My Lack of Self Esteem

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

I enjoy it when I find a blog post that is discussing something I have been thinking about. That happened this morning. Chere Michelle wrote an awesome article on self esteem called Self Esteem Why Does It Seem So Hard To Keep Hold Of.?

In it she wonders why people, women in particular have such a difficult time with maintaining a healthy amount of self esteem for themselves, as well as getting respect from others. She indicates that the amount of respect we get from others is directly tied to the respect we give ourselves, how much self esteem we have.

For most of my life I have lacked self esteem/self respect. For me it is partially caused to some extent from learned behavior. (Mom if you are reading this please know that nothing in here is meant to intentionally hurt you, it is just the truth, and I am over being angry and hurt by it) From the time I was very little, my mother said very negative, insulting things to me. As I child I took the things she said for truth. I internalized what she said, and it became a running dialogue in my head. I felt I was unworthy of love or respect. If my mother could say those things to me, then they must be true.

I went through my childhood, especially my teen years with a very negative outlook on myself. Because of my own feelings of not being worthy, I looked for love, or what I thought was love, in the wrong places. This got me in trouble more than once, mostly with the type of men I usually “settled” for.

In my first marriage I settled for a man who could not/would not take care of his family. My second marriage I settled for a man that I knew there was something “off” about him. I would say for sure something was off about him, he broke my nose and stalked me for a while. Plus there were the various men in between.

My lack of self esteem has led to me not having a voice and speaking up with my opinion about something. It has led to me being resentful because I did not like how the situation turned out, but I also had failed to speak up. I have let friends, family and strangers walk all over me because that is what I thought I deserved.

I am sure that on some level these people picked up on the fact that I did not love myself, that I had no self esteem. They in turn treated me as less of a person than they were. I do not think everyone did it intentionally, some did but not everyone. Of course the more I was treated disrespectfully, the lower my self esteem became, the more negative my internal dialogue became. The more negative my internal dialogue became the lower my self esteem was, and I was treated with even more dis-respect.

I believe that this issue of no self esteem, not having a voice and negative dialogue contributed greatly to the depression I have had over the years. Especially this last time when it became so severe.

In my depression recovery process, I have been finding my voice, and gaining self esteem. It does make me sad at times that it took me until I was almost forty to even start learning that I am worthy of having self esteem, and respect from others. I think about all the years I have wasted with that negative internal dialogue telling me what a loser I am.

However, at least I am learning those things now, and finally for the first time in my life I have a voice. I have the next forty years to tell myself I am a good person, I am not a loser, to speak up for myself and to have a healthy amount of self esteem.

Do you have a healthy amount of self respect? If so, have you always. If not, what do you think is holding you back from having it? If you have a healthy amount of self respect, what do you do to maintain it? If you do not, what can you do to try and improve it?

Green Acres, Not Always A Fun Place To Be

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

The usual response I get when people find out that I live in the country is, “Awww, I have always wanted to live in the country. I bet it is nice there”. I suppose it is nice living way out here, however, there are times when it just is not pleasant.

I grew up in either cities or the suburbs, so all of our amenities were just right there. I did not have to worry about where our water came from, or where things went when I flushed the toilet. It was like magic, things just took care of themselves.

When I moved to where I am now, I learned very quickly that there is no magic process involved in delivering water to my house or taking sewage away. Because there is no county water or sewage run to our part of the mountain we have to use a well for our water and a septic tank for our sewage.

Even though I now knew that the well gave us water, and the septic tank took care of yucky stuff , I took them for granted. It just never dawned on me that a septic tank and a well, would actually need some sort of human contact occasionally to keep running smoothly.

A few days after we moved into our house, I was taking my morning shower, and while I still had shampoo in my hair, the water quit coming out of the shower head. Of course the first person I call is my husband. I was standing there with my phone to my ear, shampoo drying in my hair, begging him to come home and make my water “magically” appear.

He comes home, and of course water comes out of the faucets when he gets there. His diagnosis. The well was four hundred feet deep and filled very slowly. In my zeal to run every single dish, cup, glass, and piece of silverware through the dishwasher, I had depleted the water in the well, and had not give it enough time to fill back up before my shower.

That was the beginning of a pattern that was to last for several years. The water never ran out for anyone else, only me, and only when I had shampoo in my hair that needed to be rinsed out.

