Be One With Nature

I'm starting to get restless from sitting inside watching TV and wasting away my time on the internet day after day. I know for most people, having this down time feels like such a luxury, but when that's what you do literally all day, every day, it can get extremely boring. That's the problem with depression though, no matter how bored I am of doing absolutely nothing, sometimes I just don't have it within me to change that situation, so I just continue being bored. 

That being said, the other day was a perfect autumn day and I managed to convince myself that there was no way I was going to miss out on such a gorgeous day. Autumn is my favourite season, so I wanted to get outside and enjoy it. The hard part is always working up the courage to get dressed and step outside. I didn't want to overwhelm myself and cause a panic attack, as I had one the night before, so I took things slowly. I told myself that I could lounge around in the morning while eating breakfast but I had to be outside by 12pm so as to not waste the entire day.

The hardest part is always getting up off the couch to go get dressed but that's also the most important step! When I'm in my pjs my mind is set on lazy mode, it's easy to get too comfy and then I end up not wanting to do anything because it seems like such a huge chore to have to go and get ready for the day before I can step outside the house. But once I'm dressed, everything else comes much easier because I'm already set to go about my day and if something unexpected comes up, I'm ready. In order to make my morning routine easier for me I've stopped wearing make-up and worrying about my hair. Sometimes spending the time to do these things makes me feel good because it's nice to feel dolled up now and again, but on a regular basis my goal is just to get out of the house as fast as possible, so I just throw on a pair of jeans and a hoodie, brush my teeth and I'm ready to go. Cutting my routine down to the bare necessities makes it more likely that I'll get outside as I don't have time to change my mind or make excuses. 

Once I got outside the other day, I honestly felt like my normal self again. I went for a long walk by myself and just took my time exploring. The path I took I've walked time and time again since I was a child, but it was like I was seeing it for the very first time. I allowed myself to notice everything, I stopped and admired the beauty of the changing leaves, I felt the crisp autumn air enter into my soul. It was wonderful! 

There's no words to describe the healing powers of nature, it's just a feeling but it's a feeling I truly believe in. I've always been an outdoorsy/active person and it wasn't until I took the time to connect with nature again that I realized how much I had been missing that in my life. The day of my walk was gorgeous, perfect sweater weather, however yesterday and today have been nothing but gloom and rain, but instead of finding myself running from the rain, I've been embracing it. It's like mother nature has woken up my soul and made me feel alive again.

I know I'm not the only one to experience this sensation. In fact, I got a text from my boyfriend about a week ago telling me the same thing. He was having a bad day, just felt a little down and didn't want to be stuck at work. He was working on a roof and all of a sudden it started to storm. While everyone else was running for cover, he lifted his face to the sky and allowed the rain to wash over him. He smiled because for the first time all day, he felt alive. 

In our busy, progressive society, it's easy to get caught up working too hard, trying to be the best, rushing from place to place or spending all of our time stuck in a concrete jungle. But I urge you to escape from all that, even if just for a few hours, and get out and become one with nature. We evolved from nature, we weren't always surrounded by tall buildings, loud noises and lots of light, life used to be a lot more simple and a lot more peaceful and as humans we're hardwired to still crave that because that's how life was meant to be before we took control and focused on making everything 'bigger / better / faster / stronger'. We have evolved as a species but it's important to remember where we came from. We are just as much a part of nature as are the animals, the trees or the ocean. We need to take the time to embrace nature, to take it all in, and to allow our minds, bodies and souls to recharge. 

Here are a few photos from my walk. I hope they inspire you to get outside. 

    

RAW Emotion

The following is an exert from a journal entry I wrote on Friday May 16, 2014. As you can tell from the entry, I was in a dark spot at the time and was really struggling to understand my life.

