May is Mental Health Awareness day in the US and the aim is to create awareness to lessen the stigma of mental illness.
So I thought I’d share my story with you today.
I have anxiety disorder. I take allopathic medication for it. I suffered with undiagnosed mild depression for almost thirty years, while I tried to ‘fix’ myself.
Years of talk therapy didn’t help. It just kept me stuck in the stories in my head about everything that was wrong in my past.
It didn’t help me to move forward. And somehow in my own head, I didn’t think that I needed medication, and that I was strong enough to make myself ‘happier’ and ‘balanced’ . I just had to work harder.
In my late thirties, I discovered Nia Dance. It connected me to my body again, and to my intuition. I started to fall in love with myself again after years of being really hard on myself.
I also learnt that my healing was up to me. It was my responsibility to be as well as I could. It was my journey and only I could make the choices that worked for me.
Then I started painting more freely (I had been stuck in representational art) and discovered Intuitive painting. That felt like freedom.
In 2011, I got a deeper understanding of the body and what I needed to heal myself through Kahuna bodywork.
All these modalities helped me to express the deep rage, and deep grief that I didn’t even know was sitting in my cells, trapped and unexpressed.
It really felt like I was coming home to myself.
I felt a lot better, but I was always tired.
Life events and big changes led to me having a breakdown one day in 2013. Because I was so aware of my body and my thought processes I knew that the day I woke up with pleurisy and pneumonia in my lungs, with thoughts of ‘what’s the point of anything’ rushing into my brain, that I needed help. The ‘real drugs’ kind of help.
From one day to the next, my mind had shifted in its thinking patterns. I recognised these old thought patterns, and knew that they were not how my present self thought about life or myself.
I had a sense of the chemical and visceral nature of thoughts – that they are real forces. And sometimes we just have no control over them. I believe this is what a ‘chemical imbalance’ feels like.
I also knew, that because I was so physically, mentally and emotionally drained, that I did not have the internal resources to pick myself up and get through this spate of depression. (I had done it many times before with natural remedies, homeopathy and using all my modalities and tools. Quiet time, journaling, dancing, bodywork and painting always helped me.)
And so I started with anti depressant medication – and what a difference it made! I realised, at the age of 45, for the first time in my life, what it felt like to be able to function in the world, because I was not feeling into every emotion of every person I came into contact with. It was like a thin bubble of protection, or a filter came between me and the world, and I could breathe my own breath, and think my own thoughts, without the interference of all my senses being overloaded with everything from the outside.
If you are an empath, does this sound like something you can relate to?
I realised that I had not been able to fully function emotionally or physically in the world before, because I had no filter system. It felt like I had had my raw nerve endings exposed to the world my whole life, and now with the medication I had a soothing balm over them, so they felt protected and nurtured.
And so these drugs, together with my continued commitment to my self care and using the tools I had, helped me to get back onto my feet and moving forward as the functioning adult I had never really been before.
I believe that as we get older, just as our bones take longer to heal, our hearts do too. Repeated emotional hurts and mental traumas seem to stack up and it’s harder to come back from them as we go. I am grateful that I have integrated modalities such as dance, intuitive creativity and bodywork into my life, and I am grateful that I had a doctor who was empathic and also had extensive integrative medicine training. She knew my history and we had tried all the natural remedies before. She prescribed the medication I needed, and trusted that I knew how to pull myself back to health once I started taking them. She said that if she didn’t know that I had the tools to help myself, she would have booked me into hospital with a nervous breakdown. (I was shocked, ‘cos I didn’t think it was THAT bad! ha ha )
The thing is, though, we all have some sort of mental or emotional issue (whether it has a label or not) that we are dealing with. Life happens and everyone finds their own way to manage and cope in life. We all have different paths.
Ultimately, it’s about self respect for whatever our story was and is, and what we use to cope with it (some people self medicate with alcohol or cannabis or other recreational drugs). And it’s about respecting others choices to manage life in the best way they can.
We are all in this together, having a different experience of it.
And in these extra stressful times of the pandemic, mental health issues have increased astronomically.
Everybody needs a little help and a lot of kindness to get by.
And if you need support – reach out to a compassionate friend or get professional help.
Don’t let it go on…. my experience has taught me that if we are empaths and achievers, we will think we can keep going and giving and doing until we drop. Then it’s ten times harder to get back to some level of okay-ness.
I still take minimal anti depressants to manage my anxiety, AND I use a whole lot of self modulating modalities to keep me on track. I also know if I don’t sleep well or eat well, my mood and anxiety levels are affected.
I don’t believe in over medicating, and I am not proclaiming that medication is right for everyone. I have dear friends who cannot take meds, and they have to find healthy, gentle therapies to support them. But I have also learnt that there is not one solution that is the ‘magic pill’ for wellness. Being well – on all levels – requires work and a holistic approach. And an understanding that there is no perfect place to reach. I am fine just as I am. (That has been an important thing for me to learn.)
I do believe that so much of this healing ourselves comes down to loving ourselves into softness and gentleness in this hard, go-getter world that we live in (with or without medication). I often think that maybe we just have to surrender to the soft, the real and the authentic because this in the end, will be our strength.
It is what makes us human.
I hope you are able to find ways to nurture yourself – body, mind and soul – and ways to change your thoughts about yourself so that you can practice deep, exquisite self-nurturing on all levels.
And ask yourself “How are you really doing?”
Take exquisite care of yourselves. friends.
Be gentle.
