But Everybody Does That

    I'm sure all of us that live with mental illness have been in the situation in which we mention our mental health condition and some of the symptoms, and someone tells us, "You don't have a mental illness, everybody does that." I was in this situation recently, and I have to tell you, it took me a minute to try to figure out the best way to respond. As you can imagine, one of the emotions I experienced in the few seconds of silence I had to take was anger. How could somebody tell me that I didn't have mental illness when I was the one that had been clinically diagnosed and had been in treatment for nearly six years after silently suffering with that mental illness for the better part of a decade to the point that sometimes I wasn't sure I was strong enough to keep fighting? 

    Yes everybody will, at some point, experience something that is a symptom of a mental illness. Everybody in the world will have a panic attack at least once in their lifetime. That doesn't mean that everybody who has a panic attack has panic disorder, but it also doesn't mean that panic disorder isn't an actual mental health condition. Everybody, at some point, will have a period of high anxiety or a low period that they classify as depression. That doesn't mean that everybody who experiences that brief period of anxiety or depression has clinical anxiety or depression, but it also doesn't mean that anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and mood disorders aren't actual mental health conditions. Everybody in the world has intrusive thoughts (for people without OCD and certain other anxiety disorders like GAD the brain does a better job at filtering them out so the person doesn't pay too much attention to them). That doesn't mean that everybody that has intrusive thoughts has OCD, but it also doesn't mean that OCD isn't an actual mental health condition.

    So, what's the difference between the thing that everybody has experienced or will experience and actual mental illness?

    For those that experience the thing without having mental illness, the symptom, like the panic attack, anxiety, or depressive episode is often tied to an external event that can be (mostly) clearly pinpointed, and the symptom occurs in relation to that external event. Also, the panic attacks, anxiety, or depressed feelings are short-term, and they often go away on their own as we overcome whatever external situation that triggered them is resolved. Most often, in this situation, the symptoms don't tend to come back again and again, and they don't really interfere long-term with a person's ability to function at their usual level of functioning. 

    For those of us that experience the "thing that everybody does" as part of an actual mental health condition, the panic attack, anxiety, or depressive episode might not always have an external trigger that we can figure out. A lot of the time, we can be having THE BEST time and then BAM...oh, hello, symptoms of my mental illness. For those of us that live with mental illness, the symptoms aren't short-term. We had them over a period of time, probably six months to a year consistently, which got us a clinical diagnosis by a licensed mental health professional, and the symptoms are on repeat, not an isolated occurrence. These symptoms don't go away on their own. In fact, without proper treatment, symptoms associated with an actual mental illness will get worse over time, each time they come back, and they will significantly interfere with a person's level of functioning and overall quality of life. 

    Basically, you can think of the difference like this: it's like somebody taking a vacation to a place versus somebody living full-time in that same place. One person, the one that's just taking a short trip, can return home after the trip. This is what thing that everybody will experience is, a vacation, albeit an unpleasant one from which they can return home, to normalcy and comfort. The other person, however, lives in the place that the other person just took a trip to. That is their home, the place they're in every day, and they don't have the resources needed to leave that place for good (although they can take a short vacation to a more pleasant place from time to time). That's what the actual mental illness is. 

    I'll end with this: Yes, everybody in the world, at some point, during their lifetime will experience a panic attack, period of anxiety, or a depressive episode. That doesn't mean that actual mental illnesses characterized by those same symptoms do not exist. The difference is simple, the thing that has happened or will happen to everyone is a short-term experience that isn't likely to become a regular occurrence that significantly interferes with someone's quality of life. Actual mental illness, however, is a long-term cycle of symptoms on repeat that DOES significantly interfere with the quality of someone's life. Let me also just say that, if you find yourself in the situation in which you keep experiencing anxiety, panic, or depressed feelings that aren't really going away or that keep going away and coming back, don't talk yourself out of making an appointment with your doctor or a community mental health agency to get checked out because you think, "everybody does that". Everybody doesn't do that, actually, and you deserve a better quality of life than living in the land of untreated mental illness. 

Different Versions

     As many of you already know, I decided to go back to school in 2021. This was a decision that came out of a moment of clarity in which I thought, "This isn't how I want my life to be, so what can I change?" And then, a few months later, I was given the opportunity to go back to school so I could actually make the career change I'd been thinking about. (Thanks, Mum!) Now, I've just finished the first half of an accelerated certificate course in an area that I've always felt drawn to.

