What really matters

What really matters in life?  And how do we live lives that honour those things?  In the professional circles I move in, it would be easy to believe that work is the only thing that matters and that other things are secondary.  So many people I have come across have the attitude that the work you do is what defines you.  The attitude of always going for the next promotion, professional and career growth being the only things to strive for.  (Note that this is not everyone, but it is the prevailing attitude).

At my work right now there is a lot of change going on and it is certainly taking its toll on a number of people.  People I have worked with for a number of years, whom I know to be smart, considerate, thoughtful and resilient, basically all the things you would want in a good leader, are starting to crack.  The stress is getting to them, and as one person put it, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the pressure she is facing.

There is a lot of change going on in my own team as well.  Different bosses, different priorities, different tasks and different expectations.  A work environment that takes  a different way of thinking and some resiliency to manage it.  Or does it?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what really matters in life.  In the last couple of years I have been in a steady state in my recovery from depression.  A number of small ups and downs, but nothing too drastic.  I'm glad for this and yet it has left me feeling restless.  It has left me thinking a lot about what I want from this short life.  I spent a number of years existing, permanently suspended in survival mode.  Then I spent the better part of the  last 5 years getting better.  Getting to a place where depression and recovery weren't the main parts of my life.  And so now, I wonder what is the next phase?

Someone I know, in his mid-50's, is right now very sick with cancer, and the news just keeps getting worse.  I am so sad for him.  There is not a lot I can do for him, but it does, once again remind me that things happen in life that we are not expecting.  We can plan our lives all we want, but life doesn't always unfold the way we expect.  We may not have the time to do all the things we think.

So, where does that leave me now?  Well, one thing is that I am reminded again that work is not what defines me.  I like my job well enough, but it is not the be all, end all for me.  This makes it easier to handle all of the change going on.  Hopefully, it will also help me not to take on all of the stress, worry and negativity around me.  This is always a challenge for me, but if I can find a way to remind myself of what really matters, it should be easier.

And what about the next phase?  I find that I have a pretty good handle on what it is that I value and what I want, now I need to evaluate the aspects of my life and ensure that all of them are congruent with who I am and who I want to be.  If not, I need to make changes.  I have worked hard to come to this  place of recovery that I am in.  It is time to reap the benefits.  I need to listen to the restless feeling and pay attention to how I live my life.

Other peoples' energy

Yesterday I went to the pool before work.  This is becoming one of my favourite things to do.  I find it to be a good way to start the day in a calmer head space.  As I was getting ready to swim a woman, that I will call the tornado, came into the locker room.  I was moving at a reasonable pace.  She came in at a frenetic pace, hence the name the tornado.

After a minute or so, I noticed I was starting to feel anxious and like I needed to be rushing myself into the pool.  I was starting to take on the frenetic energy of the woman next to me.  Yesterday I noticed it and managed to remind myself that that was her energy and I didn't have to take it on.

I don't always see myself taking on others peoples' energy that quickly.  I am sensitive to the mood and energy around me.  When there is a lot of stress of negativity going on around me, I feel it.  When I am around people that are sad, I feel it.  My counsellor calls it a "Highly Sensitive Person", my friend calls it an empath.  Same thing as far as I can tell, the difference being the angle you come at it from.  Basically it means feeling other peoples' emotions right along with them.  The thing that is hard about this is being able to see what belongs inside and what belongs outside of you.  It means learning to empathize with other people and then give them their emotions back and moving on with your day.  This is not an easy thing for me to do.

The moment yesterday when I saw myself starting to feel the tornados' emotions was a good moment for me.  I was able to see what impact it was having on me before it became difficult to differentiate her emotions from mine.  And so, progress.

A Visual

This is mental illness for me.  Especially before, and in the early days of, treatment... and on my bad days now.

