This is Emily’s second day with us as the Mental Health Blogger of the Week.  If you have not check out her wonderful site Surviving Limbo, you really should.

I really got a lot out of what Emily shared with us on Monday.  The reasons for our diagnosises  may be different, however, it appears she and I share similar manifestations of symptoms. Not only that, but I discovered we live in the same state.  It is comforting for me to get to know someone that I already have so much in common with.

Today, Emily shares her favorite mental health resources with us.  Please take the time to check out at least a few of the sites she has listed.  There are some real gems.

When I saw the counselor on Thursday, she had a suggestion – homework – for me.  It has to do with setting boundaries and finding ways for my family – husband and daughter – to remember to not cross them. This is going to sound absolutely crazy – no pun intended – but she suggested I do something silly and create a Circle Of Death.

She knows I like to try and use some humor when I set boundaries, it makes it easier for the family to accept them. She is also aware that when I am feeling like I am now, I do not want to be touched, or even like people in my personal space. I feel as if I am being smothered when I am having personal space issues and people insist on entering it. Her rather unusual homework was for me to take some duct tape and create a circle around me. Include where I am sitting to do my writing – the couch.

After I create my circle, I am to let my family know that as long as I am in it they cannot talk to me, or touch me or do anything that compromises my personal space. I am also to tell them that the Circle of Death is for their own protection.  It is a way for me to be with them, while at the same time separating myself from them just enough so that I do not yell at them or hurt their feelings, given my extreme irritability and agitation right now.

Creating the Circle of Death will give them a fair verbal warning and also a physical reminder that there is a zone they should not enter. This will eliminate any confusion – on their part – about where my boundary begins, and what the consequences will be if they choose to cross it. If they choose to ignore the boundary then they are responsible for the consequences – taking their lives in their own hands, so to speak.

I will let you know how it goes!

Due to how popular my first Depression and Cooking post has been, I decided that I would try and have a post about Depression and Cooking at least a couple of Fridays a month.

When my depression is active, I feel like being extremely inactive. That includes feeding my family. However, since I do not want my depression to control my life, any place I can claim victory over it is a good thing. Sometimes that victory takes the form of preparing my family a tasty and nutritious meal. The key is, the meal needs to be simple. Something I can accomplish with very little effort, or something I can help my family prepare.

When I was visiting my parents, my mother prepared several meals for us. One in particular I enjoyed. I enjoyed it so much because it was something that she had served for supper when I was a kid, and it was very simple. It was our version of a Mexican Salad and cheese quesadillas.

One of the reasons I like the Mexican Salad is that she and I fix it differently and both versions are good. The other reason I like the salad is that it is extremely simple and I usually have at least some of the ingredients around the house. The quesadilla is even more simple and involves two ingredients.

Here is a rough idea of what the recipe is for the Mexican Salad:

Lettuce (salad in a bag works good for this. No prep involved)
ground meat (beef, turkey, chicken, even tofu crumbles)
taco seasoning (I buy it in a pack. All that requires is me dumping it on the meat)
shredded cheese (You can buy cheese already shredded. I buy fairly large packs so I usually have some in the fridge)
canned Kideny beans, drained (I almost always have these in the cabinet. Store brands are cheap, so I buy more than one can at a time)
Russian Salad dressing (This can be a hard type of salad dressing to find, Catalina is a good substitute_
Frito corn chips (crushed) or tortilla chips (broken into bits)

Brown the ground meat, once browned stir in taco seasoning. Put in salad bowl with remaining ingredients. Toss with dressing.

I often serve this same salad with green onions and no ground meat. Instead I will bake a piece of salmon to have with it.

Cheese Quesadillas are great for many reasons.  I have a thing for grilled cheese sandwiches, unfortunately the carbs in the bread are not good for my diabetes.  Using tortillas instead of bread, especially the veggie tortillas reduces the amount of carbs I ingest. Little kids seem to enjoy these as well.

You will need shredded cheese (your choice of the type)

Tortillas (your choice of the type)

Heat olive oil in a pan large enough to hold tortilla. When heated place one tortilla in pan, cover in cheese (the amount of cheese is up to you).  Place second tortilla on top of cheese.  Cook until you think the first tortilla is browning, then flip.  You cheese should be melting.  Once you think the second side has cooked enough.  Remove from heat.  I like to slice the quesadilla up into triangles and then serve.

Let me know if you try these simple recipes out, and what you thought about them!

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.  ~John Barrymore

Whine. Whine. Tears. Scared. More Whine – with a little bit of cheese. I cannot do this.  I do not want to do this.

