Kinesthetic Meditation

Inspired by another blogger's post, "Quicksand and a Mandala", I have decide to open a new blog that focuses on activities that help me learn to heal. Throughout my therapy Dr X. has helped me create in my life, a theme of activity based healing, by developing what he calls a "benevolent schedule" for myself. My new blog is a celebration of how doing can affect my thinking, and in turn help me heal.

Please add my new blog "Kinesthetic Meditation" to your blog list. I will continue to write on this blog, but will keep this blog focused on thoughts, ideas and feelings, and my new blog focused on activities I enjoy, or that inspire me.

Thanks for the inspiring idea Harriet M. Welch!

I May Feel Depressed but...

I may have been feeling extremely depressed today, but this evening I feel really good about what I accomplished despite, and in spite of feeling so bad I want to give up.

Recently I have been volunteering some of my time to help others with mental illnesses learn about, and apply for a disability savings plan and tax credit that has become available to people with mental illnesses in Canada as of last year. I applied for it myself and found it to be so difficult to both understand the process, the eligibility, the criteria to qualify, the steps needed to open an account and to apply for an investment and to finally apply for the government portion of the savings plan.

Luckily I used to be a banker so I managed to get through it because I had a pretty good idea about how the banking system works and how investments work. When I finished doing it for myself I thought others not as well groomed in the mysterious ways of the finance industry, others trying to apply for themselves, or their family members might have an incredibly hard time doing so.

With that in mind I have volunteered my knowledge and set up an information session to help people make sense of, and get started on the process of applying for and opening an account. Tonight I offered to speak at a local mental health team's "Family Support Group" meeting. I was there to help people who had family members who may be eligible for this government program learn how to help their family members.

When I first got there a woman asked me what organization I was with. I said, "the organization of me", (I thought that was pretty funny!!) and explained I was doing this to help myself recover and gain confidence again. She was dumbfounded that someone would do this. I stayed and spoke and helped them with questions and information for about 1.5 hrs. About mid way she said to me, "but you are not like others with mental illnesses, you can do all these things. How are people who are really sick going to do this? (Ugh!)

I looked at her and told her I put a great face on. I could come do these sessions, and then when I left the building I struggled to want to be alive. I told her I was one of those people with an invisible mental illness. Ill inside, and well, to most, on the outside. Many of us are like this. She was a bit annoyed with me...but I felt it had to be said. Not everyone with a severe mental illness is recognizable as that. In fact I bet most of us are invisible to the world. Anyways...

At the end the only man in the group looked at me and said he wanted to say something to me.

He told me my talk was so helpful, and that I was an inspiration for all people with mental illnesses and to all their families. He said I could be an advocate for people I was so good at it. He went on and on...of course I couldn't hold back the tears. I felt really good about contributing to the community and helping others advocate for themselves and others. It felt really nice to have someone express that what I was doing was valuable.

On the way home I stopped at an expensive grocery store and spent my money frivolously on premade organic meals; a reward to myself for what I had accomplished. As I walked out to go to my car a man had his cap out asking for money. I glanced the other way, feeling guilty for doing so. As I looked away I found myself staring at his old, frail and grizzled black lab just sitting on the pavement in the cold waiting for his owner to take him to the next corner.

Something about the lab woke me out of my stupour. What I couldn't feel for the man as I passed him, I felt for his dog. As I felt for his dog I began to feel for the man. I put my grocery bags down and walked back to the man and gave him $20.00 and smiled and told him to buy himself and his dog some food. The man looked twice at the money I gave him and then looked up at me in disbelief. Thank you so much he said. I felt good about reaching out to someone who I could tell really needed an act of kindness at that very moment.

I Can't.

I thought, if I focused on what made me happy, if I did all the things on my schedule I committed to, if I had a benevolent schedule set up, and if I kept pushing and pushing through my decrease in mood; I thought I could stave of falling into the black hole of depression again.

I tried, and am trying, but I can't change the direction I am headed, farther and farther into another cycle of depression. I am so tired right now I feel literally sick. Driving the last two blocks on my way home today I could barely stay awake. All I want to do is sleep. I am weepy, and anxious and irritable. I feel dead again. I can't keep trying anymore.

