oh no, be strong, walk on, walk on

Wednesday, 08/29/18, 9:39am

Well. So. Hmmm.

Every so often, I have a day or even just a moment of "hey I should really blog about this". And then of course I don't make note of it and forget it or just give up for awhile on blogging. I've written a lot of blog posts over the past, whatever it is, oh, I guess it's been since November of 2015. And apparently it's a ridiculous 221 posts. Yikes. I sometimes wonder... like how much of that has any real worth to it? How much has just been repeated? I'm sure a ton, really. Other than the "oh this is what's been going on in my life" the last day, or week, or month. I don't know. It just kinda adds to my feeling of insignificance in some way. Sigh.

So RG, my older kiddo had this 5th grade overnight camp thing going on this week. They were leaving Monday morning from school, going about an hour away but up in the mountains a bit and in the wilderness with hiking, camping, bonfires, etc. Unfortunately RG developed an infection last week, got on antibiotics last Friday, seemed worse over the weekend, and was unable to leave with the class on Monday. He somehow got a ton better on Monday, so we decided I'd drive him up Tuesday morning to join everyone. It seemed perfect that he could at least get half the trip. But then he got really nervous on the drive, wanted to just turn around and go home. I kept saying things like oh, but we've gone this far, we may as well get there and see what it's like. When we arrived we got to the lodge and cabins but all the kids were out on a hike, so there were a few counselors who came and helped us out. We had an awful time getting him to stay. He got more and more resistant and after a lot of arguing, him being extremely upset, we started driving back down. Partway down, still rather close to the site, after lots of discussing, he finally said that he was concerned that other kids would think he was better now, why couldn't he come Monday? And then those kids would tell other kids, etc. I saw myself reflected in his worries, my fears of what people will think about me, how they'll judge me. I talked about myself with him, how I have a lot of fears like that, and when I end up backing out of things I'd originally wanted to go to, I regretted it. I told him about the pride he'd feel about doing it anyway and trying what he could. We turned around, he seemed a ton better, and he stayed.

The whole experience was... a really mixed bag. I did feel pride in him, pride in myself for finally becoming empathetic, I felt like we got through a lot of the tough feelings. But it all took so much out of me. It made me realize how much I need to be an example of all these things to my kids. It made me think about how, if I expect them to try in life and to be willing to try and fail, I need to do the same. And I often feel like I can't do that. I feel like I fail all the time. I feel like I will never succeed in the things I desperately want to. I hate that feeling.

I may have mentioned in recent posts that I've decided to join choir again this year. This past Saturday was the kick-off party, which I was planning to go to, but I backed out of it. There were a few logistic reasons that made it difficult to attend. My nephew's birthday party was the same day with a theoretical ending at the time the choir party was starting. But then it would have been a bit of a drive between the two. Then the bday party went longer than that anyway, and I wasn't too excited to leave that either. But. Perhaps the biggest reason was that I was terrified to go. I was terrified to see these people and "catch up" or just in general converse with all of them. I was afraid that I might sorta recognize people but not really remember then due to the treatment. I couldn't remember who even knew about the treatment. I was scared.

Then last night was the first choir rehearsal of the season. I was extremely nervous (to say the least) to go. I even had a stupid anxiety attack when I saw my calendar saying the rehearsal started at 6pm and this was already 5:50. I cried, I could barely breathe. Thankfully Nasser was there to help me through and thought to give me my kick in immediately anti-anxiety pill. Eventually I was capable enough to check the official calendars and realize that chamber choir (which I'm not in) has rehearsal 6-7 and concert choir (which I am in) starts at 7pm. Oi.

I went. I went, I went, I went. And choir was wonderful. So incredibly wonderful. It was the perfect amount of talking with a few people, of hearing the director speak about the upcoming season and a bit of Aretha Franklin tribute, of remembering the warm up, of re-learning how to site read music, of remembering that I like to tap my fingers on my leg for what the piano playing of certain measures would be. It felt really good. It was everything Nasser had said it would be, especially in his reminding me of how much singing really means to me. And I had forgotten how supportive these people are, to eachother in general, but also to me, in welcoming me back, in hugging me, in asking about my last year, and in hearing about my last year. When I got in the car after rehearsal, I took a moment to say to myself "I did it. I did it".

I did it. I do it. I try to do it. All critical things to life. All critical to building confidence. All critical to telling those stupid depressive thoughts to just shut up.

life has a funny way of helping you out

Saturday, 08/18/18, 12:56pm

In the last few hours I've been thinking about expectations. Big expectations. Low expectations. Loads of expectations.

