Climbing Everest

The past few weeks have been challenging. Apart from a depression which has at times approached severe, I have had an attack of near crippling anxiety. It’s the type of anxiety that has no origin, no reason, and no explanation. It is like a knot is around my chest and everything is a source of supreme concern.

The best way I can describe it is as though every single thing I have to do or want to do is suddenly at the top of Mount Everest. Going to CrossFit? That’s nice. The box is now located at the summit. You want to do some reading for your PhD? That journal article is only accessible at an altitude of 29,000 ft. Oh, I see, you want to get out of bed? Best to climb a mountain first.

I wish I could say I was exaggerating. When EVERYTHING feels like it needs so much effort to accomplish, even the simple tasks like getting up, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, cooking a meal feel completely impossible.

One of the things I have managed to drag myself to has been CrossFit but it has required two to three hours of intense self-talk to get me going. Coupled with the thirty minute walk each way and an intense hour long WOD, you’re looking at a five hour process to complete just one task. That’s a huge time and energy investment and at the end of it, I’m not able to tackle anything else.

I have found one source of escape in all of this besides my workouts (which, once I get there, are really brilliant). I have been doing a lot of pleasure reading. Normally, to unwind I’d toss on Netflix, but recently every film and TV show has seemed really unappealing. I’ve found a better escape by reading books which I have been wanting to read for years but never quite got around to them. In the past month I’ve read A Picture of Dorian Gray, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and An Unquiet Mind. For someone who has also written two papers (one major) and has had to do academic reading this is a huge accomplishment.

Though I seem the type, I’ve never been what you would call a Reader with a capital R. Reading was a bit of a struggle for me because as a child and through high school I was a terribly slow reader. When we had to read three chapters for English on top of chapters in history and other work, I could never manage it. I emerged from the state school system firmly convinced of my own stupidity and hating the act of reading. In the fifteen years since then, whether it was through necessity in the academic arena or finally being permitted to read books that I genuinely found interesting, I guess I developed an ability to read more speedily. I’ve read Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion twice. I’ve read all of the Chronicles of Narnia and numerous books on Thomas Jefferson. I devoured the Harry Potter series and along the way I’ve read other random books mainly classics like the Art of War, Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, and the like.

While everything else has seemed like a completely impossible task, for the first time in my life reading for pleasure doesn’t. In fact, it has been my only refuge over the past two weeks. When the horrors of the real world have been too much, I’ve lost myself in someone else’s story and for those few hours, the anxiety abates and the depression levels off.

I suppose as far as coping mechanisms go this isn’t a bad one. But this has become an escape and I haven’t been able to do any work over the past week. At some point, I’m going to have to put the books down and return to the real world and face those giant mountains. 

Perhaps my next book should be a climbing manual...

The Lion

March has indeed come in like a lion, though not in the sense of the weather. It’s actually warming up here in Leicester and the sun has been shining the past few days. No, the lion I’m very much afraid, came in the form of some erratic moods.

A week and a half ago, I had a sudden burst of energy. I had been doing a lot of reading for my PhD and all of a sudden, I was making connections and I felt this urge to start writing everything down. My thoughts were flying a mile a minute and I needed to make sense of it all. I sat down and developed a 2500 word outline in one sitting for my first paper. The entire time I felt this energy running through my fingertips. It reminded me of how I felt the first time I drank coffee. It was like I had the power of the universe running through my veins.

I remembered another time about a year ago that I had felt this way. I had been put on antidepressants and I had begun to feel much better. MUCH better. I felt that energy all the time. My thoughts were racing on a constant basis and I found that I was talking to myself much more than normal. No, I wasn’t talking to myself; I was having full blown conversations and even arguments with myself. What’s more is I was arguing with myself in public…about arguing with myself in public. In retrospect, I find it a bit funny. I laugh when I think about it because of the absurdity. It all came to a head one night when I had been pacing around my tiny room, talking to myself. I had the sudden notion that if I were to run around the giant mound in the middle of the college, everything would be fine. Perhaps, in a way it was logical. I had an excess of energy, how do I deal with that? Run it out. The trouble is, I thought I should do this in my skivvies. Thankfully, I decided that it would perhaps be better to call my GP the next morning and get an appointment as soon as possible.

He saw me immediately. I remember bursting into the room and literally spilling out the past two week’s litany of oddities at roughly the speed of light. My GP, an unassuming, pleasant and sympathetic Englishman took it in stride. I’m laughing as I remember his raised eyebrows and look that if I didn’t know better was the result of his thinking, “Oh shit, I think she’s nuts.” He took me off of the medication immediately and my mood stabilised. I began CBT shortly after and I had chalked it all up to a bad reaction to medication. Until this month.