Gone

The Lady of Shallot, John Williams Waterhouse, 1888

It is gone. My good mood has disappeared and suddenly been replaced with exhaustion, fatigue, a desire and need to sleep all the time, depression and all its accouterments: fear, anxiety, dissociation/depersonalization, sadness, crying, an intense sense of loss, fleeting thoughts of my suicide and a fixation on other's successful suicides.

Just yesterday I wrote of creating a "benevolent structure..., especially when depressed". I could feel my mood slipping last week. I woke one morning and it was gone. That excited, life seeking, experience focused me was suddenly replaced by my old self.

I thought I had healed. I thought I was becoming well. I thought my depression had finally ended. I thought a new life had opened up for me. No such luck. How can I be so stupid, so mistaken, so wrong?

Last week I asked Dr. X if I would continue cycling my whole life. Usually he says we will find something to help me...and I always think he is lying to protect me. This time he said, "Maybe". I have long thought this to be the truth.

I am trying to live despite this being the truth. In fact, I have thought that to be the truth and to try to help myself I have fairly recently tried to really, really accept that idea: the idea that I must learn to LIVE with depression and swift mood changes. In keeping with that idea I am really trying to create a benevolent structure that works for me even when I crash, even when all I want to do is sleep.

It is really really hard though, to keep going when I feel this depressed. Today I have volunteered to teach a class. All night I dreamt of how I was going to mess it up, forget my material, be late for the class, be confused and completely disorganized while I am teaching the class. feel sick about having to teach. However, because I have made a commitment to teach I will go fear and anxiety or not.

I am not so sure that is a good thing right now. I have made so many commitments over the next few weeks that I am exhausted and anxious (go figure...how can I be both?) just thinking about all the things I need to do. Unfortunately, or fortunately, almost everything I committed to involves other people who are relying on me to show up.

Ironically, my benevolent structure is working as it should be, but I am not sure I want to do these things anymore. In my recent posts I have tried and tried to convince myself that doing things is the right thing for me to do. I'm not so sure that keeping up is possible now. How do I keep up with my schedule when all I want to do is sleep? When I am afraid to do the things I said I'd do? When all my will and motivation to do these things has disappeared into thin air?

What do I do now that I have become so depressed again?

It is so Difficult Most of the Time

Two incredible bloggers, Lola, from "Marine Snow" , and Hannah, from "Becoming Hannah" posted a comment on my post titled, "Benevolent Structure".

Hannah's blog reflects upon her struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder, and Lola writes about her challenges living with an eating disorder; both work through the blackness of depression on a regular basis. I feel so much in common with both these bloggers. There comments reverberated a common difficulty I am sure many people with mental illnesses encounter: Motivation difficulties.

Hannah writes that with the people around to encourage her to create she creates. Home alone, with all the tools, materials etc. to create she has a difficult time getting going. In her words: "I need someone to nudge me along otherwise I scrabble back under the duvet and curse myself.".

Lola's comment is different, but I think is a similar problem. She writes that the more she stays in bed, the more she wants to, and does, stay in bed. She writes, "If I don't get up with a purpose on a Saturday then i spend all weekend in bed moping, sort of like this weekend. Trouble is I am so exhausted by a Friday, that the only thing which gets me through is the thought of a lie in on the Saturday!!!"

I relate so much to both comments it is frightening. I have pretty much stayed in bed since Friday at 4:30, only getting up to walk the dog, blog and go to a Flamenco show I had committed to seeing on Saturday Night. Like Hannah, I need a pull, a tug, a commitment to get going...that's okay, many people who are well need that too.

Like Lola's experiences...the more I slept, the more I NEEDED to sleep. In fact right now I want so badly to crawl back into bed. I have already given up trying to paint this morning (I managed for about 15 minutes and simply couldn't do it)

To top it all off last night at the Flamenco show I had huge problems with "disappearing" and "disconnecting" at the Flamenco show last night. I found myself unable to talk, or feel like I belonged during the wine and cheese reception afterwards, and during the show I kept dissociating.

