Just Mediocre

First off, I wanted to thank you, dear readers. I was so encouraged by the response to my previous post. Thank you so much to those of you who read, commented and shared it with others. I am pumped!

I’ve been planning a blog series on recovery for a while now, so I plan to revisit some of the tips I shared in that post. It would help me a ton if you would leave comments here on what you would like to read about, questions, or which tips interest or challenge you the most. Remember, Christie and I screen every comment before publishing it, so you can ask to remain anonymous.

I also wanted to clarify that not all of these tips will be right for you. Everyone needs their own mental health “regimen” to fit their lifestyle, just as physical exercise needs to be tailored to every individual. And just as someone who has never exercised before needs to start slow, the same goes for these tips. I would suggest picking just one or two to work on at a time. And again, always remember to BE KIND to yourself. If you are hard on yourself, keeping track of how you ‘measure up’ with habits like exercise and getting enough sunlight, you are defeating the purpose. So please, please be kind to yourself.

OCD and anxiety disorders often go along with a perfectionist personality (not that all perfectionists have OCD, or that if you are not a perfectionist you will not develop OCD, but there is a trend), and people with OCD can become obsessed with doing their therapy “perfectly.” It is a tricky paradox to navigate, but I think the key is to emphasize showing yourself grace and kindness.

You’ll notice a theme here and throughout this blog: grace. If you don’t show grace to others, you won’t have deep, satisfying relationships. And if you don’t show yourself grace, you won’t be able to maintain any level of mental health.

One of the most important things I learned during recovery I learned from a fellow patient in a group therapy setting. She was a first-time mom like me, and like me she struggled with perfectionist tendencies. She spoke up in group about how she was learning that being a “good enough” mom is actually being a great mom. Why? Because shooting for great or “perfect” is inaccessible and unsustainable. You become hard on yourself and miserable. Your children will see your standard for yourself, assume it is your standard for them as well, and be hard on themselves and miserable. Just as we need to model healthy eating and exercise habits for our children, we need to model healthy mental habits as well. Not to mention if you as a mother are unhappy and stressed, you will not be able to be present and available to your children. It’s the whole “put your mask on first” basic principle of self-care. Trying to do a perfect job in one area of life ends up costing too much in other, often more important, areas. It’s better to aim for and be happy with “good enough.”

So come on, Moms! It’s time to celebrate mediocrity! Time to be just “good enough,” and realize that that is just great.

J's Top 7 Tips For Staying Mentally Healthy

Usain Bolt reportedly fuels the world’s fastest body on a diet of mainly chicken nuggets and other fast food. Some people smoke and drink and never exercise a day in their life and live to be a hundred, while others who train hard and eat sensibly end up with high blood pressure--or worse--in their thirties. Some people seem to maintain good mental health with no apparent effort. Others of us really have to work for it.

I am one of those who has to “work out” hard to maintain mental health. So here is my regimen for staying in good mental shape:

1. Physical exercise. Our minds are thoroughly intertwined into our bodies, so good mental health needs good physical health. I have started many workouts feeling depressed, but have finished very few while still in a bad mood. It’s pretty much a fool-proof mood-lifter. Regular exercise has been shown to improve self-esteem, decrease stress, and regulate blood sugar levels. Exercise is also an important part of good sleep hygiene (see number 2, below!)
2. Sleep! It is one of the best medicines for the brain; in fact, the brain actually heals itself during sleep. Sleep also promotes and cements learning, which is particularly critical during periods of intense therapy while you re-learn and re-direct thinking patterns.
3. Cut yourself yards and yards of slack. Chronic illnesses always come with their set of restrictions on energy, motivation and strength. Our culture disproportionately values busyness and productivity. Your worth is not determined by how much you can get done in a day! Know your limits, know your priorities, and choose accordingly how to invest your energy. Then be unapologetic--to others and to yourself--about those choices. When your lack of energy chooses for you, be unapologetic about unscheduled breaks.
4. Get sunlight or light therapy. A lot of people insist on the importance of getting outside for fresh air. I have no doubt it is critical for some people, and have found the outdoors to lift my spirits sometimes as well. However, I actually get a lot more pleasure and stress relief from curling up inside with a cup of tea and a book, than from a walk outside. Outdoor pursuits are also complicated by my disorder--a lot of my fears are around going outside. Now, I do NOT advocate staying indoors and never challenging those fears. On the contrary, challenging my fears has been my door to recovery. But I can’t string myself taut on a line of fear all the time and remain mentally healthy! There are days when I just need to stay in my comfort zone and regain strength for the next round of fear-challenging. But I do find that it is important to get sunlight. I live far enough up my hemisphere however that for much of the year, even if I did spend every daylight hour outside, it still would not be sufficient sunlight for my brain chemistry. So I have a light therapy lamp. I use it mainly in the winter months, but it is helpful all year long.
5. Breathe. There is so much power in just breathing. Several times throughout the day I try to stop and focus only on breathing. It is tremendously calming. It’s my reset button.
6. Re-focus. There is so much involved in this idea, and no way I can sum it up in a single post, but essentially if a particular thought is dragging you down or causing severe emotional pain, it is time to let it go. Thoughts just aren’t worth suffering for. Seriously, it is just a thought. Thoughts that “aren’t working” need to be challenged--often repeatedly--and redirected. You may need help with identifying and challenging problematic thought patterns. This is why therapy is so critical. Now that I know where my mind tends to go and which problematic patterns I am most prone to, I am ready with an arsenal of re-directing thoughts to counter the destructive ones.
7. Treat yourself like a friend. When your self-talk turns dark, think about what you would say to a friend who was telling themselves things like that. Now practice looking in the mirror and being a friend to yourself. There is no reason on earth (or in heaven!) that you shouldn’t treat yourself as well as you treat your friends.

