Fighting the Fight: A Clarification and an Explanation

The Clarification:

So, last few weeks I’ve been talking about taking care of really basic physical needs and basic self-care. But in one of my classes, I wound up having a discussion with a classmate about mental health. One thing she said was that she got really annoyed when people would tell her “Just drink water and do some yoga and you’ll feel better!” Many times, it’s an oversimplication of the problem.

After that conversation, I remembered what I wrote these past couple weeks in the Break-Up Survival Guide so I want to clarify (since I actually did say “Drink water, you’ll feel better”): I’m not saying that doing these things will “cure” you of your depression, or of any other mental health problems. Sure would be nice if it were that easy, though, wouldn’t it?

Here’s what I am saying:

#1. You cannot view your mental health and physical health as entirely independent of each other. They are in partnership with each other and are constantly interacting and impacting one another. Depression and anxiety are mental disorders. Mental disorders are considered disorders of the brain. Your brain resides inside your body and is dependent on your body to meet its needs. So if your body’s needs aren’t being met, your brain’s needs aren’t being met either so your mental health further disintegrates.

#2. If you are severely depressed and/or comorbid (that is, you have multiple physical and/or mental health problems), you will likely have to fight this battle on every front. For some people, things like monitoring what they eat and drink and exercising and keeping a solid sleep schedule is enough to bring them to healthy state of mind. If you’re one of them, I’m happy for you. But for a lot of us, that isn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for me.

And I do fight this every day, on every front: physically, mentally, cognitively, spiritually, behaviourally. I fight with antidepressants. I fight with habits. I fight with strict thought policing. I fight with social support. I fight with prayer. I fight with food and drink and exercise and bubble baths and hot water bottles and bras and shoes and sleep schedules. I fight with knowledge from my education and from health care professionals, with the wisdom and experience of my family and friends. I fight by taking pleasure in the little things, the minute details. I take every tool at my disposal to fight this because I will not risk it getting that bad again. If I slack off in any of these areas, I start sinking down into the mire again. And I will not have that.

#3. These are my coping mechanisms. These are the things I find helpful. Hopefully you find them helpful too, but if they don’t work, they don’t work. There are many different kinds of depression and so there are also many different kinds of treatments and you have to figure out what will work for you. What works for me might not work for you and vice versa. Just keep an open mind and never give up.

The Explanation:

Also, I’m sure you are wondering when I’ll get to the actual break-up related stuff because so far I’ve been talking about depression and anxiety. I will put together a post on more break-up specific strategies, but that will probably come near the end of this series, since that’s the most difficult part for me to write, not to mention the most difficult part to put into practice.

See, I do have a structure to this thing and I’m trying to group like things together and I have no idea how many thousands of words I have to go through and categorize and I’m trying to give this thing a natural progression, starting small and simple then working up to bigger and more difficult things. So coming up next should be a post on some medical stuff and the rest should be cognitive/social/behavioural strategies.

Also, a lot of what I’m writing is written from my own memory. Generally, I have a pretty decent memory, but once I have time, I would like to come back to what I’ve written here and add in more info and studies and references for you. If I ever get around to researching all that, I’ll probably add it in as an edit at the bottom of the original post so you’ll know what changes I’ve made. I’d like to add in some diagrams too, but at the moment I am really horrible at visually presenting my ideas, so I will have to add that in later.

That brings me to why I’m so focused on depression and anxiety here.

The reason my depression survival strategies are lumped in this break-up stuff is because though I’d been depressed before, the break-up made it exponentially worse than anything I’d ever experienced before. After this break-up, I came to the realization that I had to do more about my depression than what I’d been doing. I had to up my game because if I didn’t, I was going to die. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that: I lost thirty pounds over the course of about a month because the depression and anxiety made me so nauseous I could not eat and I watched as my physical strength deteriorated. And my family watched too, terrified.

For me, this really is about purely surviving.

So here I am, fighting the battle on every front, against an enemy I can’t see or touch.

Here’s the thing: I can’t tell you how to get over your ex because I don’t know how. It’s been over a year since my ex broke up with me and I am still not over it and not over him. There are still times where I am overwhelmed by the depth of my love for him and how profound the loss of him is. But this isn’t a guide to getting over someone; this is a guide to surviving loss, surviving clinical depression. That’s it. Survival. Because survival is the first step, because you’re not getting over anyone if you don’t survive. And surviving, that’s something I do know how to do.

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): “You’re Not Seriously Talking About Posture?!”

Today I’m jumping off of last week’s post, “Move”. Yes, I’m talking about posture. Believe it or not, I’m not going to focus on the psychological aspects of it, though changing your posture can be a form of “faking it ’til you make it” and your outward behaviour can alter your internal mood states. I’m focusing more on the pure physical aspects of posture in the interests of physical pain reduction, because feeling achy all over is depressing and there are times when the only thing I have in my life to enjoy is the absence of pain.

