*TW* Finding My Thoughts

Mental illness is hard. Very hard. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It is so tough.

My days have been filled with moments where I am so tense I can barely move and so low I’m not even sure if I want to move.

Finding relief has been a lifelong quest to somehow, some way, make things a little better, a little easier. To try and find a way so that every moment is not filled with pain, confusion, frustration, and hopelessness.

Mostly, at least until lately, the way I have coped has led me to self-destructive methods, including but not limited to self-harm, avoidance, suppression, binge eating, purging and at times, restricting.

All of which have led me further into despair, frustration and hopelessness, which then leads me to isolate, avoid etc., and so the cycle continues.

And in the midst of all of this the years have passed by. Life has gone on. With or without me. For so long I’ve wanted to be a part of life but struggling to just get through the day takes all of my time and energy. Coping takes all of my time and energy. And at the end of the day I just have nothing left.

I’ve waited for years to try and get things under control so I can somehow find and participate in life again. I’ve missed so much, and I didn’t want to miss anymore. I wanted to have one day at least, that was relatively free of pain, confusion, frustration, anxiety, hopelessness, depression, eating disorders, personality disorders and the whole whack of crap that comes with them.

Just one day… at least to start.

I wanted my life back. And even though I wasn’t sure what that meant because so much of my life had been trauma-informed and filled with coping, I still wanted to at least find my life. I wanted to at least have a chance to find it. I didn’t want trauma to fill my days anymore than it already had.

I knew I had to start somewhere. Except when I focused on depression, my anxiety and PD and ED got worse. When I focused on my anxiety, my depression and ED and PD got worse. When I focused on ED, my depression and anxiety and PD got worse. I felt stuck. I felt sucked into a screaming vortex spinning with a thousand hurricanes. And I was tired.

Somehow, some way, I had to break the cycle. I had to find a way out of the hurricane. I had to. If I didn’t, it was going to kill me. I knew it would. Whether directly or indirectly, I knew it would mean my end. It was only a matter of time.

But where to start? What should I do? Where do I begin? What do I fix first? Was there one particular disorder I should start with first?

And what I started with was my thoughts. My thoughts, no matter what disorder was in the forefront for the day, my thoughts were taking me down. My thoughts were either telling me to eat, telling me to not eat, telling me to purge what I ate, telling me to avoid food, telling me to avoid anything but food, telling me I was awful, telling me I was awful because of the food and eating, telling me I was nothing, and telling me I was hopeless.

I knew if I had to start anywhere it was there, with my thoughts. At first, all I wanted was to get rid of them. To stop my thoughts altogether. All of them. I didn’t want to think at all anymore. I didn’t want to listen to my thoughts anymore. They were close to killing me, one way or another.

But turning off my thoughts was easier said than done. And it seemed that no matter how much I wanted to shut them off, it wouldn’t happen. Not even a little. They somehow, always, found their way in. It felt like trying to plug a broken dam flooding down the mountain with a cork.

And many days I felt defeated. I felt like there was nothing I could do to stop my thoughts. I felt that all my efforts were futile and that I should stop trying.

Except I didn’t want to stop trying. I needed to move past this. I had to. Because my alternative was trying to make it through the day filled with pain, confusion, frustration, and destruction.

That’s when I realized that if I couldn’t stop my thoughts then I was at least going to challenge them. If I couldn’t plug the dam, then I was going to try and swim with it.

I wasn’t ready to switch from negative to positive, and frankly, I didn’t think it would work. First of all, if I don’t believe the thought, then I won’t think it. So thinking, “oh, I’m great, and things are great!” Was flat-out bull crap.

I needed to believe something that was true. Otherwise it wouldn’t work for me.

So I started challenging my thoughts. Admittedly, I couldn’t do it alone. I needed help from my psychiatrist. I needed her to validate me when I couldn’t. I needed her to challenge me when I couldn’t. I needed her to remind me when I forgot.

