Sometimes the help you need isn’t the help you want. Call 1-800-273-8255 if you’re thinking of suicide.
This comic meant a whole lot to me. It was sincere in its depiction and treated the issue through the eyes of a grounded person. Not some godly hero saying everything is better than it seems, but a person trying his best before bringing her somewhere who can actually help.
During my first month with my therapist, I was given this worksheet to read and work on. She noticed that while I was talking with her, that my thoughts followed a lot of these. I wasn’t aware that my anxiety had brought me down paths of low self-worth and stinky thinking.
After a couple of weeks of talking with her, she gave me this worksheet to work on.
While, at first, I thought these weren’t going to work out, I was very surprised to see just how easy they were to use . My homework at that time was to identify which sort of thinking I used on the regular and which ones would best challenge them for me.
So, what do you think? Do any of the maladaptive thinking patterns sound like you? which ways would you like to untwist your thinking?
Not sure if this is useful to anyone, but I had a big breakthroughs in my idea of self-care recently when I applied a phrase I use to combat negative self-talk – “Would you talk to a close friend that way?” – and reframed it as: “Would you care for a friend that way?”
Imagine my friend came to visit and she got hungry. Would I say, “Wait five hours until I’m done with this project and then you can eat a granola bar?” No, I would not. Would I say, “I’m don’t have time to go grocery shopping for you, so why don’t you spend three days straight eating this years-old Ramen I found in the basement that one of my old roommates left behind?” No, I would not. If her clothes got dirty, would I say, “I’m too lazy to scrounge up some quarters so why don’t you wear these ill-fitting clothes from Goodwill with holes in them?” No, I would not. If she had a day off, would I say, “I can’t be bothered to find something good for you to do; why don’t you just sit on the couch reading depressing internet articles all day?” No I would not. And if I were at a party, and she was tired and feeling uncomfortable and wanted to go home, would I say, “Stop being such an awkward loser, stay here and smile at people so they don’t think you’re rude?” No, I would not. A person I treated that way would be justified in wondering if she was my friend at all.
But, needless to say, I treat myself that way all the time. Once my friend has all her basic needs taken care of, sure, we can go for manicures and massages after. But that’s not the point. The point is making sure she’s fed and washed and clothed and comfortable; and I don’t think I’m the only one who has a whole lot of trouble even getting to that point.
pretentious illiterate (that’s their username, not an insult) on Metafilter (via gazztron)
My husband gave me an idea ages ago, and I wanted to actually put it into motion. So today, I give you the ‘Being Visible’ line of shirts.
The goal of Being Visible is to allow people with mental illness, or other invisible illnesses, to help make people aware of their coping abilities on any given day by using the simple image of a battery at various charging levels:
Low charge – low ability to function ‘normally’ or perform daily tasks. May need assistance or frequent breaks Medium charge – diminished, but capable of performing routine or simple tasks during the day. Some assistance may be needed. Full charge – able to perform daily tasks with little to no assistance or reduction in speed, effort, etc. Little to no assistance needed.
These images will be placed front and centre of various T-shirt/tank top designs, to enable wearers to non-verbally alert people around them of their limitations, if they so choose. Of course, as ability levels change, so too can the shirts. On the back of the shirt is the simple text line ‘Being Visible’ above the rod of Asclepius, the common symbol for medicine.
75% of the proceeds will go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The remaining 25% will go towards my ability to purchase several units of each shirt for my own use.
You can find the shirts at the links listed below. The target goal is 75 units each.
Sometimes depression is apathy. It is staring at the roof for hours and it noticing the time ticking by. It is clicking ‘next episode’ while not knowing what has happened for the last two seasons. It is reading page after page as the words fall out of your head with every flip. It is eating exclusively cereal for days at a time.
Sometimes depression is sadness. It overwhelms your soul like a tsunami, making you lurch in the darkness and gasp for breath like it is a butterfly just out of reach. It is sobbing in the shower over nothing in particular. It is concocting irrationally sad hypotheticals in which your loved ones die or leave you or stop caring and you are alone.
Sometimes depression is frustration. It is the stack of rotting dishes in the sink that you know you have to clean but you cannot bring yourself to stand up let alone scrub. It is wanting to tear your hair out from self hatred and pent up anger at your brain which has put you in this position. It is the unanswered messages from people who care which drive you mad in the night as you can’t string the right words together in the right order to do them justice.
Sometimes depression is absent. It is bursts of energy and productivity, designed to trick you into thinking that the light of the end of the tunnel is right there, before it throws you down another dark corridor. It is waking up feeling peppy and bright and energetic, allowing to get on with you life and be happy for an instant, but meeting you at the end of the day like a circling vulture ready to pick apart every choice you made and feast on your mistakes.
Sometimes depression is pathetic. It is feeling accomplished when you get out of bed in the mid-afternoon. It is streaming tears as you struggle to swallow slimy packet noodles. It is pushing away those who love you and support you because loneliness is paramount, and the depression must be fed, must be appeased, must be put before everything.
Sometimes depression is comforting. It is an old friend with open arms and a warm bed, ready and willing to pull you under, to keep you floating in its dark waters, to fill your lungs with its greyscale and preserve you as a message to the rest.
Sometimes depression is unsatisfactory. It is hope-crushing routine designed to keep your spirit in orbit. It is unchecked to-do lists and unfinished projects. It is fleeting dreams which never got the run needed to take off.
Sometimes depression is pressure. It is a physical presence looking over your shoulder, looming, predicting failure and ensuring it is correct. It is tightness in your chest for no reason. It is headaches and stomachaches and heartaches and aches that wrack your body for any sign of resistance, to draw it out and destroy it.
Depression is multifaceted. It is an enemy like any other, complete with weaknesses which can be exploited until it has been conquered. Do not let it win. Seek help, surround yourself with a positive support network, remember that you are not alone, and you will beat this ❤
I used to really worry that medications would harm my creativity and it’s part of why I resisted taking them. It hasn’t. If anything it’s allowed me to be more focused and able to complete things. My imagination hasn’t changed just because I’m on anti-depressants.
a lot of my family didnt want me to start medications because they thought it would impact my ability to create, and I believed them.
Now im getting better and better with my art because i dont have to fight through the brainfog or the constant panic attacks and can dedicate my energy to my work.
Antidepressents didnt take my emotions away, they made them easier to handle.
also Van Gogh was literally in an asylum receiving mental health treatment when he painted ‘Starry Night’. It was one of the most stable & productive periods of his life, despite the fact that wasn’t hugely effective treatment, because they didn’t really have modern understandings of what things work on mental illness. Like, you know. Medication.
This is why we don’t romanticize mental illness or chronic disease.
ALSO because I am reading a book of his letters right now, Van Gogh himself addressed the idea that the best art came from pain and said that his art tended to suffer when his depression was hitting pretty hard. So don’t even pull that shit where you give his untreated depression credit for his art. Van Gogh would have hated that, and if antidepressants/better treatment of mental illness HAD existed then we might have even more of his work now.
Everything everyone said above me x1000000. I have done so much more art /with/ medication, than when I’m curled up in bed almost unable to move or feel. This is less ‘what he created’ and more ‘what other beauty might we have seen?’
Holding the Bowl 