Ditching the Need to be Happy 24/7

I'm so sick of thinking there's something wrong with me from the moment I open my eyes.
It's like I've bought into this faulty idea from society that if I play all my cards right, live up to my potential and continually strive to improve my life I will be happy all the time.  Everyday will be magical, full of white light and rainbows.  Synchronistic events will continue to unfold and life will look like a techocolor movie and I will be the protagonist.  Meanwhile back in Jeanne land, I wake up to mixed emotions and some lingering sadness and fear, but ultimately I feel hopeful.

This really should be good enough. It works in the ocean and large bodies of water, the tides fluctuate in temperature, and lakes have warm and cool currents.  I'm always happy and at peace in lakes in the summer and I appreciate swimming through water that has been warmed by the sun and the refreshing cooler water.  So why can't I accept this in my own mental state?

 I'm a moody, colourful, messy artist.  Life is amazing, but it's bittersweet. I've won at love and I've lost.  I'm alone, figuring out my career and how to be happy as a single person.  Yet, I expect perfection from myself, a level of mastery over my thoughts and emotions that seems to be constantly evading my grasp.

The problem comes down to lack of acceptance and an unrealistic expectation that I should be happy all the time or else I'm at risk of a depressive relapse.  Of course thats a scary thing to have to contend with because its been literal hell in the past. Depression is like being stuck in a thunderstorm, and taking shelter under a boulder, only to realize I'm drenched, freezing and trapped.  My soul cry out in agony as I await a guide to lead me to higher ground.

With this past experience, its not surprising that I don't like feeling tired, sad or scared.  Unfortunately for me this is part of life, and I refuse to give into the thought that I can't handle the cooler waters that are a realistic part of the human experience.  I need to accept that waking through adversity with self compassion is the path to freedom.

Without acceptance, there is no recovery.  Life becomes a constant fight within my own mind. There's no point being upset with myself.  I've gone through alot of change.  I walked away from the financial security I had found in my common law marriage.  I lost opportunity, status, money and prestige.
Now I have to find it on my own.  I have to face my ugly self realization that I put men on a pedestal in relationships and business.  That I somehow think I need them to take care of me, when I've been disproving that everyday by becoming successful on my own terms.

So today, I choose acceptance. I chose to love the beautiful, messy and moody monster that I am. I choose to love the scared, self doubting parts of my psyche.  I remind myself that I am enough, that I am worthy and that I can love myself as I transition and grow.

Ghost Children-Another take on Depression

I'm always trying to understand what is going on in my inner landscape and how my perceptions of myself get so distorted and dark.  I like the imagery of my depression as being fragmented parts of my childhood identity that desperately need healing.  They have been silently following me through life and reappear whenever I start to feel intense feelings such as fear or grief.  The suffering these ghosts have caused me over the years is almost unbearable, because I didn't understand what they wanted.

The ghost I want to talk about today is worthlessness and existential angst.  I used to call it Hermie, but really it's just sad little Jeanne.  When life gets tough and I feel powerless, it tries to further steal my light,  saying things like, "nothing matters, no one cares about your feelings, life is pointless etc."

I've come to realize this was how I felt alot as a child.  I recognize the sad eight year old alone in the corner of the playground, wishing she could disappear.  I remember trying to play foursquare with the popular  kids and they would purposely kick me out of their stupid game, by playing unfairly and pretty much throwing the ball at my head.  I heard haha, you're out! loser! etc ways to often.

So what did I do?  Did I tell my parents I got ostracized by my peers every day in elementary school? Nope, because at five years old I decided they were to dysfunctional to confide in so I worked extra hard in school so they could at least me proud of me.  Did I tell teachers? Nope, tattletales aren't well liked and they really didn't understand bullying in the 80's and often gave little kids shit for being antisocial.

So I found a way to cope. I wanted to cry, somedays I did, but more often than not I'd get in trouble for crying or the playground staff would force me to rejoin the bullies.  So I buried my little eight year olds sadness and rejection. I told myself that no one cared about Jeanne, that she shouldn't be sad, that there was something wrong with her and that she didn't fit in.  This was alot to swallow.

I didn't want to be forced to play with the little asshole kids, so I'd read alone in the isolated portal, and if anyone bugged me, I told them I was reading.   No one intervened, this went on for months.
 I read more than  90% of  kids in grade 3-6.  I'd get so completely hyper focused on reading I'd lose track of time,  Pretty soon I'd read all the decent Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and science fiction books in the elementary school library.  My mom took me to the public library and I cleaned up there too.  I read the Lord of the Rings book in one long sitting one day at home, I was so intent on escaping my little person world and living somewhere more magical.