Most of us have lousy posture, myself included. But improving your posture can make you feel less tense and sore. Again, you don’t need to do this all day every day. Just start by maintaining good posture for a few minutes and over time you will be able to hold that posture for longer. One day, it will become habit.

Basically, sit up straight with your shoulders pulled back. And if you tend to slouch, it will feel like they really are being PULLED back. Your ear, shoulders, and hip should all be in line with each other. After looking in the mirror, I’ve noticed that I (and many others) tend to jut my head forward a little bit instead of keeping it in line with the rest of my body. I think we tend to do this because we’re told it reduces double chin, but it’s poor posture.

Also, ladies: those contorted postures that models use (you know, where they stick the booty waaay out to make the butt look bigger and the waist smaller) are horrible posture and, speaking from personal experience here, can make you sore. It’s true that the spine isn’t completely straight and that it does have a little bit of curve to it, but that curve should not be exaggerated into an S-shape like what you see in comic books. Your spine has to support weight like, for example, your head, and in order to perform optimally, the spinal column must be in line.

Hm… I’m trying to figure out how to explain this… I think of gravity as a vertical force: it presses down. I think of us as horizontal objects, divided into uncountable horizontal planes (‘plane’ as in “flat surface”). Top of my head, a horizontal object. The more “horizontal” surface area you have, the more gravity presses down on you. Kind of like how chopping food up before you cook it makes it heat faster by increasing the surface area. So to reduce the pressure gravity puts on you, you reduce the amount of “horizontal surface area” you have by making sure all the horizontal planes of your body line up. That is, you want your vertebra neatly stacked on top of each other because it reduces the amount of surface area gravity can act on. This is why doing the human flag is so much harder than doing a pull-up: surface area.

Think of your spine like Jenga. Move one piece out of place and the rest of the structure becomes unstable.

Here’s a little thought exercise my old music teacher had us do (since sitting up improves lung capacity and helps you support your breath): Imagine that you are a kind of puppet and that a string is attached to the top of your head. Now pull the imaginary string upwards. This got most of us kids sitting better than just being told to sit up straight.

Another thought exercise: Imagine that your shoulders are angel’s wings. Try to fold your wings against your back. This helps you pull your shoulders back.

Also, vary your postures while doing sedentary activities. I spend a lot of time reading on my bed, so sometimes I’m sitting cross-legged, sometimes I have my back against the wall and my legs stretched out in front of me, sometimes I lay on my tummy or my side. Switching postures keeps me from getting stiff. Again, this is related to that integrating movement thing I talked about last time.

And ladies, take a look at your bras and your shoes. These two items have more impact on the way I carry myself than any others. If you wear heels, make sure you are stretching your legs. If you are wearing a shoe with a heel, that means your heel is forced to be elevated off the ground, which can shorten the muscles and tendons along the back of your legs over time. I stretch this out by either standing with my feet flat on the floor and by touching my toes (you can just reach for your toes if you’re less flexible) or by sitting on my butt and fully extending my leg while pulling my toes towards me. Stretch gently. According to this article (http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-03-25/features/8601180366_1_calf-muscles-high-heels-leg), you should “stop as soon as you feel pain or strain, hold still for several seconds and then stretch again only if the pain stops and you can feel the muscle fibers starting to loosen.”

Your body also needs breaks from wearing high heels. I wear high heels to work several times a week, but my shifts are short and I’m either barefoot or wearing my orthotics in some runners the rest of the week. Make sure you are spending some time wearing flat shoes.

On the subject of flat shoes, my podiatrist really disapproves of flats. Why is that? It’s not just because there isn’t any arch support. It’s also because there is no cushioning on your feet, which is okay if you’re walking around on something with some give like soil or sand, but if you’re on concrete, your feet are not made to handle that kind of hard pressure all day. Second, flats also allow the tendons in your forefoot to spread out. Once a tendon is stretched out, it can’t be stretched back, so this damage is irreversible. So, when I say wear flat shoes, I’m not referring to flimsy ballet flats or flip-flops, but something with cushioning and support that can be laced snug around your foot to keep the tendons from getting stretched out.

And if your bras are not fitting properly, that puts a lot of tension on your back, neck, and shoulders. Even if you have big boobs, you should not be getting back, neck, and shoulder pain from having big boobs. That pain results from an improperly fitted bra, not from having large breasts. I’m saying this as a busty woman myself (and I will be saying a whole lot more on bra-fitting in the future, so if your bra is uncomfortable, stay tuned).

