Finding Hope30 Days of Self Care
Posted on May 4, 2019
A while back, I discovered the 30 Day Self Care Challenge (here) and I’ve been really wanting to try it. I’m always on the look out for more and better ways to help myself manage my life. As April was Stress Awareness Month, I figured this was a good opportunity. Stress and anxiety aren’t necessarily the same thing but there is an overlap and anyway, we could probably all use a little more self care in our lives.
I’ll admit that I was only semi successful at completing the daily challenges. I managed most of them but there were busy days, illness, and various other roadblocks. But I tried, and I thought I’d share some of the ones I did manage to do:
Day 4 – Write down 3 things you love about yourself
- That I’m honest.
- My hair – when it behaves.
- My scars.
Day 7 – Burn a candle/incense
I burned my pink pepper and grapefruit candle (my absolute favourite candle) with the special wooden wick from The Candle Bar in Nashville. The wooden wick makes a crackling noise, like a fire burning. It’s lovely and the smell always relaxes me.
Day 8 – Unfollow people on social media who don’t inspire you
I don’t think I’ve unfollowed anyone since I joined Twitter and Instagram and it definitely needed doing. I was following a lot of people and organisations that only stressed me out. More and more, jobs are involving social media so it’s not always possible to just unfollow every account that doesn’t bring you joy but there were definitely some that were unnecessarily stressful. So I started unfollowing. I went through my Following lists and unfollowed thirty accounts on Instagram and forty on Twitter. My social media sphere has felt a lot safer since then.
Day 9 – Take yourself out on a date to eat/see a show/go to a gallery/museum
I had to shuffle things around a bit for this one but for one of my parents’ birthdays we went to see Waitress the Musical. She’s always encouraged my love of music and the music in this show is so good. We decided to do something together for her birthday and this is what we landed on. We had so much fun and we laughed a lot. It was a good night.
Day 26 – Read a chapter of a book
I technically failed this one but the day before, I read the whole of This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay. It’s a collection of diary entries from when he was a doctor and it’s hilarious and disgusting and tragic in equal parts. It was a really good read and it reminded me of why I always loved reading. It’s like the rest of the world stops for a bit and I really needed that, even if it wasn’t the easiest read.
Day 27 – Take a nap
Mid morning, I went down with a migraine and the only coping mechanism I have for migraines is to sleep through them. So I ended up having a six hour nap.
Day 29 – Explore affirmations, and write three of your own
Before this, all I really knew about affirmations was that they were positive phrases that you repeated to yourself. But I did some research and it’s a really interesting practice – this article was particularly good. So I’m having a go at it:
- I have the skills to do my job.
- I am competent and confident.
- Every action I take makes me more comfortable in my life.
Self care isn’t a one size fits all scenario and what I think is so great about this challenge is that it allows you to try all these different things that you can incorporate into your routine as self care. Some will work for you and some won’t. The last day of the challenge allows you to reflect on the successes and failures and while some were practices I already use as part of my self care routine, there were others that weren’t but will be now: I’m getting back into reading, I’m learning about affirmations, and I’m more comfortable on social media. I’d definitely recommend this if you’re not sure where to start with self care; it gives you a lot of options. Hopefully there’s something for everyone.
The New Plan
Posted on April 28, 2019
The last few months have been tough, medication wise. I had a wonderful, un-depressed Christmas (which I’m massively grateful for) but since then, I’ve been struggling. My mood just kept dropping and my anxiety just kept getting worse and we tried to alter the medication to compensate, to find that perfect balance, but it’s gotten to the point where we just need to try something new. So I’m taking stock of everything and trying to figure out how I feel about all of it.
The Clomipramine (a Tricyclic anti-depressant) worked for a while. As I said, I had a really good Christmas where I felt joyful and energetic and actually happy for the first time in a really, really long time. But then it seemed to lose its effectiveness and my mood dropped, whether that was because I was taking a magnesium supplement (I talk about that here) or because it just had a short shelf life. I don’t know. But it stopped working and my depression returned. Since then, my depression has been stifling and I’ve really struggled with suicidal thoughts, at an intensity I’ve never experienced before.
My anxiety also skyrocketed so, in addition to the Pregabalin (also known as Lyrica) I was already taking, I started taking Flupentixol to help manage it. At first I felt no different but after adjusting the dose, my anxiety decreased dramatically and I started to feel a bit more functional. But in the months since then, it seems there have been a number of difficult side effects: my energy levels dropped dramatically, to the point where even a shower is a real struggle. Standing for any length of time is impossible and I ended up being wheeled around multiple airports in a wheelchair during my Nashville trip. The worst part though was that my hands felt thick and clumsy, like my fine motor skills had just evaporated into thin air. Playing guitar was practically impossible.
At first I didn’t realise that these things were connected to the Flupentixol but thanks to my Mum and her incredible attention to detail, we realised that the dates all seem to match up and since we reduced said medication, these problems have disappeared. I’m ridiculously grateful to have my hands back, even if my anxiety has flooded back in.
