Category : tools

A Season in Heck

I have a tendency to forget that summer is the worst time of year for my depression. I think it’s a combination of me not dealing well with heat and humidity, an increase in daylight hours, and my allergies getting worse. Maybe it’s just that this time of year plays havoc with my brain chemistry more than other seasons do. I talk a lot about not liking summer, but it’s often only when I’m deep in the muck of bad mood swings, melancholy, lethargy, anhedonia, and a difficulty reading and writing with any consistency that I remember that summer is my kryptonite.

This weekend, I did my usual hanging out at my local, favorite coffee shop, where I do a lot of my writing. I skimmed a few chapters of a few different books, I wrote a few lines of poetry, but I mostly sat in front of my laptop and…just stared. I’d bop around on Twitter and Facebook, read some entries on TVTropes, and then go back to trying to write and not writing anything. I got home on Sunday evening and felt…I’m tempted to say “awful,” but it was really more like “MEH.” I couldn’t even get my emotions cranked up enough to be upset at not having written anything. I felt blue, but it was a beige kind of blue.

But then the sun went down, and I sat down at the desk in my living room and said to myself, “Self, how about you don’t write anything, you just…write nothing. Nothing of consequence, nothing of sense. Don’t try to write. Instead, play a game. A game called ‘automatic writing.'” I opened a new browser window (instead of opening a new tab, because a new window meant I could obscure my other browser window and not see if I was getting new emails or new Facebook notifications or be otherwise distracted), went to 750 Words, and just started typing furiously, whatever came into my head. I stopped at 758 words and realized I felt good. Not great, but good. Good enough for a summer Sunday night. Better than the beigey blue I’d felt before. It was the brain equivalent of feeling physically better after getting up and exercising. Maybe I’ll do something more with what I produced through automatic writing, maybe I won’t. The result isn’t the point, just the doing.

When my strength and energy are being sapped by the kryptonite of summer, I’ll take whatever constructive and creative salves I can get, and I think automatic writing is one of those. So lap on with the swordfish underpants of thine most instructive dessert and high tide the coconut dragoons exclusively pitterpatted with sticky buns!

7-12-2016 |

Get Up and Go

I noticed something a few years ago (before I was diagnosed with ADHD). When I got to work, I would be full of energy and determination to Get Things Done as I walked from my car to the building and on to my desk. As soon as I sat down at my computer and began checking emails, I lost all of my energy and drive, slumping into lethargy, apathetic to whatever projects I was working on. It was then that I first asked for a standing desk, figuring I could keep my energy going if I just kept standing. It took a while before I finally got to work consistently at a standing desk and it’s just what I suspected: it’s easier for me to keep my enthusiasm going when I don’t tumble into a chair as soon as I get to work.

This is great for my job, but what about the rest of the time?

My combo alarm (part phone alarm, part cat bugging me for his breakfast) went off yesterday morning and because I’d gotten a good night’s sleep (which isn’t typical for a Sunday night), I woke up easily and had pep in my step as I walked to the kitchen to get Oberon his food. Then I sat down at my laptop and felt all of my pep dissipate, like soda pop losing its fizz. I was so unenthused to do much of anything that after checking my email and social media sites, I moved to the sofa, Oberon curled up in my lap, and I suddenly realized I didn’t give a fuck about doing anything. Instant torpor and boredom. It took everything I had to get up and get myself out the door to go to work.

I have no interest in being driven to succeed. I have no interest in rushing through life, worried about productivity. (A family member once said to me, “They say there are Type A people and Type B people. You must be Extreme Type B.”) But I’m also tired of moving slow and losing what energy I have, what enthusiasm I have to do things I really, really want to do.

I know I need to exercise, or “actively meditate” if one prefers (and I kind of do). It seems clear that this “active meditation” should start right after I get out of bed. Feeding my cat is a pretty mild, easy form of active meditation (so decrees Oberon, King o’ the Cats!). I’m looking into yoga and tai chi as other forms of active meditation. I would look into walking outside if it weren’t so disgustingly hot and humid and sunny here. Getting a standing desk for home? Also something of a priority.

I can’t be active all the time. Everybody needs time to rest. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that my brain works better when I’m not sitting still and I need to jump on that. Figuratively AND literally.

