yet again.. got a psychologist to call me ‘fascinating’.... i love it when they do that :’)))

World Mental Health Day

Today, October 10th, is World Mental Health Day. I thought it might be appropriate to share some things.

*This isn’t me trying to bitch about being sad. I’ve got a rad therapist for that :) I believe that transparency is important in destigmatization of mental health (and other) issues. Visibility and social acceptance will help to decrease the shame that people might feel, preventing them from reaching out for help.

**I’m also not trying to claim that this is “how depression and anxiety” are or how to treat either one. I’m simply sharing my own personal experiences and what has and has not worked for me.

I’ve been struggling with anxiety and depression for several years now, but I always managed to brush it aside as a mood or a phase or a funk - anything other than depression - that was transient and dismissable. I felt I didn’t have a good enough reason to be depressed - I have a good job, great friends, a loving family; I’m able-bodied, I’m of sound mind, I haven’t had any recent traumas or abuse or huge losses. I felt like my life was not bad enough to be depressed. I often feel like I am not enough. (I felt like I wasn’t enough for depression. Talk about inadequacy issues, hah!)

Fake-it-till-you-make-it behavior can be shitty or constructive depending on how it’s done. I found myself exhibiting a lot of shitty fake-it-till-you-make-it behavior before I was able to confront my mental health and admit that I was depressed. I only listened to fun pop music and I made sure my room had lots of bright colors and I only watched comedy TV and I carried glowsticks everywhere and I went out partying 3x per week and I did my very best to make people laugh and I made sure everyone knew that I was having fun and that I was happy because then maybe I could convince myself that I was having fun and that I was happy. I was pretending to be the person I wanted to be. Fake it till you make it. It was only a temporary fix, a band-aid, because of the fact that I hadn’t confronted the reason(s) why I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. I could fake it till the cows came home, but I wouldn’t make it unless I accepted that I needed to do more than just faking it alone.

More like “FAKE-IT-TILL-YOU-are-able-to-identify-the-mental-illness-that-is-holding-you-hostage-and-then-take-steps-to-address-the-probably-deeply-rooted-issues-that-may-or-may-not-have-contributed-to-its-manifestation-and-work-on-managing-it-consistently-for-a-long-time-and-make-it-part-of-your-daily-life-to-take-better-care-of-yourself-and-don’t-beat-yourself-up-when-you’re-not-able-to-manage-it-that-well-but-always-try-to-get-back-on-that-goddamned-horse-so-that-you-can-fucking-MAKE-IT!”

You feel me?

This year, I got to a point where I couldn’t fake it to myself anymore. Even if I had fooled other people, I knew that I was kidding myself and that I couldn’t keep avoiding an obvious issue. I worked with my primary care physician (who, by the way, noticed early on in our patient-physician relationship that I was showing signs of depression and suggested I go to therapy like 3 years ago) and we decided that therapy had indeed become a very necessary treatment. I happened to have enough motivation that day to look up psychologists within my insurance network and research them individually to see if we’d be a good fit and I made a bunch of phone calls and left a bunch of messages and only ONE person called me back (BTW, WTF?) and he’s my therapist now and he’s amazing and I love going to therapy! And, good grief, did I NEED THERAPY.

So I magically got better after my first therapy session! Just kidding. I still felt like shit. I was still embarrassed and ashamed for feeling depressed when I had “no reason” to. I told my therapist about how I had been faking it, and that I knew I should stop doing that and that it was unhealthy. I was surprised when he suggested that I keep faking it. He said something like (paraphrasing) “For most people, motivation precedes action. When you’re depressed, sometimes you need to force the action to spark the motivation. You’ve acknowledged that your depression exists and you’re actively taking steps to manage it, you’re not being delusional, you’re not doing it to avoid a problem anymore. There is a healthy way to fake it.” 

