Starting Over from the Pit of Despair

Last week I broke up with my boyfriend, citing my mental health issues as my reason that I needed space to find some healing.  The relationship was just dragging down my spirit, and it was making it hard for me to recover. I wanted a break from all the feelings, the anxiety, the situational depression.

Unfortunately breakups rarely end well.  Both of us where struggling to swim on our own in this life, alternating taking personal responsibility for being grownups.  I knew it was wrong, we were super co-dependant and fighting alot.

All I ever wanted was a boyfriend, but not like this. Not the co-dependancy and being a victim to my partners issues.   I never wanted to feel responsible for someone else's happiness and wellbeing and to be the reason they are making better choices.

My soul wanted to be free, to be single to find my own rhythm again.  I've been denying myself this because "things aren't that bad," or "they could be worse."

Meanwhile I was anxious and my energy constantly feels depleted because I refused for a year to leave an unhealthy situation.  My business was suffering, my mental health was suffering, but I just sat on the fence, waiting for a big "God moment" to help me make a decision.

 When I asked for space and he threw me under the bus and said the most horrible, soul destroying things about me and my struggles with mental illness and cursed me wishing me the worst that was a big enough sign for me.

So now I find myself shaky, alone and afraid.  Desperately wanting to feel some relief and some contact with my higher power.  I'm getting moments of peace and serenity, but they are fleeting and the guilt and sadness and anxiety feel pretty all consuming at times.

The thing is recovery is a selfish process, and sometimes when you're drowning in the deep end of an emotional ocean, and the ones that are supposed to love you are struggling too and pushing you underwater you gotta bail on the situation and to swim to an unknown shore.  

We are both beautiful humans, just broken and need some space to grow and find our own sunlight instead of fighting and blocking each others light with unconscious patterns of behaviour that don't serve ourselves or our relationship.

This weekend has been pretty tough, and I'm sure he's struggling too.  I want so badly to just be able to forgive and patch things up, but thats not being honest with myself and that's setting us both up for failure.

SO for now I swim, unsure of how long its going to take for me to find my way back to the shore of balance and sanity.

The pit of despair is where I've found myself, but depression isn't what I want as a result.
I need to find acceptance....BIPOLAR is super hard....ADHD is hard....ANXIETY is a monster and BREAKUPS are awful.

The next steps are acceptance and commitment to keep moving onwards and upwards.  To brave the storms of my mind and heart and to find a solid reliance on the healing power of the universe.
I wish everyone thats struggling to find those glimpses of light and to find the hidden strength to keep braving whatever adversity you find yourself up against.

We are not alone and isolation only makes the recovery process take longer.  Thats why I'm sharing my journey, reaching out to friends, going to work and going to AA meetings. I'm not letting familiar patterns keep me stuck, because our job in this lifetime is to fight to take control of what we can, and learn to surrender to the process of healing, even when change feels impossible and our preconditioned patterns of depression feel all consuming.  Truth is I need myself now more than ever to be compassionate and understanding, and I'm not really interested in feeding despair.....I am and always will be a child of the universe, and I wasn't born to suffer, but I was born to learn and grow and unfortunately pain is a natural byproduct of growth.

When You're Under a Raincloud, Look for Rainbows

I had the kind of year that left me in awe and terror of the severity of my mental illness, but also showed me the strength of my own character and resilience.

In late April of this year, I'd had enough of a six month episode of clinical depression and was at rock bottom.   I was at Sunshine Village, pushing my limits on my snowboard, yet no trick landed or amount of speed was quelling the incessant feelings of hopelessness and despair.
I sat on the mountain, my goggles filling up with tears of desperation and frustration.
"Why was this happening?" "What was I missing in my treatment plan?" "Was I treatment resistant? Doomed to a life of depression and misery?"

Part of me knew I had to dig deeper than I'd ever gone before to get out of this rut, so I took myself to the hospital.  A judgemental and mean male nurse told me I was fine and to leave the emergency and go back to my psychiatrist, so I left that day without any help or answers.

Finding out my psychiatrist wouldn't be able to see me the following week sent me back to the hospital, and this time I brought a friend.  The same asshole rolled his eyes, but luckily it's a team approach, so I ended up getting the help I needed.

I knew what my treatment resistant bipolar depression needed and it was ECT and hospitalization, and within 2 weeks I was back to myself.  I did about 10 rounds of ECT and had amazing results and very little memory issues.  Was it scary?  Not as scary as staying depressed and thinking awful thoughts of wanting to drive my truck off the road.

The staff was amazing, the other patients where supportive and I got really into floor hockey.
I'm actually pretty good at floor hockey and honestly for the first few weeks out of the hospital I was secretly wishing I hadn't checked out just so I could score a few more goals.