Once I began to feel that course of energy again, it was all too familiar. I didn’t feel I could blame stress and the international move and starting a PhD, at least not anymore. I thankfully never reached the same height as the episode last year, but it was enough to make me book an appointment with my new GP. Then I learned a new word: hypomania.

Apparently, this is the “nicer” kind of mania. It isn’t the kind where you become delusional and begin to think you are Jesus or that you can control the universe with your thoughts. It’s a milder form of mania and it described perfectly what I had been feeling. She had me take a form away to fill out and when I brought it back the next week, I had checked more than double the “normal” amount of boxes. I hadn’t thought it was that bad. I really hadn’t.

Then came the next word: Bipolar.

She explained that she didn’t want to medicate me in case we were missing something else, perhaps a thyroid condition. I underwent a bloodletting and am awaiting the results at this moment. She put in for a referral to a psychiatrist but warned it would be a few months before I heard back. I guess there are still some glitches with the NHS, though were I still in the US, I’d be waiting forever as I have no health insurance back home. I couldn’t shake the impact that word had had on me. Bipolar.

I’ll be honest, I had considered it before. I had spoken to very close friends about what I was feeling but they always seemed to assure me that I was just depressed. The effect of this word was enough to feel like someone had punched me in the solar plexus. I walked home from that appointment and I barely remember seeing anything. I remember looking at the memorial arch in Victoria Park and the flowers in the beds along the walk up to it. Everything else seemed grey.

I began to think about the past month and how I had been feeling. I had felt everything in HD. Every emotion had been more vivid, deeper, and realer. I began wondering if that were really a bad thing. I felt like my protective carapace had been cast off and I had allowed myself to be truly emotionally vulnerable. I had been more open and I had felt everything. The amount of empathy I had felt is almost too much to describe, but at the time I wasn’t overwhelmed by it. It felt really wonderful.

Now, everything was beginning to feel grey. The power of that word had drained the colour from the world. The past few days have been challenging. I haven’t been able to pull myself together enough to work as hard and as much as I want to. I haven’t made it to the box to work out as much either. I can’t peel myself out of bed in the mornings. I still at times feel things in HD, but it seems that it’s only the horror, depression, and hopeless feelings that are vivid. It seems like these elements are standing out of everything I read and watch and do. I suppose the saving grace is that I know that this will cycle out. That it isn’t of my own doing. The trouble is now I feel like I can’t trust the “good” cycle anymore. Is the good too good?

I don’t have a diagnosis yet. There’s still a chance this is a thyroid issue. In a way, I hope it is. It’s easier to explain that to someone than to say I’m bipolar. The one elicits sympathy and understanding. The other, mistrust and fear.  

It's not Lupus (but it is chronic)

I've been doing fairly well the past few months since I last posted. It's for that reason that I really haven't written anything in this space. I didn't feel the need to chronicle the good moments, I was too busy living and enjoying them. Which, to be honest, is as it should be. The only downside to that is when the bad moments come up. When the dark fog rolls in and obscures everything but its own black haze. In those moments, being able to go back and read about the good times, might be a real road map out of that cloud.

This past week was a difficult one. I had finally gotten over the initial excitement (and yes sadness) of completing another big move and starting the next chapter of my life. Those transitional periods can be really exciting especially when you have no idea what to expect and you are learning a whole new city and creating a new lifestyle. I didn't really have time to "be depressed." I was too busy doing things and meeting people. This week though, was the first time since the move that I found myself settled. I wasn't distracted by wondering where the grocery store was or how to get to the library. My brain had quieted down. Then I got slammed out of no where with a severe bout of depression.

This may be odd, but I was so annoyed by it. It came up at an inconvenient time and for really no good reason. I was angry that my brain decided to sabotage my week like that without any sort of warning. Then it finally hit me. I have a chronic condition. It was the first time I understood my depression in those terms. It's not unlike someone with rheumatoid arthritis who has flare ups and has to deal with the expectation of pain on a more or less regular basis. This week I had a flare up. Thinking about it as a chronic illness somehow made it easier to weather. It was the first time that being depressed didn't feel like my fault. That is huge. 

I'm lucky that it didn't last a long as my normal bouts of depression and perhaps this new revelation had something to do with it. It made it easier to think in terms of illness and medication. The illness is depression and for me the medications are CrossFit, friends, and art. I made sure I went to the box, and while I didn't go the four times a week I'm trying to hold myself to, I did go three times and each day I went, I felt better. I got in touch with friends from home and chatted and I made plans to visit friends who are nearer. I also invested more time in my art journaling. I've decided to keep a PhD art journal and that has made a difference in how I'm approaching my project as well as giving me a much needed creative outlet. 