So I did. I often forced myself to go out when all I wanted to do was stay in my bed under the covers, safe from the judgement and criticism that I was sure I would receive from the world. I took photos of myself being goofy and smiling so that I could look at them and … visualize myself being goofy and smiling, hah. I made myself go anywhere but home so that I wouldn’t get sucked into the island of isolation that is my bed. It helped, a lot. A few times, the actions still weren’t quite enough and the motivation never came out but the monsters did and they weren’t the kind of monsters I could run from so they nested in my head and they feasted on my confidence and my self-worth and my rationality and shit out self-doubt and self-loathing and fear and hopelessness.

So I would be forced to house the monsters, temporarily. Eventually they’d die. Since April, I’ve had probably five or six mini-episodes of highly depressive states.

The monsters re-spawn, apparently.

This happened as recently as this past weekend. I stayed in bed for three days straight, leaving it only for the restroom or to receive my Doordash delivery. I went four days without showering or changing my clothes or having significant human contact. I would go through cycles of being harshly critical of myself, over-analyzing how others thought of me, feeling insignificant and worthless, deciding to give up on being happy, and drowning in tears of self-pity until I fell asleep. Think, cry, repeat.

I was forced out of bed on Monday for an appointment with my physician (and I showered!). Thank fucking goodness. That same day I saw my therapist. Thank fucking goodness.

I had nothing to do yesterday so I slept until like 2:30pm and since I had no reason to do anything, I did nothing. At least, until I had to get dressed for a birthday party, so I got dressed. I had lots of reasons to NOT go to the party, and I wrote out multiple cancellation texts and I thought about how the monsters knew exactly where the party was and they had been there before and what if they came out again tonight and I kept looking at my fucking bed and wanting to climb into it and feel the comfort of my comforter and the pretend comfort of my body pillow but then I remembered that I could feel very real comfort from laughter and hugs and songs so I deleted the texts and I went. I cried first and I had to redo my fucking makeup but I did that and then I went.

I went to my favorite bar with some of my favorite people and did some of my favorite things, and I was elated. I laughed and I sang and I danced and I hugged and I laughed more, and I wasn’t faking it this time. I made it! I MADE IT!

 But guess the fuck what? I’m probably going to feel overwhelmingly anxious and depressed again real soon. I don’t want to, but realistically, yeah, it’s gonna happen. And guess the fuck also what? I’m gonna keep seeing my therapist and doing my gratitude exercises and catching my unhelpful thinking patterns and working through my negative automatic thoughts and breathing with my diaphragm in counts of four and two and six and

FAKING-IT-TILL-I-work-on-managing-my-depression-and-anxiety-consistently-for-a-long-time-and-make-it-part-of-my-daily-life-to-take-better-care-of-myself-and-I-won’t-beat-myself-up-when-I’m-not-able-to-manage-it-that-well-but-I-will-always-try-to-get-back-on-that-goddamned-horse-so-that-I-can-fucking-MAKE-IT!

...again.

Introduction :)

Hello! 