Those are just a few of the words that could be used to describe how I felt when I found out that I was going to have to stop taking Effexor.  The way I felt the first few days of the withdrawal process reinforced those feelings.  At one point, I was so miserable that all I wanted was to check into a hospital so I could be miserable all by myself. Maybe I physically felt as bad as I did because of my state of mind, maybe not.

What I do know is that so far some of the physical problems that the Effexor was causing seem to be be getting better.  My blood sugar is coming down, and so is my blood pressure.  As those have come down, I have felt so much better.

Most experts agree that exercise is good for depression, and is extremely beneficial for people with Type II Diabetes.  I have felt such guilt and self condemnation at the fact that I almost never exercised.  People who did not know what I felt like on a daily basis may have thought that I was lazy, and unmotivated.  Or they may have thought that I did not care about my physical and mental well being. The reality is that everyday of raging high blood sugar was like a day “walking through jello”.  I was so darn tired ALL OF THE TIME. The extreme high blood pressure also made me feel rotten.  Quite simply, I did not have the energy or strength to do much of anything.

The change in how I feel is so remarkable.  The amount of  change that has taken place in such a short time is a miracle.  Stopping the Effexor was the best possible choice for me.  I am not saying that I do not need to go back on an anti-depressant, because I most definitely do.  What I am saying is that I can see now that although Effexor helped my brain, it was so bad for me physically.

One of the most joyous things that has happened since I have begun to physically feet better has been the fact that I have walked miles in just a matter of a few days. Those walks were so wonderful because it was something my daughter and I could do together.  Sometimes when we walked, we talked about silly things, other times we engaged in serious discussions, and there were times when neither one of us said a word. No matter what type of conversation we engaged in or did not engage in, it has been a real bonding experience for us.

Laughter Makes Me Feel Good!

It is hard to joke around and laugh when you feel yucky.  However, in the last few days I have felt more like joking around with Anna than I have in a long while. I even had a great opportunity to embarrass her in public yesterday. I did not realize how much I had been missing a good long and loud belly laugh shared with my daughter.  I cannot explain to you how wonderful it has been to be able to tease her and have her tease me for the first time in a long while.

Giving Back

I have been using a local free clinic for my medical needs for over a year now.  I have probably received better health care there than I have at most of the doctors I have ever had to pay to see.  I have been wanting a way to repay them for all the kindness they have shown me.  I have tried to volunteer there, but every time I am set up to do that, I end up getting sick with something – usually an asthma flare up.  The last few months I have simply not been physically able to even consider volunteering there. However, my withdrawal from Effexor afforded me an opportunity to give something back.

One thing the volunteers at the clinic have been able to help me with is obtaining free medications from the drug manufacturers.  One of those they helped me get was a year’s worth of Effexor, sent to me – via the clinic – three months at a time.  Today I had to go pick up some of my medications from them.  One of those items was my three month supply of Effexor.  Obviously, I can no longer make use of it, and I did not want that medication to go to waste.  So today, when I was at the clinic’s pharmacy I asked them if there was any possible way I could donate the unopened supply of Effexor to the clinic.  To my surprise and delight, they said yes.

The pharmacist explained to me that Effexor was one of those medications that they could not keep on hand as much as they would like to because of its expense.  I should be receiving at least two more refills of it from the drug manufacturer and we went ahead and made plans for the pharmacy to take those as well. She also said that my little donation would help many patients. It really did make me feel good to be able to give back to the place that has helped me so much.

All this joy from something I did not want to happen.  I love it when things work out that way.

“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.” – Richard Bach

Are you choosing to be the Victim of your mental health issue/mental illness? Or are you choosing to be the Victor?

I know what some of you might be thinking…Did she really just ask if I am choosing to be a victim of my mental illness?

Ummmm, yeah, I really did just ask that.

Now before you decide that I am yet another one of those self help guru’s who has never had their own mental health challenge, and that I have no basis in reality to ask that question, I urge you to read a little bit more of this blog post.

I have spent the last three to four years facing my own mental health challenges. For a good portion of that time, I chose to be the victim. I made that choice because:

• I was scared
• I thought my family would not understand
• I was embarrassed
• Making choices was hard, especially given how I felt. It required more effort on my part than I desired to put into anything.

I allowed my mental illness – depression – to become so strong that eventually any choices that I might have made were taken out of my hands. The disease itself took away my choice to live or die. My thoughts were so irrational that other people – family and medical personnel – had to make life choices for me.