The one cool thing about all of this is that I got really engaged in stories about female heroines, that overcome adversity and this gave my little soul hope and strength.  I desperately wanted to be an alien princess, leading her people through social and environmental challenges on foreign planets.
Anything was better than being me.

I guess what saved me was my strong interest in language and creative arts, because as a child you do what you excel at and you don't have to worry about getting a job.  Later in life, realizing what I got A's in at school wouldn't easily lend itself to finding a career was as damaging to my psyche as bullying, because my natural skill set is not easily remunerated in a capitalist society and money is a form of apprieciation.

Sitting alone in the staircase of the portal the furthest away from my tormentors, I became a ghost of the vibrant divine child I was created to be.  The constant re affirmation I was getting from the other kids that I was different and my feelings didn't matter got deeply engrained in my subconscious.  These are some of the roots of my suffering and depression.  I got the wrong message and continued to tell myself the wrong things when life got tough throughout my adult life.  No one championed little Jeanne, and I live with the ghosts she created.

Luckily I am so much more that my suffering, so much more than my pain.    I can learn to be the mother that the ghost children so desperately needed, and love them for their original pain, but stop believing their faulty beliefs that I am not worthy.  No child should have to live with bullying and not be able to get help.  I just hope that other people can realize that we need to heal our past traumas so that they don't keep showing up as automatic negative thoughts.  When we get to the root of our suffering we can align with the universe and find healing if we stay open and vulnerable and turn towards the light.  We all have the ability to heal if we are willing to shed some of our old ideas and turn our will and lives over to our creator.

Life Lessons-Dealing with Rejection

In my journey towards maintaining good mental health, there are road bumps that can really trigger me and send me backward, and one such trigger is rejection, real or imagined.   Having had several bouts of clinical depression I can be an emotion phobic person.  If life feels painful or I feel sad, I accidentally let the depression gremlin in, because he never turns me down,  but I'm so done with that mindset, so I'm gonna send him packing.

So rejection....not a great feeling right?  Especially for those of us that are emotionally sensitive, have been bullied and on some level question our self worth. As I'm writing this I'm exploring the murky emotional waters that rejection has created in my mental landscape.  It doesn't feel good, I feel sad, alone, tired and vulnerable to depression.  Lucky for me I'm an optimist and I have faith that this too shall pass it I play my cards right.

I hope the people that hurt me don't read this, because its really none of their business how I feel.  They didn't care when they hurt me to know who I really am and where cold and inconsiderate when I needed love the most.

Thats the hard part about all of this, I put my trust and love into people that where unable to reciprocate and I took it personally.  The rejection I'm talking about has been from the men in my life.
It started with my father, he rarely took the time to care about my emotional needs or give me the validation I needed growing up.  Sadly, even today he's short with me on the phone and he's not able to be there for me in crisis situations.  I love my Dad, and I accept this is just life on life's terms.

So I come by the habit of choosing emotionally unavailable men and bad boys honestly, its what I grew up with, its my comfort zone.  If my own father didn't know how to be there for me, why would anyone else?

Lately I've had a string of destructive relationships with men, and I've repeated my parents mistakes in my own first marriage.  It breaks my heart that I could love someone so much and put my heart and soul into a relationship and never get my emotional needs met.  I had to walk away from an otherwise amazing human being, because I didn't want to stay in a relationship that wouldn't allow me to grow.

Being single for the last few months, I haven't done much better with men, and my poor choices resulted in me breaking down in tears last night.  I tried to reconnect with a hot bad ass from my rave days and he was really nasty to me, and because I was at my breaking point I did not handle the perceived rejection well at all.  It was a huge wake up call, no one is gonna make me happy but me, and that at the end of the day, in-spite of being surrounded by great people I am alone with only my higher power for large portions of my journey and its tough changing 34 years of mental habits! Jesus did 40 nights in the desert with the devil, and I think I've outdone his record!

Anyways the point is we attract what we think we deserve and its pretty fucking sad that as I overcome depression and a failed marriage, I think I deserve to be treated like shit by men.  It's pretty harsh that I even expose myself to people that are potentially toxic to me when I'm trying to heal.

At the end of the day, I actually have alot of compassion for all the bad boys and emotionally fucked up men, and I really hope I can respect them and we can eventually get along.

But its time to get real, the person I really need to be best friends with right now is myself and if I know I'm just getting my feet back under me after dealing with heartache and depression, the last think I need is to allow people to kick me when I'm down.