** Update: Since I wrote this journal entry I have stopped going to work completely as I found it too hard to focus on myself and getting better while also trying to force myself to work a 9-5 job where other people depended on me. How could I be there for others when I couldn't even depend on myself? I decided I needed some time to just figure out me. I also feel like my medication is starting to work a little better. It's taken a long time to truly start altering my brain chemistry, but I can say that within the past month or so I have noticed a bit of a difference. Remember, I started my medication in March and it wasn't until July that I really felt a significant change. That's five months! So medication isn't a quick fix option, this process takes time. I'm still by no means feeling fixed or better, but it is very encouraging to recognize some progress, no matter how small. 

RAW Emotion

"I really don't feel very much like myself anymore. I look like me, but that's really the only thing about myself that I recognize. Some days are better than others. Some days I know that the real me is hiding just beneath the surface, other days I feel like I'll never see her again. It's hard to look at myself in the mirror every day and to not really know who the person is staring back at me. It's upsetting. I act different than I used to, my mind thinks in a way that feels so foreign to me, everything I used to identify myself with, my education, my career choice, are gone; vanished, replaced by what, I do not know. Everything I used to enjoy feels distant; out of reach.

It's hard to tell whether I'm getting better. I suppose I am. I don't cry or break down as much as I used to, I can spend a night alone without panicking, I've been able to force myself out of bed in the morning and go to work more often than not - those are all good signs. But I'm not really sure that the medication is working. It certainly didn't last time Although I'm on a different type of medication this time, it seems to be the same story. I feel like it worked a bit at the beginning, my brain got a nice spike of serotonin and then it stabilized me a little, just enough that I was no longer going crazy, and then it plateaued, leaving me here, in limbo, stuck. 

Stuck. Not getting worse but also not getting any better, just staying the same. This 'sameness' is starting to agitate me, it's hard to push myself each day when I don't notice any improvements. I will never give up on myself, if there's one thing I am, it's determined. But the longer I stay in this one place, without seeing a meaningful change, the harder it is to conjure up the motivation I need to push myself forward. Why keep working so hard and get nothing in return? But I will, because I know otherwise I'll be swallowed up in a vicious circle - every time I miss work, every time I don't do something I had my heart set on, it'll make me feel worse and just continue to bring me down. 

Going to work seems to be the thing that stresses me out the most. I don't know why. I honestly enjoy my job, it's the type of work I've always dreamed of doing - working in an office, researching, writing reports - the old me would think I hit the jackpot, that I was given the opportunity of a life-time, and yet the new me isn't quite content. Again, I feel stuck in limbo, confused between the life I always wanted, which is the life I have now, and the life I now keep dreaming of. I'm not sure which path to take, which life I want more, I'm at a crossroads and I think that's really contributing to my depression. I always wanted the office lifestyle - the 9-5, the suits and briefcases, the desk, the business meetings, that was so appealing to me. Now, after living in England and travelling around Europe (especially Portugal) I'm confused. I want a more laid back lifestyle, more relaxing, I want to be in control. 

Matt asked me why Portugal was so special and as I told him, it's just because the people there live such a carefree way of life. It was a turning point for me, it was there that I realized that I needed to take life less seriously. It was there that I realized that there is so much more to life than all these daily hassles and work and stress. Life is an adventure, it is my adventure, mine to create, mine to live the way I want. Just because I have grown up in an uptight, serious society does not mean I have to continue to live my life that way. North American society has created these rules, these boundaries that we are to live within, these expectations that we are to live by. Everything is focused around who gets the best grades, who has the best career, who makes the most money. That's how I used to identify myself as well. But life doesn't have to be that serious, it can be so much simpler. I don't want to live within these confines that someone else created for me, that someone else decided was the way that we should all live. I want to be in control of my own life, to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, without having to answer to anybody. Other societies have adopted this more relaxed version of life and the people just seem so less stressed, so much happier. I want to live a life that makes me happy. 