Another thing I’ve been doing is carrying heavy loads like textbooks in a backpack. Around the start of the school year, I was getting some back pain and I couldn’t figure out why since my exercise habits hadn’t changed. Then I remembered that during the summer I was not carrying textbooks around in a cross-body bag. And even though I did alternate the bag from shoulder to shoulder, that still wasn’t good enough.

So I decided to do what my chiropractor has been telling me for years and actually contemplated using a backpack. Thankfully, my mom had a cute one lying around and she’s letting me use it. In order for this to do anything for you, you have to wear it across both shoulders. One shoulder only isn’t going to cut it. The straps are adjusted so it sits lower on my back and I find that physically, I do feel better.

Another thing I’ve started doing is after I go to bed, I put my pillow aside for a few minutes and lay flat on my back to stretch my shoulders out. It feels especially good after I’ve spent the day hunched over my computer. Doing this has a similar effect on my shoulders as sitting up straight but without any effort from me since gravity is doing my work for me here.

I also do things like wearing my orthotics around the house every day, brushing and flossing every day, wearing my retainer from time to time, regularly showering and washing my face, wearing clean clothes that fit me well (most particularly a well-fitting bra), washing my bedclothes regularly. These are all small things but they make me feel like I’m taking care of myself, which I need.

These mundane tasks have become accomplishments for me. At the end of the day, I can tell myself that I may not have gotten all that I wanted to done, but I did do things to invest in my health and well-being and that is enough. Because when you’re depressed, doing these small things are a colossal effort. It is enough to just survive.

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): Move!

So, today I’m continuing where I left off from the last BUSG post: basic self-care for your physical body. Seeing as your brain is responsible for your mental health and your brain is housed in your physical body, it is probably in the best interest of your mental health to make sure your body is getting what it needs.

(Just to clarify, since I know I’ve mentioned recently that I’ve moved to another city, when I’m talking about moving today, for the most part I’m talking about getting your body moving, not packing up and moving to another place of residence.)

I’m starting to consider that maybe I should’ve titled this “Depression and Anxiety Survival Guide (Break-Up Edition)” instead of the other way around, since so much of this is strategies for handling anxiety and depression, but it feels wrong to change it now. Oh well.

Your body is made to move. Exercising regularly decreases your risks for a myriad of diseases and delays a lot of age-related health problems, so it’s an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. If I’m remembering correctly, we start seeing these preventative effects when a person exercises for three hours or more per week, which is why I am aiming to get three hours of exercise a week. I’m halfway there right now, but seeing as my life is very unsettled at present, I figure it’s better for me to get more things in order before I get the other hour and a half or else I’ll overwhelm myself and give up for several months.

Also, endorphins. One of my counsellors told me that forty minutes of brisk walking three times a week can be equivalent to an antidepressant. (For the record, if you’re on antidepressants, I’m not telling you to go off them and just go for a walk instead. Do both, and keep in touch with your doctor.)

Movement also gives you something to do. It’s not like I stop thinking when I move or that my thoughts are now only focused on the act of moving, but thinking about depressing things while moving around and reorganizing my room isn’t nearly as depressing as thinking depressing thoughts while just laying there staring at the ceiling. Moving doesn’t stop the depressing thoughts but I do find it can sometimes dial down the intensity because there’s a little bit of distraction there.

And I totally get it if you feel tired and sore and don’t want to get up. I understand and respect the need for rest. But spending too much time laying around can make things worse. You ever heard of disuse atrophy? It’s what happens when you don’t use your muscles enough– your muscles start wasting away, becoming smaller and weaker.

I also find that if I don’t move enough, my body gets sore from that, too, and frankly I find it a less pleasant type of sore than the kind I get from exercising. “Good workout” sore makes me a bit sore and stiff, but stretching feels great and I know I’m getting stronger and I’m admiring myself more in the mirror even though I probably don’t look any different. But “selectively bedridden” sore is different. I feel weak and tired and purposeless. There this sinking, sluggish feeling about it and it’s awful.

But going from barely able to get out of bed to exercising three hours every week is a bit extreme and overwhelming so that’s not what I’m telling you to do right now. That’s why this portion is entitled “Move” not “Exercise”. Take breaks from reading or watching movies or interneting to get up and walk around your room for a few minutes. Shrug your shoulders. Reach for the ceiling. Try to touch your toes. Stretch a little, just enough to feel it (don’t tear anything!). Basically, just use your muscles to do everyday tasks. Integrate movement into your regular activities.

Me, I’m lucky that I don’t have to go out of my way to do that. To give you an idea of what implementing everyday movement looks like, I’ll use myself as an example.