Wanting to challenge my thoughts took practice. The first few times I didn’t even remember to challenge them until long after I had the thought. I kept trying. And practice after practice I finally managed to remember to challenge a thought as I had it.

And now what?

I was so surprised that I remembered that my mind went blank on what to do next. I felt like a deer in the headlights. And I kept trying. Until I finally had the thought, remembered to challenge it, and then actually challenge it.

It was so foreign I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right. Was it true? If it was true, where was the evidence that it was true?

Slowly I started to peel the onion of thinking, layer by layer, to get to the middle of what this thought was all about. And one day, after trying and trying, and practicing and practicing, I had poked enough holes into the thought and if it was accurate, that the thought deflated. It just dissipated. It was gone.

And I waited. Looking. Wondering. Was it really gone? Or was it hiding? Was it laying low until I stopped challenging? Had I managed to move past it? I waited, quietly, looking for the thought, and it was gone.

It was really gone. I had challenged the thought and taken all of the wind out of its sails. I was so pleased that it was finally gone. Granted it was one of many, many thoughts that would also need to be challenged. But this one thought had gone. And if I can get to a dozen or more of my thoughts to be deflated then starting with one was good.

The practice to challenge is by no means perfect. Nor does it happen right away. Some thoughts are tougher to break than others. Some thoughts still try to make an appearance every now and then and with even more practice it becomes easier to challenge them and even their ferocity to take me down is much weaker than it used to be.

It is hard. Very hard. To change my thoughts has been a difficult process. I am still not at a point of having thoughts that everything is all good, but my thoughts are at least not as defeating or abusive as they once were. And that’s more than enough for me.

To not have my thoughts abuse me on a moment-to-moment basis has been like finding freedom. I am able to be finally free of the harsh, abusive, degrading voice that had been holding my mind captive for decades.

I don’t know if all of the thoughts will be gone one day. I can only hope that will happen. So I will continue to practice, I will keep challenging, as much as I need to, to get my own thoughts back.

Depressed and Functioning (Sort of)

Depression is hard. Regardless of how long you’ve been struggling with it, or how much of your day (or life) it takes up, it’s hard.

For me, depression meant, days and days, and even weeks and weeks at a few points, of barely moving from my bed. And even then it was only to use the bathroom, and maybe, maybe, get something to eat. If I did leave the bed for any length of time, it was to camp out on the couch. Where I would spend the day just staring at the ceiling, trying to contain my thoughts, trying not to think, and trying not to cry.

Everything was painful. Moving was painful, my joints ached, my muscles ached, my head ached, and nothing helped it feel better.

I lost interest in everything. Hobbies, interests, other people, the outside world, even myself, I had no interest in. I didn’t care. About anything, or anyone, including myself. And when it was at its worst, I wouldn’t care that I didn’t care, or if I ever cared again.

And this went on for years. Many, many years.

There were times where it seemed like maybe depression was in my rear view mirror, but then, it would always come back. And sometimes it would be gradual, and sometimes it seemed to blindside me. Sometimes I was able to hold it off, and sometimes I didn’t even try.

It felt like an inevitability that I would just deal with depression for the rest of my life, and hope that one day it might not be as painful.

Depression can present very differently for everyone, so I can’t speak to how others may experience it. I can only speak about my experience. And my experience was tough.

Especially when I was younger. Because I managed to work full-time, and go to school at one point part-time, and have my own place, and yet I still struggled with depression.

I honestly don’t know how I did it. When I look back, at all those times I somehow managed to get out of bed, get to a job, stay at that job, earn an income, and come home, and do it all again the next day. It just amazes me that I did it.

That’s the thing about depression, and a lot of other disorders too, it doesn’t always look the way you think it might. Even to yourself.

You can have depression and still leave your bed every day. You can have depression and still go to a job every day. You can have depression and accomplish things. You can have depression and be productive. You can have depression and laugh. You can have depression and have good days.

