Blogging-Slice Of Life – Page 4 – Vraxx

Stress Awareness Month — And Mental Health

Stress Awareness Month 2018

I suppose there’s logic, at least for we US folks, that April would be stress awareness month. With tax season smack in the middle of April it isn’t exactly the best of times. For me I have double-reasons to be aware. April is also when I got divorced.

One of the biggest challenges in addressing depression for me has been knowing how my body is reacting to stress and how I chose to respond to it actively. For me the first indicator my body gives me is an increase insomnia. I’ll find sleep harder and harder to come by. As a result I’ll usually feel much more fatigued and prone to feeling pain throughout the waking hours. My usual approach to this has been to try and get in a bit of exercise to force myself asleep or to use the occasional dose of melatonin to help ease me into sleep.

Irritability is the other common symptom that I manifest. This one is often harder to attribute to depression or stressors as I work in a fairly high stress industry to begin with. I’ll usually journal about moments where I’ve found myself ranting more or becoming shorter with people in conversation. As a target shooter one of my common de-stressing activities is hitting the range and getting behind a firearm. This isn’t something I recommend for everybody. Be it a pistol or a small 22LR rifle, practicing my accuracy and fundamentals and the safety surrounding it is calming for me.

The last major symptom is probably the most common for folks but also the most challenging. Stress eating is a hit/miss thing with. While I don’t binge eat as I did early on in my depression, I do still find myself making bad eating choices when stress mounts. I’ve tried to divert those urges by always having simple protein snacks on hand like jerky or healthier alternatives to sweets like fruits, nuts or yogurt.

Life throws a lot of stress our way, April or otherwise. Make it a point to see what things are stressing you out and what you can do to process through it. Find your coping tools, make use them in moderation and listen to your body. It’s easy to get into the spiral and to let the stress build until you let it off in negative ways. Here’s hoping your April ends relatively stress free.

World Health Day — Tasks I’m Using To Address My Mental Health

One of the bloggers I follow (Sonyo Estavillo, https://lilpickmeup.com/)happened to note that today is World Health Day. While most of the news about it centers around physical health and access to health services, I thought I’d throw out some aspects of mental health and in particular the activities I use to help manage my dysthymia.

A throwback to some of the earliest posts from my own blog, I continue to use both digital and traditional adult coloring books as a mental reset. In particular Pigment by Pixite (http://pixiteapps.com/pigment/).[All Pigment images copyright to their respective artists]

Be it a watercolor styled sketch or something cartooney like a grumpy bear.

Pigment provides me an outlet that goes way outside of my normal activities. I’m an IT person by trade so I’m around blunt, fairly bland data all day. A bit of artistic expression is very much the opposite of my day and it certainly helps to slow myself down when things get hectic.

Despite having terrible handwriting, I still find that I enjoy the practice of writing in a journal. Sometimes it’s just ranting about the things that frustrate me, or reminding myself of my goals and the things I need to focus on, there’s something to be said for putting pen to paper and just getting the thoughts out of your head and onto print.

The last of my activities is not something I recommend for everybody, particularly if your depression or anxiety is severe. I am a target shooter and hunter. For me getting to a gun range and being able to focus on nothing but myself and the target is one of the few things I can do today where I can sink my teeth into. For a few brief hours everything else that bothers me is put aside and I am not floating about in my own thoughts but I am there in the moment. The focus on safety, awareness and precision for me is a calming thing. Obviously this particularly coping tool suites me but it would not apply to everyone.

The important thing I want folks to take away or think about today is what are the things you can do to help your current state, even if it’s just releasing a bit of the stress. If you haven’t tried something artistic, or journaling, seek out something that can hold your interest in a productive way and find a way to balance it in your total health picture.

Time and Friendship – Article and Thoughts

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-waves/201803/how-do-you-make-or-maintain-friends-put-in-the-time

I happened upon the above article by chance but it’s something that’s weighed on me for a while. What are the factors to how we gauge friendships. While the study suggested that there’s certainly some milestones in terms of interaction hours I tend to question how effective that is at framing a friendship.

The crux of the article focused some baseline such as 50 hours of interaction in moving from acquaintance to friend. While close friends were those whom people interacted with for 200 hours or more. While I would find those numbers plausible it sort of misses out on another factor which is the affect of time and lack of interaction. That idea has wrestled in my mind for some time.