Just wanted to give some background onto why I’m blogging. 2016 and the beginning of 2017 were rough. I was always overweight as a kid, I remember being over 100 lbs in elementary school and was the target of any and all fat jokes, and that only got worse as I got bigger. As a result, I was always very meek and quiet, afraid to reach out to anyone. My junior year of high school I decided I would try to lose the weight. And I did. Through obsessive running and calorie counting I went from 190 lbs to 135 lbs at 5′5′’. I had a world of newfound confidence and decided to join the military, so I did. Because I was doing so much restricting (never ever indulged, minimum calories, no cheating) I gained a few pounds. or 15. I still looked great I thought. Then my superiors in the military started to notice and I was constantly being openly reprimanded on my weight and that I needed to lose more. Didn’t they know where I started and the work I put in? Putting up with fat jokes as a kid is one thing, but to have a an older, wiser superior, who is also male, sit you down face to face and call you fat? That didn’t sit well for me. So I changed what was a balanced diet to eating peanut butter every day. Hey, it’s healthy fat and I lost enough water weight to make them happy. But I felt like shit. So fast forward through all of bootcamp and training and I was vegan (basically a fruitarian) and running 2-3x a day with half-marathons on the weekends. Admittedly, I was really fit doing all that with abs peeking through and happily toned, I was still restricting calories. I remember one night I literally ate two ENTIRE containers of oreos. And that’s how it started. I graduated training and went home, and all everyone could say was how great I looked, so my confidence soared. But all that restriction and obsession came crashing down as I stressed to keep it up and deal with a negative relationship. Say hello to binge eating. I used to drive to several fast food restaurants in one trip and end up spending up to $30. I went from 1200 calories a day to up to 5000. Then I would feel horrible and guilty so I would restrict to 500, but then I’d get so crazy I’d binge. And thus a vicious cycle began and the pounds flew on. Months in I started getting reprimanded again by my new unit. It was so embarrassing to sit down and sign a paper saying how fat I was and that I needed to follow a program and I needed to send proof that I was working out daily. That became a huge stressor as I began hyper-aware of my body. I couldn’t stop the binges. So I tried purging and that spiraled out of control and my whole day consisted of planning my binges and purges. I would show up to weekend drills having not eaten for three days and barely drink water, and would try to run the fastest two mile I could run without passing out. I regretted joining the military because I associated every drill with the extreme anxiety that everyone looked at me and knew I was the fat girl. So I told my supervisor who was female and got redirected to behavioral health. Long story short I’ve been seeing a psychologist for five months and have been doing incredible, especially lately. I haven’t binged or purged in several weeks and it feels surreal. However, now I had ballooned up to 216 lbs and now my goal is to lose the weight carefully without severe restricting calories and love my body the whole way. Hope you all stick with me along the way and please feel free to ask questions!!! Xoxo - Kate

