Tag: coping tools

New Years and Depression – Coping Ideas

So I’ll be very blunt. October through about April is the hardest part of the year for me depression-wise. The collapse of my marriage and subsequent divorce more or less ran from those months and while I try not to dwell on the really painful memories it entailed it still affects me to this day. I have however come to understand that I have to find outlets and methods to cope with it and being New Years Eve I thought I’d schedule this particular post for anyone having difficulties as the year draws to a close.

New Years is always a time where people take to self reflection. I do that constantly, to the point where it ramps my anxiety. As such the increased focus on it in social media, news and social circles can become overwhelming. As down as it sounds, I stopped treating Christmas and the run up to the New Years as something to celebrate. After all being Asian my family actually celebrates the Lunar New Year more than NYE/NY. I don’t make particularly elaborate plans, I just treat it as ‘a day off’ from work. But what does that really mean right?

Call me a Grinch I suppose, I don’t really go all-in with Christmas but as a result, my budget is OK, I don’t stress about parties or gifts (except for those really close to me) and I try to focus on positive messages and thank you to those who have managed to still keep in touch. I find activities that have a short turn around time and yield fun results. The latest experiment for me, coffee gummy bears.

Cooking has been rather cathartic for me, between healthier eating and the occasional bread-making, I’ve tried to expand into recipes that I don’t really know as well. This past Christmas I experimented with paleo-friendly gummies. The main reason? They take all of ten minutes to actually mix, and just an hour to set and enjoy. While an hour can sometimes seems like an eternity, I tried to find small activities throughout the holidays that could yield results. Other tasks I passed the time with, Lego sets while waiting on laundry. Seems silly right, but it gets two things out of the way. You’re distracted while cleaning so that you aren’t sitting there listening to the drone of a washer/dryer and you’re making progress on cleaning up around yourself and self-care.

I realize my outlets aren’t going to necessarily line up with everybody else, but consider some of the aspects of my approaches and apply them to yourself. If you like cooking, try a small recipe you’ve been meaning to try out, doesn’t need to be candy. Like building things, maybe try out a building game rather than an FPS shooter (The Sims, Parkitect, Rimworld). Vary your pattern just enough so that you get something ‘different’ than just your daily.

Motivation is probably the biggest issue with anything I’ve mentioned above, and I get that. There’s a lot of mornings it’s a struggle to want to cook or try cleaning up anything. So remember that a lot of it is momentum. Don’t try to be grand in your plan like “I’m going to clean the whole room”. Go smaller, tidy up just the bed itself. If you have that forward push, maybe try sorting a drawer. If you find your motivation waning, move on from the cleaning to something else.

The holidays are rough, but if you can find those two or three things to get you through the day without putting a strain on your mental health it makes a difference. I know, I know it sounds like some stupid motivational meme thing right? My days aren’t full of constant cooking and positivity, there are a lot of days I just sort of zombie-walk my way through things. No matter what your current situation, small changes, big changes, anything to move into a better mental health space helps. It doesn’t always feel like it, I know, but while there’s no magic cure-all, you can find ways to fight back against the undertow.

From Seasonal to ‘Regular’ Depression

Now depression related humor is always a delicate thing, but it’s often rooted in painful truths. This particular find on Tumblr summed up a very real scenario for a lot of people.

http://slaughterkeys.tumblr.com/image/183585744311 )

With my dysthymia I’ve found that I’m basically as depressed during the winter months as I am in summer months. I suppose in some ways I’ve been the opposite. With colder weather I don’t feel as guilty about staying in and giving myself a few hours more of comforter time.