6-28-2016 |

Up and at ‘Em

I’ve been meditating for years. Not consistently, mind you. I always intend to do it consistently, but for one reason or another it always ends up being a sporadic thing. If there’s one thing I’m consistent at, it’s being sporadic.

I know there are physiological reasons why meditation can help with depression and anxiety, and it just plain feels good to do it regularly. But I got to thinking recently that for someone with ADHD, sitting still for long periods of time may be, in a certain sense, fighting against the tide instead of surfing it. I wondered if perhaps a more active form of meditation would work better for me. And then it dawned on me: “active meditation” is a way of describing physical exercise.

Here’s a thing: in the past 10 years, I’ve put on about 50 pounds. Every time I see my doctor, I’ve put on another pound or two. I’m not close to being morbidly obese and I know that weight is not equal to health. Still, I’d like to lose a little weight, if only for my self-esteem (that weird, fragile thing that sits on my shoulder and whispers things good and bad into my ear), and I’m very clearly out of shape.

So I need to exercise regularly. As much as my lazy, sofa-loving, PE-hating self would like to deny it, if I want to lower my slightly-too-high blood pressure, decrease my expanding belly and chin, not get out of breath walking up a flight of stairs, and develop a meditation that uses the gift of my energy, I need to exercise regularly.

I should mention that after I spent a day walking all over the convention center at Planet Comicon, my muscles were sore for a few days…but in a way that felt good. Which encourages me to get into a regular exercise routine. But there are some psychological issues that are putting up barriers to exercising.

Mostly, it’s kind of a social anxiety thing. I feel very, very self-conscious and uncomfortable exercising where other people can see me. The thought of going to a gym terrifies me, even if accompanied by a friend. Even the thought of going for a walk around my neighborhood makes me feel weird enough that I find it terribly hard to motivate myself to get up off of my ass and move. I’ve done some yoga before, but I can’t afford to take actual yoga classes and, again, the thought of doing it around other people makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t want to let my anxiety and neurosis stop me from exercising when I know–I know–that it’s good for me and will make me feel better in a bunch of different ways. But I also don’t want to push myself so hard that it colors the exercise experience a dismal grey. It’s just too easy to give up, so I need to find a way to get exercise that’s comfortable and fun and makes me want to stick with it.

6-07-2016 |

Sly Cares Excel

I recently went off one of my meds. I mean, I didn’t just stop taking it cold turkey, flushing the leftover pills down the toilet. I’m not that crazy and reckless. But after being on a mood stabilizer (Lamictal) for almost three years and dealing with anxiety and hypomanic episodes far more than depressive episodes, I decided I wanted to wean myself off of my antidepressant (Celexa), which I’d been on for almost eight years. My doctor and my therapist both agreed that this made sense, so over a course of three months, I slowly reduced my dosage and have been completely off of it for a couple of weeks now. While I was tapering off of it, I didn’t notice any adverse side effects (and I noticed one good side effect, an increase in libido, which the Celexa had been messing with since I started taking it), and now that I’m 100% off of it, I feel as good as I did when I was on it. Maybe even a little better, which I assume is because the mood stabilizer regulates the cyclothymic swing between depression and hypomania better without the added antidepressant in the stew.

Well, except for one thing. I don’t know if this is a side effect of going off the Celexa, I haven’t found anything online that mentions this, but…everything, and I mean everything, brings tears to my eyes. I watch the season finale of The Flash, I bawl. I watch the season finale of Arrow, I get all choked up. I watch the season finale of The Flash again and I get blubbery A-GAIN. Movies, commercials, the teary confession of a teen contestant on So You Think You Can Dance, my daughter ending her first year in college with an A average, it all makes me cry. Not sad crying, just “Oh my god, this is so moving!” crying. I’ve always been easily moved to tears, but this is pretty extreme even for me.

Maybe it’s not fallout from the Celexa. Maybe my emotions are just riding high these days. I think the obvious answer is: going off the Celexa is making my emotions run higher than they have in quite a while. As side effects go, it could certainly be a lot worse. I’d rather cry a lot over things that move me than experience “the zaps” that I’ve read about–or have a surge of depression come at me. I’m definitely not complaining.

But if you see me, maybe offer me a tissue before you tell me about your beloved pet dying or about the wonderful thing your partner did for you recently or before you show me a particularly pretty flower. I’ll probably need it.

5-31-2016 |

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