When I was 15, I was introduced to weight training. It transformed my life then, and it keeps doing so now. I really didn't know what I was doing then. I just read a lot of magazines and did exercises that made sense. In an era of college football with most weight rooms either less than one thousand square feet or simply nonexistent, I was one of only a few players to take weight training seriously. As I write this article today in 2015 I can proudly say that as a college player 50 years ago my bench was 405, my squat was 505, and my deadlift was 605. I never took steroids, and my only vice was protein shakes. I have a bachelor's degree and master's degree in kinesiology. My master's thesis was on strength training. I was a head football and swimming coach at the high school level before becoming a clinical and sports psychologist 30 years ago. I never stopped working out. In fact, when we added on to our house, my wife allowed me to turn our old master bedroom into a full weight room complete with bench, squat cage, lat machine, leg extension & curl machine, sit up board, treadmill, 550 pounds of free weights, and dumbbells from 10-70. Our house was the hangout for all our son's teammates. OK, enough background. In my ignorant youth I was working out 3X/week for about 2 ½-3 hours, which included all body parts. Of course, now we know that is overtraining, but no one told me. I just knew I liked the results. Over the years I've tried high reps, super sets, and all the usual workouts. For the most part, they all work if you are consistent. What I can tell you is that at my current age of 68, I can still hold my own in the weight room with men much younger. We all now know that sarcopenia (loss of muscle due to aging) is somewhat inevitable, but it most certainly can be slowed down and delayed by proper workout even in the absence of great amounts of testosterone, as long as protein requirements are met (1.2-1.5 grams/kilo of bodyweight for men and slightly less for women). I stopped doing heavy lifting years ago, but many consider what I lift now to be heavy. Even my teammates from 50 years ago recently made that comment. High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT, has been shown to be the most effective and efficient means of achieving good cardio. So after almost a year of experimentation, I combined HIIT with weights. Please understand that Y44 is a method of working out. You can still do whatever exercises you want, split your workouts, etc. The beauty of Y44 is you only have to do one set of the exercise to get excellent results. In fact, doing more is overtraining. I can almost hear the skeptics now, but please be open-minded. I have turned many skeptics into believers. People have been very pleased with the Y44 method. If you are a senior or significantly out of weight training shape, please see your doctor and get her or his approval before you attempt the Y44 (I always emphatically recommend getting a full physical before undertaking any new workout regimen). Yes, it's that intense. This is NOT a beginner's workout. You also need to make sure your kidneys are functioning properly in order to be able to handle the protein. The best results from weight training are when you take a muscle to complete exhaustion. Please keep in mind the protein requirements,otherwise this won't work. Again, keep in mind you can do almost any exercise using the Y44 principle. I say almost because some like flat barbell bench or free bar squats, can not be done this way. If you want to do bench or squats with the Y44 method, a machine is the best choice. For the purpose of explaining the Y44 method I will use dumbbell bench as an example. Again, this is a method. You can continue whatever exercises you want in combination so long as you give at least 72 hours between working out a specific body part. Okay, let's do this. Take whatever weight you can do 8 reps with and cut that in half. As an example, I can comfortably do 8 reps with 100 lbs. dumbbells, so my Y44 set will be with 50's. I set my timer for 4 minutes. I lie down and do as many reps as I can do until I can't move, usually somewhere between 21-25,then I sit up. I take exactly 4 breaths, and go back down and repeat the process. I usually am able to get maybe 7-8 reps. I sit up and take another 4 breaths, and back down, this time maybe getting 3-4 reps. I repeat this process until the timer goes off. 4 minutes, 4 breaths equals Y44. This constitutes one set, and that's all that is needed. It seems far too simple, especially for those who think you need 5-8 sets. Keep in mind, this is weight training, not bodybuilding. This is more on the order of body sculpting. Oh, yes, and if you don't think this involves cardio, track your pulse during the workout. Y44 is a hybrid HIIT. As with all weight training, make sure your form is excellent to avoid injuries. I am not a researcher, so, no, there are no studies versus a control group to point to, and at this point in my career and personal life, I'm just thrilled to get results and share them. I'm happy to let my background speak for itself. I'll let some graduate assistant or doctoral candidate set the whole thing up, record the results, and do all the various statistical analyses. I would be happy to help. Just remember it will take you about a month just to get in shape to really attack the Y44 method. As the old legal disclaimer goes, "Results may vary." By all means email me and tell me I'm crazy. I love to hear all the wonderful results from a fellow crazy. Dr. Yellen is a parent, former educator, and clinical & sports psychologist in private practice. He has appeared nationally television as well as giving commentary on local television and radio stations.

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ok ok im leaving hospital on monday but now im. now im very very anxious about leaving

like. not only do i have access to all sorts of unhealthy coping mechanisms at home. i dont have anyone giving my meds to me at set times??? also im gonna have no sleeping meds bc the only ones that work rn are hella addictive and he said hes only gonna let me have like 4 after i leave???? so im gonna end up not sleeping, losing my whole routine, fighting off dastardly urges all day and night, having to cook and clean and walk dog and pack and PACK and make DECISIONS ..........

i mean yes i will have good shower. and friends. and dolg. and mum visiting most days. ill have help.

BUT WHAT DO I DO WITHOUT THE SWEET CLEANING LADY WHO CHIRPS AS SHE COMES IN AND DOESNT JUDGE ME FOR THE HORRIBLE MESS AND JUST SWEEPS AROUJJND ME AND TALKS ABOUT BLUEY

AND THE SWEET GAY NURSE ON NIGHT SHIFT IM IN LOVE WITH WHO BRINGS ME  MY ZOLPIDEM AN D TREATED MY SELF HARM THAT ONE TIME SO GENTLY AT 5AM AND CALLS ME DARLING AND TAKES MY PHONE AWWAY BC HES A TIKTOK GIRLIE AND KNOW S WHAT ITS LIKE TO SPEND 8 HOURS ON TIKTOK INSTEAD OF SLEEPING

