On How I Manage My Life

This year has been very busy and very hard.  My mental health has suffered and as a consequence, my creative practice.  While last year I managed my goal of writing one short story every month, comparatively this year I have written very little.  I had not set a large goal for this year.  I had a project earlier on which I knew would eat into my brain matter, so I had decided at the outset to take things easy.

But not quite this easy...

I'm the tallest one in the picture for once!   
Winning a Mothers Day Card comp circa 1993

When I have little to no creative output everything just feels wrong.  It's not due to guilt, or ego.  It's more a loss of my sense of self.  I've been creating in some form or another for as long as I can remember.  I started keeping a poetry journal when I was about eight, which I still have* alongside some of the obsessively crafted stories of imaginary worlds a nine year old me put on paper.  While creating is a large part of who I am I strongly suspect that it's a coping mechanism.  Sometimes a means of escaping.  Sometimes a means of analysing and understanding.  Always an important tool for managing my mental health.

A stack of frozen baby food.  So pretty!

When the kids were little and my brain function was at an all time low, I focused on creating manageable things.  I made jellies and delighted in their colours.  I made a sourdough starter and from that created gluten free bread twice a week.  I exulted in the rainbow of homemade baby food I blitzed for Etta.  I focused on different creative outputs so I still felt human.

But this year my brain has felt too full to do even that.

I have had patches of activity and patches of nothingness.  There has been no consistency.  My mental health has been the worst it's been since Abby was small**.  And I'm not sure what this is like for other creatives, but for me it forms a vicious cycle.  Down and exhausted so no energy to create.  Don't create, so feel further disconnected from myself.  Disconnection makes me feel even worse about myself.

Plum jellies, such a gorgeous colour!

But recently I've had a breakthrough.

This breakthrough was, in part, due to going back onto medication to get some stability***.  Once I gained my equilibrium I had a brilliant idea.

Excel.

I love spreadsheets.  They help me feel calm.  The absolutes of mathematics are comforting.  While I mostly use them for creating budgets (I love making budgets), I've used them for many other things.  I used them to monitor Etta's sleep when she was a baby.  I use them to create week planners and charts for the kids.  I used them to chart my temperature when I was attempting to conceive Etta**** - which totally worked.  In fact, one of Etta's middle names (Sally) is derived from Murray's workmates nickname for our potential progeny: Celly.  Thus named for mine and Murray's***** obsession with Excel.

A few weeks ago I suddenly realised another way I could use Excel to improve my life.


I started tracking my writing.

I set myself an optimum goal of writing four hours a week.  I know it doesn't seem like much, but it is much more than zero.  Four hours is half of an eight hour work day.  Four hours feels like a manageable amount plus enough to achieve something tangible.  And while I haven't managed that goal as yet, I have managed to get some semblance of a writing practice happening.  I am excited about creating data to analyse and decide what else I should be tracking.  I have managed to post a blog once a week over the last three weeks while posting consistently on the same day.  This has never happened before.

I have built some LEGO this year, but building
without instructions meets a very different need.

It probably seems a bit silly, but I'm a list maker.  I'm a chart filler.  I'm a box ticker.  Having a visual reminder of what I should be doing makes me want to fill in those little boxes.  I'm a teachers pet from way back.  So it means that even if I really don't feel like writing.  Even if my brain is tired or my mind is blank I am picking up the laptop in bed and putting words on the screen.  I'm taking the lappy to work and snatching five minutes of writing time in the car.  I am editing in the lunch room.  And those words might be rubbish.  But it doesn't matter.  Because it's a start and it gives me a place to work forward from.  Building something is better than building nothing.

And I am starting to feel better.  I am still saddened that two wonderful people have left this earth sooner than they should have, but I'm coming to terms with it.  They were both problem solvers.  Both determined (some might even say stubborn) to do what they felt they were called to regardless of what barriers were put in their path.  Even if what I'm making currently is unremarkable, I am making.  And making is helping this grief, this loss, feel more manageable.



* Oh dear lord there is some awful stuff in there!

