Tag: memory

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8 Things That Plague My Life Because Of Mental Illness

Mental illness, like any other illness, brings with it many changes and things that we have to cope with on a day to day basis. We have to take these changes and learn to live with them and not allow them to consume our every moment. If at all possible, we have to accept them and realize that no matter what happens we can live, in spite of everything.

  1. Completing a task that once seemed so simple. Most simple task that we all perform on a daily basis, we don’t even think about; we just do them.  Driving on the highway (something I haven’t done for 6 years now) the fear itself paralyzes me. Every task that I perform I will now replay over and over in my mind.
  2. Being unable to work. “Not working, I do not work, I cannot work.” Now that makes me angry; I worked for 28 years and loved it (most times). It now makes me feel so worthless. I wish I could, there’s nothing I need more, both for my mental health and for the income that we so desperately need. It seems so simple but for me it seems impossible. 
  3. Fatigue! Whether from my medication, mental fatigue or just plain exhaustion from fighting to be okay. Tiredness is an everyday occurrence that controls what you can or can’t do in  your day.
  4. Isolating! Days when you feel like hiding away or not coming out of your bedroom (but that’s not an option for me). Sometimes you just want to hide “YOU” from the world or vice versa
  5. .’Zoning Out’. I’ll just kind of withdraw from a conversation I was holding and zone out, unblinking, staring blankly at nothing. Maybe sitting in a room of people and totally separating yourself from everyone and everything in the room and creating your space in your mind.
  6. Sighing!  Everyone thinks I’m angry or frustrated all of the time, when really I’m just exhausted and overwhelmed. And sighing is just a release of negative energy.
  7. Losing my “Train of Thought”. I can lose my train of thought mid-sentence and often forget very common words. My mind just goes blank and I fumble for the word. Many times I have to be reminded of where I was and what I was talking about. This could be both frustrating and humiliating.
  8. Memory! I believe we can all forget things at one time or another. But for me there are blocks of my life that I forgot. Details that I can never recall. A song that once I probably knew every word; I now have to trust to writing the words on paper because I cannot depend on my memory anymore. Maybe it’s best I do not remember some things, maybe I don’t remember for a reason.

These are just a few things that my illness as plagued my life with, there are many more. But I have tried, to the best of my ability, to live above my illness. It’s one moment, one hour and one day at a time; it’s what we have. We cannot live in the past, we cannot dwell on the future but we can live for the moment!

 

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The Aftermath of my Depression and Anxiety

It’s ironic how I wrote this blog; I wrote the content before I wrote the opening paragraph. That’s me, never do things the normal  way, just being my unique self. The main thing is, I still get the job done. This being a chronic disorder, I still have to face each day has if I’m climbing a mountain. It takes hard work, perseverance and stamina. But you do what you have to do in order to survive.

Nighttime comes and I and I anticipate my escape from my thoughts and feelings, just maybe sleep will give me some reprieve. I do sleep fairly well, thanks to mirtazaphine , but my dreams/nightmares are frightening and tormenting. Just last night, I was on a locked down physc ward and trying to escape; but there was no way out. Because of the trauma I experienced during that period of my illness, seems to haunt me even to this day. I guess it’s my biggest fear that those days will return. I try not to live in fear but deep down in my subconscious, that fear at times resurfaces. I do trust and pray that God will spare me the horrific trauma of ever having to relive that nightmare.

Morning arrives and the first thing I have to do is to debrief myself; that those dreams and nightmares are just that, they are not real. But none the less they are a constant reminder of my past living hell, that will try to follow me through my day. I guess I am still experiencing a lot of post traumatic thoughts that I just can’t turn on or shut off. But I just pray that God will one day allow me to forget.

After debriefing is done and I desperately try to move past it; I am faced with the thoughts of how am I going to face the day with my limited strength and focus. My head is in a fog. The day seems so overwhelming and I feel so powerless over it, it’s then I go to my knees and ask God once again, for the thousandth time, to give me strength, purpose and wisdom. Even when I have days when I feel I can’t do this anymore, and I do have those days, then I believe God moves in and carries me.

Do I believe my illness has made me weak? Well sometimes I do think that but then that still small voice tells me; you are strong. If I were weak I would have given up a long time ago. Society taught us has men, that if we show our emotions then we must be weak; that is so far from the truth. It does show that we have compassion, humbleness and a caring spirit.  And to those who have succumbed to this illness, I am most certainly not saying they are weak but the pain of their illness was just too unbearable. If I were weak (by society’s standards), I would have given up a long time ago. But I pray that God will give me “continued” strength for everyday that lies ahead. Because in our little family we have so many uncertainties, unknowns and fears. But we will conquer  them one day, one hour, one minute at a time, through the strength of our Heavenly Father. Because there are days when you wonder how you are going to keep going, but you just do! What choice do we have?

One of the biggest adjustments still to this day is performing a task, a task that before just came natural and you didn’t even have to think about it; you just did it. But now that task seems so big, overwhelming and I have to over rationalize it. It is still a work in progress and I believe one day will get easier. A good example would be, I’m singing in the Christmas Cantata. Now, I have been singing since I came out of the womb and absolutely love it, it’s my passion. But now it comes with much fear, thoughts of; I can’t do it, I’m not good enough, inadequate and the list goes on. I have to do much mind control and self talk to override those negative thoughts. None the less, it takes much hard work to perform any task and that can be just exhausting. My day is only half done and fatigue overwhelms me. So I do what I can, just on a lower scale and try not to take on more than I can handle.

Have you ever had a task to do and you had to go to the next room in the house to do it and by the time you got there, you forgot what the task was? Well that’s the story of my life now. Just the other day I was supposed to be returning the water jug to the refrigerator and when I realized it, I had the coffee pot; now that’s scary. Because of my disorder, it’s my brain that’s affected, thus my memory and train of thought are/was highly affected. Now whether that’s from the medication, ECT treatments or aftershocks of the disorder; I’m not quite sure what the cause is. Maybe all of the above. Whatever the case, I cannot trust to my memory anymore, if there’s something I need to remember, I have to write it down.  If I have a speaking engagement, I have to write it down; I cannot trust my mind. Then there are times when I’m in the middle of a conversation and I just loose my train of thought. This happens too frequently and becomes a little bothersome. Maybe I need to eat more bananas, they’re supposed to be brain food.

So you see, even after all this time, I still have to fight this dreaded disorder. But I am so thankful for my improvement and believing that with each day will come renewed strength. It’s because of this hope that I can face each new day, despite my disturbed feelings of depression and anxiety.