In my job, it is an office job (part-time, since I’m in school), but I still stand whenever people come to speak to me, I sit when I’m inputting at the computer, I walk around to follow up with people and to grab things out of the back room, I crouch to pick things up of the floor or to talk to children, so I get everyday movements implemented into my work. It’s not physically demanding but it’s movement.

Same goes for simple things like keeping my room clean, reorganizing things, picking things up, putting things down, doing my laundry, emptying and reloading the dishwasher, cleaning the cat box, vacuuming, sweeping the floor. Not demanding, but movement nonetheless.

Of course, this satisfies not just the need for movement, but it also increases my standard of living and it makes me feel like I’ve done something useful that day. It also means less work for my mom to do, which in turn means less strain on our relationship. We both start to feel like I’m pulling my weight, so… win-win.

I also try to implement movement into meeting with friends. Usually we grab lunch or a hot chocolate then walk around for a bit. That way I’m both socially and physically active.

Before I moved, I lived in an apartment and would take the stairs instead of the elevator. Now, I have to park down the street from where I live since there’s no more room in the driveway, so I get some movement walking to and from my car.

Movement can also be used in tasks like grocery shopping, walking from the parking lot into the store, etc.

And I actually do get exercise too, since working at a dojang means I get free martial arts classes as an employee. Again, I’m not telling you to dive headfirst into exercise. You’ve got to slowly and gradually work your way into it, allow your body to adapt to these new habits, so that you’re less likely to be overwhelmed and exhausted and more likely to be consistent and succeed.

And now that I’ve moved, I live in a nicer, safer neighbourhood. I feel comfortable walking around on my own where I live now, so I can go for a walk when I want to. This unfortunately isn’t a privilege everyone has. If you can’t go for walks like I can because you feel unsafe or live in a dangerous area, don’t feel bad about yourself, just stay safe and do what you can.

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): Eat, Drink and… Try to Be Merry, I Guess

There are days when I probably would’ve been fine mentally, but feeling discomfort or pain physically triggered off or intensified my depression and anxiety. And sometimes being depressed or anxious can make you very tired and sore and create a great deal of physical pain, so it can be a nasty cycle.

So let’s talk a bit about caring for your physical body.

In the words of Remus Lupin, “Eat. You’ll feel better”.

 

I found myself really having trouble eating while depressed. Sometimes I was too nauseous to eat, other times I just didn’t feel like eating and nothing tasted good, other times I didn’t even feel hungry even though I should’ve, and other times I felt hungry but was too exhausted to eat.

A lot of people have the reverse of this problem and overeat when they’re depressed, but since I don’t really have any personal experience with that particular problem, or much book knowledge on it, for that matter, I won’t talk about it right now.

One thing I learned is that sometimes, I can’t trust my body’s feelings, not even the feeling of hunger (or lack thereof). So eat regularly, even if you’re not feeling hungry. I realized that my hunger started to manifest itself differently when I was depressed. Instead of hunger pangs in my stomach, I just felt weepy and tense and tired and sore all of the time plus my thoughts were more drawn to negative things like my ex with his new girlfriend. Just because you don’t feel hungry doesn’t mean hunger isn’t taking a toll on your body. Make sure you’re giving your body what it needs.

Learning to eat again is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do (which probably warrants its own post). Eating made me sick. Not eating made me sick. But once I got past that threshold and got regularly eating again, I felt so much better. I had more energy. I slept better. My dreams weren’t always pleasant, but they didn’t upset me as much as they used to. I feel more optimistic about my future. I have better control over my thoughts. I’m not in physical pain all the time.

If you are not eating enough, you will feel worse. Remember, feeling like crap is your body’s way of telling you to feed it. I think the fact that the word “hangry” exists shows that this is a pretty well-documented phenomenon even among people who aren’t mentally disordered and aren’t under a lot of stress. Imagine how much worse this gets when you are mentally disordered and stressed out.

So please eat. If you’re having trouble eating, just focus on eating period. Don’t worry about getting healthy food because that can be too intimidating. Just eat. Once you’ve got yourself eating regularly again, then you can focus more on healthy foods and getting nutrition into your system.

Also, pick up some multivitamins. Even people who do eat regular meals don’t get the vitamins and minerals they need from their meals because of how processed our foods usually are, and when you are not able to eat as much as these people do, you are getting even fewer nutrients than they are. And there are certain vitamins your body needs but does not produce on its own, so you need to get that from what you’re eating and drinking. I take gummy vitamins because I find the capsules too hard on my stomach at present.

My mom helped me pick up the vitamins. She also picked up these meal-replacement drinks that are used to help people put on weight. She spoke to the pharmacist at the store, told him I was depressed, on medication, having trouble eating, and needing to gain weight, and he suggested those drinks.

The drinks don’t fill the tummy the way that an actual meal does, so I’m not using these to actually “replace” meals, but rather to add in “extra” meals, since I need to gain weight.