** A colicky baby who will not sleep alone plus a toddler with sensory issues does not make for good mental health
*** I had gone off my meds by accident (again), but had been coping ok.  I found that I was sleeping much better when I wasn't medicated, and that felt friggen amazing.  But with all the things that happened this year, after a while that ability to cope faded.  And, even with the negative affect it has on my sleep, medication became necessary again.

**** I only have one fallopian tube and had just been the go ahead to try to conceive.  But when not on the pill, my cycle is super irregular (thank you endo!) so I needed all the help I could get.  We had been told due to my medical issues we would be eligible for one bout of free IVF on the government, but having been through unsuccessful IVF as an egg donor previously, I really hoped to avoid that.

***** Murray is not so much obsessed with Excel, as someone who has had to use it as part of his job.  He is the master of adding buttons to make cool stuff happen to your data collection.

On Mental Health Awareness Week and my Mental Health

Because it's Mental Health Awareness Week I thought I should talk about mental health.  I've talked about this before - but it's always good to revisit as I learn new things over time.

My official diagnosis is PTSD resulting in anxiety, depression and dissociative disorder.  PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and in my case it's childhood trauma - so I can never  remember a time where I wasn't mentally ill.

I wasn't officially diagnosed until I was 20, but I have been symptomatic my entire life.  When I was  11 I was diagnosed with exercise induced asthma.  Retrospectively, what I was actually suffering from would have been panic attacks.  Kids didn't get diagnosed with mental health stuff back in the 80's and NZ has the second highest rate of asthma in the world, so it was a reasonable assumption.  Even though my peak flows were always off the charts.

How does having this illness affect me in daily life?

Like Masha and the Bear only not so cute...      

Well, sometimes it doesn't affect me much.  Living with mental health issues is like living with a friendly bear.  You live together side by side, most of the time it's just a little uncomfortable because it's a bit weird living with a bear.  But some days the bear just shits in your bed.  And you have to clean it up before you can go to sleep.  And some days the bear totally maims you with its claws and you feel like you will bleed to death and die.  But you don't want to tell anyone because your flatmate is an unpredictable bear.

And you don't always know when those messy days will occur.

Sometimes I know when things are starting to get bad and you I help.  But sometimes I've convinced myself that I'm ok, so I don't.  I have been in and out of therapy for 22 years now and I still don't get it right all the time.  I am sure this is not uncommon.

If only I had a protocol droid

The everyday things I struggle with are social.  I need to know what is socially expected of me to feel comfortable - I wish I had a protocol droid like C3PO at my side 24/7 to help me negotiate my way through social situations.  If I don't know what is expected of me I tend to panic and then shut down - like an overheated engine.  Consequently, I am scared of phoning people I don't know, walking into a situation I have little information about, or trying new (social) things.

This may seem odd to people who know me because I am a social, friendly person.  It's because I like people.  And I am fine in social situations if I know what's expected of me.  That's why I like working in retail - there are obvious parameters for most interactions.  The kinds of things I'm not good at are small talk with parents I don't know, or interacting with tradespeople or going to job interviews.

The other thing I suck at is conflict resolution.  I may seem bold on social media, and in person, but when it comes to actual conflict I freeze.  I have watched myself do it.  When someone touched me inappropriately recently (even after I had told him 'no' insistently) I just froze*.  It's like I'm a deer caught in the headlights.  I don't want to respond this way, but my body physically refuses to do anything else.  It's part of my dissociative disorder.

The other part of this is that I often zone out so much I truly do not see or hear anything outside of my 'zone'.  If I am out of the house, I am usually on a mission - so I'm in my 'zone'.  People have often accused me of 'snobbing' them because I have completely ignored them despite their bids to get my attention.  I'm telling you now, 98% of the time I would have just not seen or heard them at all.  This isn't the greatest for my kids - I have to work really hard on trying to be present for them, but it is really handy for getting work done in a noisy environment, or staying on task to complete a project.  So it's not all bad.