Now for others I’m not sure how they would cope or experience it, but for me… for me, it was painful. Every day. Even though I was up and moving, I was in pain. Even though I was doing things, and going places, and talking to people, I was in pain. Every day. All day. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It was awful.

Every day I would wake up, and somehow find a sliver of strength to carry me, and get up and get dressed. Each action to get dressed would leave me tired and sore. I would feel as if I had ran a marathon and the day hadn’t even started. I would have to pause for a moment before I could go on. And once I found that sliver of strength again, I would use it to get to work.

Forget breakfast or making lunch though because the sliver could only do so much and I needed that sliver to get to work. And somehow once I got to work I was able to shut some things down and a lot of stuff out, to be able to sit at my desk and do my job. But it wasn’t easy. Nor was it always successful.

Some days I could distract myself long enough to complete the task at hand. A lot of days though, I didn’t. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think. I would fight back the tears, and if I couldn’t, then I would cry at my desk. I would try to make it to the bathroom in time so I could cry there, but not always.

And some days I didn’t care if anyone saw me crying or not. Some days it would just happen and I would just let it. And I would try to find ways to make the day go faster, immerse myself in a task so that for a few minutes I would have a reprieve.

I made a lot of mistakes that I tried to care about, and I took a lot longer to complete ordinary tasks. And somehow, some way, I would make it to the end of the day. Not all days though. More than a few times I claimed illness and left. I had to.

But if I did make it to the end of the day, the knowledge that for now, for today, it was done, would be enough to get me home. And once I got home, then I would crash. Then I would crawl into bed, or onto my couch, and just stay there. Trying to contain my thoughts, trying not to keep crying, and sometimes wishing that maybe I wouldn’t have to see the next day because I wasn’t sure how I would get through it.

To the outside world, I seemed normal. Maybe a little anti-social, and definitely sullen, but mostly normal. Mostly.

Even I tried to see myself as normal. I had my own ideas of how depression looked, and it didn’t look like a functioning, productive person. I talked myself into thinking that things weren’t that bad since I was able to get out of bed and go to work. I was able to shop, and go out with friends.

On the outside, even to me, I could tell myself that I was okay. That maybe I wasn’t depressed.

Except inside… inside things were dark. Inside, when the day was done, I would sink. I would feel the darkness envelope me and take me down. Every. Single. Day.

It was relentless. The minute I stopped, or was by myself, things would spiral downwards. And fast. My thoughts would flood my mind with the darkest, most abusive words a person can imagine. The images, the past, the moments that I wanted to forget, would swarm my mind as if they were ghosts destined to forever haunt my brain.

My body would just lose all of its energy, and I would try my best to be in a place where I could collapse and not have to move for the remainder of the day.

If I was able to hold of the collapsing, I would self-medicate with food to try and ease the pain. Every single day. Food became my go-to in relieving all of the physical, mental and emotional pain. Sadly, it has caused its own pain after decades of abusing it, and I am doing my best to heal that pain too.

Sleep should have been a reprieve but it wasn’t. Every night my dreams would be just as haunted as my day would be. And the next morning I would wake up and wonder how I would get through another day.

I would draw on that same sliver of strength, that would get me out of bed and moving, over and over and over again. For years. I have no idea how I found it. I have no idea where it came from. And I had no idea how to make it bigger. All I knew was it came to me and I took it. I had to. It was the only way I was able to get through the day.

Some days it was a little more than a sliver, and I would take that too. Some days the sliver wasn’t there at all, and I would take yet another sick day, and hope like hell the sliver came back the next day.

All those days I somehow made it through, they took their toll. They did damage to me mentally, emotionally, and physically, until one day I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t find that sliver anymore. I had used up all of the energy and now the source was bone dry. There was nothing left. I had nothing left. I was done.