I also realized that another thing that makes me feel like crap is being dehydrated. It seems being dehydrated doesn’t necessarily make me feel thirsty, but it can make me nauseous and really, really tired and weepy, also can give me headaches. Point being, pay attention to the less obvious symptoms of hunger and dehydration. A growling stomach and a dry throat aren’t the only signs.

Make especially sure to drink lots of water in hot weather, or in cold weather when you have the heat cranked up, when you’ve been exercising, and if you’re on medication, since dehydration can be a side effect of some medications.

Also, water is better for you than any other drink, so that should be what you’re drinking the most. Drinking eight cups of Coke or iced tea is not going to produce the benefits that drinking eight cups of water will. The cells in your body run off of water, not root beer.

I cut soft drinks out of my diet ages ago due to the caffeine and the amount of sugar in them. I rarely ever drink them. I’ll drink them occasionally, like, once in the span of several months, but whenever I drink them, I usually regret it because I feel like crap afterwards.

If you have anxiety problems, seriously consider cutting caffeine entirely out of your diet. I know I felt so much better doing that. No more heart pounding for no apparent reason, less jumpiness and fidgeting, less sluggishness, no sugar crash…

Seriously, lots of water. It’s refreshing.

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): Go Ahead, Feel Your Feelings

Go grab yourself a snack, because this is going to be reaaaally long.

After the break up, my feelings were so all over the place. It’s the most unreasonable and disoriented I’ve ever been in my life. I had no idea what to expect when I went in to work with my ex. It’s not just that I didn’t know what to expect of him (whether he would be moody or friendly was a total mystery, which meant I was on eggshells a lot of the time) but I also didn’t know what to expect of my own feelings.

Sometimes I would want to scream at him, other times I’d instinctively want to give him a shoulder massage because he looked a little tired.

Sometimes I wanted to hold him and kiss him, other times I’d have to repress the urge to hammerfist him in the neck anytime he was in arm’s reach.

The fact that this turned up on Pinterest showed me that no, it’s not just me.

 

There were times where I was so in love with him, and other times I hated him just for existing and everything little thing he did just pissed me off. Like the way he stretches, or the way he flips his stupid phone and all his stupid little fidgets. (But he’s still cute when he hums and when he talks to himself while he’s trying to teach himself something…)

And sometimes I wanted so badly to be with him again and for us to be happy and in love again, and other times I want him to fall for me again only so I can reject him because going out with him again offends my sense of justice.

There was a part of me that looked forward to working with him and liked having him around, even though we’re broken up, and there was another part of me that dreaded seeing him and never wanted to see him again.

Sometimes I would think wistfully of all the good things we shared, other times I would think of when he’d been inconsiderate and how deeply he hurt me, all because he was being selfish, and I’d wonder how I ever fell for someone like that and maybe I really would be better off with someone else, but then the thought of being with someone who’s not him seems abhorrent, and sometimes I think maybe things could work with him if things changed and other times I wonder if maybe him and I are star-crossed somehow and doomed to fail…

I’ve never felt so conflicted over one person in my life. And that’s saying a lot.

So, everyone I’ve talked to says these feelings are pretty normal. The feelings I’m having are probably amplified by my anxiety and depression but the core of the feelings are apparently what most people experience after a breakup.

And no, feeling like this does not make you a bad person. I really want to drive that point home because when you have a psychological disorder, like depression or anxiety, like I do, sometimes you do everything you can and still have all these negative feelings crowding in on you and you don’t know why these awful thoughts and feelings are still hanging about and why you can’t seem to make them stop and wondering what’s wrong with you and why you’re so horrible when you’re trying so hard to be good.

So let’s talk about feelings and how they relate to you, your identity and your experience.

Firstly, they’re just feelings. You are more than just your feelings. Your feelings are only one part of who you are. They’re still important, because they’re your present experience, but you have other, more stable aspects of your identity too: your morals, your values, your reasoning, your choices, your thoughts (and yes, sometimes thoughts can be separate from feelings). Are those things related to feelings? Yes, but they also have some degree of independence, enough independence that people can retain a sense of identity even though their feelings fluctuate daily. You recognize your friend when she’s laughing at a bad pun and also when she’s upset over some family conflict. You wouldn’t think she was two separate people because she’s displaying two different emotions, right? So there must be more to a person’s identity than just feelings.

Secondly, the only person really affected by your feelings is you. Of course, because your feelings affect you we want you to be feeling better, but my point is, you can still be good to other people while feeling this way since it’s your behaviour, not your feelings, that impacts other people. Though I’m not going to ignore the fact that feelings are motivations and as such they do influence behaviour, it’s also important to remember that feelings can be contained to the mind and that you can feel like crap and still do wonderful things.

