Have you ever wanted to try your hand at blogging but were intimidated by the process? Or do not think you could write enough to fill a blog? Or even wanted to just try it out before you set up a blog for yourself? Have you thought about being a regular contributor to a blog, but did not want to have one of your own? Maybe you already have a blog of your own but you want some more exposure for it?
Here is the answer to all those questions! I am looking for guest bloggers, someone who contributes occasionally, and/or regular blogging contributors.
Topics for blogs must be geared toward the blog’s main topics, depression, anxiety, diabetes. You can describe what your own anxiety attacks feel like, even talk about mild depression, or how you or a family member cope with diabetes. You can have an article that gives advice about any of those topics, or one that is strictly informational, or a personal blog post about any of those topics. If any of the main blog topics you decide to write about are comorbid with something else, you can write about how the conditions affect each other. As you can see there are so many ways you can take those topics.
Perfect writing skills are not mandatory. Just write clearly, get your point across, and together we can fix any grammar or spelling mistakes.
Guest Bloggers can submit articles whenever they feel like it. No deadlines. Regular blog contributors must submit something at least once a week.
You will be given full credit for anything you contribute to the blog
If you are interested in being a guest blogger or regular contributor, send me an article that you would like to see posted on the blog. I will review it and let you know if I decide to use it in the blog and when it will post.
Monthly Archives: October 2009
Look Forward
Look forward. For me those two words have several meanings. A person can “look forward” to an exciting upcoming event. Someone can “look forward”, as in have their eyes/mind looking toward their future. Or for me personally, when I “looked forward”, it was often to think about my death, and how I had nothing hopeful to look forward to.
In all that time that I was checked out from the world, not only was death on my mind, but I also experienced little to no personal growth. Now that I have woken up, the process can begin again. It needs to begin again. If it does not, then I know that I will be in the same shape, or even worse than I was in not too long ago. In a stuck place, where I was barely functioning and barely living.
I do see a dilemma. While it is a positive step for me to look forward and think about and even make plans, I need to be careful about how far I look, how much I plan. It will cause me to stress out, worry, and have all sorts of bad thoughts if I take too much on. For the most part my life still needs to measured out in day to day kind of way.
The biggest and most worrisome thing for me was what kind of person am I going to be when when I get on the other side of this recovery process. I have already decided that I do not want to be the person I was before the depression started, but there are some qualities of that former self that I do want. I certainly do not want to be who I was when I was “checked out”. It becomes hard to predict who I will turn out to be.
I began to think about it in a new light. This is can be a very interesting opportunity for me. To some extent I will be able to pick and choose what qualities I want, and how I want to be. There are not many adults who are in a position to be able to do that. This is very exiting! The way I keep thinking about it in my head when I think about what I will be like in a few years is “When I grow up I will….”. because that is how it feels like to me.
I will grow up one day at a time. I will work hard to leave behind the things that cause me to feel bad about myself and hold on tight to the things that build me up. When I grow up, the foundation of who I am, will be built on a solid foundation. I will have confidence in myself. I will be happy with myself. I will LOVE myself. I will learn how to take problems and challenges in stride. I will learn how to do these things one day at a time, facing each new day with confidence and an attitude that is open to learning, and not worry about what the next day will throw at me. I will LOVE myself.
I look forward to what I will learn today. Today I do LOVE myself.
Daily – October 27, 2009
Yesterday had its ups and downs. For parts of the day I felt really down in the dumps and really discouraged. Other parts of day I felt cheerful and encouraged about things. An acquaintance of mine seems to have issues with people with mental disorders and said some really not nice things to me. So I am sure that is why I was feeling down part of the day. However, I did not let it get to me as much as I would have in the past. I simply buried myself in working on my blog. That kept me from thinking about the things that were said, and at the same time encouraged me. I really am enjoying myself designing my blog. I think I will start designing another one just for the fun of designing.
Sometimes I wish people paid more attention to what they were saying. They have not idea what someone’s state of mind is when they are talking to them, so they have no idea how damage words can do. It is no that they should be prevented from saying what they want to, but there are ways they can speak the truth without it being unnecessarily harsh 
Anna seems to be over being mad at me. In fact she was in a great mood today. We are talking more than we had in the recent past, and getting along better. That was the other part that was good about the day.
Anna's Picture Of The Day – October 27, 2009
Fallen Trees
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
Guest Blogger
Have you ever wanted to try your hand at blogging but were intimidated by the process? Or do not think you could write enough to fill a blog? Or even wanted to just try it out before you set up a blog for yourself? Have you thought about being a regular contributor to a blog, but did not want to have one of your own? Maybe you already have a blog of your own but you want some more exposure for it?