    I have to tell you, friends, even though I really wanted to go back to school and even though I've always done well in academic settings, I was scared. As some of you might recall from my earlier blog posts, I was secretly and terrifyingly mentally unwell during the years that I was working toward my BA in applied psychology and my sociology minor. During that time, I hated myself, and so I felt like I didn't deserve friends or even the opportunity to go to such a good college. During that time, I also had an unhealthy relationship with school, I guess you could say. I used it as a distraction from my mental health, and so every semester I practically ran myself into the ground trying to avoid dealing with the mental illnesses I didn't know I had. There was also speculation that the stress of going from a high school senior to a university freshman was the straw that broke camel's back, so to speak, and contributed to the sudden onset of my OCD symptoms in the second semester of my senior year.

    So, yes, of course, given that past experience, I was scared of what would happen to me if I took the leap and actually went back to school. Would the past repeat itself? Would the stress be too much so that it would exacerbate my symptoms? Would the similarity of the situation trigger new symptoms or a new mental health condition that would also need treatment? Would I be able to have a healthy relationship with school instead of relapsing back into the old pattern in which I used school to avoid dealing with my mental health conditions? I had so many concerns that were all related to the way I had been before. The fear was almost enough to make me back out before I even tried.

    Then I remembered something that Allison Raskin (YouTuber and fellow cool human that also lives with OCD like me) said in her Just Between Us podcast. (It's on YouTube. Check it out.) She was talking about how therapy changes us, and she said something like, "This version of me has never been in X situation." She said it weeks and weeks ago, but I still think about it. I was especially thinking about it as I got myself ready to embark on a new educational adventure.

    Allison Raskin was right. People don't stay the same. We grow, and we change all the time. We create different versions of ourselves as we heal from traumas. I know I'm a different version of myself than I was even three years ago as I was just starting to heal. I also know that I'm a completely different version of myself than I was while I was in college the first time.

    This current version of myself (from a mental health perspective) has never functioned in an academic setting. It's like a whole new experience with a new person. I don't need to worry about this new version of myself drifting back to the way I had been while I was in college the first time because this newest version of myself hasn't experienced that self-hatred, that same level of fear, and that sensation of drowning in darkness that the older version of me lived in as a constant state of existence. This current new version of myself has never been through a spiral without the tools and information to handle that spiral. This new version of me recognizes the importance of caring for my mental health. That meant this new educational opportunity could happen with a clean slate, so to speak, from a new perspective, with a healthier brain.

    I'll end with this: It's normal to worry about how we'll react when we're putting ourselves in situations that previously had an unpleasant thing or trauma associated with them or that we previously didn't handle in the healthiest of ways. If you've made progress in healing from that trauma, it's normal to be concerned about how the situation might affect your progress. But, remember, people don't stay the same. We change and grow and create new, healthier versions of ourselves as we learn and heal from our trauma. This version of you (probably) hasn't been in whatever situation you're worried about, and, so, it's more like a clean slate than repeating the past.

On Deserving

     When you live with a mental illness, a lot of times, that mental illness can make you feel like you don't deserve things. Your mental health condition can often make you feel like you don't deserve good opportunities in school or at your job, your friends, the love freely given by your loved ones, or even happiness in general. Maybe you think you don't deserve them because you feel like you're not good enough or maybe you feel like you're a terrible person (like I did) who doesn't deserve anything good at all.

    I lived my life for the better part of a decade under the assumption, that because of my OCD, specifically the content of my intrusive thoughts, I didn't deserve anything good in life because I was a terrible person. I didn't deserve the friends that I so desperately wanted. I didn't deserve it when people were nice to me. I didn't deserve to have romantic relationships. In fact, I didn't deserve to be happy at all. So, when something nice happened, anything from someone wanting to be my friend to something as simple as somebody giving me a compliment, I felt guilty because I felt like I didn't actually deserve even the most basic kindness from anyone. My inner dialogue was always, "If you only knew how terrible I really was, you wouldn't do this/say this/think this about me. I'm deceiving you by allowing you to think I deserve this."

    When I told my therapist about this, she asked something like, "You don't want or like or intentionally have these intrusive thoughts, right?" I answered that, of course, I didn't want or like or intentionally think such terrifying, awful things. She nodded and said something like, "Well, these thoughts aren't your fault. You don't like them. You don't want to have them. So, why does this thing outside of your control mean that you're a terrible person who doesn't deserve kindness and things that make you happy?" I didn't have an answer. 