We always look for what the root causes are for depression. Be it purely external and situational things or internal matters. Sometimes it’s simple, a decrease in Vitamin D, other times it’s far more multilayered (requiring medication). I know it’s easy to get frustrated when your progress stalls in treatment. As we enter into spring, I genuinely hope that for anyone suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD)/seasonal depression, you’re finding things lifting. For anyone who is struggling with ‘regular’ depression I hope your treatment course is still consistent and you’re taking the seasonal transition OK. This is where my own triggers tend to come up. For me my divorce took place in April, a time when I think most people are looking forward to warmer weather and color. Happier people around me usually puts me into a state where I want to isolate further. I don’t begrudge others their happiness, instead I get a sense of not fitting in among them. It’s a distorted view, one that I continue to work on and forced myself through in gradual stages.

Whatever form of depression you are dealing with today, keep current on your treatment options. Look for more and more coping tools to try and gauge. Most importantly, I wish you well in your journey.

Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone – Trying New Things

Depression does a number of things to your sense of enjoyment and twists how you experience day to day challenges. At the darkest point of my last depressive episode anhedonia turned everything I used to enjoy into bland, seemingly meaningless activities. CBT/Talk Therapy helped me push through and being able to provide feedback to my therapist gave me a clearer picture of the things that began working and the things that weren’t. In the last year or so I’ve tried to do things that were related to my past interest but not quite.

I’ll preface here that as a hunter/target shooter what follows may or may not trigger negative reactions to some, so please if you are sensitive about firearms  you can stop here.  If not please continue scrolling down.

 

 

 

 

Before my divorce I thought my passion lay in photography but eventually I felt like I was hitting several artistic walls and I stopped feeling like I was really gaining anything. Social media made it much worse as there was always this weird sense that I needed to appease some stupid FB doctrine of likes. Following my divorce I realized anhedonia was perhaps the biggest symptom of my depression. Nothing I did felt fulfilling. All the old activities I did were bland and in some cases painful as they triggered me to remember my married years. My ex-wife was not a fan of firearms. She tolerated them for my sake I think but I don’t think she really enjoyed that I had an interest. Free from those concerns as I improved through therapy I looked to take up my side arms again.

The occasional weekend at the range turned into real drilling at the range. Cleaning and getting out there to shoot became one of the few times I could do something and be totally focused. A year and half later after ‘getting back’ on the range, I find myself helping friends to rekindle their interest and me looking to improve enough to shoot in an amateur league. Two sessions down and I’m feeling great that while each league night poses some challenges and I’m certainly testing myself in skills I’ve never used, I am learning a lot. That in itself is a big win in my book.

 

By contrast my other exploration outside of my comfort zone will seem like a complete homebody.  Bread.  Baking was never my thing in my teens or as a young adult. When I was married my wife was the predominant baker in the household. It was something that in some ways seemed to be too involved for me (stand mixers, yeast, proofing) but I found it to be so far off from my normal types of cooking that everything was interesting.  Every little bit of knowledge became novel and a potential thing I could grow from.

Working through depression is never easy and I find myself certainly walking a fine line with my choice of coping tools. Everyone has to find their own path, their own means to staving off the depression in a constructive, healthy manner. While my ‘bullets and bread’ approach won’t apply to everyone, I hope it gives you pause to think about something you might consider trying that’s just outside of your comfort zone.

Depression — Weathering the Storm

I live in a hurricane zone and that got me thinking about the parallels between depressive episodes and storms. In the case of hurricanes you can see the storm forming sometimes thousands of miles away. It’s a gradual thing that inches closer to you. You can’t stop the hurricane from happening, you can’t get out of the way, you can only brace, prepare and weather the storm.

The one major thing I’ve gradually gained through therapy has been an awareness of my mental and emotional state so that I can feel the onset of an episode. In past blogs I’ve talked about sort of side-stepping, though really it’s more about fortifying and minimize how long the episode keeps you pinned under.

The tools vary by person but my own typical approach has been to blend these main behaviors and elements.