  ECT got me back to maybe 60% better and I had a business to run so in-spite of my new found passion, I wasn't about to get too comfortable in the psych ward.
Additionally, my room was across from the nurses station, and they are a really rowdy bunch at 7 am, so I never got really comfortable. Not only that, but hospital wards are no substitute for comfortable suburban living.

Do I miss the safe, structured environment and 3 meals a day?  Ummm, yes.  Do I miss drawing and playing the piano?....absolutely.  I did realize that once I was depression free, the rest of the journey back to wellness was my responsibility.

I wanted a miracle, but the last 8 weeks haven't been easy.

My business grew exponentially, and I found myself hardly keeping up, back on nicotine and redbull and working long hours.  I was in the fight, flight, or freeze response trying to juggle a ridiculous work load.  My poor overtired and wired brain started getting obsessive compulsive about germs, a scary symptom of my inability to find balance.  I started just wanting to give up, when was this battle going to stop?  When was I going to find the peace and serenity I so desperately needed?

What gets me through is my ability to always look for hope and the presence of a loving higher power in my difficulties.

Through all these challenges, as storms of mental illness disturbed my inner landscape, I kept the faith I would heal, and that the God of my understanding would guide me on a daily basis.
I have been guided every step by a loving higher power that didn't want me to give into clinical depression and despair.  Friends, counsellors, doctors and random strangers have said the right things to give me the strength to go on.

Nature has shown me amazing weather this summer in Alberta....so many rainstorms, thunder storms and windstorms in June that reminded me of my own storms...frightening but impermanent.
After most rainstorms, rainbows showed me the connection between this realm and the spiritual plane.

I really believe that God is within all of us and knows our struggles and wants us to find healing.  Our job is to keep reaching out and having faith that no matter how long the storm lasts, there will be healing and redemption and we must hold on and keep fighting.

My Own Personal Hell....Nicotine Addiction and Anxiety

I thought getting sober 13 years ago was a great feat.  Well if I can beat nicotine that will be a battle just as excruciating.

Nicotine makes me physically and mentally ill.  Crippling anxiety, lack of energy, terrible gut pains, constant shakiness, should be enough to get me to cut vaping and the nicotine gum off immediately.

But I keep using and suffering, day in and day out, one bad decision after the other.

It might be ok, if I didn't have such an adverse reaction to what many consider a pretty benign addiction.  Unfortunately, anxiety is a side effect and I've got it through the roof.
I'm like Howard Hughes, the Aviator, fucking terrified of germs.

High on nicotine and stress, I periodically think I'm this disgusting, vile, germs monster and there's not enough hand sanitizer to protect the public against me.  Sounds ridiculous right?

I'm fully aware I've crossed a line,  there's some wires in my brain that have gone haywire.

Having only suffered with depression and ADHD in my adult life, I didn't understand or empathize with people suffering with clinical anxiety.  I totally get it, Im afraid to have a shower, what if I don't get clean enough?  I don't want to go grocery shopping, the idea that I'm contaminating everything overwhelms my amygdala.  I feel crippled by something I rarely gave a second thought too....this invisible threat has always existed but I used to be at peace with it....and I would give anything to get over this obsession.

So what am I going to do?

I'm pretty much at rock bottom....

Time to go cold turkey....

Nicotine free vaping only...

Cut the gum back to zero pieces a day ASAP.

I'm strong enough, it's bad enough and I'm worth it...

This is my one and only precious life and this drug is killing my spirit and my resilience.
Sure a couple of cigarettes used to ease my nerves, but those days are long gone.

I can't control nicotine, it controls me and for that reason I gotta be done, once and for all.

Please say a prayer for me....I'm not out of the woods yet.

The Battle is Won One Day at A Time

Overcoming 13 years of recurrent depression is a battle I win one day at a time, and its not easy to keep fighting.  I wake up in the morning some days after going through normal life stressors and it feels like I only have 2 serotonins left to my name and they want to fight each other, like pac-mans and are threatening to devour one another at the slightest perceived issue that I face.

The idea of being functional all day sounds as much fun as going on an arduous mountain hike.

The automatic negative thoughts are waiting for me to buy into the idea that life is to hard for me and I should just give into the low vibration thoughts stemming from feelings of being overwhelmed and unworthy.

I'm just sick and tired of giving into depression and its bullshit. It feels like every time I'm about to do something challenging, my depression wants to run interference, and for to long I've allowed it to get in my way.

For 11 years,  I bullied myself and worried about myself for getting easily sad and disappointed.  I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyways.  I also got scared when I had to take full responsibility for my life, and sometimes that fear lead me to depression.

