A Sign for My Window
24 Apr 2012 6 Comments
in Day-to-Day Life Tags: anxiety, coping, depression, life direction, quotes, self-talk, social anxiety
Life feels dark and directionless today. The weather can’t be helping, cold and blowing, rain hissing down from the sky. I feel like a sitting duck, waiting for disaster, which I know is ridiculous. I create my life. Mental illness affects it but I can choose positive thinking to get myself through today. But it’s hard with the sky so dark.
Every once in a while, life brings someone into my life that helps me see the sun. Someone breathes life into my veins and shows me that there’s a lot out there in the world, a lot of goodness that can be trusted. Then life takes that person away and I question whether they existed in the first place. It’s hard to believe in the good when it leaves so little evidence.
But I contradict myself again. There is evidence of good in the world, as I talked about in my last post. I just have to get there and hang on until I do. My problem is that there are so many people around me that are tired of life as well. There are so many of us straining for something better.
I read a quote this week, adding it to my one hundred and fifty page collection that grounds me when no one else can:
[My best tip for overcoming depression is] to regard it as being like the weather. It’s not your responsibility that it’s raining, but it is real when it rains, and the fact that it’s raining does not mean that the rain is never going to stop. The only thing to do is to believe that, one day, it won’t be raining and accept it so you can find a mental umbrella to shield yourself from the worst. The sun will eventually come up.
- Stephen Fry
Maybe I should make a sign for my window that the sky can read and be reminded that some of us down here have had too much rain. DEAR SUN, PLEASE RETURN TO MY LIFE. AND WHEN YOU COME BACK, DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE AGAIN. At least stick around long enough for me to dry off and warm up and sit in peace.
I feel myself in my own way. My self-talk is bad and my self-esteem is worse. Hence my lack of blog posts lately. And then, of course, I beat myself up over that.
Isolation is always a trap for me. I fall into it so easily since I adore doing solitary things like reading and writing and doing art. It felt like my connection with the world was falling away piece by piece and then I got the flu, so all the events I was looking forward to got crossed off my calendar. Now I feel like I have nothing to pick back up.
The solution is there: Go, don’t think, just go and do it and live. Or at least, write.
Links of Love
11 Apr 2012 4 Comments
in Fun Tags: art, creativity, frank warren, gaslighting, life direction, links, postsecret, psychology today, self-sabotage, TED, video
So, I’m still feeling sick as hell. Great! Anyway, I haven’t been up to any genius writing these past few days but I have found some great mental health stuff online that’s informative and inspiring. Worth every…click!
First of all, my new awesome friend Claire wrote about Happy Lists after reading my Happy List post from February. Her blog is brand new and I am in love already!
Next, , complete with a list that branches out into several related articles as sub-categories:
Number three reminds me of what I believe to be the original Gaslighting article, A Message to Women from a Man: You Are Not Crazy. If you’re only going to click on one link from this post, the latter is the best. I feel like my entire life is explained by it.
Moving on, TED (my new favourite site) has a brand new video of Frank Warren of PostSecret. It’s phenomenal. Check it out:
Speaking of TED, this is my most favourite talk on there, one that I make sure to rewatch every few weeks. It’s Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of on Nuturing Creativity. It’s a great example of how to weaken your negative self-talk and keep your channels of creativity flowing and open.
*okay, that video isn’t working for some people, so click this link to watch it instead. :)
(If you know me in “real life” I’ve probably talked to you about this. Now you have the link so you have no excuse for not watching it! I’ll be checking. Yeah, you!)
I just learned about assistance dogs for people with seizures. Apparently we emit an odour right before having a seizure and certain dogs can smell it. Once trained, a seizure dog can save lives. HONESTLY, GREATEST THING EVER.
Lastly, read about this . The header photo alone just makes me feel peaceful and wonderful:
Be well!! ♥♥♥
The Carousel
18 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in The Big Picture, Uncategorized Tags: change, childhood, coping, growth, life direction
I forget if I’ve told you that I live next door to a daycare for preschool-aged children. They play in the yard between my building and theirs, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to catch some of their conversations. As I was stepping off my porch this morning I saw a girl in a pink snow suit sort of lounging by the wall. A boy ran up to her and gasped for breath. She asked in alarm, “What’s wrong?” The boy answered, “It’s just SO MUCH FUN!!!” and then broke into hysterical laughter.
I have so much I want to share with you but each topic deserves its own post. I feel a little like that boy tonight, gasping for breath and taking it all in. I wouldn’t say that I’m having a hysterical amount of fun at the moment but I’m definitely at the sidelines, taking a step off the carousel of life to get my bearings.