And now, as I work in my recovery and to heal my trauma, I can’t imagine being as productive now as I thought I was then. I can’t imagine being able to fully function. Depression has taken over my day. Anxiety has taken over my day. So that every moment of every day I am just trying to get to the next moment.

At some point I hope to function, properly this time. And I hope to accomplish things. I want to move from trying to survive to actually living. That’s my dream. That’s my goal.

I hope this time I can do it.

Fighting With Food

Sigh. Food.

Where do I even begin?

Food has been my worst enemy. My best friend. My reason for living. My reason for dying. The first thing I’ve wanted. The last thing I’ve wanted. The only thing I’ve wanted. My coping mechanism. My destruction. My way out. My way through. My… everything.

The relationship I have had with food has been the epitome of a love-hate relationship. The poster child for how not to relate to food.

It has been more than a roller coaster ride. It has been a whole amusement park of ups and downs, twists and turns, pushing and pulling, giving and taking, restricting and purging, hoarding and hiding. A house of horrors filled with food.

And now food is changing for me.

Mostly in a good way (thank god).

It is slowly dawning on me that food is not my saviour. Food is meant to nourish me. It is meant to nourish my cells, my bones, my muscles, my brain, and keep me functioning.

Now I was functioning before. Sort of. I was able to get up and go to work and somehow get through the day, despite not nourishing my body. And it wasn’t that I never ate, because I did. But I did not eat to nourish my body.

I ate out of habit. I ate to calm down. I ate to fall asleep. I ate to wake up. I ate to distract myself. And I ate because I had nothing else to do.

All of that is shifting for me. Now that I have better coping skills, or, well, coping skills, full stop, it has changed food for me. I honestly never thought that could happen. I really didn’t. I had resigned myself to always having the love-hate relationship with food and eating.

I thought I was forever destined to be tied to food in such self-destructive ways. That was how it always was, and I figured, that was how it always would be. I believed that it would never change.

And slowly, be default of healing and recovering other things, it did change. A lot. Food has become a reason to nourish my body and that’s all. Yes, I still default to old habits at times when skills fail me, and I’ve found myself at the beginning, and even the middle, of a binge. It hasn’t been a totally 180. Yet.

Now when I find myself turning to food for reasons other than nourishment it feels odd, and sometimes even wrong. I know now that this isn’t what I need. This isn’t going to help me. Knowing this is becoming easier each time I realize it. It’s new territory for me.

At first, it terrified me. Almost enough to stop. But I persevered. I had to. And I’m glad I did. I can actually eat without judging myself. I can eat much smaller amounts than I previously consumed. I can eat when I’m hungry. And I can stop eating when I’m full.

It’s been a very, very tough road, filled with missteps and a lot of learning. And I am still learning. It’s by no means a fool-proof system where I eat on cue, stop eating on cue, never overeat, never not eat, and I still struggle with food shopping and meal times; it’s a work in progress to put it mildly.

But I have to say, even the shift it’s taken so far has given me hope that maybe one day I will be able to endure hunger pangs without anxiety, and then I’ll eat to heed those hunger cues. One day I will eat just enough to give my body sustenance and nourishment on a regular basis. One day I will think of food as just food.

I’ve waited a long time for this hope. So I’m gonna make sure I eat it all up.

The Devil’s Advocate

I have always been the devil’s advocate. And based on my life’s trajectory so far, I probably always will be.

I know to my mom, and my brother, and I’m sure of one or two friends, this was irritating as hell. It meant I would crap all over their indignancy and poke holes in their theories of why they should be indignant, even outraged at times.

As far back as I can remember I would typically have a clashing point of view to the general consensus of the room. It wasn’t on purpose, or to be controversial, or even to be a pain the ass (although some may have thought so over the years).

No, I would pipe up and chime in with the opposing point of view because I thought it was only fair to see both sides. I thought that making assumptions and jumping to conclusions was often premature, and a lot of times, uncalled for.