In that same year, I learned that there are more things to do with a sewage system than unclogging the toilet occasionally. I learned terms like gravel line, as in “M’am, you gravel line in your septic system has collapsed. That is why your septic tank is full and you have sewage coming up in your toilets, sinks, baths, and showers.” I also learned there are whole trucks devoted to doing nothing but sucking stuff out of your septic tank.

In August of the third year we lived there, once again for the 100th time, I am taking a shower and the water stops while I have shampoo in my hair. This time was different though. I knew I had done nothing to deplete the water, and my usual tricks did not get it going again. Once again there is an aggravated, irritated, panicked phone call to my husband, with me demanding that he “make the water come back”.

He tells me to go out to the pump house and “close the contacts” The best I can describe the contacts is that they are actually an electronic switch that tells the pump to start pulling water out of the well. Now, I have never messed with these the contacts before, but I see how to push the contacts together to make things start working. What my husband failed to mention though, is that touching the metal part of the contacts is a bad idea.

Want to guess which part I touched? Yeah, it was the metal part. I received a nasty shock, screamed and hung up on my husband who was laughing.

It turned out that our well had gone dry. We had to have a new one dug. The thing is though, you never can plan how much you are going to pay for a new well, because the drilling companies charge by the foot dug. So your new well could turn out to be several thousands of dollars, or a few hundred, depending on how far they have to drill.

The new well works so much better than the old one did, well most of the time. It seems there are these large ants that love to make a home in our pump house every year. There are bunches and bunches of them. So many in fact that as they are running across the electronic parts of the well, including the contacts, the contacts are closing and electrocuting them. Eventually, so many fried ant bodies have piled up that they are preventing the contacts from closing. If the contacts do not close, then no water comes up from the well. Guess how I found out? Yep, in the shower, with shampoo in my hair.

People who do not live in the country, seem to enjoy talking about the wonderful fresh air we have here. No pollution, no car exhaust, and no truck fumes.

We have none of those things but we have the lovely smell of chicken poo. Every summer many of the farms around here get fresh chicken poo to spread over their fields. By the time that stuff cooks in the summer sun for a few hours, the chicken poo reaches maximum smelliness.

You know those lovely spring days where you have your car windows rolled down? If you happen to drive past a chicken house that is being cleaned and your windows are down, the chicken poo smell will stay with you for many miles.

Something else I hear people talk about is how lovely our water must be. We get it from the well, and it has no added chemicals to it. They are sure that it is cool to drink all the time. Those things are all true. However, they do not realize that when we lose power, we have no water since our well runs off of electricity. I am smart though, when the weather looks bad, I avoid the shower. That means I do not end up with no water and shampoo in my hair.

Finally, all these wide open spaces and cow pastures, means there are loads of field mice. Not really a big deal, they are kind of cute. Except for the fact that when winter comes along they think our home is the perfect place to live. I do not use any kind of poison since we have pets, so with just traps it makes it harder to get rid of them all. No worries though, there is always
a snake that follows the mice into the house. I guess the snake enjoys the mouse buffet. Unfortunately, my husband is terrified of snakes so once he has evidence there is a snake in the house, the great snake hunt must commence. He has yet to find a snake, just a snake skin.

I guess country living is good. I just have to remember to have a sense of humor about the other stuff that is not all that fun.

Depresion and Marriage

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

Is it possible to maintain a marriage when one spouse has major depression, especially major depression that lasts for years? The statistics are certainly not encouraging. Marriages with a depressed loved one are nine times more likely to end in divorce. Add this number to the 60% divorce rate we already have, and it seems to me that most marriages where there is a depressed spouse do not survive.

One of the key elements of a marriage is the give and take that is supposed to exist between the married couple. There are times when it is not an equal give and take between the spouses, one having to give more than the other, but ultimately there is always a give and take. This is not the case in a marriage where one of the marriage partners is dealing with a case of long term, major depression.

The spouse without the depression will often find themselves picking up more and more of the slack. Taking care of things that would normally be done by the other spouse. In the short term, this works out OK, however, as the depression drags on and on, and the one spouse is continuing to be stretched thin taking care of things, a certain amount of resentment and frustration starts to build.

The more the depression the goes on the more resentment and frustration build up. I know that my husband expressed to me more than once that he felt like a single parent, when I was at my worst. In addition to feeling like a single parent, there was the added pressure of worrying about me and making sure I was OK.