    I still think about what my therapist said that day. Why would experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition or having a mental health condition at all mean that someone didn't deserve good things? It doesn't, no matter what the mental health condition is or its symptoms are. That's just another lie that can be filed under "garbage thoughts your funky brain generated for no reason". I mean, you wouldn't say someone with asthma didn't deserve good things. That thought wouldn't even cross your mind. And mental health conditions are like asthma in that they are chronic health conditions outside of a person's control, right?

    I'll end with this: Having a mental illness is not a default in your character. It doesn't say anything about who you are as a person, even if your symptoms are weird, gross, terrifying, vile intrusive thoughts. Having a mental illness isn't a thing that can define what you deserve. Living with a mental health condition doesn't mean you don't deserve happiness or to have the same opportunities in life as those without mental illness. Don't listen to your funky brain when it tells you that you're not good enough for someone or something or when it tells you that you're a completely terrible person. You are good enough, and you're definitely not a terrible person just because you have a mental health condition.

I'm Still Here

    I remember when I first started my weekly sessions with my current therapist. I remember how terrified I was, how hard life felt, and how hard it felt like I was fighting just to be functional ALL THE TIME. I would go to my appointment some days and cry through the entire session. I would tell her how weak I thought I was, how I wished I could be stronger, and express my worries about whether or not I'd be able to survive my OCD. Her response was always the same, "You've done a great job surviving so far. You're still here. So, that tells me that you can survive this time, too."

    At the time, I always felt like my therapist had more faith in me than I had in myself. I was so sure that she thought I was stronger than I actually was. I didn't understand how she could be so sure of my survival when I couldn't be sure. She was also so sure that I could get back to a higher level of functioning and be "better", even when I doubted that I'd ever get there. (That didn't mean I wouldn't work really hard. It just meant that I had my doubts, but that I'd do my best anyway in the hope that she was right.)

    A realization hit me the other night as I was trying to fall asleep. I'm still here, and my therapist was right. Another year is coming to an end, and I'm still here. Right now, I'm in the place in my life that my therapist repeatedly assured me that I could get to. I've made it to the place in my life that I doubted I'd ever see, the place I hoped for. I remember the times I prayed to reach this point, the point where I was no longer fighting so hard all the time just to be functional, the point where I no longer questioned my ability to survive against my own mind, where I felt like myself again. I'm there, right now. Realizing that feels weird in a good way. (Sure, I still have rough patches, but I no longer doubt my ability to survive them.) I just...needed to take a moment to acknowledge that progress and the hard work that went into it. 

    I'm not even just surviving anymore. I feel like I'm thriving more often than not. I feel like an actual person instead of a pit of darkness, anxiety, and despair clothed in human skin. I have sessions with my therapist every two weeks now instead of every week, and I feel good with that. (As in I don't feel like I NEED to talk to her every week to be okay.) I have friends, and I actually feel like I deserve them. I also don't feel like I need to keep people at a distance anymore to protect them, which is nice. (It's nice to let people in sometimes.) I got to experience having my dream job. I've reached "okay", and then I moseyed on past it to something more than just being okay. I feel...grateful to have made it this far, especially when I doubted that I could make it this far in the first place.

    I'll end with this: It's so easy when we live with mental illness to feel like we'll never get better, never be okay, and that we'll never feel like ourselves again. It's so easy to listen to our mental illness and start to believe that we're actually too weak and afraid to "win" against our own minds. It's easy to just want to give up. I've been there. Before anything could improve, I had to find the right therapist with the right therapeutic approach, and then I had to give it time to work. I had to trust my therapist. As much as I hate clichés, it actually does get better, I promise. You just have to still be here to give it a chance to get better. You're stronger than you think you are, I promise.

The Monster in My Head

     Most of my life has been controlled by my mental health conditions. Before my diagnosis, my OCD made me believe that only certain things were safe and okay. After my diagnosis, I found myself walking on eggshells most of the time because I didn't want to upset the delicate balance I had achieved with my mental health conditions. I was overly cautious to the point of being avoidant because I was afraid that something, anything or everything might cause a panic attack or an OCD spiral, even when something hadn't been a trigger for either of my conditions before. In other words, I treated my mental health conditions like the big, scary monsters under the bed that might jump out and grab me at any time if I stepped even one toe out of my carefully defined safety area.

    Until about 3 years ago, I was afraid to think about my mental health conditions. I was afraid to talk about my mental health conditions a lot. I was even afraid to read past journal entries in which I wrote about my mental health struggles. I was terrified that doing any of those things would bring forth my symptoms. I had worked (and was still working) so hard to be "okay" that I didn't want to do anything that might be considered angering the beast, so to speak.