Yes, there were times when the assumptions would prove true, or the conclusions would be right, but not always. And automatically taking one side over the other just didn’t seem right to me. It didn’t seem fair.

Did we know the whole story? Did we understand the scope of what was happening? Had we heard both sides? Had we heard all sides? Had we confirmed what we were told? Is what we were told facts or perspective?

It’s a lot to consider for day-to-day conversations but it feels important to me. To try and gain an understanding of what is going on. To try and see both sides, or more, to the story. To try and not make assumptions about another, or a situation, that wasn’t fair.

Part of this, I think, is just who I am, but the other part has a lot to do with my upbringing. Justice and fairness were not always obvious when I was growing up. And not just on the homefront. I would encounter it with social services and at school. With housing and with friends.

And at home, things often felt skewed to a different perspective than my own. My mom gave my brother a lot of attention because he got into trouble more than I did. He needed help with learning and with school whereas I was okay on my own.

I liked to ask questions. I was curious to learn more. I liked to pick things apart and understand things more fully. I was very often the sole dissenting opinion to any given situation.

It seemed like nobody got a fair hand when their cards were dealt. More often than not, things were not always as they seemed. It taught me very early on that when it comes to life, there is often more than meets the eye.

Life is not like a Disney movie, or a superhero movie, where the villains are obvious. All dressed in black, in dark foreboding castles, with yellow eyes, and goblins for their minions. It isn’t always obvious who is good and who is evil.

Good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things. And I think that’s important to remember. We don’t always know who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. We like to know who and what we are dealing with. We like to know whose side we are on, and which team to root for.

Our brains like certainty and clarity, and unfortunately, life is rarely certain or clear. And lest you think my brain is somehow able to function without certainty, allow me to allay those fears, and tell you that my brain loves certainty. I would argue maybe even more than the typical person.

I crave certainty and consistency. I have had crippling anxiety for years because of the lack of certainty and consistency that life does not provide. It’s because of the lack of certainty and consistency that I like to try and hear the whole story. I want to know who the good guys are too.

A great example of thinking we know who is the bad guy and who is the good guy comes from a headline earlier this year, where a woman sued her nephew for giving her a hug.

Now just reading this headline, for anyone who knows how to empathize, they would immediately jump all over the aunt, vilifying her and publicly shaming her. How could an aunt do such a thing? What kind of a person sues a child? And for giving her hug? My god, what kind of woman is she? Despicable.

Except, as expected, the headline didn’t give the whole story. Nor did it accurately portray the situation. The media took a sound bite, no doubt to cause a stir, and went with it. You had to dig into the story, and even from later interviews this so-called “worst aunt” had to give in order to clarify the story.

That when her nephew had hugged her, it caused her arm to break, and in order to get financial support to pay her bills and time off work she had to apply to insurance for coverage, and in order to file the claim she needed to name someone in the suit, namely the person who had, in fact, brought on the injury, her nephew.

But that is not what the newsbite told you. Even when they gave further coverage of the situation they still spoke of it as a young nephew excited to see his aunt and caused a broken arm to which she sued him for. It wasn’t until the aunt started to give interviews that the actual story came out. That she wasn’t some vindictive, anti-hugging aunt who is just out to cause a controversy by suing her nephew.

And this is what I mean when I say, we didn’t know the whole story. And given the initial coverage of the story, if it hadn’t been for the aunt being bombarded on social media as the epitome of an awful aunt, and subsequently coming out to clarify her position, we may never have know that there was more to this story than meets the eye.

Being the devil’s advocate can be hard.

There have been hundreds of conversations, if not thousands, that I know didn’t happen because my family and friends knew I would question them. They knew I would poke holes in the so-called “story” that they were basing their assumptions on. That I would always chime in with my piece. That I would pick it apart and leave them with the pieces to pick up afterwards.

I challenged everything. Their beliefs, their intentions, their motives, nothing was off the board from me asking questions. I wanted to know if they were being fair. I wanted to give the other sides to the story a chance. I wanted to try and do what was right.