Once I began to reach a bit of clarity in my thinking – this came after a two suicide attempts and a psychiatric hospitalization – I realized that I had choices to make. I could choose to continue being the victim of my mental illness or I could choose to become victorious over it.

In the past, when I thought of someone being victorious over something, the mental image I had was of glittering confetti falling down, golden streamers flowing from their hair, and crowds in the street cheering for them. There was no doubt that there had been a victory of some kind and there was no doubt who the victor was. I think that this type of imagery is common for most people, which is why I believe it is hard for most of us to visualize any type of victory over a mental health issue/mental illness. We want clear cut answers. We want to see hard evidence that we have defeated something. It is hard to get that clear cut, “I won” answer when we talk in terms of defeating something as intangible as a mental illness.

However, we can live in victory over our mental health issue. I am not talking about a cure. I am not talking about no longer having to take any medications we are on. I am not even talking about stopping any type of therapy we might be engaging in. I am talking about changing our attitudes when it comes to our own mental health “label”

I am talking about Personal Responsibility.

Give me a minute….I need to check and see if I actually wrote those words. Oh..I. Did. Is it possible to irritate yourself with your own “wise words”?

I have been thinking a lot this week about Personal Responsibility in reference to mental health issues/mental illnesses. I have been thinking about the role Personal Responsibility plays in regards to a disease – an organic process – that takes place in someone’s brain.

Nine months ago if I saw or heard someone use the words Personal Responsibility in reference to my depression diagnosis, my reaction would have been one of polite disdain. I probably would have rolled my eyes, and politely listened to what they had to say – if they were in front of me – and privately ranted about how that person had no idea what they were talking about. Or I would have skimmed through what they had written so at least I could truthfully say, “What a thought provoking read”, while keeping what thoughts they had actually inspired to myself. It is possible that seeing or hearing the words Personal Responsibility even four weeks ago might have inspired me to call the person who used them a few not nice names – only in my head of course.

The reality is that we do have some personal responsibility when it comes to our mental health. Even in the times when we are barely holding on, we still have choices. Granted, the choices could be yucky ones, but we do have choices. To the outside world, those choices may seem silly or inconsequential but they are still our choices.

We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility. – Albert Einstein

I believe that Personal Responsibility is doing the best YOU can in your set of circumstances. Not what your Aunt Fay thinks is your best, or what your Mom believes you should be doing, or even what someone else who has the same diagnosis as you is currently able to do. It is doing the best that YOU are capable of at that point in your life. Having been there, done that, and have the hospital bracelet to prove it, I can whole heartedly say that for some of us, the best we can do is simply to put food on our forks and then into our mouths. As long as we are doing the best that we can, even if it only involves making the simplest of choices, we are living in victory over our mental health issue/mental illness. It is a victory born out of Personal Responsibility.

Personal Responsibility means that we STOP using our mental illness as an excuse for why we cannot do something. It means that we STOP blaming that disease for why our life is not going the way we want it to. Dare I use this phrase? Yes, I think I will. Personal Responsibility means we are going to have to COWBOY UP,and get about the business of living our lives the best we can. It also means that we must do what we can to manage our own mental health. For some of us that will mean making sure that someone else is in charge of giving us our medications, because either we cannot remember to take them, or the temptation to take too much at one time is harder than we can presently handle. For others, taking Personal Responsibility over our own mental health means that we need to push our comfort zones more. Sometimes taking Personal Responsibility for our own mental health means we have to take a step back in our treatment process in order to relearn how to use a particular “tool”.

When we take Personal Responsibility for our mental health, our attitude about our particular mental health challenge changes. The way we feel about ourselves changes. Very often we are surprised to find ourselves rising to challenges that we might not have even considered attempting to conquer before all the business in our brains got started. I believe taking Personal Responsibility for our mental health has the potential to make us happier. We have more to be proud of, and that increases our own sense of self worth.

Personal Responsibility:

• Gives Us Choices – there is never any choice that is too small or too silly when it comes to Personal Responsibility.
• Is doing the best you can in your set of circumstances. – If the best we can do on a particular day is making the choice to live for that day then we are doing the best we can in the set of circumstances that exists for us at that time.
• Gives us a sense of pride – When we can truthfully say, “I did the best I could today”, no matter how big or small what we did may seem to the rest of the world, we can feel good that we did the best that we could. The more things we have to be proud about, the more our self worth grows.
• Means we are choosing to be the Victor and not the Victim. By choosing Personal Responsibility, we are choosing to no longer allow our disease to dictate our life circumstances – we no longer choose to be the victim.  We are choosing to do the best we can, no matter what the circumstances are, which means we WIN – we are living in victory over our mental illness.