Accepting that the problem is depression is half the battle for both spouses. It is easy to blame outside sources for why your spouse is in such pain. Before I started getting treatment for my depression my husband felt the sole reason I was acting the way I was, was because of how my son left our home. He did not understand that the depression had been there before that incident, and the incident just made it worse.

Depression affects not only the person with the diagnosis, but it affects the marriage as a whole. Especially if the depression goes untreated. Before my depression was diagnosed and I started the recovery process, my husband thought that I did not love him anymore. From his perspective, I was withdrawn, distant, and did not want to have anything to do with him. He felt hurt and taken advantage of, because I was incapable of helping him around the house. Our marriage was already under strain by the time I started therapy.

Then the things I was learning and doing as a result of the therapy added more stress to our marriage. As far as my husband was concerned the outcome of my therapy was far from what he expected. It has taken him some time to come to grips with the fact that I will not be the person he married.

Both people, not just the one with depression need a support system. It is imperative that even the person without depression has good support to help them through the rough patches. It is also important that both spouses work together on plans and other things that will give both parties guidelines to follow during the recovery process. A support system also can help the married couple identify when thing are not gong a well.

I personally think that it is possible to maintain a marriage when one of the spouses is living with severe depression. However, it is a unique challenge that requires both parties to make the effort to keep the marriage together.

One of the things I used to do was to write contracts with my husband about things I would or would not do. An example is, shortly after I tried to commit suicide, my husband was asked to work out of town. He was hesitant about going because he was afraid that I would try to kill myself again, I was still having suicidal thoughts. We came up with two solutions that made it so he felt like he could work out of town. First, I actually wrote a contract between me and him that stated that I would not try and kill myself during the time he was out of town. Also, knowing how I would isolate myself to attempt suicide, we decided I would stay at my grandmother’s house while he was out of town.

As far as my mine and my husband’s marriage is concerned, things are still a long way from perfect. However, each of us is trying as hard as we can to keep it together. We are also taking more time to understand how my depression has affected us from each other’s point of view.

I try really hard on my bad days to show him affection and tell him I love him, so he does not feel that I do not appreciate all the things he does for me. I can tell he is trying very hard to not become frustrated when I have a bad day and can not be the marriage partner he needs.

I also make a concerted effort to not think about those statistics. I feel like if I pay attention to them too much, then I am allowing them to pigeonhole my marriage into one of the failures. I want to keep my mind on my marriage surviving and thriving.

Aha! And Less Stress

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

One of my biggest frustrations in my depression recovery, is a perceived lack of support from my husband at times. He did not understand how the recovery process worked and I was not understanding of how hard the last few years have been on him. There have been times when both of us thought our marriage would not survive the added stress of my depression recovery.

My husband had it in his head that as soon as the correct medication had been found for me and I had been in therapy long enough, I would very quickly pull myself out of “this deprssion”. I have tried so many times to explain to him that it was not that easy, and that my medication really took its toll on me. He just could not understand it. Not for a lack of trying, but I think it is one of those things that you need to see or experience yourself before you can understand.

Over the weekend, my husband happened to be home several times when it was time for me to take my medications. He was able to finally witness for the first time, how I am before I take my medications, and how I am afterwards. He finally had the Aha moment I had been waiting for.

He realized that some of my not wanting to do things away from the house, is due to how sleepy the medications make me feel. He saw me go from a wide awake person to someone who could barely keep their eyes open.

I feel much less stress now. I am not feeling like I am not performing to someone else’s expectations and I no longer have those “I am a slacker” feelings. I feel like another weight has been lifted off of me.

My husband even went so far as to discuss with me about whether or not my medications needed to be changed again, based on how sleepy they make me. For the first time I was able to explain to him that most of the medications for depression will cause me to be that sleepy. I also was able to tell him that I did not want to change medications. I was able to tell him how bad my depression made me feel physcially, before we found this combination of medication and how I was not willing to take a chance on going back to that. If we started messing with the medications there would be a good chance I would go back to physical and mental state.

I really hope this state of understanding lasts. I hope that me having less stress will last. I believe with this better understanding, that my husband and I have a better chance of making it through the difficult times ahead.

Hey Mom! Guess What?!

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

I have a thirteen year old daughter I love very much. Her name is Anna. She is very smart, pretty, and fun to be around. She also can and does make me incredibly insane often.

Starting a few months ago, the question “Guess what, mom?” became something that could be heard around my house multiple times a day. When it first started happening, I thought Anna had done something that she was proud of and wanted to share it with me. Trying to be a good and interested mom, I would always answer with “What?” She would always answer with “Chicken Butt!”