It’s pretty tiring. And extremely isolating.

Seeing my family and friend’s faces as they pause while they consider if I will pick them apart. Wondering if they should say something, or if they do, will I somehow challenge them? Will I have them questioning themselves? Will I have them re-thinking something they don’t want to re-think?

Sometimes this is a really bad, really lonely place to be. I have yet to find the good side to my approach. I hope one day I will, and maybe I won’t be the devil’s advocate anymore. And people will want to share their opinions with me. Maybe. One day.

Wanting to see all sides, if possible, is surprisingly uncommon and unpopular. My experience is that people like to make their determination pretty quickly so they know how to feel about things. Which I understand, I like knowing what’s going on too.

But I have a hard time making my own determination right away. I need more information. I want to know as much as I can. Knowing all the players and the game helps me. If I can, I want to be as fair as possible with my determination.

I don’t like exclusion of information. I don’t like exclusion of people.

Belonging and feeling connected are important. And when people are excluded for unfair or unjust reasons, that gets my back up. I don’t think that it’s right. And I will argue the case for what’s right whenever I get the chance.

I’m talking about people being excluded because of their race, or their religion, or their sex, kind of exclusion. I’m talking about not getting equal pay for equal work kind of exclusion. I’m talking about putting others down because they’re different kind of exclusion.

Life is already exclusive enough. And we, as a people, have added so many levels of exclusion that frankly feel like less than valid reasons to exclude another. I can appreciate coming from a place of fear, and feeling threatened, or becoming irrelevant as something newer, and maybe better, comes to the forefront.

I can appreciate wanting to feel important, wanting to feel needed, wanting to feel special. I get it. Feeling like the go-to guy feels good. Being heard, being seen, feels good.

Doing it at the expense of another though? I’m not so cool with that. Doing it maliciously? Not cool with that. Doing it with violence? Also not cool with. Doing it with a hatred that should be reserved for the truly evil of the world? I feel like there’s room for understanding here.

I want to know what kind of person you are. Are you kind? Are you considerate? Are you open to consider other options? Are you sympathetic? Can you empathize?

I couldn’t care less where you’re from, what faith you have (or don’t), what colour your skin is, how much money you earn (or don’t). I want to know your character. I want to know if the good things you do outweigh the bad.

People make mistakes. And I don’t think it’s fair, or right, to judge a whole person, on one mistake, or one tweet. Unless you’re doing something truly awful like abusing children or animals or even adults, and then I feel like those might be good cause to put you on the evil list.

But day-to-day stuff that comes from tiredness, frustration, and trying to find your way kind of mistakes, I feel like maybe there’s room for understanding there. That maybe one poorly chosen remark shouldn’t define all of you. Nor should it automatically make you an evil person who deserves to be crucified.

Are you regularly a jerk and doing or saying mean things? Then, I would concede that those calling you “jerk” may not be in the wrong. But I reserve the right to know more before I make that concession.

I think words like remorse and consideration are far too underrated, and that forgiveness is not a dirty f-word that should only be saved for those who are deemed “worthy”.

I think for most of us, in most situations, that we aren’t bad people for making mistakes or poor decisions. I think when we do make mistakes we should be given at least one chance to make it right. I think more than our stupidity in the moment should be considered. And how we respond and hold ourselves accountable should be considered.

Does that mean that we should be all willy nilly with forgiveness and not hold people accountable for their actions? No, not by a long shot. But I also don’t think that giving second chances, understanding remorse, or understanding full stop, should be as hard to get as winning the lottery while riding a unicorn towards the leprechaun holding a pot of gold.

Life will never cease to have bad days and bad people, and I can only hope that the good will outnumber the bad. I can only hope that most will be given a chance, and will be treated as fairly as possible. And if not, then they’ll always have me, being the devil’s advocate, trying to do it for them.