However...had I not gone to the show I would have missed two of the most incredible Flamenco dances I have ever seen. Both were by the same dancer and I have NEVER seen so much passion in flamenco before. It is always passionate, sensual and outright sexual, but this dancer had the ability to drag me out of my dissociative state, to hold my interest.

I felt her dancing inside my body, in the way your body reacts to a sexual come on, or enticement. It was amazingly erotic. The only way I got out last night was by making a commitment to a friend to go. I would have missed two stunning dances, and would not have known of this dancer had I not known. I discovered she dances at different venues around the city...now I have something I enjoyed that I can experience again.

Sleep is a narcotic. It pulls you in and holds you hostage. The more sleep I get the more I want to sleep. Depression is like a drug too. The more you succumb to its power, the more you stop doing things because you don't have the motivation, or the energy, or the will, the more power depression gains on you. It is so difficult. It is not easy. It requires external help to both create and participate in a benevolent schedule of activities.

1. For me that external help is a little caring "pressure" from Dr. X...a few questions about what I am doing next week, a soft commitment to do them, and a desire to please him, is in part what keeps me mostly on track.
2. Commitments with friends to visit, to do activities, and sometimes a gentle competition between us to do the things we want to do, helps me too.
3. Commitments to others (like volunteering to teach art) keeps me getting out of bed, even if I don't want to.
4. A commitment and love for my dog gets me outside at least a few times a day, rain or shine

...and you get the picture. This benevolent structure only happens if I have a caring structure in place to get me moving, to get me out of bed, to make me want to be actively participating in my life. ...and no it isn't easy. It sucks sometimes and it is always hard work. I do however believe in the long run it will pay off for me.

Benevolent Structure

Over at Dr. Shock's Blog he has posted a blog about depression and art. With the post he has posted two paintings Klaas Koopmans painted of his fellow patients when Koopmans was in the hospital. They are beautiful.

Here are a couple drawings I did while in the hospital. My roommate, who I adored, had amaranthus on here beside table...it was stunning, so I drew it. Then I drew the part of my hospital room that I found myself staring vacantly at while I was there.

When I went into the hospital for ECT in 2004 I brought my drawing board, paper and pencils with me. Drawing helped me break away from the fear I felt about receiving ECT, but it was also a really positive way to pass the time during a very dark period of my life.

(note...an aside): ECT and my hospital stay was a positive experience for me. I read up about it and felt confident, and feel confident, that it is a safe and often effective treatment for major depression. There was however, some kind of primal fear about being put to sleep and trusting and allowing a stranger to do something physical to your brain. My fears were unfounded as the only negative side effect I was left with is crumby spelling (I used to have impeccable spelling...now it is really bad...though this could be medication induced and/or caused by my decline in reading since being depressed. It did however, seem directly associated with ECT..There is always spell check, so not really a big deal.
It is taking me a really long time to learn one of the most important lessons I can learn:

Plan to participate in positive activities in my life, even when, and especially when, I am depressed .

It is extremely difficult given how, when depressed, I have so much fatigue and a desire to do nothing but sleep. In the end though planned activities like volunteering, painting, drawing, and singing work to help me in a few ways:

1. The planned activities create a "benevolent structure" (Dr. X's term) This benevolent structure creates an external "pull" towards my continuing to do things to help myself, even when my mood drops.
2. The plan replicates some form of structure, which emulates a sort of "work". I really need structure to get out of bed. I do more if I have a set plan to do things.

3. While it may not seem like doing things is helping, maybe while doing things I feel overwhelmed, overbooked or just plain tired, but...I know doing things keeps me at least more on track than if I avoid everything and sleep.

4. Scheduling and doing planned activities "forces me" to actually do something. I don't mean really forces, I mean creates a sense of responsibility to myself and others that acts as a motivation for my doing, rather than only thinking about doing. The latter only creates guilt.

5. "I don't want to, or I'm too tired to, (go, paint, participate, see anyone etc.) usually means "I am too depressed to"...if I am thinking these thoughts it is extremely important for me to challenge them.