This life I'm living now seems lonely, hallow. I feel like I'm living the same thing from day to day. In fact, I don't really feel like I'm 'living' at all. It is all so mundane, I'm just doing what I need to get by. I feel alone. I have no one to share this life with. I have my family, I have Matt, but they can't be my everything. I love my independence until I realize how constricting it is, how much I'm missing out on since that's really all I have. It's hard though, for me to carry on friendships. The friends I did have treated me so badly in the past. I was bullied, I was walked all over, I was used. How can I trust that that won't happen again? I lost touch with so many people because I focused 100% of my time on school work, I had no personal life. Or I felt too depressed to do anything so I never saw my friends and they eventually just faded away. Then there's the few friends I thought I could trust with my secret, that I have depression, only to find out that some of them didn't want to be friends with someone who was 'broken'. I had to watch them walk away, ignorant to what I was really going through. I had to watch, helpless, as this illness defined the limits of my life..." 

My Experience: Part II - The Suffering That Depression Has Caused Me To Endure

It’s really hard to put into words how I feel when I’m depressed. There’s no words strong enough to do my feelings justice and if you’ve never experienced depression yourself, you can only try to imagine how terrible it really feels. No one can understand the true horror of depression unless they’ve felt it first-hand. If you’ve never been clinically depressed your body just isn’t programmed to feel such strong negative emotions, to hit a low that reaches deeper than any low you have ever experienced. Lucky you.

I have panic attacks, anxiety attacks, full on mental breakdowns that all occur just out of the blue. I can literally be perfectly happy and not have a worry in the world one minute and then all of a sudden this rush washes over me and I feel scared, although I don’t know of what, my mind is blank yet racing with thoughts at the same time, I forget everything I was doing, everything I should be doing, everything I am and I just become overwhelmed with negativity – it’s like I’m under water, drowning, being tossed around by a giant wave with no way of knowing when it’ll stop, if it’ll stop, if I’ll ever get the chance to come up for air. My chest feels tight, it’s hard to breath. I start shaking and crying, gasping and hyperventilating. I need to get somewhere safe immediately – my bed, the arms of my boyfriend, my mom or my sister. It goes on for hours like this. Every time I start to feel a little calmer and the tears have managed to stop flowing then another rush comes over me. There’s no trying to stop it, to get a hold of myself, my brain can’t even fathom how to go about doing that. All I have to do is wait; endure the pain of it all until it comes to its natural end. Needless to say, I feel off for the rest of the day. I can’t shake the feeling of what happened. I feel sad, down, lonely, tired. I just want to fall asleep and hope I sleep right through until the next day.

I cry a lot. I’ve heard that crying may mean you’re not dealing with depression but simply grief because as I explained in a previous post (Depression vs. Sadness), your mood produces emotional symptoms, whereas the symptoms of depression are more physical. But I’ve always been a very emotional person, I’ve always turned to crying as a way to release the feelings built up inside me and so I think my excessive crying now is due not to the temporary mood of grief, but to grieving for the loss of myself that depression has caused. I don’t recognize myself any more, and sometimes no matter how hard I try, I can’t get back to the way I used to be and this scares me. So whenever people ask me how I’m doing, whenever I’m forced to talk about my depression, I get a lump in my throat and the tears start swelling up behind my eyes and no matter how hard I try, it eventually becomes too much and I break down crying.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting by myself and I just start crying out of nowhere. All of a sudden this feeling of frustration over takes me and I can’t escape it. I bring my knees to my chest, put my forehead on my knees, and grab at my hair with both hands, pulling on my hair because I feel so overwhelmed, so frustrated, so broken.

I get irritated a lot and lose my temper. When people do things that I used to find funny and playful, I now have no patience for them and they cause me to be annoyed. The littlest things set me off and I argue a lot more than I used to. I also can’t concentrate – my mind either feels overwhelmed and jumps from one idea to the next, making it impossible for me to make up my mind or I stare blankly ahead while my mind is off in la-la land, thinking of absolutely nothing, just wasting time away.