Third, feelings change. Example: You know when you get hangry? You’re really moody and irritable and weepy and then you eat something and then you feel fine? That shows how easily our feelings are affected. They’re affected by what we eat and don’t eat, how long we sleep for, what stage of sleep we wake up from, the temperature, whether we stubbed our toes or clipped our shoulder on the doorframe walking by, whether we’re coming down with a virus. Our feelings are very linked to our environments. Why? Survival.

Feelings serve to motivate us to survive. Feeling weepy or grumpy or sore when you’re hungry motivates you to go eat, to get your body what it needs to survive. If you didn’t feel that way, you wouldn’t recognize your body’s needs and consequently would not meet those needs, resulting in your death. This is demonstrated by the few people who are born without the ability to feel pain, who typically die young because without the feeling of pain, they don’t learn self-preservation.

So, when your feelings are all over the place, it’s not that you’re going crazy. It’s just that your needs aren’t being met and you’re in that uncomfortable spot where you don’t know how to meet your needs and perhaps you don’t even know what your needs are. Once you get what you need, the bad feelings will go away.

I’ve heard people condemn feelings and treat feelings like they’re something to beat into submission and that if you “just had some self-control” and “weren’t so weak-willed”, you would be happy all the time. But that’s not the nature of feelings. Yes, we can influence our feelings with certain thought patterns and by managing our behaviour (this is essentially what cognitive-behavioural therapy comes down to), but it’s important to acknowledge that there is a biological basis to this and once that is accepted, we can work with our body’s limits instead of against them. And also to acknowledge that feelings, behaviour, environment, and biology all act on each other in a complex cycle so we can’t even say which causes which. In fact, I could argue that certain feelings and genetic predispositions can enable one to have self-control or will!

Feelings: best and worst part of the human experience.

And it’s okay for you to feel like a human. You are one, after all.

However, though I acknowledge your right to feel your own feelings, that doesn’t mean I’m telling you to act on those feelings. As already mentioned at the beginning of this post, this was the most unreasonable I’ve ever been in my life. If I’d acted on my feelings, I could’ve destroyed all the things I’d worked to build in one foolish impulse. Also, it’s important that your actions remain moral and that you don’t do harm to others. Even if he is being really moody and childish, it is still not moral for me to hammerfist my ex in the neck, for example. Or to punch his girlfriend’s face because she’s being inconsiderate and kind of a suck-up. Feel your feelings, but behave in a way that you can be proud of, a way that you can build a good future off of.

Also, I am not telling you dwell on your feelings. As already discussed in the “process” post, there is a time for everything and that means there is a time to let your feelings go. Sometimes, you need to indulge in feeling miserable. That’s okay. Go home. Curl up in a ball. Cry. Scream into a pillow. Punch your pillow. Tell your best friend what a jerk your ex is being. Complain. Listen to some depressing music. Cry some more. But only temporarily. It’s not in your best interest to remain in that state for too long and at some point you will need to come out of that. The difference between feeling your feelings and dwelling on your feelings is the amount of time spent on your feelings. “Too long” is when feeling turns into dwelling. Again, what “too long” is varies from situation to situation so you’ll have to figure out how long that is for you.

It’s okay to be angry at your ex. There are probably things they did royally screw up and you don’t need to deny that. Be honest about the bad things they’ve done. But, again, you will have to let it go at some point. With my ex and his new girlfriend, loving them was killing me, but hating them didn’t make me feel any better, either. Hate felt like a poison. What is needed was for me to come to a point between those two extremes.

At first, I couldn’t bear to hear others say bad things about him, even though they were true, because I loved him so much. Too much, perhaps. I didn’t make excuses for him, but when my mom would call him an asshole, I’d ask her not to because it made me sad.

So for me, complaining about all the jerk things he’s done is a sign of how far I’ve come. It balances out all the rose-tinted, lovey-dovey thoughts that I have to distance myself from. One day, I won’t have to be angry at him to distance myself from my love for him but right now, I need that anger to keep myself together. Remember, anger is a survival instinct and it’s okay to use it as such.

It’s okay to feel sad. It doesn’t make you weak. It means you love.

I’m a feminist and sometimes there’s this attitude going around that accuses you of “You’re not a real feminist” and “You’re a poor role model” because you didn’t just turn your feelings off and are hurting over a man. I am grieving someone I love. Don’t you dare turn this into my life revolving around a man and don’t you dare suggest I am weak when I am fucking strong.

 

It’s okay to be happy. Feeling happy again doesn’t mean you’re absolving them of any wrongdoing. They are still responsible for their actions towards you regardless. And being happy without them doesn’t mean you didn’t love them. It just means that you’re moving on in your life and taking care of yourself.