If I am unwell, I will try and manage my survival by procrastination or total avoidance.  I will avoid areas of known potential conflict.  I will not make the phone calls or open my mail.  I won't engage in unpredictable social activities.  When I was extremely unwell at 20 I just stopped leaving my house entirely**.

Sertraline - truly a lifesaver for me      

    

These days I manage my illness primarily with medication.  I take a low dose of Sertraline (the safest anti-depressant for when breastfeeding or pregnant), which is an SSRI that helps balance out my brain chemistry a little.  For me, being on medication means I can actually just live a normal life.  When I came off my meds recently, cashing up at work would often cause me to have a panic attack** even though I'm very experienced and good at this.  Because I was panicking, I would make mistakes.  Taking my medication means I can actually do my job competently without freaking out.

I've heard many misconceptions around antidepression and antianxiety medications - the main one being that it makes people into zombies.  Sure, if someone is on lithium or loads of sleeping meds or a combination of meds then maybe yes.  But in my case it just helps me feel, I guess, like a well person.  This will likely be the same for most people with long mental health histories - over time we have found the right chemical balance for us.  There are many, many different medications out there, and you often have to try several before finding the right one.  Dissociation makes it difficult to feel connected with reality.  It often feels like I am watching everything through plastic, like I'm a voyeur in my own life.  For me, medication helps me feel more connected with the world and consequently, makes it easier to make better decisions***.

I've also heard that it kills your creativity.  Maybe it does for some people, but not for me.  I try and write about something I care about at least once a week.  I photograph birds daily.  I try and have an annual creative project to work toward and look forward to.  Medication actually reigns in my manic tendencies which allows me to have better focus.  And my creative tendencies help me manage my mental health in a productive way.

Consciously engaging with nature daily in a creative way helps me to feel grounded

I do other things to manage my mental health as well.  Medication is the stabiliser, but in order to stay well I need to live consciously.  I try to make sure I have regular time to myself.  I focus on gratitude - daily when I'm not coping well.  I connect with the bigger world outside.  I walk.  I read.  I utilise routines.  I (try to) practice mindfulness.

1 in 6 New Zealanders will experience mental illness at some point in their lives.  And women are 1.6 times more likely to be diagnosed than men.  I don't believe is necessarily because we experience it more.  I think that Kiwi men still struggle to talk about their wellbeing so are less likely to get a diagnosis - I'd say our suicide statistics reflect this.  I am so grateful that we have men like John Kirwin and Mike King working to change this.

If I could impress one thing on those struggling to understand mental illness, it would be that it is a real illness.  We are not just really sad.  We are not just high strung.  We cannot just 'get over it'.  Like managing any illness, we need to visit our Drs regularly.  We need to utilise tools (medication, therapy, changes to lifestyle) to manage our illness.  And living like this is tough.  For some of us we have to live this way for the rest of our lives.  And it's not to feel special, or because we are too lazy to be 'normal'.   Mental illness is not a choice.
No-one would choose this.

But with understanding, patience and compassion you can choose to support those of us who experience it.

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If you think that you, or someone you know may be suffering from mental illness read this.
If you want more ideas on how to help someone suffering from mental illness, read this.

* It was (again) due to social disconnect.  If he were some rando I would probably have kicked him in the balls.  But he wasn't.  He's someone I know who is older and doesn't speak much English, and I didn't know the social convention of how to handle bad touching from an old person I know.

**At that point I didn't think I could cope with any social interactions in an appropriate manner (besides with my Mother) and was terrified of running into people I knew on the street - there was also a high chance of doing that as I was living in the suburb I grew up in where everyone knows pretty much everyone else.

***Because of perceived time pressure leading to awkward social interactions with managers.
 
**** When you don't feel like you actually exist it's very easy to make poor choices.  It's like you're playing a video game and you're curious to see what will happen if you walk into that pit with the spikes.  You know that you can just start over.  Because you're not really dead.  If you don't feel connected with existence to begin with it is difficult to feel afraid of death or of the outcomes of poor choices.