Lessons

I had my nephews over for the day yesterday, which is always a fun time.  We spent some time at the park/playground in the afternoon.  It was about -10C and there is a lot of snow around, so the playground equipment was slippery.  My three-year old nephew loves to climb things, pretty much any time, anywhere and yesterday was no exception.  Climbing in boots and snow pants is not as easy as climbing in the summer though.  He was determined and made it up many a climbing structure. He did some slipping around and fell a number of times, none of which phased him.

At one point he was climbing and slipped and fell quite a distance, at least for him.  He hit the ground, took a second and then stood up, looked at me and said, "Auntie, I didn't make it."  He then ran off to climb something else.  The only time he fussed the whole time was when he bashed his nose into his brother's back, and then a kiss from me was all it took.

My five-year old nephew had surgery on his knee in November.  After nearly six weeks of not putting any weight on it, he has been walking again for just over two.  He is limping still, and it is evident at times that his leg is tired.  At the playground he was running around and climbing things along with his brother.  He slipped and fell a number of times also.  Nearly every time he fell down he started laughing, finding the whole thing hilarious.  He made it up a number of structure also.  The only time he fussed was when he was wrestling with his brother and his bad knee got bent faster than he was used to.  This hurt for a bit.  Then, as soon as he was able, he was up and running and climbing again.

These lovely creatures showed me some great lessons yesterday.  The first is that it is okay if something doesn't work out the way you want it to.  You can get up, say "I didn't make it", and then be off on the next adventure, leaving the thing that didn't work out behind.  Sometimes there are lessons to take along, sometimes it is just better to know that you tried your best and move on.

It is okay also to admit when something hurts you, and take the time to heal the hurt.  Take time to rest and let the hurt heal (be it emotional, spiritual, physical etc...).  Once the pain is bearable, you get up and move on to the next thing because life is too interesting to stay where you are.

And now the link to mental health.  I think both of the lessons shown to me by my nephews yesterday are important to remember to cultivate mental health.  Too often I have spent time berating myself because something didn't work out as planned.  Too often, especially in the midst of depression, I was unable to find a way to heal the hurt and to move past it, nor was I able to find life interesting.  Remembering to let myself be human, to feel things, to succeed, to fail, to leave things behind, to heal and to be curious is the greatest gift I have and will continue to give myself.

Shades of Grey

Life is not black and white.  There are always shades of grey.  I have had lots of experiences through my journey with depression, and other places too, that have hammered this point home.

I have friends that have cheated on their spouses.  This is an action that I always used to think was unforgivable.  I found a new way to think about it when it was good friends that were involved.  I saw their vulnerability, their remorse, their pain in the situation.  And I decided that I couldn't walk away when they most needed a friend.  I learned that being a friend and being supportive doesn't have to mean thinking their actions were ok, it means showing compassion, giving people a break, knowing that we all do things that are hurtful to ourselves and to others.

Being involved with the lesbian community has shown me some things as well.  What I have found there is people who want to be accepted for who they are.  In some pockets I have found people that are unable to do that for other people.  I sometimes tell the story of a friend of mine.  Her religious beliefs say that it is wrong to be gay.  For a bit after I came out this was a sore spot between us, but eventually we agreed to disagree.  I have had some pretty bad reactions to this story in that I should continue to try to change her mind because she is wrong and how can I accept  her like that?  I respect that this is what she believes and she respects that I don't believe that and we move on.  I truly believe that compassion and acceptance has to go both ways.

 I have had some friendships change for the worse because of my coming out and my journey with depression.  A different friend says I don't need those people in my life because if they can't deal with those things then they are not my true friends.  In some instances she is right.  But there is one person in particular where I am not convinced this is true.  I think there is a lot of hurt and misunderstanding between us and maybe if we can find a way to broach that we can change our relationship again.