    Checking in with your mental health, making sure that you're aware of how things are affecting your mental health, and being mindful of your triggers are all great things to do. Those things are crucial to having a good co-existence with your mental health condition(s) and having a self-care routine that actually helps. 

    However, being so cautious that you become avoidant because you're AFRAID of your mental health condition and its symptoms, like I was, is not checking in and being mindful. Tiptoeing around your mental health condition because you're afraid of causing symptoms to occur is actually a thing that creates MORE space in your mind for your mental health condition to run amuck, because in tiptoeing around it, you spend a lot more time thinking and worrying about it than you would if you weren't being so careful of it. So, the more time you spend fearfully thinking about it and worrying about it, the more space you create in your mind for the things you're afraid of to happen. By being afraid of my OCD and panic disorder I was actually making them worse.

   Instead of greeting my symptoms with fear and trying to fight them off like a wild animal fighting to escape a predator, I had to learn to just say, "Okay, this is happening. I don't like that it's happening, but I'm still going to be okay. I know how this is going to go, and I don't need to be afraid." (I worked on this as part of regular cognitive-behavioral therapy practice and with ERP. Yes, it was unpleasant, but it was so worth it.) Over time, the fear I associated with my mental health conditions and what they were "going to do to me" lessened until I noticed I was no longer actually living in fear of my own mind. When I stopped being afraid of my mental health conditions, that's when I could fully engage in the self-care and healing part of my wellness journey.

     It's impossible to make peace with something and to non-judgmentally allow it to be present when you're afraid of it. I had to stop viewing my mental health conditions as the terrifying monsters that lived in my head, and I had to learn to view them for what they actually were: chronic health conditions. Since there isn't a cure (in the truest sense of the word) for mental health conditions, I'll be living with mine as peacefully as possible or as miserably as possible for the rest of my life, depending on the way I interact with them.

    I'll end with this: Having a mental health condition and experiencing symptoms is scary, but that doesn't mean that tiptoeing around it and being afraid to "anger the beast" inside your mind is the answer. That also doesn't mean that your mental illness is a monster that lives in your brain that you have to pretend isn't there to keep it from jumping out at you. You'll never have peace that way. I had to learn, with the help of my therapist, to stop fearing my symptoms and to view them non-judgmentally as a thing that happens when I live life with a chronic health condition before I could make peace with my funky brain.

The Other Half of Forgiveness

    It seems like people are always urging forgiveness, doesn't it? Forgive anybody who may have hurt you or done you any kind of wrong. Forgive them even if they don't ask for it or deserve it. Forgive them because they may not even know or understand that they have hurt you. Forgive because holding onto grudges, anger, and other negative feelings only actually hurts you in the long run. 

    People love the idea of forgiveness, but they only ever really talk about half of it. Half of forgiveness is forgiving other people, and, yes, that's really important. Forgiving yourself is the other half of forgiveness that gets ignored a lot, but it's just as important, if not slightly more important, especially for those of us that live with a mental health condition or have endured some kind of trauma.

    If there is one thing that I've learned about life with a mental illness it's that it involves a lot of forgiveness. This is a point that my therapist really emphasized with me in the early days of my time with her. I would be guilt-riddled over something, usually my intrusive thoughts, some perceived moral shortcoming, or some incident in which I wasn't as kind or selfless as I thought I should have been (as is often the case when you're dealing with something like OCD), and I would tell her how awful I was still feeling despite the fact that I had prayed about it. She would always say something like, "So, you prayed about it, and asked for forgiveness, but...have you forgiven yourself for it yet?" I used to HATE that question, because forgiving yourself is HARD, friends. Saying to yourself, "I forgive myself for my past mistakes," and actually MEANING IT, and then actually working to change your faulty thinking patterns so that you can let go of the things you forgave yourself for is HARD.

    Learning to forgive yourself is hard for people with healthy brains, and it's even harder for those of us with mental health conditions because, a lot of the time, our mental health condition can make us believe that we don't really deserve forgiveness from anyone, let alone ourselves (which is a lie). Learning to forgive yourself is a crucial part of the healing process, though. How can you heal from your past if you can't forgive yourself for the things for which you are carrying the blame? How can you move past an issue if you can't forgive yourself for the role you think you played in it? The answer: You can't. So, you have to first extend the same forgiveness to yourself that you extend to everyone else so you can leave the past where it belongs: in the past.