Here is the answer to all those questions! I am looking for guest bloggers, someone who contributes occasionally, and/or regular blogging contributors.
Topics for blogs must be geared toward the blog’s main topics, depression, anxiety, diabetes. You can describe what your own anxiety attacks feel like, even talk about mild depression, or how you or a family member cope with diabetes. You can have an article that gives advice about any of those topics, or one that is strictly informational, or a personal blog post about any of those topics. If any of the main blog topics you decide to write about are comorbid with something else, you can write about how the conditions affect each other. As you can see there are so many ways you can take those topics.
Perfect writing skills are not mandatory. Just write clearly, get your point across, and together we can fix any grammar or spelling mistakes.
Guest Bloggers can submit articles whenever they feel like it. No deadlines. Regular blog contributors must submit something at least once a week.
You will be given full credit for anything you contribute to the blog
If you are interested in being a guest blogger or regular contributor, send me an article that you would like to see posted on the blog. I will review it and let you know if I decide to use it in the blog and when it will post.
Neither In Or Out
I have blogged more than once about my anxiety and how it can and has prevented me from leaving the house on a frequent basis. For example, today my husband had to work, and my daughter wanted me to take her to youth group, but the time of day we needed to go and where we were going caused my anxiety levels to increase dramatically. In the end I had to tell her “No”. She was very disappointed with me, and I was very sad because I had disappointed her. So you can see how the anxiety I have can really get in the way of life, and not just mine.
There is another aspect to my anxiety that I have not blogged about. It is not bad enough that I have horrible anxiety and panic attacks that prevent me from leaving the house often, but I also have a similar reaction when people come to my house. Now isn’t that a kicker?
If I know someone is coming to my house a day or two before they are due to come, I start feeling anxious. Even though the house is clean, I will go through and reclean it and turn into a horrible, mean, nag towards my husband and daughter so they will help and make things my image of “perfect”. We all know how easy it is to reach perfection. By the time my husband convinces me the house cannot get any cleaner, I am so stressed that I am miserable and have made everyone around me just as miserable.
If someone just shows up to my house, well then “it ain’t purty”. As soon as they leave, I have to go to bed. I stay in bed until the next day and hope that the stress of an unexpected visit will go away.
I know why I have such a reaction when people come over. My house is my safety zone. It is and also represents the one place where I am “free to be me”. I do not have to act like I am comfortable, because I already am. I do not have to pretend like I want to talk to people, because I do not have to here. I do not have to wear makeup and if it is a bad mental health day, I can stay in my pajamas all day. Or I can have naked laundry day. Having to leave it sometimes is bad, but to have people invade, and it feels like an invasion to me, my safety zone it is almost more than I can bear.
When I first started seeing my counselor, she did some kind of assessment on me to see what sort of services I qualified for from their practice. I qualified for everything. I am considered a high risk patient because of the suicide attempts. One of the things I qualified for was some kind of extra service where these social workers would come to my house on the weekends or during the week, basically whenever I did not have an appointment and sort of provide me with extra support. I liked the idea until my counselor let me know about the whole having to come to my house thing. Then I had sort of melt down in her office. I had not been seeing her long, so she did not know about the whole panic attack when people come over to my house thing. She decided, after witnessing my panic attack, that it would do more harm than good to have the social workers show up to my house.
I look at this and I can see how dramatically it affects me and my life, the unfortunate thing is that it affects my husband and daughter as well. She cannot have friends spend the night over because of me not being able to handle people in the house and the noise they make (that is a story for another day). My husband cannot have his guy friends over. Depression and anxiety are diseases that take a toll on the whole family.
My hope is that one day I can feel less anxious about going places and way less anxious about my house being invaded by other people. Sometimes it seems like this whole recovery process is taking so long. I often have to remind myself that it does take a long time, and I have not been in treatment all that long.
Daily – October 26, 2009
I have been working diligently all weekend to bring you a much improved looking blog. I hope that I have accomplished it. It was not all that easy, because I was having to learn to code as I went. I took quite a bit of the unnecessary bits away, moved a few things around, and changed the background. The biggest thing I am excited about is, if things worked correctly, you should see a new font in some places of the blog. This is a huge accomplishment if it worked out, because blogger itself has limited choices on what fonts you can use, so I had to do a bit of code manipulating to get things to work out the way I wanted. I believe the font should show up for most everyone.