Most of the time I have zero motivation to do anything. There’s lots of things I’d like to do, and often I’ll sit there staring at things, willing myself to just pick them up and start doing something, but I just can’t. There’s no explanation for it. There’s just this force within me that is holding me back. It’s terrible, because I’m so bored, but no matter how strong the boredom, I can’t bring myself to do anything. Sometimes I can’t even read or watch TV or do mindless tasks. I just sit there, staring off in the distance. Sometimes I go days without showering because it just seems like such a huge chore. I love to cook but I barely eat decent meals anymore because I just don’t feel like making them. I live for nature and the outdoors but most of the time I can’t bring myself to get dressed let alone leave the house, even to just go sit in my back yard for a bit. It takes me hours to fall asleep at night, usually I’m not asleep until 4am and then I never want to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. By the time I’m up it’s almost lunch time and I’ve wasted half my day just lying in bed. I used to be extremely active (sports, gym, yoga, zumba) but now I do none of that; it’s just too much effort. I’ve become lazy, but not a kind of laziness I can control. It’s not like I don’t want to do these things and rather sit around doing nothing, definitely not! I would love to be my active self again, but I just can’t. Again, there’s that imaginary force holding me back.

Most days I get out of bed and go sit in my recliner, I drink a tea and spend the whole day reading. I only get up to go to the bathroom, snack on something that doesn’t require time to make or to refill my tea. I feel like each day just blends right into the next one, it’s all a blur. My life is passing me by. Days have turned into weeks, into months and now into years of me doing absolutely nothing with my life. It saddens me that I’m missing out on so much, that I’m missing out on being a regular 24 year old girl, that I can’t hold on to a job and don’t even have enough money to live off of let alone go out and have a good time with my friends doing all the activities I dream of one day doing again. I try to get things done each day to change my situation, even if just a little, but it’s terribly hard to notice any progress. I’m determined to turn all this around and be my happy self again but sometimes I just feel stuck. 

My Experience: Part I - My Story

I haven’t posted in over a month. I didn’t forget about my blog or give up on it but I was going through a down period and I needed to focus on me for a little while. I also knew the next couple of posts I wanted to write were to describe my personal experience of getting diagnosed and dealing with the effects of depression and it was hard to work up the courage to tell this story.

In 2010/2011 I went on an exchange to England for a year. It was the best year of my life! I experienced a new culture, I met so many amazing people and made some of my best friends, I travelled all the time. It was perfect. Then I returned home to Canada and things got hard. I was thrown back into a more strict society with higher expectations; it was like culture shock in my own country. Friendships had dwindled over the year as people’s lives continued on without me while I was gone. It was my last year of university and for the first time ever I found school work to be a chore. It wasn’t hard, I had just changed. I used to be the person who identified myself by my grades and focused only on school work, to the detriment of all other aspects of my life. But now I had experienced a different way of life, a more relaxed way of life; I felt alive. I wanted to travel and explore and meet new people and socialize; school just wasn’t as important as it used to be. But I had gotten straight A’s throughout my past 3 years of university and I knew I’d be very disappointed in myself if I didn’t get straight A’s in my final year, so as hard as it was to concentrate, I pushed myself to give it my all. In the end it paid off and on graduation day I was happy when I received a medal for graduating at the top of my class. It was worth it. But I was burnt out.

Throughout the year I also diagnosed myself with Seasonal Affective Disorder. After being in England for a year I was certainly sun deprived. Then came the cold Canadian winter (which I usually love because I ski/snowboard/skate/snowshoe) but for the first time, I hated it. I started sleeping a lot, stopped trekking to the gym, went outside as few times as possible and eventually started skipping most of my classes (which I NEVER did before!) I think the lack of sunlight, the endlessly long, cold winter, and my pure exhaustion from school just did me in. My body gave up, it didn’t want to try and fight anymore.