AND THE NURSE IM IN LOVE WITH WHO TRIES TO GET ME UP AND GET ME EATING FOO D AND WAS SO HAPPY WHEN I GOT UP BY MYSELF AT 8330 THIS MORNING AND LIT4ERLALY JUMPED FOR JOY WHEN I SAID I SCHEDULED AN APPT IVE BEEN PUTTING OFF FOR A YEAR AND A HALF AND WHO THELPS ME CLEAN MY ROOM AND DOESNT JUDGE ME FOR MY MANY CUPS JUST FILED WITH SUNFLOWER SHELLS

AND THE SWEET NURSE ALSO WHO FOUND ME ON THE FLOOR AND FOUND OUT I HADNT EATEN IN A FEW DAYS AND SCOOPED ME UP AND TOOK ME TO A TABLE OUTSIDE THAT UR NOT MEANT TO BE ALLOWED AT AND PUT AN INSIDE CHAIR THERE SO I COULD SIT AND BROUGHT ME BACK LIKE EVERY FLAOURR OF YOGHURT AND FRUIT AND OPENED THEM FOR ME TO MAKE SURE ID EAT IT

AND THE NURSE THAT ALWAYS SHOWS ME FUNNY EDITS OF HER DOGS SINGING SONGS AND ALWAYS ASKS WHEN REGGIES NEXT VISITING  AND BRINGS FOOD TO MY ROOM WHEN I CANT LEAVE

AND LINDA WHO I ASKED HER TO BRING BEDSHEETS CAUSE I HAD BEEN SLEEPING ON APPLE JUICE FOR 5 DAYS AND SHE WAS LIKE ‘ITS OK IT HAPPENS’ AND CHANGED THE SHEETS FOR ME AND SHOWED ME WHAT SHE WAS DOING SO I COULD LEARN HOW TO DO IT MYSELF (theres a lot of layers due to hygiene) AND STOOD BY ME MAKING SURE I PUT AWAY ALL OF MY CLEAN CLOTHES FOR THE FIRST TIME I GOT HERE 2 MONTHS AGO

AND THE OTHER PATIENTS HERE WHO ARE DELIGHTFUL, ONE SLID A BEAUTIFUL COLOURING PAGE OF THE FIRST LETTER OF MY NAME THAT SHE DREW AND SHE SLID IT UNDER MY DOOR ?????/ AND SHES SO NICE AND THE GUY I PLAYED CHESS WITH AND THE OTHER GUY AND THE GIRL I WAS TALKING TO,,, AND THE ONE WHO GOES ON WALKS WITH ME AND HAS REALLY ENTHUSIASTIC CONVERSATIONS AND STUFF

YEAH SHE SHOWERS HERE SUCK BUT WHEEEERRE ARE THEY ALL GONNA BE ITS JUST GONNA BE ME ??? ALONE??????????? AT HOME WITH ALL MY RAZORS AND WEED AND SHIT AND N0B0DY TO TALK ME THROUGH THINGS??????? NO PSYCHIATRIST 3X A WEEK, NO GROUP THERAPIST CHECKING IN ON ME ONE ON ONE TWICE A WEEK.... i will have my psychologist bUT SHES GOING AWAY FOR 3 WEEKS SOON she did offer to see me once during that but OMG

i have a lot of people with me here, i have plenty of beautiful friends offering to help, my mums gonna help too... im just scared. mostly about the sleep thing, i knowwww im gonna stop sleeping and this schedule ive managed to cultivate for the first time in ever will be fucked. like, ive been sleeping at midnight, getting up at 8:30, it’s insane!!! i do nap a  bit after cause my brain is so stressed and overwhelmed and tiiiired but it’s something!! i really want to try to hold onto this i really hope i have the strength. please, please have the strength to get up, please, even if you literally want to die. and take your meds every night and get off your phone even if it’s so so scary and you don’t know what to do without it. PLEEEEEEEEASE MAKE THIS WORKKKKK