It can be so hard to find your way out of the fog but with practice you start to draw your own road map that you can keep in your back pocket. 

The Chasm in my Chest

Once again I find myself being swallowed up by the darkness which feels ten times darker since I had been recovering so well and so swiftly only a month ago.  I have begun to ride on crests of panic and troughs of depression and all the while I can’t believe I am back here again.

I suppose it was being home that really contributed to the relapse. Being back in a place that hasn’t changed even though I have, where people aren’t sure who you are anymore so they treat you the same as before. All of a sudden old thought patterns and behaviours begin to reassert themselves and they take hold. It was the endless spiralling thoughts that were the worst. It was like it was a year ago and all I could think about was the relationship I had been in and then panic and desperation began to eat away at my new confidence. The endless stream of negative thinking reasserted itself and try though I might, I couldn’t disrupt it.

Part of the problem was that the support I had built for myself was thousands of miles away. I was able to go to some CrossFit boxes nearby and for those hour long sessions, the thoughts stopped and it was again just me and the WOD. Outside of the box it all started up again as though I had only pushed the pause button.

When I returned to uni it was only for a few days and I left again to travel around Scandinavia and Europe. My days were filled with all the things that make me happy. Exploring different cities, seeing new places, meeting and speaking with people, trying new foods, practicing other languages, and navigating new terrain. The days were perfect. I didn’t feel alone enveloped with the happiness of each new experience. But then the day would inevitably give way to night and I would make my way back to my room and then I would be alone. The stark contrast to the fulfilment I had during the day with the emptiness that came at night was like a punch in the stomach.

I tried explaining the feeling of intense emptiness to a friend.

“It’s like a giant chasm is in my chest. It’s like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where he is standing on the edge of that huge bottomless pit. It’s like that pit is in my chest, it’s empty and it’s physically very painful.”

When I finally came back to uni and I had nothing to look forward to but a research paper and the uncertain future. I crashed. I had two days until my therapy appointment and I felt like I couldn’t handle the extremes in thoughts. It was in that moment that I reached out to some friends on Facebook. It was like sending an SOS from a sinking ship. I was lucky to receive some immediate responses and encouragement; enough to spur me on to begin work on a PhD proposal and to make it through to my appointment.

As I sat there, crying and revealing past trauma that I had only just begun to recognise, the progress I had made over May and June felt like a joke my mind had played on me. It was as though I hadn’t been getting better at all. My frustrations with personal relationships exploded several times and I realised how angry I’ve been feeling. Angry because how I am today is the result of emotional abuse and the psychological trauma of an assault.

This isn’t who I was supposed to be.

My therapist couldn’t give me definitive answers; he couldn’t give me specific tasks that would get me on the right path to finding a meaningful relationship with someone. I was adamant. If I didn’t feel like I was making progress, I wouldn’t be able to function. I needed to feel like I was doing something to get better. He gave me some things to work on and though that should have been my last appointment, I made another for the following week.

It seems that we really are the sum of our experiences. Our interactions with others shape our thoughts and feelings and they have the power to cause immense pleasure or debilitating suffering. In the darkest moments it is often difficult to remember the light. It seems that the whole world has always been dark and always will be. I find it almost impossible to remember what I felt like only a month ago. I find it difficult to remember what my days felt like while I was in Europe. It’s only the intense isolation I seem to be capable of recalling. Depression truly is a bastard. It robs you of your good memories. It tries to destroy them. Soon you don’t even feel like fighting it anymore. And I think for today, I need to just accept a defeat. I am hopeful that tomorrow will bring the light again. 

Confidence Building

For the first time I think ever, I have begun to feel comfortable in my own skin. I’m not sure what to attribute this to. Is it CrossFit, CBT, becoming more vocal about causes I care about, being successful in grad school? Are these the causes or the results of this new feeling? I wonder if it can be a simple as cause and effect. Perhaps it’s a far more organic process.

I think it may have started with CrossFit. After six months I have begun to see and feel the physical changes that come with being fit. I have more energy, I’m stronger, and I feel successful because of the progress I have made. Becoming part of a community outside of grad school has also helped immensely. I think too often it is easy to become wrapped up in the small bubble of academia and you begin to forget about the wider world. As I have been able to attend classes more regularly, I feel like my progress has accelerated and I have felt even better. When I’m there, I am able to focus on just what I am doing. I have no thoughts about the next assignment, finding a job, or my personal relationships. It’s me and the WOD.

