I had a weird nudge to write about mental health this week. At the beginning of our COVID-19 stay-at-home order, I read many commentaries on how people with mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, would suffer greatly while we were all locked away.
Summed-up backstory moment: I got my official depression/anxiety diagnosis in October, 2017. I’m pretty sure I’ve had it since college (almost 15 years, ugh). Alas, doctors continued to tell me it was just “stress” all this time. Super helpful.
But anyway, I’m medicated now and can handle life a whole lot better.
So, in the beginning of quarantine. Those few months of staying at home actually went really well for me. I loved having nothing in my planner, never having to get ready to go anywhere, and pretty much just staying in my pajamas all day long. I kept very busy, even repainting the entire interior of the house. But I knew the hardest part of all this for me would be when the world opened back up. My worries didn’t center on catching the virus but on “going back out there” and doing regular life again outside of my control zone.
I generally have to psych myself up just to get the mail at the post office or grab dinner at a restaurant. If I’m at any sort of gathering, even with the people I love most in the world, I still need a good bit of rest afterward to recover. I do not care for this about myself, but here we are.
So, no surprise, when the stay-at-home order lifted, I found myself sitting in my car for long periods of time before I could run into a grocery store. I debated pulling our family out of every activity and using COVID as the excuse. I even scoured the internet for inspirational quotes to help ease me back into being a human.
Why am I like this? I have no idea. But I know I’m not the only one out there that deals with it on a daily basis.
It took a couple months of the state being reopened before my depression reared its ugly head. It always sneaks up on me slowly and makes me question it. Maybe that’s not really what it is. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m hormonal. Maybe it’s because I took my medicine at the wrong time of day. Etc.
It’s annoying.
All of this has led me to wanting to take a deeper look at navigating the crappy waters of mental health challenges and some ways we can wade through it.
***
After several weeks of wondering why I felt particularly distressed/tired/achy/anxious/lonely/etc., I finally pushed pause on my life to get some answers.
This leads to the first and most important step in healing: acknowledge its depression and embrace it.
That might seem weird, but if you’re like me, you fight it. I hate feeling like I don’t have control of something, and when that beast comes knocking, I fight it with everything in me. There’s stigma around depression, too, which doesn’t help. So for today, we’re just going to throw all stigmas out the window because mental health challenges are REAL, and the world we’re living in is breeding it at a faster rate than ever before.
Just like the flu, depression has its own symptoms unique to the individual. And just like the flu, it’s a illness. Unlike the flu, however, it doesn’t just vanish after a round of antibiotics (or whatever). There’s a chance you might deal with it forever, but you can manage your symptoms.
For me, my warning signs that I’ve got a big wave coming on include: not being able to look people in the eye, muscle tension in my shoulders, needing the house to be pristine at all times even if that means cleaning late at night or after a busy day, laser-focusing on a small problem until it becomes all-consuming, irritability, and I stop singing. That last one is usually a pretty good indicator because I’m always singing. When the music stops, I need help.
When you’re sick, you go to a doctor and get a diagnosis, which always relieves some of the “Holy crap what’s wrong with me!?” fear from things. With depression, if you’ve already gotten the diagnosis (and you should absolutely do that), you just have to acknowledge the “flare-up.”
It’s super important to take stock of the way you feel and face it head on. Lie down, take some deep breaths, and acknowledge that you’re struggling. Call the disease by name. Honestly, that’s easier said than done. I often try to downplay it. “My head is sick.” “I’m having a bad brain week.” And so on. But it is what it is.
You’re not weak because it’s there. You’re not failing at life. You’re sick. When you accept your diagnosis, you can begin to heal.
After the acceptance phase, we can finally begin treatment.
Onward!
***
Once I stopped running from it, laid on my bed, breathed in deep, and said, “Oh. This is depression rearing its stupid face,” I was able to start working through it.
I turned to my favorite resource on mental health: Pinterest.
I waded through many ideas on how to deal with a depression slump, but they all struck me as those montages you see in romantic comedies: sip hot tea in a bubble bath, have a dance party to your favorite song, call up an old friend to chat, do yoga, put on makeup and an outfit that makes you feel good.
I’m not doing any of those things. I mean, hot tea is fine in the winter, but it’s 95 degrees outside. No, thank you. And who can possibly throw a dance party when sitting upright is a chore?
So I’m sharing my list in case it helps even one person. This is what I do to pull myself up by the bootstraps:
- Go to a dark, quiet space away from everyone else. Over-stimulation is a huge contributor to depression and anxiety. Your brain is crying out for a break.
- Take a nap or just rest. Depression is exhausting. You’re going to need extra sleep to fight it.
- Designate a special “calm down” song. Mine is “Oceans” by Hillsong United. I put that sucker on repeat for as long as I need to just breathe and re-center.
- Pray honestly. I used to filter my prayers. For example, “Dear God, help me to be grateful for every part of my life.” Which is fine. But instead of being open and honest with God, I was just saying what I *thought* I was supposed to say. When I’m depressed, my prayers are now: “I hate everything, and I can’t do this anymore!” Just being honest with God upfront really opens the door to spilling out my soul and working things out through prayer, rather than trying to maintain a “pious” voice when I feel like I’m already failing at everything else. Ya know?
- I’m terrible at deep meditation because I have zero focus. So what I like to do is just visualize an image and explore the detail in it, especially as it pertains to my senses. My go-to image is from the Bible where Peter steps out of the boat to walk on the water to Jesus. Only, I’m Peter. I imagine the storm raging around me and the uncertainty of what lurks below the water and how I absolutely should NOT be able to walk on water. But I just focus on Jesus and what it would take to ignore the chaos around me and just close that gap. Explore the sight of His calm presence, the roar of the thunder, the cold water under my feet, and on we go.
- Make a to-do list. Break everything down, even mundane stuff like “shower, put clothes in washer, drink water, etc.” Crossing something off a list can give you a visual of how you’re actually accomplishing things and making forward progress.
- For some people, this goes hand-in-hand with depression anyway. It doesn’t for me. I fight tears like I fight everything else. But letting go of all that pent-up emotion is soooo good for the body and soul. If you feel that tension building inside you and need it to release, find something that makes you cry. It can be anything: old photographs of loved ones, a heartbreaking scene from a movie, Johnson & Johnson commercials, you name it! You know what I discovered makes me cry? Dance. Like, seriously, I spent a good portion of my afternoon the other day watching waltzes and rumbas from Dancing with the Stars and bawled my eyes out. Who knew!? But I felt better afterward!
So this is my super un-romcom-y way of dealing with mental health slumps. I hope it helps.
At this point, it seems as if COVID-19 disparities will stick around for a while, which means we’ll continue to be bombarded with arguments, fear, and uncertainty—all nasty triggers for depression and anxiety. I pray we can keep our heads above water and make it to the other side soon.
You are loved.
coffee with mommy 