I once heard someone say that her diagnoses of mental illness were her life sentence.  This person is an advocate for anti-stigma work and I admire that.  For me though, I don't like to look at depression as a life sentence.  Yes it appears to be chronic for me and something I will live with for the rest of my life, but is it a sentence?  We all have things in our lives that we have to deal with.  My friend has diabetes and has since he was 7.  Would people characterize this as a life sentence?  Maybe.  I view depression as part of my life, part of who I am and part of how I live.  It's not the most fun part to be sure.

Taking care of myself has taken on a whole new meaning also.  I used to think I was great at taking care of myself because I could work and earn enough money to pay for all the things I needed.  I didn't need anyone's help with anything. This is certainly one way to take care of oneself.  I wasn't taking care of myself in a number of other ways though.  I wasn't paying any attention to my mental health.  I wasn't paying that much attention to my physical health.  I let myself stay in unhealthy situations way too long because I didn't know how to get out of them.  I let physical pain go on for a long, long time before doing anything about it.  I never took sick days from work, even when I should have, and the odd time I did I felt extremely guilty.  Now, I am much better at really taking care of myself.  Finding a balance among all the things in my life; work, alone time, physical activity, friends, family.  I take sick days more often than not as mental health days.  I get a flu shot (because when I don't I catch every virus going around).  I pay attention to how I feel and take action on it.  I work really hard at living according to what I think is important, and not what other people think is important.  I ask for help sometimes, although this is something I am working on.

Side Effects of Depression

For the last 15 months I have been going to see a physiotherapist twice a week or so.  It started with a sore knee, then a stress fracture in my foot.  At first the treatment for the foot wasn't working, so we started looking for the cause.  Turns out my hip and back are out and I have inflammation on my SI joint (the spot where the spine and pelvis come together).  That was causing me to walk funny and hurting my knee and caused the broken one in my foot.

This is all a side effect of depression.  When I was really struggling with depression, and even for a long time after my diagnosis I ignored a number of signs of the injuries I am currently working on healing.  The 2.5 years before the diagnosis I was hiking 2-3 times a week for 5-10 hours at a time.  I eventually had to stop because my foot was so sore I could barely walk.  The nerve pain down my leg has been there for a number of years, etc etc.

In the depths of depression, I wasn't able to manage anything other than surviving every day, or hour or minute.  For the first 3 years of my recovery, it took up SO much of my energy and that along with things like my job and family took up everything I had. And so my physical health suffered, a lot.

So now, I am working on the exercises the physio(s) give me and healing my back etc... so I can be healthy mentally and physically.

5 Years

5 years ago today I took my first anti-depressant. That day I went to my doctor and asked him to help me. He gave me the medication and put me off work on sick leave for a month. That days was brutal. I was in no shape to be making big decisions like taking meds, frankly I was in no shape to be asking for help either.  Somewhere inside I knew that I needed to though.

The weeks, more like months, leading up to that day were awful. I was descending further into the black hole daily. I was trying a lot of things to make it better but nothing worked. And I was certainly at a point where I was no longer able to hide that there was something wrong. Depression is awful. When the idea of taking my own life started to be appealing (not the first time in my life) I knew something had to change. I went to the psychologist I was seeing at the time in a desparate state.

She did something that was awful at the time and so helpful. She looked at me straight and said, " you have depression and you should see your doctor about medication because it is obvious that just therapy isn't working". Hard to hear and harder to act on. I did it though.

That black hole is a place that I never want to return to, and that I live in fear of. The memory of it is what drives me to continue to see a therapist, to see my doctor 4 times a year to make sure the meds are still working, to continue to find ways to live better with seems to be a chronic condition, and to talk about my experiences.  All of these things help me, and I hope that by talking it will help others.

The last 5 years have been a pretty wild ride. Much of it has been really hard. Dealing with some of the causes is an ongoing and tough process. Living near the top of or out of the black hole, depending on the day, makes it all worth it. In this place there is joy, there is happiness, there is sadness, there is grief and all sorts of other emotions. The biggest thing there are here are love and light. Two things that are essential for me to feel alive and the 2 things that I was deprived of in the dark hole.

And so the journey continues....