Each of us has some amount of expectations over our heads.

I don't think about it often enough, but I suppose I expect Nasser to work, to keep a job, to support our family, to provide healthcare so that I can be treated, to work because I feel unable to work.

I expect our kids to listen to us (at least some or most of the time. to be honest I suppose I expect it all the time and that's why I freak out everytime they don't listen). I expect our kids to help out in the house in certain ways- to set the table, to clear and clean the table especially when they make a mess, to clean up their toys when it's needed or I need it, to get themselves ready for school or for us going places, to do their homework, to eat what I feed them, to brush their teeth in the mornings and evenings, to take a shower when I tell them they really need it, to be nice to eachother and to us. Hmmm, I guess that's a lot of expectations.

I expect a lot of things out of myself. I expect to get myself to work out everyday. I expect for me to choose to eat healthy everyday, to stick to a plan to lose weight. I expect for myself to be strong for the people around me, and for myself. I expect to fight the depression. I expect myself to not let it trickle in, to control me. I expect to be capable, quickly, every time it hits, to fight, and to fight hard.

I expect a lot of more "normal" things as well. I expect to take care of my family, to keep a safe home, to provide support to my children and husband (emotionally, lovingly, as well as nutritionally, logistically, socially, and whatever). I expect to either work outside the home or to take on a lot of childcare in the home (or both).

I expect to try. really hard. I expect to try the things I know should could help me. I expect to work on integrating into my life things like regular exercise, healthy eating, mindfulness, practice in calming myself, reading, forgiving myself, dropping my bad thoughts into my bucket of soapy water (see previous post).

I have expected, going into each treatment over the years, that this would be the thing that worked. I expected to "get better" with electro-convulsive therapy. And I have, in particular in comparison to what I was going into it, but I think I expected more. I'm not sure what I expected/expect with every treatment. Maybe I expect(ed) that something out there will just make me miraculously 100% better. And I know that everyone deals with bad days, etc. I'm pretty sure the stuff I'm still experiencing are still within the depression spectrum. I was told recently that I'm "in remission". I'm still trying to figure out what that means. I guess by this definition, "if the disease is in remission, the disease has been controlled so that they are not as ill as they were", it would be valid. I suppose I need to modify my expectations. Depression/Bipolar II is a lifelong illness and can't be "cured" in the true sense, but only "remitted".

And I am not as ill as I was. And I am finding that other things are working more than they ever did (cognitive behavioral therapy for one, practicing strategies on my own, actively finding ways to improve my mood when it hits rather than ruminating, even if I start off ruminating). I guess I expected just wish I was cured, rather than remitted only.

I've been wondering how to "phase out" ECT. It's been every 4 weeks for a little while now, our appointment with the ECT doc this past Thursday was good, but it was much up to me. We came up with the options to either stop here and see how it goes (as has been an option for some time now) or to taper more slowly, getting myself to every 5 weeks, 6 weeks, up to 8 weeks, and stop there. Either way I plan to set reminders for myself to "check in" with my feelings, with how I'm doing. And I'll be setting up a doctor appointment to check in a few months after stopping to be sure I don't need a boost. I decided to set up the appointment for a treatment at about 5.5 weeks and I'll cancel if I'm feeling like that's the right decision. Tapering does feel a bit safer to me though.

I've been really judging myself when it comes to ECT lately. Maybe I had the expectation that I would be done sooner. Maybe it's this prejudice that I have against myself that I'm messed up because I still need ECT (maybe I have a prejudice against myself that I did mess up enough to need ECT in the first place). I do tend to feel like people are judging me when I mention treatment and it feels like they are thinking "wow, she's still doing that??". And of course, most, if not all, of this is in my head. But knowing that doesn't really help much.


I guess I need to remind myself that I'm in remission, not cured. If and when I need heftier treatment, be it ECT or something else, later on, whenever it is, in life, it is ok. It is and always will be a journey.


PS, here's what I've been working on a bit today, after starting to feel crappy. I'm currently calling it my "comfort book", which I may have mentioned in a previous post, but I've made some progress. These are all things/images/quotes/pictures that speak to me, provide me comfort and/or motivation.

and all these sorrows I have seen, they lead me to believe that everything's a mess

Monday, 08/13/18, 11:21am, 4:17pm, 5:30pm

My brain.

It's hard not to despise my brain when my depression strikes, or even just in thinking about or talking about my depression. Hmmm, maybe I'll change that to "the depression" rather than "my" depression. Maybe that helps, or can help, take away some of that self-shaming. "My" makes it sound like my fault.