I started CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) a month or so ago. I’ll admit that I was dubious as first. I’ve done therapy before and I found it less than useful. I remember speaking for an hour about how awful I felt just to have the therapist say at the end, well I think you’re making progress see you next week. Progress? I would raise my eyebrow a la Skeptical Spock and walk out of the room. This has been different. CBT works on identifying thought and behavioural patterns. Once you are aware of these patterns you can begin to work on changing them. As a highly achievement oriented individual, having assignments and goal posts has helped me a lot. I think it has also appealed to my analytical and problem solving nature. Knowing where my patterns came from, what they are, and having tools to combat them has given me much more confidence in my ability to break them.

It was through CBT that I was able to identify just when, where, and why I began to suffer from depression. Turns out it had very little to do with me. It wasn’t because I was bad, awful, or broken. It was because I have had some truly terrible people in my life who told me I was those things. I started to believe them and VOILA! Depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and self-destructive cycling. Realising this has made me want to fight against elements in society that promote negative feelings especially against women. (The origins of my problem are rooted in being on the receiving end of some misogynistic rhetoric and actions.) I recently wrote an article describing the types of misogyny and sexual violence faced by women at my university replete with tips on how to stop that kind of thing in its tracks. I also took part in a study on a similar topic. Feeling that I am helping to change hearts and minds has again given me much more confidence and more than that, it has given me a goal. (Remember that achievement oriented thing?)

Even in my darkest moments this past year, I still managed to pull myself through enough to continue to achieve high marks in grad school. When I first started, I desperately wanted to achieve a first. It was the goal I set for myself and somehow I have managed to stay on track. For someone who used to believe she was quite stupid, I’d say this is a pretty great thing. I, like a lot of my friends suffer from imposter syndrome. When I first was accepted at university, I really thought that they had sent me the wrong email and that in a week or so I’d be getting a correction through the post. Then when I got here, I felt like I was probably out of my depth, that I was, well, an imposter. I think I’ve managed to shake that feeling finally. I’m not here because of a mistake; I’m here because I deserve to be here.

The confidence I’ve gained over the past month has been really amazing. I can’t point to one thing I’ve done or read to say, “That’s it. That’s when I had the epiphany!” I think it has all been a process. I vowed total all-out war on depression and anxiety and so far that holistic approach seems to be working. I’m smart enough to know I’ll still have setbacks and that those days will be tough. Those are the days that I’m going to make sure I get to the box for a WOD, or the days where I take a really long hike through some beautiful countryside, or the days when I take a look through the CBT exercises I’ve done, or the days when I read one of my favourite books, look at my marks, or write another article. I guess the point is, I’m not going to lose hope again. I’ve got too many reasons not to. 

Finding the Wall

I was speaking to one of my closest friends over Google Hangouts about trying to confront the anxiety and bouts of depression I have fought with for the past thirteen years. Even as I type that word “thirteen” I cannot quite comprehend the true length of time I have been engaged in this battle. It’s a battle that has not gone without casualties. I have lost people who I absolutely adored but who could not understand the daily struggle I was going through. I also have battle scars. They are invisible and visible; mental and emotional damage that I have tried to suppress beneath a practiced layer of positivity and affirmation just as I have on occasion hidden the physical scars beneath a layer of make-up. It is a very real fight this war against myself. So as I mentioned the new tactics I was now employing he startled me by suggesting I begin writing a blog about overcoming anxiety. There are few occasions when I am truly stunned. I was truly stunned. I couldn’t imagine how my story was any different from the thousands of those fighting their own wars. I let the suggestion settle into my thoughts where it steadily ate away at my doubts. Then this morning I began to feel the first pangs of a panic attack, something I had gone without for about three weeks when it occurred to me: write. Write, write, write. And so I began to write this. My first blog entry for Finding the Wall.

I suppose I should explain the title of this blog. As part of my total war on anxiety and depression, I began doing CrossFit five months ago. I was never one to work out in any sense before then; walking to and from lectures was more than enough physical exertion for me. A friend managed to convince me to give it at least two weeks and I was hooked after one class. There is a movement in CrossFit called Hand Stand Press Ups. It’s very much how you would imagine it. You do a handstand against the wall and then do press ups, your head touching the mat then your arms extending fully. I hate being upside down. It’s uncomfortable and I don’t feel in control of my body. The biggest problem I have had though was what my coach kept referring to as finding the wall. You have to go for the handstand and find the wall with your legs and trust that it will be there. The trouble is I don’t trust that it is there. I am put off by the uncertainty of whether or not it is there. I am put off by the uncertainty that if I ever do find the wall, I won’t be able to support my weight with my arms or that I won’t know what to do once I’m there. Uncertainty. That’s really what anxiety is all about. It’s about not knowing and that not knowing then eats at you. It erodes your confidence, your stability, and you’re left with that painful hollow stomach feeling.

I haven’t found the wall yet; not in CrossFit and not in life but I am determined to do it. This is my journey to the wall.