****I want to say a sincere thank you to all the stand up men I've dated and been friends with that treated me well.  It sad to say but I have lost out in love because I didn't always treat the nice guys with the respect they deserved, and I'm the one who lost out in the end.  Some of the amazing men I've dated are now happily married to great women and they deserve the best life has to offer.
 I remember those good relationships with fondness and they serve as reminders I can have great relationships in the future.

Giving a FUCK About My Life

In my climb towards mental health, I can often be my own worst enemy.  I want to be healed yesterday, and I find the daily symptoms of "depression" exhausting, bothersome and scary.
The great news is I'm nowhere near being clinically depressed so I can help myself with the symptoms that remain.

As hard is this is to say, I have to take as much responsibility for my mental illness as I can.  That means admitting to myself that ever since I was a teenager I've had an attitude problem.  I used to wear that as a badge of honour, I liked attention, whether it was good or bad.
Now I'm realizing that some of my personality traits are not as endearing to me as they once where and they aren't serving me well in my recovery.

For way to long I've held onto the "I don't give a Fuck" attitude.  It kept me safe.  It was like a dirty black hoodie, tattered and stained, but I wasn't replacing it with anything new.
I'd been wearing it for to long and it felt like a necessary part of my armour as a human being in a challenging world.

I've outgrown the" fuck you" attitude.  It's  actually unnecessary and rude.  I have 2 university degrees, I don't need to keep swearing and being sarcastic everyday.  That's lower vibration and I want to keep climbing mountains.

So I'm trading in the "fuck it" attitude, for the "giving a fuck" about what matters attitude.  That means challenging my fears about being an artist and blazing new trails for myself.  It means owning my recovery from addiction and mental health issues.

I am the master of my own destiny and I'm not letting negative core beliefs, other people or situations dissuade me from being everything I am capable of being.  I look forward to this spring, doing art shows, garden design, and genuinely being a decent human being.  After my separation I thought it was gonna be "Me Against the World."  Now its "Me for the WORLD!"

Whatever it Takes: Ketamine for Depression

For the last 4 days I have been in Denver, Colorado, dealing with an important medical issue.  I had a relapse of depression, brought on by the stressors I spoke of in previous entries.  The last straw was when I stopped taking Vyvanse, a trendy new stimulant for ADHD, and I was left spiralling into an endless pit of fear, despair, and hopelessness.

It was a crippling blow from depression.  All my hard work and insight overshadowed by a chemical imbalance, my brain going haywire, and reverting to deeply engrained unhealthy patterns. Once this happens, depression becomes much more than my shadow or negative beliefs, it actually becomes a medical issue.  I wake up with no spark, and a sense of dread.  Each episode feels heavier as if this cloak of stagnation has grown stronger through subsequent episodes.  I felt powerless, alone and afraid.

 I needed medical help, so I checked myself into the hospital.  Realizing they had nothing for me but uncomfortable hospital beds and an increase in prozac, I checked myself out.  I waited in the ER for 2 days, and stayed in the psych unit for 2 days.  I cannot fucking believe they leave patients in the ER for 2-3 days in Canada, seems abit cruel.

As my roommate Carol drove me home I was pretty sad, because there was nothing medically that could prevent me from having another 3 month bout of depression that the hospital could offer.
I asked the psychiatrist at the hospital about ketamine, and he earnestly  replied "why would we give you something potentially toxic when we have so many great drugs at our disposal?"  I was so discouraged, because antidepressants have not been super successful for me and the onset of action is 4-6 weeks minimum and I've tried almost all the classes of medications.

When I got home I was pretty despondent, but I said fuck it, I'm going to do ketamine infusions in the US for treatment resistant depression.  There are treatment centres in almost every large US city, because ketamine has a 75% success rate at treating depression in a matter of hours to a couple of days.  Its a powerful tool that got me out of the depths of despair, and gave me a higher perspective on my situation.  It was somewhat spiritual in nature, and frightening and magical at the same time.

 I have 10 years of sobriety from drugs and alcohol, and I didn't love it when I realized ketamine was a powerful narcotic.  I realize that some people in recovery community may think I'm a hypocrite for taking this treatment.  The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson did LSD to deal with his treatment resistant depression.  I can't deny I got a certain high off ketamine infusions, but that was a side effect of a powerful medicine that may save lives.  I will write more about the actual trips and self realizations I had in the posts to follow.