We’ve reached a point where I can remain where I am or start over. So I’m starting over. I don’t want to live like this. So, after a lot of thinking and talking to my psychiatrist, I’m coming off both the Clomipramine and the Flupentixol. I’m not a massive fan of the Pregablin either to be honest but even changing two things at once is ambitious. So that one can wait. I’ve already started reducing the meds and I’m bracing myself for a barrage of mood swings, depressive episodes, and more. It’s not going to be fun. But it will be worth it. Hopefully.
The current plan is to come off the two drugs, go the ‘wash out’ period (two weeks of no drugs – apart from the Pregablin – so that there aren’t any negative interactions between the medications), and then start Phenelzine again. Yes, Phenelzine – the drug I stopped taking two years ago because it had stopped working, because the joyfulness it gave me felt fake and suffocating. BUT it’s the only drug that’s allowed me to be functional – creatively and otherwise – so we’re giving it another try. It did work for a long time and if it doesn’t, we’ll try another MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibitor) anti-depressant.
I’m not sure how I feel about it, to be honest. Part of me is frustrated and disappointed. I’ve spent two years trying to find something better only to end up where I started. But on the other hand, that’s two years of knowledge, experience, and confidence that I didn’t have before. I’m a different person and chances are, my reactions will be different: our bodies change and our chemical makeup is constantly shifting. These medications all but cause a hurricane inside us. So I’m trying to be optimistic. I’m trying to be hopeful.
Claudia Boleyn on BPD and Obsessions
Posted on April 20, 2019
EDIT: Since writing this post, I’ve learned a lot about the language around mental health and I no longer think that the word ‘obsession’ is necessarily a helpful one. I think something like ‘subject of intense interest’ or ‘specialised interest,’ not dissimilar to language used when describing ‘special interests’ in Autism. Having said that, I’m reluctant to change the language in this post because it’s the language that Claudia uses and because I think it’s potentially important to leave the post in its original form. Also, the negative connotations of the word ‘obsession’ are potentially relevant in the context of BPD as it’s a condition that can have unhealthy (a word often linked to obsession) and damaging behaviours for both the person living with it and the people who surround them (and I say this as someone who struggles with BPD).
I’ve written about Claudia Boleyn’s videos before but this is another great one that I think really clearly explains something that happens with Borderline Personality Disorder (also becoming known as Emotional Intensity Disorder) and various other mental health problems. I really recommend watching it.
In this video, Claudia talks about how, when you’re struggling with your mental health, you can develop obsessions with certain things, particularly fandom related things: fictional characters, books, TV shows, etc. These special interests can overlap with autistic special interests but they can also come about as a coping mechanism; they can become an escape from the difficulties of the real world.
She talks about how she can categorise her life by her obsessions, including Emmerdale and Anne Boleyn and certain areas of art history. She talks in particular about her obsession with Anne Boleyn, how it strengthens her and gets her through the really tough times. She even uses Boleyn as a surname: “I use it to exist in the world.” She talks about how she uses this obsession and others to understand herself. All of this makes those obsessions really special and important. I can definitely relate to this. My life can be divided up by my obsessions: animals but particularly horses – I obsessively read the Animal Ark and Saddle Club book series – Harry Potter, crime dramas, Taylor Swift, certain youtubers, anything superhero related…
“My identity and my life is sort of filled up with the stories of other people rather than stories of my own.”
With BPD, there’s the extra layer of struggling with your identity and your sense of self. Claudia talks about how she would go to school dressed as her favourite characters and how a teacher once asked her, ‘When will you come to school dressed as yourself?’ But that’s really hard when you don’t know who you are. I’ve always found it very easy to lose myself in fandoms or characters because I don’t know who I am to begin with and I’ve had a couple of experiences where I’ve done things I didn’t actually want to do because I thought that’s what a character would do, i.e. what I should do to embody those good characteristics.
“I’ve never felt like I have a proper identity in myself so I’ve sort of constructed one in a way based on what I admire and what I want to be and what will make me as good a person as I can be and what will make me contribute to the world but it’s really tough.”
It can be a good, helpful strategy – until it starts to dictate your emotional state.
“I think this isn’t spoken about enough with BPD, especially because we can struggle with identity and who we are and what sort of people we are. I think we often construct ourselves based around fiction and around those characters we admire and I think it matters a lot to us. It feels like it becomes a part of our identity in a way, so when it goes wrong, it feels like we’re falling apart. Yeah, it’s difficult.”
Another problem in BPD is that of regulating your emotions. Small things – day to day things – can have massive impacts on your mood. It can be exhausting and stressful to go through such ups and downs and it’s constant; there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty involved. So escaping into an obsession or fandom can be helpful and soothing but then, when something goes wrong in or around that fandom, for example, it can cause really negative emotions because your escape, your safe place, has been threatened. It might seem extreme from the outside but it’s very real and personal if you’re going through it.
I really relate to this video and I’m really grateful to Claudia for putting it out into the world. We need to talk about all parts of living with mental health, not just the relatively straightforward ones.
Finding Hope 