All I know is that for today I have a choice.  Yes, those years of giving into automatic thoughts have taken their toll.  There's probably a highway of faulty neural networks that are working against me.

But honestly, just for today I'm not clinically depressed, and I will not give into the thoughts that send me spiralling downwards.  If due to stress and factors beyond my control I get triggered and anxious, I will ground myself and allow the scary feeling of powerlessness to pass.

The other key ingredient, is giving myself some down time and room to breathe.  My mind goes so quickly and it sometimes feels like I have 5-10 computer programs running at the same time.  Lately, after working 40 hours a week and upping my game in other areas of my life I've been feeling run down.  The landscape season was great, but I worked quite hard and honestly, I need a little time to recuperate.  The snow came fast, and I saw it as a sign to hibernate and slow down and do less in a day than I normally would.

This was hard because it gave me more time to sit with my feelings, but ultimately I know that I can't function on high gear without eventually crashing.  I've seen myself get kinda crazy when I push for to hard for to long, and than start getting obsessive, neurotic and spiralling downwards.

It feels like my brain sends me waves of negative thoughts because it almost wants to shut down and go into depressive mode because it cant handle the chaos that is my mind when I'm going to fast.

What I'm trying to do now is force myself to slow down and do self care, and not get frustrated with my brain, body, and mind needing to recalibrate.

I'd rather stay in bed longer meditating or resting in a good mood, than push myself to a place where I am clinically depressed before I allow myself to rest.  

Everyday is a challenge, but one day at a time I'm learning to just to my various energy levels and moods in order to guide myself towards recovery, inner peace and balance.

The Best Thing I've Ever Done To Beat Depression

Its been awhile since I've written in this blog, my open diary to the world.  I felt compelled to start sharing my experience, strength and hope on how to overcome depression a few years ago and I've never looked back.

In the depths of a depression, a Reiki- Healer Shaman Woman told me to read Therese Borchard's Blog, Beyond Blue.  Here was a bright, intelligent woman who knew the depths of suffering with depression, and wrote her story with courage and determination.  Her journey of self discovery helped me feel less alone and isolated on my bleakest days.  Like Therese, I needed an outlet for my frustrations and to give voice to alternative ways at looking at the causes and solutions to a complex illness.

What I felt guided to write about tonight is my gratitude for loving myself enough to quit drinking 11 years ago.  That quitting drinking and finding recovery was the best thing I've ever done to beat my depression.   I need the world to know that for me, battling mental illness, bi-polar 2 and ADHD as well as the dis-ease of addiction was wayyyyyyy to much for me to handle.  I believe that trying to put out two fires all the time is nearly impossible.  I see so many addicts with mental illness suffering in active addiction and fuck is it ever hard to get to the root of our issues if we keep using drugs and alcohol to mask our suffering.

Worse still is that women addicts and alcoholics pay dearly for their disease.
I hear countless stories of sexual abuse, homelessness, domestic violence etc coming from women that are trapped in their addictions and the unhealthy situations they struggle to free themselves from.

I still struggle with addiction to shopping, nicotine, caffeine and it ends up burning me to a certain degree.  Not wanting to sit with my frustrations, sadness and tiredness causes a vicious cycle of relying on stimulants to get me through rough patches.  The silly part is once I quit nicotine and reduce caffeine I won't  have big energy crashes that feel like mini crisis situations a few times a week.  I know when the time is right, I'll get the balance back, I'm going to 12 step meetings and reaching out for support.

Nicotine and caffeine will never say no to me, just like the alcohol and recreational drugs that used to be my friennemies and get me into so much trouble.

Many weekends in my young adult life where spent in complete debauchery, because the pain of being a lost soul was to intense, and getting wasted was an easy solution.  The consequences kept getting more and more severe until I had to make a decision,  keep fighting depression and alcoholism or accept help.  I was completely out of control once I abused substances.  I never managed to moderate for very long.

I made a deal with God on my way to rehab, and it went like this:


"God, I'm clinically depressed again, and I don't know what to do.  I know my drinking episodes are crazy and chaotic and dangerous.  If you really want me to face my alcoholism, you have to remove this clinical depression today and then I'll smarten up and go to rehab for long enough to find out if I have a problem."

So I've had over 11 episodes of depression and they take weeks or months to resolve.  Not that time.
Within 24 hours I was depression free and my eyes where wide open and I was ready to listen.
I was only 24 and still rebellious, but I stayed in rehab for 3 months and the aftercare program for another 3 months.  With all the support I got, I was depression free for 2 years, the longest stretch I've ever had.

All I know is that I wouldn't have the life I had today, if I hadn't put out one of the wildfires that was threatening to devour me.  I can't even imagine if I got drunk and did hard drugs recreationally.
I really think that kind of reckless behaviour could result in me being in jail, institutionalized or dead.