  • Optimize my diet
    • When an episode is brewing I try to cut way down on sugars and carbs and focus on vegetables and light, easy to process proteins
    • Yogurt, overnight oats and ready to go meals so that I don’t start skipping meals and binge eating later
  • Try to keep even a low-level exercise routine
    • I’m terrible at this to be honest but I try to keep a little under-desk peddle unit so I have some exercise
  • Switch off from the news and negative media
    • Unplugging has often been one of the hardest things to do given my job in IT but less information is sometimes better.
  • Brace my friends and support structure
    • This one is weird and hard. I often struggle with telling friends that I feel an episode coming on so my mood, mannerisms and conversation may become more difficult. Most people expect it when something tragic happens, but for clinical depression it doesn’t have to be one specific major event that triggers your episode, getting that across isn’t always easy.
  • Mind my medications and supplements
    • This will vary greatly by person, especially if you’re on prescriptions medications for depression or anxiety but falling out of sync with meds or supplements to keep your health up is always rough so better to try to remain consistent.

I wish there were an easy answer out there.  I wish that living with depression wasn’t simply about surviving and managing it like some terminal condition. The fact there’s no cookie cutter solution to depression is a constant reminder to me that people are unique and we each have to chart a course through the problems our life has. I don’t have answers for everyone I just know what’s been working for me and hope that in writing it down may help someone else who may have overlooked something or could add to their box of coping tools.

 

 

Depression and Helping Your Partner Cope

https://www.ualberta.ca/news-and-events/newsarticles/2017/february/want-to-help-your-partner-deal-with-depression-try-a-little-tenderness

I happened upon this article and thought it was a good suggestion right around Valentine’s Day. A painful aspect of depression stems from the tendency towards doing the opposite of what reflex would tell you to do.

For me I realize when my depression continued to escalate I became harder and harder to live with. The best comparison is being a porcupine. The last thing you want to do is keep that close to you or cuddle it. To both those around the person experiencing depression as well as the person him/herself, instinct gravitates towards the opposite of what should be done. Tenderness is not the first reflex when someone is starting to withdraw or became more irritable than normal.

The most difficult thing about the experience (from the perspective of the depressed person) is that you can’t step out of your own mind and objectively assess what’s happening. You feel as though you want to withdraw from social situations and not seek help.

If you or your significant other are experiencing these types of things, try to take that big leap and objectively look at your circumstances. Reach out, communicate to someone of your pain. It’s the hardest first step, sometimes it can lead to empathy, sometimes confusion, potentially rejection but you have to take it.

Distractions and the Negative Loop

As much as I love technology it has been both a blessing and a curse for me. Previously I rarely used my iPad unless I was on the road or traveling.  These days I use it almost every day as sort of “background tech”.

Following my divorce I found myself having the hardest time getting my mind to unhook from negativity and loneliness. In a cruel twist of irony though my anxiety made social interaction difficult at times in crowds and in public.  So I was left with a quandary. How do you feel less alone when alone? For me it became always having background noise or dialogue be it shows or movies in the background. Not directly in line of sight, just off to the side on my iPad.

This slippery slope however is something I’ve had to try to balance. It doesn’t interrupt my job it sort of becomes the din behind me. Replacing the normal banter heard in any office setting or workplace without the rise in anxiety. Slowly I’ve tried to ween myself off it, but it’s a gradual thing. Silence you see is something I fear.  Those gaps, that idle time when it’s just me and my thoughts is a dangerous place. There’s the phrase of idle hands are the devils workshop. When you suffer from depression and anxiety that statement becomes more true to me and really silence is your personal hell. Those moments where there’s no clear objective that I can keep engaged to often result in negative thoughts and dwelling on the past. It’s a horrible back-slide in my recovery. So every day I try to keep my mind running, never giving it time to think about the past, my marriage, the divorce. Eventually though there’s nothing but silence and in those moments, little by little I try to meditate and come to terms w/the pain and the guilt. I work at it every day to break out of the loop and it slowly gets easier, but it never quite goes away. Maybe some day when my head is full of other things or more positive elements I can push the negative aside.  For now though, it is a daily task.