This happened over and over. To be honest I found it extremely annoying. Finally, I quit responding to “Guess what, mom?” It was the only thing I could think of to stop the repeated asking of that question.

She changed tactics, she would go a week or so without asking it. I would let down my guard and think she had passed out of that phase. Out of the blue, and at unexpected times, she would again say “Guess what, mom?” Because a few weeks had passed since the last time she asked it, I would not suspect I was falling into her trap again. I would answer with “What?” Once again “Chicken Butt” could be heard echoing through the house.

Every few weeks she would pull her guess what routine and every few weeks I would fall for it. Eventually, I did reach a point where I just could not take it anymore so once again I quit responding to the craziness.

Anna went back to saying “Guess what, mom?” everyday. I would always refuse to respond. I was determined not to fall for it anymore and I was determined to not allow my child to push my buttons that much anymore. However, I had seriously under estimated my child’s determination.

After a full day of “Guess what?” and my constant no’s, Anna implemented her new strategy. She would look at me with a sincere, and wounded face, and say “Mom, I had something else to tell you instead of chicken butt” Of course, I was appalled at myself for hurting her feelings by not taking the time to hear her exciting news. In an effort to right the wrong I had committed, I would then say “What?”, only to be immediately blasted with “Chicken Butt!!!!”

It was at this point I had to concede my defeat. Anna had won the chicken butt war. From that point on, I would respond to “Guess what? with my “What?” every single time. It actually became second nature and quite boring. We finally quit hearing “Guess what” around the house.

I was relieved. I was so happy her game had finally run its course and she was done with it. Yeah, right! She had come up with a new strategy during that no “chicken butt” time.

Once again horrible sounding “Guess what, mom?” came out of her mouth. I responded with “No, Anna”. That is when she started playing dirty. When I would tell her no, she would respond with “But, Mom….I was just going to tell you I love you.” Of course I fell for it, and you can guess the outcome, “Chicken butt!”

She is sneaky though. Very, very sneaky. Sometimes instead of saying “Chicken Butt”, she actually says “Mom, I love you”. Which means I am currently caught in her “Chicken Butt” trap. How can I say no to “Guess what, mom? “, when her response might be “Mom, I love you”.

I have had to implemented my own strategy. When she says “Guess what, mom?”, instead of the usual response of “What?”, I respond with “I love you”. I think my strategy is working. Just yesterday when she tried her routine, and I answered with my new response, she seemed very disappointed. She replied with “Aww, mom, I was going to say chicken butt”.

As much as I hate to admit this, the whole “chicken butt” thing has become a funny memory for me. I think it will be one of those memories that when Anna gets older she and I can laugh about it together. The other thing about this crazy game Anna has been playing with me, is that even on my bad mental health days, it was causing me to think about other things besides my own misery. Either I was thinking about how crazy she was making me because she would not stop, or I was thinking about ways to get her to stop.

I am not sure if that was her intention when she started the game or not. She is a smart kid, so it very well could have been. Either way I think she is gifted in her ability to distract people from the things that are making them feel bad.

I also think her silly game has caused us to be closer. Because I am responding with “I love you”, every time she tries to “chicken butt” me, I am saying “I love you” to her way more than I used to. I am sure that is making her feel more loved than she has in the last few years when my depression was so out of control. The “I love you” and those shared memories are things that will make our emotional ties much stronger.

Picture Of The Day – February 1st, 2010

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

The last few years of having a mom who was “checked out” due to severe depression has been hard on my daughter, Anna. In an effort to try and rebuild that relationship and because she really enjoys taking pictures, she was given a page in my blog to show off her pictures. All the pictures you will see in this section, will have been taken by my daughter. I personally think she does an awesome job.

Anna enjoys see any feedback anyone has about her pictures, so if you like what you see here, why not leave her a comment and let her know.

Too Cool For The Spa – Part II

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

I am going to finish “Too Cool For The Spa” today. I apologize for not finishing it yesterday, but I just could not stay awake any longer and I had been working on that one post all day long. Some days are harder than others, in staying awake. My depression medications make me sleepy, some days worse than others.

After leaving my brother’s place of work, we were finally headed to our last stop, mine and my mother’s appointments with Dr. Szumstein. Again we arrived early. We got to his office and proceeded to try and find a parking spot in the parking deck. It was very busy, and the only spot we could find was on the very top deck.