    Forgive yourself for all the situations you handled the wrong way in the past in regard to your mental health before you learned the right way. Forgive yourself for all the times you let your mental illness make you believe you were unworthy or undeserving of forgiveness or anything else for that matter. Forgive yourself for all the time and opportunities you feel like you let your mental illness steal from you. Forgive yourself for all the times you felt like your mental health condition ruined something. Forgive yourself for everything you didn't become that you thought you should have. Forgive yourself for all the time you wasted avoiding getting the help you needed. Forgive yourself so you can start to heal. Forgive yourself because you don't deserve to carry the extra weight of the guilt, shame, and anger over things you can't go back and change. Forgive yourself so you can learn to live completely in the present.

    I'll end with this: Yes, forgiving other people is important to your overall well-being, but that's only half of forgiveness. The other half, forgiving yourself, is just as important, if not more important to your mental health. Learning to forgive yourself is difficult (possibly one of the most difficult things I've had to learn), but it is crucial to the healing process. You have to forgive yourself for your past before you can work through it and move on from it. And, remember, if your mental illness makes you think that you don't deserve or are unworthy of forgiveness, it's lying to you.

Checking In

     When people talk about mental health, they often emphasis the importance of checking in on your loved ones. We all see the posts on social media reminding us to check on our strong friend, our distant friends, our goofy friends because they might not actually be as "okay" as they seem. Those same people that remind everyone else to check in with others often forget about the other check-in that's just as important: checking in with yourself.

    It's easy to remember to check in with other people most of the time because we can more easily see changes (like a drop in functioning, a change in our interactions, and emotional changes) in other people. American society has taught us to not recognize those changes as easily in ourselves, though, and so instead we prioritize "powering through" or "dealing with it later" when we might notice something feels off. So, of course, we don't think about ourselves a lot of the time past a surface-level, like whether or not we've eaten that day, or whether we're sleepy enough to go to bed at night.

    Checking in with yourself is so important even when you don't have a mental health condition, and especially during times of high stress (like a pandemic and the holidays happening at the same time). Checking in with yourself is a vital part of self-care. It's actually how you figure our what kind of self-care you need at any given time. But, to actually do it properly, you've got to go deeper than the usual surface-level concerns. Example: Instead of just asking if you've eaten today, it's a good idea to ask, "HOW have I been eating lately? Do I need to change any of my eating habits to improve how I'm feeling? How can I change them within my (dietary/budget/time) restrictions?"

    Don't forget about checking in with your mental health, too, even if you don't live with a mental health condition. To check in with myself, I regularly ask, "How am I ACTUALLY feeling overall lately? Am I honestly okay, or am I trying harder than usual to be okay these days? Have I been feeling 'not like myself' in any way?" Then I have to go a little deeper and ask myself, "In what ways do I feel 'not okay' or 'not like myself'?" 

    Once I do the "system scan" I have to ACTUALLY implement or change my self-care routine to reflect my current needs. The same self-care routine won't be helpful for every issue. If I've slipped back into an unhealthy thinking pattern, or if I need to get more sleep, then a face mask and meditation aren't going to be the self-care things that make me feel the most "okay". Checking in with yourself is the only way to really become self-aware enough to realize that how you care for yourself needs to change from time to time. 

    A note for those of us with mental health conditions: Don't confuse checking in with monitoring. Monitoring is more specific than checking in, and monitoring generally makes us feel worse, not better. Monitoring is when we notice we're experiencing symptoms of our mental health conditions, and then we keep going back and asking, "Am I still anxious/depressed/having intrusive thoughts?" And then we just keep going back and doing that over and over again. By doing that, we've just added to our symptoms and exacerbated them by worrying about them. The goal of monitoring is to make sure we stop having symptoms of our mental health condition. That is not the goal of checking in with yourself.

    Checking in with yourself is an overarching assessment of "Am I okay or not okay, even if I'm dealing with symptoms of my mental health condition? If not, what can I change to work toward being more okay?" The goal of checking in with yourself isn't to stop your mental health symptoms but to help you tweak/shift/change all the areas of your life that you can to get into a space where things generally feel more okay than not okay. However, reaching a feeling of being okay may actually help your mental health symptoms even out since some of the previous stress and worry have been lifted.

    I'll end with this: People are generally quick to remind everyone to check in with their loved ones to make sure they're okay, but they often forget to extend the same level of attention and care to themselves. This is your reminder: check in with yourself regularly. Make sure you're closer to okay than not okay in every way that you can. Also, it's completely normal to need to change up your self-care routine because your needs aren't always going to be the same.