Transition's in the Air--J

It’s been awhile since I’ve had time to work on a post. I’ve been writing, but in spurts. Life has moved from one thing to another at mom-on-caffeine speed since we moved in November. Travels, holidays, family get-togethers, not to mention Christmas and a fourth birthday for one very special lily-child!

I will see my psychiatrist soon, and was just beginning to concoct an answer to her predictable question, how are you doing. Then I realized: no concoction necessary; the straight-up truth:  I am doing fantastic. I am generally happy and relaxed. I am less irritable. I have motivation and energy--feelings so new to me that I wouldn’t have recognized them if they hadn’t reintroduced themselves so gradually. Why, I do believe I am better than ever before in my entire adolescent through to adult life. I’ve even seen changes in my thinking happen without a ton of ERP: a thrilling realization, because up until now, I have had to fight with teeth gritted for every ounce of brain-shift. I am doing fantastic.

I am in the process of editing some old posts I never published. It has been enlightening and encouraging. I found one post I wrote about this time last year, reflecting on relapse, and it reminded me of how I felt after our recent move in November. Come to think again, the move was a more significant transition than the ones I’ve described below, and my ‘relapse’ around the move was shorter and not nearly as serious as the one I experienced at the time of this post. I hope it might be helpful just to know that relapses do happen, and they do get easier and less world-shaking.

* * * * * * * * *

I’ve been struggling. I thought it might help for me to write down the reasons I’ve identified for this relapse. Could any of these explain something for you? Whatever your struggle and whatever the factors that brought it on, be assured, be validated: your body and your brain have their reasons!

The first reason, probably the most obvious, is that my meds have decreased. I’ve been on the highest dose of Prozac recommended since partway through my pregnancy, about three and a half years ago now. My psychiatrist thought it would be a good idea to get back to my pre-pregnancy dose. I’m there now! But weaning down this medication comes with a nasty side-effect: brain shivers. They’re hard to describe. Like being dizzy, but different again. You move your head, and even though your vision stays clear, you feel like you left your head behind you. It’s similar to the stomach sensation when you ride one of those dropping fair rides--like you left your stomach (in this case your brain) up in the air. Maybe somebody else would find that fun? But I’ve always been a wimp when it comes to fair rides. Anyway, I had a few days of that, and extra fatigue, and I was a bit teary, but I think the worst of it is over. Still, I’m sure the medication decrease on its own could account for this bit of a relapse I’m experiencing now. It is weird to discover how dependent I am on these meds. I feel so normal when I’m on them that they begin to seem redundant. It would be easy, if I didn’t understand a bit about how the meds work, to think, Well, I’m better now, I don’t need these pills anymore. But if I don’t take them, then I know.

In addition to the change in meds, there have been a lot of changes in our lives. All relatively insignificant changes on their own, but put them together and couple them with a brain suffering from OCD, and they make for an uphill slog. First, I started the new job I wrote about here. The time came to toilet train Lily. Our fish died.  A change of seasons is upon us, which always means more illness. Jem has been ill almost continuously for the last two months, and I always feel like I am fighting off something. Lily-girl has had three or four bouts of illness (all blurred together) that involved fever and sleepless nights.

I noticed something else dreaded about season changes: I start worrying about new ways to contact germs. With the arrival of winter, I worry about “smearing” germs through the sleeves of my coat when I put it on. I worry about touching my hair when I put on my hat. But just as soon as I get a handle on the challenges winter presents to my OCD brain, spring comes along and now I have new ways to worry: about not having those gloves that provided a convenient barrier between my hands and the germy world. That I can’t just take all the out-of-the-house germs off with my coat when I get home. I worry that the germs are no longer frozen, and that cats are back outside pooping in gardens. Does anyone else worry about these things? No. Should I worry? NO. Can I help it? Not really. Not for a while anyway, until I have practiced going out without my coat and not washing my arms when I come back inside.

Then there’s toilet training. Don’t even get me started--never mind, I’m started. I have honestly been dreading this stage ever since she was born. It takes all my courage to take my pristine lily-baby into those filthy public restrooms. Plus, her skinny legs don’t fit on most toilet seats--they slip in between the gap and she ends up sitting on the rim of the toilet instead of the seat. AaUAurRgh! The first time that happened, I obsessed about it for days, not sure whether it would be safer to let the germs stay dry on her legs, or to risk reactivating them in the bathtub. I sound insane even to myself right now. I think I’ll just keep her in diapers until she’s fourteen.

And then my new little fish buddy died. I’d sort of been expecting it, and didn’t think I would find it so traumatic. But when I saw him nose-down in the gravel, my stomach sank to my toes, and when I jiggled the bowl and saw his body’s involuntary sway, I felt dizzy, disoriented, like I was the one upside-down. I screamed like a girl. (I am a girl. I mean, I screamed like a little girl.)

Aside from grief and guilt (I figured I probably hadn’t changed his water often enough--so, another exercise in giving myself grace), I was very anxious about what he might have died from, and whether those germs could affect us. When Jem dumped him down the toilet, I was worried about splashing, and about what Jem touched before he washed his hands… It was really hard to get my mind off of ”fish germs” that night.

So there you have it. Changes in meds really do affect me big time. And so do little life changes that probably shouldn’t be a big deal. Now that I’ve thought through all the factors, I’m not worried about his little set-back. I know that it might take me a little longer to get settled after change, but I will, and I will have gained some resilience by pushing through.