And it’s okay to not know what the fuck you’re feeling.

I think of my emotions as a pendulum. Right now, they’re swinging back and forth, from one extreme to the other. But as time goes by, the laws of physics act on that pendulum and the swings become slower and less extreme, until it stops right at the middle. The middle is my neutral. That is where I want my feelings for my ex to be. Not in love with him, but not hating him either. Neutral. Fact-oriented. Painless.

I’m still in the swinging stage, but sometimes I do stay in the middle for a short while. Honestly, no matter where I am emotionally at present, I’m not sure what to do with any of it. It all feels very foreign. I’ve really had to turn off the “analysis” part of my mind and just let my feelings be without agonizing over the how and why. This is I mean when I say “feel your feelings”. Feel them, don’t think about them. Centuries of philosophers and scientists still haven’t figured out how exactly feelings work, yet here we are, seven billion strong. You don’t need to figure it out right now.

I hope that all made sense to you. Since I’m in psychology and philosophy, I see feelings as the final frontier and even now science still finds human emotion mysterious. I feel like I’ve skimmed over a lot of ideas here but I can’t come up with a better way to say it all than I did here and I don’t want to do anymore editing of this post.

In summary, feel your feelings, but don’t think on them and don’t act on them. Feelings are survival instincts, abilities, and tools. They are a part of normal human experience. Feeling angry, sad, happy, or confused is okay. You are more than your feelings and you are still a good person.

And I’m so proud of you. Keep going. You got this.

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): Let Yourself Go Through the Process

I’m writing this bit first because I think it kind of serves as a model to fit the rest of my suggestions into. See, a process has multiple stages that require different behaviours and such from each stage, so it’s very much about context and so all the rest of what I will say fits with different stages of the process, so I think this is an excellent place to start.

Dealing with a break-up (or any loss) really is a process. For me, it’s been a very long process.

This has been my life:

I dreaded my shifts at work so much that I was nauseous pretty much all the time. Because of this, I ate less and lost a lot of weight and even had to have someone cover my shifts, losing precious wages as a result. I was tired all the time. I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I had to because I had a job and I needed to survive somehow. I kept busy all day, trying to distract myself. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I also dreaded falling asleep because I kept dreaming about the two of them together, which is somehow worse than any dream I’ve had about my abusive father or about that guy who stalked me in high school or the nightmares that would leave my heart pounding when I awoke. And then, of course, having dreamed about them, they were the first thing in my head when I woke up. And I just wanted them out of my head, but I couldn’t get them out.

I really didn’t know what to do with myself because nothing made me happy. Watching movies and reading books were depressing because I’d see these interactions between the characters that reminded me of him and I together. I was too miserable to try writing music or journaling or blogging because writing out the way I was feeling meant thinking about what I was feeling which I did not want to do. I avoided friends and family because talking to them about how I was meant rehashing all this break-up stuff and I didn’t want to think about it.

The only thing that truly distracted me was Pinterest. Bizarrely enough, looking at photos of wedding dresses did not make me depressed. It was actually a pleasantly neutral stimulus that only had the thought process of “Wow, that’s really pretty”. But as soon as I had to pull myself away from the distraction, I fell right back into the abyss.

Things got tense around the apartment because my mom was the only person I was really talking to and so I leaned way more heavily on her while she still had a physically demanding full-time job to work, plus commute, plus grocery shopping and bill-paying, plus I was so tired and unmotivated that I didn’t keep up with any of my chores which meant she was either having to do the chores herself or expend the energy of nagging me to get my butt into gear.

Now, this isn’t what I would call “healthy” behaviour on my part and I hope you never feel this awful. Having depression and anxiety probably amplified “normal” break-up feelings and thoughts into these mutant, unmanageable, life-sucking emotions that I had. But my point is this stage will end. IT WILL END. Trust in that. It will end. You will come through this and learn to live again.

It will take some trial and error to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, when it works and when it doesn’t. That’s part of the process (and I’m guessing that’s why I hear people say the first break-up is usually the worst: because you haven’t worked out how to cope yet).

Sometimes, you will regress. There will be times when you’ll think you’re getting the hang of it and think you’re getting better, then a particularly bad day will hit you and you’ll wonder if you’ve made any progress at all. And the answer is, yes, you’ve made progress. Sometimes you’ll have bad days that seem to come out of nowhere. That doesn’t mean you haven’t been trying or that you haven’t made improvements. It’s simply a fact of life.

I’ve, ahem, created a visual to show you what the process isn’t.

(Please excuse the lack of artistry; I have too many other things to do than to care about whether I’ve mastered Paint on my computer)

 

I think a lot of us expect our process to look like this. We think all we need to do is cross this line, cross a certain barrier and then we’re “fixed”, like magic, and we never go back. We’re cured! Hooray!