My other bit of exciting blog news is that I had a huge amount of visitors on Friday. That was very exciting for me. Although I am not blogging to make money, it does make me feel good to when I see how many people dropped by.
I made my daughter very upset with me today. Once again my husband had to work on a Sunday. She wanted to go to youth group this evening. Because of the time of day we were going to have to go to town and because of the anxiousness I felt today, I just could not take her. I know she was very disappointed in me and in the fact she could not go. It made me sad.
My daughter hates my profile picture. She says I have an awful stare going. I guess I am going to have to fix my hair, put some makeup on, and put on decent clothes so she can take a better picture of me.
Oh YAY!!! Just now, after several days of not hearing from him, my son texted me.
Anna's Picture Of The Day -October 26,2009
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
Guest Blogger
Have you ever wanted to try your hand at blogging but were intimidated by the process? Or do not think you could write enough to fill a blog? Or even wanted to just try it out before you set up a blog for yourself? Have you thought about being a regular contributor to a blog, but did not want to have one of your own? Maybe you already have a blog of your own but you want some more exposure for it?
Here is the answer to all those questions! I am looking for guest bloggers, someone who contributes occasionally, and/or regular blogging contributors.
Topics for blogs must be geared toward the blog’s main topics, depression, anxiety, diabetes. You can describe what your own anxiety attacks feel like, even talk about mild depression, or how you or a family member cope with diabetes. You can have an article that gives advice about any of those topics, or one that is strictly informational, or a personal blog post about any of those topics. If any of the main blog topics you decide to write about are comorbid with something else, you can write about how the conditions affect each other. As you can see there are so many ways you can take those topics.
Perfect writing skills are not mandatory. Just write clearly, get your point across, and together we can fix any grammar or spelling mistakes.
Guest Bloggers can submit articles whenever they feel like it. No deadlines. Regular blog contributors must submit something at least once a week.
You will be given full credit for anything you contribute to the blog
If you are interested in being a guest blogger or regular contributor, send me an article that you would like to see posted on the blog. I will review it and let you know if I decide to use it in the blog and when it will post.
Looking Back
In the few short months that I have been in recovery for my major depression and an anxiety disorder, I can see a big difference in my life already. I know that I still have a long way to go, but the process does not seem as daunting as it used to be. At least for the moment.
In the beginning of my recovery process, I used to tell my counselor that I wanted to go back to the person I used to be before the depression. I had that “old me” on a pedestal. It represented everything that I had lost because of the depression, asthma, diabetes and the anxiety. I was convinced that if I got that “old me” back, then I would be healed and my recovery process would be over.
I began to look back at who I used to be. I was a mom who was running children all over the place for hours every afternoon. The mom and wife who always made sure that supper was ready for the family, even with all that running around. I was the mom and wife who cleaned and maintained the whole house, and was always available for the family to come to and talk with. I was the mom who home schooled a child. I was the mom and wife who……..Do you see a theme here? I was everything that the family needed, but I was never anything for myself.
Even then I was unhappy. I would never have acknowledged that I was unhappy and dis-satisfied, but I was. All, I had been looking at was the fact that I could accomplish so much in a day, not the reality of who I was. Who I really was, was woman who had no voice, and no identity of her own. I was not appreciated for who I was, but for the things I could do for others. It is not my family’s fault that they could not appreciate me for who I was. There was no way they could since so much of who I was , revolved around and was wrapped up in doing things for them.
Then suddenly, like a toy who has wound down, I was stuck. Stuck in a life where I could do nothing for anyone, including myself. When I finally, got “unstuck”, the world had moved on, and had passed me by. It was hard to think of my child as a teenager, when I still thought of her as that little girl from three years before. In many ways, I still did not have an identity to call my own. So I grasped onto that “old me” thinking that was my goal.
Once I started feeling better, and could semi-function I started trying to fit into that old mold of me. It did not last for long, my medication quit working and I became overwhelmed with depression very quickly. Looking back again, I started to see a pattern. The pattern I saw was that I always seemed to wrap part or all of me up in what I could do for other people. Most of the time my family, but at times it was other people too. At some point, I would always become frustrated and unhappy, and it always led to a depressed state. Or if for whatever reason the relationships with the other people ended, and I could no longer get at least part of my identity from them, it would leave me at a loss and also sad and depressed.
I began to think about the things I could see about myself when I was looking back. I realized that I was not the “strong” person that I had thought I was. I was someone whose whole world and identity were based on what I could do for others and not based on my own skills and accomplishments. Looking back has made me rethink that goal of being the person I was before the depression got so bad that I “checked” out.