This is a picture I took of the Atlanta Skyline from the top deck of the parking deck. If you look carefully, you can see the city of Atlanta off in the distance.

The waiting room at this practice had even more baseball memorabilia than the other office had.

After signing in at Georgia Lung Associates we did not have to wait very long for Dr. Szumstein to call us back. One of the things I like about this practice, is that the doctors actually come and get you from the waiting room. It makes everything so much more pleasant that way, not too mention it gives you the impression that the patients are really cared for there. That is not something you find very often anymore.

When we have appointments together, Dr. Szumstein will put us in the same room. My mother and I had a discussion over who would get the big chair. Neither one of us really wanted it. My mother prevailed in that discussion, after all she is older than me.

When Dr. Szumstein came back into our room, I asked him about taking his picture for my blog. I think he thought I lost my mind, but he did say I could take his picture. He sent mom off to have her breathing tested. While she was out of the room, he asked how I was doing. He knew about my depression and suicide attempt. I had to tell him because many of the depression drugs out there make Restless Leg Syndrome worse, and he has to know so he can make informed decisions about increasing my doses of Restless Leg Syndrome medication. He seemed very pleased to find out that I was doing much better.

Dr. Szumstein is probably my favorite doctor I have ever had. He is a very nice man as well as being a very good doctor. If only one of us is there for an appointment, he always takes the time to ask about the other members of the family.

Dr. Szumstein then sent me off for my breathing test. The technician who did my test for me that day was kind of enough to take a picture of me while I was in the testing booth. This is the test I have to do every time I go to the pulmonologist. It tests to see how well I am breathing and compares the results to previous tests.

Dr. Szumstein came back into our room and gave us our tests results. While he was looking over our information, I told him how mom and I had been comparing our wheezes as we were walking down the hall. She had a whistle wheeze and I had more of a rumbling wheeze. Dr. Szumstein thought this was pretty funny and replied with “Awesome!”

Dr. Szumstein did not seem worried by anything he saw in our breathing tests results, however, my tests results were worse than they had been right after I had gotten out of the hospital for an asthma attack. He also said that in all the time I had been seeing him, I only had one breathing test that was worse than this one. No wonder I have been feeling like crap lately.

The other thing that I really like about Dr. Szumstein, is that he is really good about giving out samples of medications. He knows that even with prescription insurance, it is still expensive to get everything filled. So he gave me and my mother plenty of samples to last us a while.

We were finally finished with all our appointments for the day and we could start back to the house. I believe my daughter was rather happy to be done with all that waiting around for people.

I think my family is rather cool. Instead of the women getting together for a day at the spa, we got together for a day at the doctors’. We are just that cool, too cool for the spa!

As a side note: I think maybe I should put my mother in charge of my schedule since she seems to get every where either early or on time.

Hospitals and Frogs…..

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Margaret Tidwell

For years my family has had this really odd tradition. If I had to point to anyone as the person who started this tradition, it would have to be two people. My mother and father are the ones responsible.

In 1996 my mother was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. At the end of all her treatments she had to have major surgery. My mom is like me, she does not want flowers in her hospital room. It makes it look too much like a funeral. In addition since her immune system was severely compromised, she really did not need any anyways. My father bought her a frog.

At that time my daughter was an infant and my son was about seven. Well, my son really, really, and I mean really wanted his grandmother’s frog. She is the type of grandmother that rarely says “no”. So he was pretty convinced he was going to get it. This time his cute, little, pouty face did not work. She said “no” and something about how it meant something to her since Grandad gave it to her.

In an effort to appease my son, we told him that if he ever was in the hospital we would buy him his own frog. The very next year, he was in the hospital with a broken femur. So the tradition became firmly implanted in our lives.

A few years ago my daughter developed appendicitis, obviously she was in the hospital. She had no memory of my mom being in the hospital or my son, but she had heard us talk about the “hospital frog”. So she wanted her own. We found one in the gift shop. At that time we had no idea that it was a webkinz, and just how special webkinz were, but that is a story for another day.

When I have been in the hospital, I have gotten my hospital frogs. I have several now. This last time I was in the hospital, I did not get one. My husband kept working during the day, visited me at night, and doing other stuff so he forgot my hospital frog. Last week as a joke I mentioned how I did not get my hospital frog.

Apparently, he remembered what I said and bought me one today. It is a very special one.