Following my divorce I knew I had to change how I interacted with people. In my view there were friends who were established through the marriage and my ex, there were friends that I considered neutral, best friends, close friends, casual friends and acquaintances. The vast majority of my friendships were really now more acquaintances or casual than meaningful friends. I used to use a basic metric, if I have had several meals with you, or better yet if I’ve cooked for you, you can at least be thought of as a friend. The changes in dynamics with most of the friends who overlapped with my ex made me realize that there’s definitely a negative counter on friendships as well. Like any living thing, failing to nurture friendships will over time take its toll. I had to play a dangerous and painful game of understanding where my mental and emotional efforts would have to be put to survive. Some past friends has to be culled. Not because of who they were, but because of the circumstances of the divorce. Interacting with them on any level was draining and would often cause me to go into a spiral that I found no good way out of. This pruning has gone on for the last two years and admittedly while those people whom I still communicate with are certainly locked into a ‘friend’ status with me, I realize the majority have fallen by the way-side due to neglect, either intentional or through happenstance.

Quantitative analysis is all fine and good but I also realize that there’s a far less tangible qualitative aspect that cannot be readily pinned down which affects how our friendships are nurtured, grow or wither. For me I’d like to think that the closest rung of my friends have now seen me through good and bad and are able to weather both my moods and life circumstances. There is a trust there that I won’t try to be something I’m not. To those friends who are now casual or even bumped back down to simply acquaintances, these are people while I may want to keep in contact with, I realize probably won’t see much of me beyond a cultivated image. Good or bad it’s how I have to compartmentalize relationships in my life. Take the article with a grain of salt and just remember that friendships take effort. Sometimes it can be trying, you may not get to keep all the friends you want to, but make that effort.

Journaling and Rumination a Mixed Bag

Bluntness time, I have terrible handwriting. Perhaps as an IT person it isn’t unexpected but my penmanship would make a doctor look like a master scribe. Yet there is some solace in the act of taking pen to paper and feeling thoughts go into print.

It isn’t all positive though as I’ve found with my own return to journaling. While it’s good to be able to look back on my thoughts, with my depression and anxiety at times I feel like I am caught in a constant loop. The same themes resonate daily and after a while I feel like I’ve wasted paper on the effort. I realize that part of it can be a product release of pressure or sometimes just being able to self-reflect upon things I need to change. Other times it feels like I’m circling the drain on the same things over and over again. Progress through mental health matters is not a simple flip of a switch, that I’m aware of, but some of the set backs do get frustrating, especially when I can see them visualized both in the content and the structure of my handwriting.

If you find yourself in a similar quandary, try adjusting your cadence so that you aren’t doing a daily journal but something every other day. Give yourself a break. Though still a work in progress I find myself altering the days I journal and trying to focus on what I have accomplished and what I want to accomplish. It’s that later half which has been the most challenging. Pattern wise it’s all to easy to focus on ruminating about the day or the past, it’s much harder for me to frame the future. Work at it I must though and I hope that any readers facing the same challenge are able to find something that works.

Recognizing the Signs In Yourself (Depression)

https://medium.com/little-old-lady-comedy/im-not-depressed-but-66a36f129ccc

I happened upon the above link and it resonated with me quite a bit. Coming to understand depression is not easy. You start to come up with excuses for all the things you’re feeling, your behaviors. It’s difficult to recognize the signs and seeking help to address it.

Humor was my principle mask, one that I don’t use as often these days. While there’s certainly a macabre humor that surrounds depression culture, it’s important to remember to keep your eye on the reality of the situation. If you find yourself exhibiting symptoms of depression for a prolonged period, seek out professional help. Try to make adjustments to your diet, exercise. Depression Symptoms (Mayo Clinic)

While it might be comforting to laugh at the black humor, don’t let it distract you from facing the very difficult challenge of addressing your depression.

Self Care — No One Size Fits All

One of the most difficult things to deal with surrounding depression and anxiety is a sense of self care. For me my process began with trying to improve my diet, my personal grooming and finding activities that I could focus on without doing things like foraging while I did so.

YouTuber Anna Akana posted a recent vlog focused on her own self-care approach and made some very good points.

Self-care means different things to everyone. For some people it’s confronting fears head on, for others it’s finding alternative ways to cope or fortify yourself mental health-wise. One of her points that struck a chord with me in particular was knowing when to pass on a social outing. I’m generally not a social butterfly so some of the typical ‘hanging out’ options that most folks think nothing of don’t appeal to me. That’s not to say that I don’t interact with friends and socialize, it’s just usually a more specific ‘thing’ that we’re going out to do. Meals, movies etc with a focus is usually how I engage with friends. For people struggling with anxiety however the act of going out in a crowd and with friends can sometimes be more stress inducing than relaxing. I think on some levels it’s hard to describe to friends that smaller-interaction is easier.