Instead, I have a messy, moody, beautiful life.  I've built a successful landscape business which gives me purpose and something to focus on, instead of worrying incessantly about my troubled mind. I have friends and family and a recovery community that meets me where I'm at on a daily basis.
One day at a time, I find moments of serenity and balance, even on rocky days where my brain refuses to co-operate and my demons cast shadows over my hope of gaining mastery over my bipolar.

I have to give myself credit for being intelligent and loving myself enough to quit flirting with my addiction, because together we were creating hell on earth for myself and my loved ones.

Today, I can honestly say that in-spite of the terrible suffering of experienced having survived several bouts of clinical depression, I'm on a windy road to finding inner peace and mastery and the foundation for my personal growth is my sobriety.

Down Turns

Im so angry and hurt right now.   I'm so close to having a life worth living. My first month of landscaping went well, but I was burning the candle on both ends trying to keep up.  I met someone worth caring about, that's been kind and wanted to date me after a year of getting strung along by emotionally unavailable people.

I guess the constant stress of getting back to work started getting to me.  I felt some cracks in the fault line of my being.  I pushed through and was pretty productive.  I was working, going to yoga, swimming, going to meetings.

The sadness started seeping back in and over the last week I feel like its permeated into every aspect of my being.  My client asked if I was ok today, and I feel a marked sense of me being lost in my own
life.  A sad stand in for my former vibrant self.  A woman watching her life without being able to draw any meaning or joy from it.  Feeling cut off from her essence and from the magic and mystery of the universe.  Looking at the stars and feeling alienated and lonely in-spite of the beauty and majesty of the night sky.

All I want is to face this with courage and grace, and not give into the powerlessness and sense of loss.  Because I've had so many episodes its easy to feel like getting washed into the vast ocean of lost days and months and predicting this will last for months.

I really have to take it day by day.  I don't know what the future holds, I don't want to predict the worst.  I just want to hold onto my scared, tired soul and reassure her that she will be ok.  I'
ve worked so hard to deal with all the issues that were dragging me down and there isn't a lot for this depression to feed on.

I definitely need the support of a powerful plant medicine called ibogaine that I ran out of last week. That has helped me cope with my condition more than anything in the last 4 months, and I'm so grateful I found something that beneficial.

Until I can get access to the medicine I need, I'll just focus on one day at a time, one action at a time.
Back to the basics.  I've been here before....that doesn't make it any easier....just when I was starting to run, I got tripped up and I'm back to crawling again.

Anyone who has to go through this is amazingly strong and a huge badass, and I hope theres a reward in the afterlife.

Having to Surrender

The last week has been pretty hard, I've been to the edge of what I think I can handle in terms of feeling like my mind is falling into familiar patterns of negativity.  Stress has triggered wave after wave of reminders of where depression has taken me.  All the powerlessness and loss I've experienced. Months of living without knowing without any spark or joy.  Its overwhelming and terrifying dealing with a mental illness, and theres only so much I can do. Looking backwards is scary and yet I made it through.

Lately, I've had to come to a place of acceptance in order to move forward.  Whats happened to me has been terrible and largely beyond my control.  I've done my best everyday dealing with the cards I've been dealt. I didn't ask for this, but it'd my life and I want to make the most of it.

This morning fear gripped me, I felt anxiety and remembered the days I couldn't shake the feeling I was sinking all day.  Days where I never got any serenity and fought from the moment I got up until I went to sleep to keep moving.  Than I remembered a powerful insight I had yesterday.

I was fighting my depression, and telling myself I was going to be ok and I was gonna be able to stop the intrusive thoughts on my own.  Deep down I knew I didn't have control over those thoughts coming on and telling myself I could change the fact I have a mental illness that causes automatic negative thoughts wasn't working.  I'm simply not that powerful!

So I turned it over, and I told myself, "I've done my best, and I don't know what the outcome is going to be, but I trust God to get me through this whatever the outcome will be."
"Your will not mine be done. "  A flood of relief came over me.  I didn't need to believe that the worst was going to happen and I didn't need to control the outcome.

Later that night, I went to an AA meeting and cried admitting I don't have this under control and that I need to surrender and let life run its course.  I can't assume the worst and I can't force this illness to leave me alone.

Today I'm still shaky, and grieving the lack of control over whats happened in the past, but something inside me knows depression hasn't gotten hold of the core of me, and my spirit is still intact.  I don't know how or why that is but I'm grateful.  I feel like I can handle whats going on and be my own best friend, and be compassionate towards the woman who has been through so many struggles and made it out the other side.  I'm surrendering alot sooner, and that feels like progress.