would be intolerable to add to my daily allotment of food. Insane.

Thing #6 The last thing was tonight. My flight got super delayed and came pretty close to not taking off at all. I was in a complete and utter panic about having to stay another night. Not because of work or having to get home to the dogs, but because I had only packed enough food for three evenings (yes, I also recognize that I count evenings and not days.. the only eating at night thing…). What the hell was I going to eat? This thought despite the fact that airports are completely filled with things to eat. There’s a restaurant and a convenience store every 10 feet. But none of it is MY food. I was really panicked.

So, that’s it folks. I clearly have some shit to work on. And I don’t talk about it with anyone because the majority of people in my life at this point didn’t know me when I was really sick. They know something is up, but they have no idea how bad it actually got. They expect me to function like any other human and right now that is taking everything out of me. I feel stretched. My job requires a lot of emotional fortitude and I just am wearing really thin. I am keeping it together, but only with my obsessive and exacting routine. I nearly came undone during that vacation and that scares me. I want to get help but there is just no way to do it right now. I feel really trapped and overwhelmed. I am torn between patting myself on the back that I am holding it together, that it may look dysfunctional, but it is working for me and keeping me afloat. And the other half is so mad at myself that I am still so stuck in this trap. I want to break free and live a normal and spontaneous life. I want to travel, I want to build new relationships, I want to be spontaneous, but I just can’t.

And one of the things that bothers me most, in very typical eating disorder fashion, is I don’t even look thin. All of these traps and rules and I look totally normal. I am within my weight range and no one would ever know the extent of my anorexia and it just makes me feel awful. I would think at least with all these rules I would be in a body I was a little more comfortable in. I am not trying to lose weight and I won’t go down that path, but I am just so deeply uncomfortable in my body. That’s part of my rules, I am trying so hard to prevent any further change. I feel like if I break my rules I may either gain weight or lose weight. And while I could tolerate losing weight, I cannot head down that path without completely destroying my life and career. And I cannot gain weight because I want to crawl out of my skin as it is. I cannot handle any more flesh on my body without wanting to tear it off. Dramatic, but true.

Alright, this is getting really long so I am going to end it here. I just have a lot to think about.

#anorexia #eating disorders #relaspe #routine #obessive #ocd #night eating

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