Good habits however should never be excluded from self care. Exercise, diet, hygiene should always be a component of your regimen. It won’t always be easy to identify what should or shouldn’t be in your self-care plan but make that effort, try things. Take the time to see what works for you, what you can sink your teeth in that has positive benefits and work on it.

Valentine’s Day – My Least Favorite Day as a Divorcé

Not going to sugar coat this one, Valentine’s as a divorced guy is not my favorite time of year. Add to that my allergy to chocolate and well Feb 15th isn’t exactly something to look forward to either.

I think for a lot of folks there’s a difficulty in understanding what those suffering from anxiety and depression go through during holidays meant to celebrate togetherness. One thing keeps popping back up into my mind which is that love is something that you need to have for yourself in order to be able to share it. It sounds horribly cliche but I understand the concept. I’m not there to be honest and that’s tempered how I view relationships and the future quite a bit. Still, I look at Valentine’s as a time to look at who I am, where I’ve come and where I still need to improve and try to be happy with the me that I see in the mirror.

Happened upon this little ‘tips’ post from Anxiety.org which might be an interesting read for some.
https://www.anxiety.org/relationship-guide-getting-through-valentines-day

If you’re having a hard time this Valentine’s, coming off a break up, there’s also this very pointed vlog from Anna Akana about dealing with breakups. Despite my divorce being nearly two years old now, I still found her post to be a good remind of the things you need to do to process things.

No matter what situation you are in relationship wise, if you’re dealing with any form of mental illness and find this particular holiday season difficult, reach out, get in touch with people in your support network or even other mental health communities. Take that step to communicate about what you’re dealing. Stay safe folks.

Language Use and Depression

https://theconversation.com/people-with-depression-use-language-differently-heres-how-to-spot-it-90877

This was one of the more intriguing articles I came across recently. The idea that the use of language can be an indicator of depression is both compelling and worth self-reflection in my case.

My college background included bits of linguistics, neuroscience and computer programming, a weird focus yes but I’ve found some of what I learned has helped me to understand my own depression a bit more. Personal pronoun use certainly became something I found myself slipping into much more as my depression worsened. Isolation I think does that to you though, you interact so little and have such limited common ground that the only thing you have a frame of reference for is yourself. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with the idea that it’s strictly a self-focused symptom but I can see how it may manifest.

The more markers of depression we understand, the more we learn to catch ourselves and take action the better. I just worry that as we uncover what seem to be associations with patterns of behavior or linguistic signposts that we start to see depression everywhere, even when it may not necessarily be an accurate diagnosis. So take articles like the above with a grain of salt, but don’t be afraid to ask the question, “Are you doing ok?” of your friends, or yourself.

Depression and The Ability to Converse

One of the things I’ve noticed over my first few years post-depression-diagnosis is that I sense I’ve become harder and harder to converse with. I still maintain conversations with my closest circle of friends, my therapist and coworkers but friends who were more casual friends I feel I’ve taken to become a ‘one-liner’.

It’s an odd feeling, to feel like any attempt to start a conversation is met with sort of a one-line response. Emails, instant messenger apps, all of these mechanisms cease to be conversations and become a one line banter or response often feeling more frustrating than fulfilling. At times I can’t tell if it’s just me, them, or a multitude of factors.

I’d imagine others experience the same type of issue. I often can’t tell if it’s because I’ve become too self-focused when I speak to others which makes the conversation very one sided or it is that people from my circle of friends don’t know how or what to say anymore. I realize that awkward or not I still have to put in the effort to converse but I do worry that it’s a balancing act. I converse just enough to let others know I’m still ‘around’ and OK, but I won’t have many easy-flowing conversations.

Photography: Depression — A Night In

Rarely have I picked up my camera in the last two years. To be honest, I’ve probably done more ‘shooting’ at the range than I have behind the lens in the last four years.

The face of depression is something I deal with constantly and it’s often hard to describe to people what it means to live with it day in and day out.

I happened upon my reading light and my usual ‘before bed’ get up and thought the angle and framing told the right narrative. A small area of light, surrounded by mostly darkness. A sense of something comfortable yet also an intangible discomfort. Those are some of the themes and senses I get from my depression. Everyone’s depression is different and I hope perhaps someone viewing this may find common ground. Don’t give up, don’t let depression win. Express yourself even if it’s just something simple as a photo before bed.