Anyway.

I get these depressive thoughts that run me in circles thinking that "I suck", "I'm a failure at [insert anything and everything]", "I don't deserve to live", "I don't deserve to even be treated for depression", etc, etc. This morning I was trying to (and I've certainly tried this before as well) tell myself that "these thoughts are the depression", "they aren't real", etc. And I was capable enough to tell myself this (which is a long way from what I've been in the past, or even most of my crashes), but I couldn't get myself to believe this. I start saying things like "I suck so bad that I can't even stop believing all this even though I know it's the depression".

Nasser and I were discussing this morning how to fight these thoughts, you know, cuz I was in the midst of a crash. He talked about learning to recognize that these thoughts are happening and that these thoughts are originated by the depression, which is basically the foundation of using mindfulness for depression. But then we talked about, after recognizing this, placing these thoughts away. Sorta like all the distraction techniques.

I'm starting to get a good image in my head of where to place these thoughts. Last week I was at my sister's house. And she's really big into gardening and yard work, all of which I have a lot of trouble with. I saw that she has this method of taking care of these Japanese beetles that eat the tops of fruit trees. She keeps a little bucket of soapy water in the backyard and when she finds a beetle she puts it in there. The beetle can't escape because of the soap in the water and it drowns. I saw this method again last night when Nasser and I watched a video of a homemade yellow jacket trap and they used soapy water again to drown the yellow jackets in the end.

So now, I'm using the soapy water image to "trap" and "drown" my depression thoughts. The image helped this morning, but I haven't exactly experimented with it much. I'm not sure that it will work but I guess over the years I'm never sure that anything will work. I just have to keep trying.

The other thing that Nasser reminded me of this morning is that progress doesn't have to be fast. I don't have to become an expert at a particular method in a day. The whole idea that progress can be slow is something I need to work on, something I need to apply to everything I do. I'm getting there with losing weight and trying to get in shape. I've been trying to make bits of progress here and there. I've been trying to recognize that I can do 20min on the stationary bike at home and still feel like I did something worthwhile. And I'm trying to notice things like "hey, I haven't been snacking so much between meals lately". I don't have to lose 20 pounds in a few weeks or something. Even if the progress is slow, it's still progress.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned, and at the moment I don't feel like perusing my latest posts, I'm still getting ECT treatment but it's been every 4 weeks for pretty much the whole summer I think. Once we hit the 4 week stretch, after increasing the interval each time, the ECT psychiatrist gave me the option to stop there and see how it goes, or to do some more treatments at 4 week intervals and see how it goes. And I chose the latter. So now, Nasser and I plan to meet with the doctor on Thursday to discuss the plan moving forward. I think, or assume, that this meeting will determine that it's time to stop, but I also want to have a clear plan moving forward of how we'll check in to be sure I don't need to go back to it. My last treatment, 2 weeks ago, was... awful. Let me clarify. The treatment itself was fine although I seemed to have some more physical pain than usual, but then that physical pain seemed to last longer than it ever had before. And I seemed to have a big emotional crash as well, that didn't recover all too quickly, and maybe it's still a bit of an issue (although it's hard to tell since the boys go back to school on Wednesday and maybe I'm sick of the summer).

I feel mostly ready to be done with ECT. But then there's also this, I guess, crutch feeling to it. I'm scared to stop. I'm scared I'll stop and I'll steadily get worse and worse, but it will be hard to tell and I won't want to admit it, and then I won't want to admit or accept that I really just need another treatment boost or whatever. I'm scared it will be too hard to recognize what I need. It's always been hard to recognize that anyway. (I assume it has been, since my memory isn't all too good.)

But then I'm glad to stop and have more memory improvement. I still find it really difficult to discover things I don't remember, I find it difficult to talk with people that I don't talk with regularly and I have no memory of how much I've talked with them about my treatment or if I'm forgetting times when I did see them over this past year.

I'm glad to stop trying to figure out a bunch of logistics for every time I have a treatment.

I'm glad to stop having to deal with the fasting, the clear liquids only stuff, and the recovery over the couple to several to many days after.

I hope that this will go well. I hope I continue to have improvement in this fight. I hope that I continually find ways that really work and that I'm able to practice them and that I'm able to make some of them second nature. I hope that I can start feeling more confident in things in my life. I hope that I can feel confident enough to start and stick with choir again in a few weeks, like I plan on doing. I hope that I can keep feeling more and more confident as a parent, and really every other role I play in this life. I hope.