After my year abroad I had also gone through a break up. The break up itself didn’t contribute to my depression, but there were consequences to that relationship that were now fairly evident. For 3 and a half years my life had revolved around one person and now that he was gone, I was alone. I had given up most of my hobbies and we had spent all of our time together so I now realized that I really didn’t have any friends. This certainly affected my mood – I had no support network, no one to share stories with, no social life. It was just me. I love having alone time, but when all my time was spent by myself and I had no one to do anything with it got incredibly lonely.

In May 2012, right after I finished my last year of university, I was officially diagnosed with depression. I went on a dopamine medication and immediately had a bad reaction so my doctor switched me to a serotonin medication that seemed to have more promise.  But despite having just gotten diagnosed with depression, I still decided to move back to England for law school. In hindsight, that was probably a bad idea. I loved England, I made more awesome friends, but being in another country, so far away from my family, at a time when I was really struggling made things worse. I was fine for the first semester, the change and the excitement was enough to boost my spirits. But then second semester came along and I was 100% burnt out. I couldn’t focus on school; I had no interest in it anymore. The grey, rainy weather in England put a damper on my already low mood. I had no motivation to do any of the fun activities I had planned to do, and I barely saw my friends any more. I stopped going to class, even though I was on a VISA and could get kicked out of the country for not showing up. I stopped going out with my friends. I didn’t travel anymore. I didn’t even get dressed or leave the house. It also didn’t helping that I was dating (and living with) a guy who turned out to have zero aspirations in life – his negative outlook on life really brought me down. I decided to break up with my boyfriend, take a leave of absence from law school and return to Canada. Packing up and getting myself to the airport was an enormous task for me, I’d say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. It was so hard for me to gather the motivation to actually do something and to leave the house and catch a train to the airport seemed impossible. I almost didn’t get up the morning I had to leave because I couldn’t coax myself to get out of bed and face the day. The only thing that got me moving was knowing that I was going home and that I could then get into my own bed and not have to move again for as long as I wanted.

Being home actually made a huge difference. It was nice to see my family and my dog. It was summer time and I live on the lake so I could just relax and soak up the sun. I was happy. And I thought I was cured. I had stopped taking my medication while in England, a few months before I came home. I found it really wasn’t helping me and I actually thought it was making me worse. Now that I was home, I was glad I wasn’t on any meds, I don't like the idea of putting all these unnatural chemicals into my body, I much rather find my own personal, natural ways of healing, so I was happy that all I needed to cure me was to come home and be with my family in the sun.

So I had dealt with depression (officially) for just over a year – May 2012 until June 2013. And then I was fine. I was still struggling to get back into a routine of working and moving out of my parents’ house, but I was happy. I eventually moved to Toronto in January 2014 and started working in February. I then got a second job in March and I loved how busy I was. After so long of doing nothing and being bored of doing nothing but not having the motivation to do anything else, a full schedule felt like heaven! Until the end of March, when it all came crashing down again.

March 2014 – I had been free from depression for almost 10 months and all of a sudden I felt my world spinning out of control again. Maybe I was never really completely free from it the first time. Maybe it was just a false sense of happiness from switching up my routine. I’m not sure. But I was certain that I was dealing with a relapse.

I missed work one night because I suffered an awful panic attack and couldn’t stop shaking and crying for hours. The next day I quit that job. I started struggling to wake up to get to my 9-5 job downtown and I either missed days or came in late. Eventually we worked out a revised schedule where I worked 11:30-5 instead. That helped for a while, but as time went on that also became too hard. I wasn’t falling asleep until around 4 or 5am, so waking up in the morning was actually impossible. Even when I managed to get to work, I couldn’t concentrate and it took forever to get anything done. I eventually just stopped going to work altogether. I reluctantly went back on medication (a different kind then the previous 2 I had tried). It’s working better I think. I also started seeing an acupuncturist (more on that later) and he really helped me deal with some of my issues. I’m still struggling with the relapse. But I can definitely say I’m on the rise again. And this time I’m not going to assume my recovery. I’m going to work hard and make some serious life changes so I can hopefully eliminate depression from my life altogether.