This post was written as part of The Blog Gang. A circle of bloggers who write about the same topic, each from their own point of view. This month’s topic was personal responsibility.

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same. ~Francesca Reigler

I have decided that I need to return to the basics. You know, that basic homework my counselor had me use to create a more positive thought process in my head. It is a fairly simple bit of homework, all I have to do is look for at least three positive things out of every situation. Okay, well maybe it sounds simpler then it really is.

I thought I had gotten extremely skilled at doing this. I suppose in comparison to how I used to think – glass is always half empty, life sucks and the world is out to get me – I was getting fairly adept at it. However, this whole withdrawal process has shown me, that I am still a long way from being as skilled at positive thinking as I want to be.

“Would I like some cheese with my Whine?”

Instead of focusing on the positive parts of withdrawing from Effexor, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how rotten I have been feeling. The headaches, the muscle aches, the constant need to sleep, and even the nausea have been what I have been concentrating on. Thinking so much about how my body feels has done me no good. In fact, I have allowed it to create a negative mental attitude in me. I do not know about the rest of you, but when I have a negative attitude it also affects how I feel physically.

It is time to practice what I preach!

I talk often about being positive.  I tell other people that thinking positive will help them/us get through the trials that depression and other mental health issues throw at us.  I say that I practice positive thinking everyday.  Yet, when I am faced with my biggest personal trial since I began depression treatment I revert, to some extent, to old patterns of behavior.

I believe that I had become complacent. Taking it for granted that I would always pick a positive attitude and/or thought process.  At the same time, I had not really paid attention to the fact that it has been months since I have had to face any real difficulties in my life and depression treatment. This withdrawal process has turned into a much needed reminder that when it comes to my mental health, I can not take anything for granted.

Beginning again

1.  Withdrawing from the Effexor is allowing me to sleep more than I have in years and years.

2.  The constant feeling of wanting/needing to cry is a great reminder that I still need to be on an anti-depressant.

3.  At least during the time that I am not having to take any anti-depressant my sex life will be better than it has been in about four years (3 years of untreated depression and about 1 year of being on Effexor)

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I can take the next thing that comes along. -Eleanor Roosevelt

Sometimes I think I am like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.  The one thing he most wanted in the world was courage.  He wanted it so much he was willing to face the scary, powerful Wizard to obtain it.  Little did he realize that he had courage all along, facing the Wizard proved it.   Silly Lion, facing the fear is a mark of courage!

One of my biggest fears since a medication was found that worked on my depression has been anyone or anything getting in the way of me being able to take it.  That includes when I have been in the hospital for asthma, and the timing of when I was to take the depression medication was changed.  I have had such a fear of it that my previous psychiatrist was able to detect severe anxiety in me even when I just thought about my depression medications being changed in some way.

I have been so afraid that a medication change would happen, that I actually deluded myself into believing that it could never happen. Now, what I have feared has become a reality.  Not only has changing depression medications become a reality, I am having to stop taking the one I have been on cold turkey. I cried when I received the news.  I cried mostly because I was afraid.

I admit it.  I am afraid. I am afraid that I will lose all or at least most of what I have gained over the last year and a half.  I am afraid that I will lose my sanity.  I am afraid of feeling as sick in my head and body as I used to.  I am more afraid of these things than of death.

I have realized something over these last few, very hard days – thanks in part to my mother.  Being afraid is okay. Being afraid is normal. Mentally Ill or not, anyone in a similar set of circumstances would probably be afraid.

So here I am on my third day of withdrawing from Effexor.  I feel rotten.  I have the worst headache I have ever had in my life. I am constantly thirsty.  I get hungry, eat, then I want to throw up.  My body aches from head to toe.  I have no idea how long it will be before I can start on a new anti-depressant. I am still afraid. However, the fear that I have now feels different than it did.  It is hard to explain but the fear I have now feels as if it is empowering.  Like I looked that fear I had of depression medication changes in the face and said, “I know you now.  You still scare me, but you cannot defeat me.”

Now I know what it feels like for other people when they have medication changes. I can sympathize and empathize with what they are going through. I can be of better help to them.  I also know that the next time I have to go through something like this – I am sure there will be a next time – I am strong enough to handle it.

To myself I say, “Silly Melissa, facing the fear is a mark of courage!  You Win!”