Except, in all likelihood, it won’t happen like that.

I think the process actually looks more like this visual from page 98 of When Love Hurts (Second Edition) by Jill Cory and Karen McAndless-Davis. The book is geared specifically towards women who have experienced abuse in a romantic relationship and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has experienced abuse, but I found this visual so helpful that I think it would apply to all kinds of losses, even ones where abuse isn’t involved.

Diagram 11.1 The Healing Process, from page 98 of When Love Hurts (Second Edition) by Jill Cory and Karen McAndless-Davis

 

You see above that there is a figure eight. The top half of that figure eight is rebuilding. The bottom half is grieving. And notice that the arrows circle around and between both the top and bottom, through both grieving and rebuilding. The arrows don’t go one way. This isn’t a thing where you start out grieving and then BAM! You’re healed and you never go back. It’s a cycle. It’s a process.

How long this process lasts will vary between situations and people. Sometimes the process can be concluded in a matter of minutes. Other times it can take months, years, decades…. Sometimes it’s the rest of your life. Before you’re too disheartened at the thought of this process being lifelong, remember that rebuilding is also part of the process. There will be times where you do feel good. And the more time that goes by, the more opportunities you have to heal, you will be spending more time in that rebuilding stage and less time trudging through that grieving stage.

And there will be some periods that are worse than others. Milestones are what comes to mind. Things like his birthday, him getting a promotion at work, what would’ve been our anniversary, starting school again (this time without him to wander around campus with), etc are awful because I don’t get to share it with him anymore.

And little everyday things will sometimes get you down too. Things like my mom buying a DVD that I’d wanted to watch with him. Or listening to a CD and wishing I could listen to it with him because it’s just the sort of thing he’d like to listen to.

But it will pass. You’re not irreparably screwed up. One day, it’ll get to the point where the sad thoughts drop out of your mind as quickly as they popped into it. You’ve just got to stay alive and keep going and you’ll get there. I’m finally starting to get to that point (and I drift away from it… then come back to it…).

There might be people acting like you should be “over it” by now. But they really don’t have any right to tell you when you should get over something. Those people are likely well-intentioned and can’t bear to see you in pain, or perhaps you’re taking longer than they did to deal with it and they don’t understand why, but I find the process is something you need to go through yourself, in your own time. As already said, the length of the process will be different for each person and rushing it is not going to help you. Just trust that you will get through it. Others have done it, I’m doing it right now, and you can too.

The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition): Intro and Disclaimer

I present to you “The Break-Up Survival Guide (Depression and Anxiety Edition)”! I’m breaking it up into several posts because this is really long and it might take a while before I finish this series of posts since I’m on the brink of returning to school, so time and energy will be limited. Anyway…

I’ve hated this whole break-up experience, but I have to admit, I’ve learned a lot about myself. One thing I’ve learned is that I can be particularly bad at taking my own advice. I’ve doled out a lot of advice (excellent advice, actually) to family members who’ve had bad break-ups and now that I myself have had a bad break-up, I think I’m lucky I didn’t get smacked by anyone I gave advice to cuz, gee, it is really hard to take.

So I’m gonna give you a few disclaimers before I start.

Firstly, these are context-dependent. Here’s an example of what I mean by that:

I stand in court, accused of speeding because I was driving 50km/h. Was I speeding or not?

Your answer should be “I don’t know”. Why? Because you don’t know enough about the context. You don’t know whether I was speeding just by how fast I was going. You also need to know the speed limit of where I was driving. If I was on the highway, I definitely wasn’t speeding. If I was driving in the suburbs, I was going only the speed limit. If I was in a school zone, I was going almost double the speed limit. And if I was in a school zone, you also need to know the time of day I was driving at because the school zone limit often does not apply on weekends, instead going up to 50km/h instead of 30km/h.

My point is that I don’t know everything that you’re dealing with. I am not the expert on your life. You are. So you are the one who must decide whether or not these things are likely to work for you.

I do ask that you keep an open mind and consider all that I’m saying. Sometimes it can be hard to figure out a person’s tone in their writing (as opposed to hearing them speak), but I am not being bossy or telling you what to do when I’m writing this guide. I’m just writing down the things that have helped me and am hoping that you will glean something useful from it. Whether or not you apply any of this is your decision.

Also, keep in mind that these aren’t guarantees. There is as of yet no set equation for healing your mind. Some days you do everything “right” and still feel miserable. Other days you feel awesome without even trying. And still other days you fall somewhere in between; you feel unhappy but with the right strategies you can pull yourself out of that. And I hope that you find some of those strategies here.