A new year beginning can give us that time to reflect, as can birthdays, and endings. I experienced an odd juxtaposition today as I located a brand new place in order to say good-bye to people I hold dear to my heart. I almost missed the building at first because the outside wall perfectly matched the slate January sky. And the good-byes were like most, only with an undercurrent of understanding. We aren’t always so fortunate to get to part from others on the same page.
I wish I could be more specific but it’s not for today, or perhaps any other day in the near future. I think I will be able to understand it better myself as time passes and even then it will be complex, both hurt and healing. One thing about this carousel of life is that we can never see the whole picture because it keeps moving, always.
Are you on your carousel or off? Is it time to take a break or is it time to go around for another spin? Take a moment to breathe and feel the ground beneath your feet or just keep hanging on, trusting those strong hands of yours.
Invited to Share My Story
16 Sep 2011 15 Comments
in Local Events Tags: life direction, local events, london, mindyourmind.ca, speaking, the life of erin, treatment
Yesterday was a day of firsts! I spoke at the London Distress Centre‘s Annual General Meeting, where I told “my story,” which I have not done before. I put “my story” in quotation marks because it was not even quarter of my story, really, but it’s impossible to accurately represent my life in fifteen minutes to a room full of strangers. I also really promoted my blog for the first time in a public setting, which is really exciting.
I now feel obligated to say that if this is your first time reading my blog, you should probably read some of the earlier posts instead of this one because I’m uncharacteristically excited here. Plus you spent the evening with me so you’d just be reading about something you already witnessed. That said, you can read about it here from my point of view so do whatever you want. :P
In my speech I talked about one of my suicide attempts and I talked about my close friend’s suicide. I talked about how I’ve always felt like my contribution to the world was like a big bucket of black paint, and that any attempt to paint a brush stroke of myself on the world would be poison. I said that by sharing my story others have reflected it back to me, showing me all the beautiful colours I am capable of making. I shared some of my art that I’m planning on making a part of this blog soon.
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Therapy: School of Life
11 Aug 2011 3 Comments
in Therapy Tags: depression, life direction, mindyourmind.ca, school, therapy
My last post mentioned one reason I didn’t go to university or college: the fact that I felt invisible. There are actually many reasons I never went, but another reason that I am going to share with you now is that I couldn’t leave my therapist. When all my peers went away to school I stayed here because the rapport I had with my therapist was essential in keeping me afloat. I could have found a new therapist in the city I went to school in but I was so fragile that doing so was out of the question.
So I stayed in London and while there is a university here, it had no appeal for me. I decided to wait until I felt better emotionally and by the time that happened all of my ambition was gone. People tell me all the time that I should go back to school and they don’t realize that school is a really sensitive topic for me. So many things factor in to my decision not to go yet, one of which is maintaining proximity to my therapist.
When we hear about depression or other mental illnesses, we hear about their debilitating symptoms, but not about how debilitating treatment can be. While I acknowledge how fortunate I am to be receiving treatment at all, treatment is hard work.
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Screw Shame
04 Aug 2011 4 Comments
in The Big Picture Tags: feelings, guilt, life direction, mental health superhero underpants, risk, shame, therapy
I’m learning a hard lesson: shame about being mentally ill is not something I can just fix and then forget about. The shame lingers, waiting for a chance to reattach itself to my back. At the blink of an eye it jumps on me, making me heavy and slow. It sticks on the bottom of my shoes like gum, willing me to stop moving forward, to stay stuck and hide instead.
Bummer. I thought I’d outgrown my shame! Me and my mental health superhero underpants that maybe don’t fit me as well as I’d hoped. Today my mom repeated to me a question she’d heard on the radio: If you knew you only had one day left to live, would you go to a nudist beach? Talk about a serious question. Maybe what I ask myself is whether or not I’d be willing to take off my mental health superhero underpants and show up on the internet nude.
Wait, that didn’t come out right.
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Me and mindyourmind
23 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in The Mental Health System Tags: employment, goals, life direction, mindyourmind
I am writing today’s post from the mindyourmind.ca office, my old workplace. I’m back as a volunteer for a few hours a week because I love the staff here and the work that mindyourmind does. We joke that mindyourmind is like the mob – once you’re in you can’t leave!
It was an extremely hard decision for me to leave mindyourmind as an employee because I truly loved my job. I left for a few reasons, one being that both living with a mental illness and working in a place that deals with mental illness was too much. Sometimes what we’d talk about at work would really trigger me but for the sake of my job I felt like I had to pretend I was fine. I know that my coworkers would truly would have understood me being triggered, but I didn’t want to be this flake at work, always having my emotions get in the way of doing my job. I’m such a perfectionist and I didn’t want to be seen as unprofessional. Plus, I had therapy appointments two (sometimes three) days a week and therapy is HARD WORK. I felt like I had two jobs I was constantly juggling, both having to do with mental health.
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