Well, yesterday, and so far, today, have been a bit better than the last, well bunch of days. I had felt like I was stuck in this depressive rut for almost 2 weeks, but maybe (??) I'm coming out of it? I'm not gonna get my hopes up too much, cuz sometimes that causes a bigger crash downward, but I am going to hope a little. Yesterday I had several things go right: I succeeded in making butternut squash soup in the crockpot (booyah! cuz I haven't made dinner successfully in quite some time...), I biked to my friend's house and picked up food for us on my way over (hah, I spent quite a bit of time transferring the to go orders into some leak proof containers I had brought so that I could put them in my backpack. I think I lot of people at the restaurant were like "that biker weirdo", haha!), I enjoyed a really good lunch with my friend and got to have really good friend talking time and she let me let out a lot of the bad feelings from the past 2 weeks (such a good friend you guys, she just got out of the hospital end of last week after spending a week in it!), and then I biked home. The rest of the day I got a lot of "chill" time, both before and after the kids came home from school, but I think the combination of feeling really successful at several things plus getting some good exercise in plus friend time, was perfect.
This morning I was going to do a cycle/core fusion class at the Y, but didn't make it since Nasser and I still had to fill out our ballots this morning. I could have made it there late, but then we also got some snow (!!) last night so I would have been extra late with clearing off the car. Oh well.
I ended up doing a 20 minute "yoga for anxiety" video, which certainly didn't burn very many calories, but it was rejuvenating regardless. And I intend to do more of a workout later in the day if I can since I've got therapy at 11 this morning.
I want to share a couple quotes that have meant a lot to me recently...
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again,
this time more intelligently."
-Henry Ford
"The moment that you feel, just possibly,
you are walking down the street naked,
exposing too much of your heart and your mind,
and what exists on the inside,
showing too much of yourself... That is the moment,
you might be starting to get it right."
-Neil Gaiman
"The moment that you feel, just possibly,
you are walking down the street naked,
exposing too much of your heart and your mind,
and what exists on the inside,
showing too much of yourself... That is the moment,
you might be starting to get it right."
-Neil Gaiman
Both these quotes showed up at the end of my mindfulness practice with that app, Calm, on different days of the "7 Days of Calm." I am liking that app, although I haven't yet started the "21 Days of Calm," after having finished the 7 Days. I think that might help me get into the habit more of mindfulness every.single.day. Cuz I probably need that.
You know, today, it turns out, is my "blogiversary." I've now had this blog for 2 full years, and published 192 blog posts. Yikes. That seems like a lot of posts to me, but whatever. I think this blog has been huge for me in a lot of ways. It's given me a place to write, and pour out feelings, and reflect about things, and learn how to become more open about my mental illness. I didn't share the blog openly right away, it took some time. But I do kinda feel like that Neil Gaiman quote, I often feel like I am exposing too much of my heart and mind, and I do often wonder if it's the right thing or right thing for me at least to be doing. I like the validation I get from that quote. Cuz there's still this inner part of me that feels very strongly that it is the right thing to be doing. But it questions the blog, often.
So the other thing that I think helped my mood, was on Sunday night, Nasser reflecting over several recent things that I did, despite my foul mood. In my last blog post, I was feeling really crappy and yet forced myself to create some "hope statements", which isn't necessarily something I could have done pre-ECT. On Sunday, we were walking with my sister and her family to a restaurant across the street from our house. On the way, Nasser made a comment to me that I took a lot of offense to and felt really triggered by. I was talking with him really angrily and talked about going back home and skipping the meal with everyone. I was actually incredibly triggered (this is more a reflection on my depression than me, or Nasser) and felt super down, but I forced myself to go and actually enjoy the lunch and enjoy the discussion with my sister and brother-in-law and ended up helping myself more in the long run than had I ran off to go home. There were a few other things that Nasser brought up on Sunday night in this conversation and hearing all that made a big difference in my overall mood, I think.
When we're discussing medication changes and the possibility of a 2-3 ECT treatment burst, it's easy to feel lost in these feelings of, "I'm as depressed as I've ever been" and it's hard to see that despite the down times right now, I'm still doing better than before. I'm doing better than just a few months ago. And that's still huge, and that's still something to feel good about.
Ok, so, this next part I'm writing later, after therapy. My therapist got me talking today about some of the things that seem to motivate me, rather than focusing on the things that I feel should motivate me but haven't been. It helped to get a list started- we were able to come to a conclusion of at least 2 things. 1. I might need to plan in at least an hour every day of "relational" time, so like get together with a friend or spend time messaging with friends or even spending time on facebook catching up on friends or talk to a friend on the phone, etc. and 2. I might need to plan on one "project" a week- whether it's something around the house like getting together a pile of baby donation stuff or maybe working on ideas for our basement finish project. It was really helpful to start thinking about, like, what do I really need as a part of each day to feel good? Exercise each day probably needs to be the third item, but I'm having some trouble figuring out what "expectation" to set on that. I've been trying to exercise every day since meeting with my doctors on Thursday, and so far I've done it except for Sunday, and today I still need to (like I'm not really counting the yoga for anxiety from this morning since it was mostly laying on the yoga mat). I need to be careful about planning the exercise thing as an expectation because I tend to have a lot of issues when I don't "meet my expectation" and it all compounds into a horrid depressive state of feeling like a failure and yet the state makes me continue to not meet the expectation and it all gets worse and worse.
So like today. I'm a little demotivated with exercise since I didn't get it in this morning. This happens a lot when I don't accomplish it in the morning. Somehow the afternoon and evening are much less motivating times for me to exercise. I'm not really ready to exercise right now since I just ate lunch and feel too full still. But then, I don't really have much time to get the exercise in before I have to leave for an appointment at the gastroenterology place. Oi. I'm going to tell you about my appointment even if you don't want to hear about it. This afternoon I've got a hemorrhoid banding, my second of three of these. Sounds fun, right? I, unfortunately, but not, like, life threatening or anything, have hemorrhoids. We're currently treating the internal ones with this rubber band ligation procedure. Basically the doctor sticks a probe up my butt, sucks at the hemorrhoid, and puts a tiny rubber band around it. This cuts off the blood flow to the hemorrhoid and after a few days or so it falls off. But we can only do one at a time. So I have 3 separate treatment times for this, spaced out a few weeks apart. Anyway, my point was, I have one today, and I don't expect to be interested in exercising afterward... last time my butt hurt a fair bit.
Alright, I'm going to be done writing for today, since I don't feel like I have much else to say, and I could use some free time before this appointment. I do want to say, thank you to my readers, those of you who've stuck with me these 2 years, and even if this is the first post you're reading. You're all awesome.
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