I know this post is incredibly long!! But whether anyone reads this to the end or not, I thought it was important to tell my background story of how I got to where I am today, if not for anyone else’s benefit, then at least for my own, as a record of my past and what I’ve been through. In my next post I will discuss all the feelings and emotions I have experienced when in my states of depression to give people an understanding of what I go through, and to help those of you dealing with depression see that you’re not alone in experiencing these troubling feelings. 

Feelings You May Experience If You're Dealing With Depression

Below is a list I created for myself of how I feel on a regular basis. I experience most of these feelings daily, although the severity of the feelings varies from day-to-day. I found it helpful to write all my feelings down – getting everything out of my head and on to paper made me feel less overwhelmed. It’s also great to be able to look at this list from time to time and remind myself that even though I’m struggling, there’s nothing wrong with that, the feelings I’m experiencing are normal for the situation I’m in, and I think recognizing that is an important step in recovery.

I encourage you to make your own list to help yourself better understand the different sensations your body is dealing with. For some of you, creating this list may be easy. Personally, I struggled with it because it was hard for me to accept that this is what I was going through (normally I’d just sweep all my emotions under a rug and forget about them) so this was definitely a good reflection exercise for me. Just remember that there may be things on my list that don’t apply to you and likewise you may be dealing with certain feelings that I haven’t experienced. That’s okay. We’re individuals and that means even though we’re in the same situation we may have slightly different experiences, that’s what makes me, me and you, you. We’re all unique, and you should be proud of who you are.

How I Feel (in no particular order)

• Anxious
• Stressed
• Sore (all my muscles feel heavy and are in physical pain)
• Sad
• Down
• Lonely / alone (even though I know I’m not)
• Like no one understands (even though I know that’s not true)
• Irritable
• Upset
• Indecisive
• Unable to concentrate / distracted
• Like I’m letting people down who are depending on me
• Guilty
• Depressed
• Nervous
• Tired / exhausted
• Burned out
• Unconfident
• Not like myself
• Confused
• Lazy / lethargic
• Overwhelmed
• Unable to sleep at night but then can’t wake up in the mornings
• Restless
• Shy / timid / soft spoken
• Vulnerable
• Easily frustrated
• Scared of conflict
• Emotionally unstable
• Scared
• Lost
• Like my mind is fighting against me every step of the way
• Angry (at other people and at the fact that I struggle so hard at everyday tasks that come so easily to others)
• Trapped

Me & My Silhouette

Hello friends! Welcome to Me & My Silhouette.

For a couple of years now I’ve been dealing with depression and I’ve found each day to be a constant battle with myself to get out of bed and do the things I enjoy doing. I’m tired of living my life this way; of being a prisoner to my own mind. Something needs to change. I’m determined to get better and to live my life to the fullest. I’m in control, and you are too!

If you want to get better than nothing can stop you. It’s going to be hard, but all good things in life are. If you’re determined, if you persevere, I promise you you’ll become a stronger person, ready to take on the world. All you have to do is believe in yourself. This blog will show you how.

Me & My Silhouette will be my virtual diary; we can take this journey together.

I think education is key; only when you understand what depression truly is can you start taking the steps to getting better. I’ll teach you the facts of depression and give you a list of resources that you can use to enhance your knowledge. I’ll share my personal experiences with you because I know you feel like no one else understands what you’re going through but believe me, I do. And I hope when you hear my story you’ll realize that you’re not alone. Finally, I want to get better, and I want the same for you, so I’ll motivate you, I’ll inspire you, and I’ll give you tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way that I promise will help you if you’re willing to try. I know it’s all easier said than done, I know it’ll be a struggle, but all it takes is a bit of courage, a bit of determination, and some baby steps and you’ll be well on your way to a healthy, happy lifestyle. Let me guide you; let me be your light :)