I want to end my saying a sincere thank you to everyone who reads my blog.  I was to deeply honoured to see that my blog has 4255 page hits since its inception.  Thank you all for reading and relating to my online journal, my thoughts and perceptions on the human condition as I have experienced thus far.  I don't know how or when I might write a book, but this blog will serve as the unedited manuscripts for whatever I create.

Optimism in the Face of Mental Illness

I try to be optimistic about my recovery from mental illness.  That's easy on good days, I think its clear sailing, and I feel like I have some mastery over my inner landscape.  I take pride in doing what I need to do to take care of myself and deal with the daily nuances of my mind and guide myself in the right direction.

Recovery is a lifelong journey, and there are days when I'm actually scared for my life and everything I've fought so hard for, because I still have alot of vulnerability to clinical depression.  Days like today I'm acutely aware that I don't have full control over scary thoughts and feelings that have in the past spiralled to the point of changing my brain chemistry leaving me lost and alone, disconnected from my soul, my life force and other people.  Just writing this makes me want to cry, because I don't think that anyone should ever have to feel this way.  I don't know why some of us are so delicately wired and have to overcome patterns in our brains that are so detrimental.

Yesterday, I was with a friend and I started feeling disconnected in a scary way so I curled up on his couch and started crying.  I reached a point of deep compassion for myself, I realized how overwhelmed I was with all the pressures I put on myself, trying to figure out my career, dealing with adhd thats makes focus so hard, and being confused about relationships.  I grieved that lack of control and held my wounded, disappointed heart.  I realized in that moment, I'd done everything I could and being mad at myself for letting myself get to this state wasn't going to help.  I connected to that inner love for myself, I'm only human, I didn't ask for this burden.  I didn't ask to have to reach such scary places dealing with everyday challenges.

I guess at the end of the day, everything I achieve means that much more, because I fight like hell to do what other people take to granted.  Years of therapy, trying to understand my triggers, taking more and more responsibility for my choices, learning to relate to my mind in a different way, and still sitting here crying because living well with mental illness is the hardest thing I will ever have to do.

I'm a perfectionist, and having hard days can feel like a failure.  I'm never going to be perfect.  I will struggle with a mind that is  distracted and scares easily.  In times like these I need to remember I've found peace in this life through yoga, meditation, connection and recovery.  I'm not alone.

All my problems need to be surrendered at a certain point.  Yes, these low points are signs I may need to change something in my life, maybe a perception, maybe a behaviour, but I'm not going to figure it all out at once, and fix my life overnight. I've done my humanly best and I accept my suffering, that I'm not a loser because I am feeling somewhat powerless.  Accepting where I am and committing to small changes can be empowering, reminding me I do have some control over my life, and I'm stronger than the dark feelings that haunt me from time to time.

I think having deep compassion for myself, realizing how stressful its been being un employed and making art, and putting pressure on myself to be positive even though I'm not making any money has been tough.  Realizing if I want to have a landscape business again, its alot of work and I need faith in myself that I can make it work, I need to surrender my fears, because they are keeping me sick.

Believing that I can make something  meaningful out of my life helps. Goals of advancing my art practice,  getting ready for markets and believing that I can either have my own landscape company or work for someone else keep my moving forward.  Closing my eyes and remembering the joy I've experienced having felt mastery and visualizing getting there again feels amazing.

I am responsible for making the most of the cards I've been dealt.   I'm not a victim, just a person that has another layer of frustration and challenge to learn to accept and overcome. I only have one life, and I believe that the power of my soul, my connection to my higher power and the beauty of my vision of myself healthy, happy, and contributing to society will pull me through.

The Struggle is Real! 10 years sober and still not out of the woods

Ten years ago my Mom chaperoned me to the Nanaimo Ferry terminal, where a militant woman with razor sharp bangs and a nononsense attitude drove me to rehab.  It was pretty epic, like summer camp for bad kids.  Where else can you safety interact with such a broad range of disturbed adults, from multimillionaire crack addicts, to members of the Hells Angels, to moms who do meth in front of their kids, and cops who can't stop taking sexual favours from criminals.  There were doctors and dentists there too, because it was a pretty classy place.

Anyways, I defied the odds, and I took it all in, and decided fuck it, I may not be as far progressed in my addictions as my fellow campers, but this wasn't a joke. So I did it, and I'm clean and serene for 2017.

I'm still not out of the woods.  Not only do I struggle with addictions, I have been through the wringer with mental illness.  I did what society recommends and trusted my doctors and all their lovely medications that they give out like candy in different flavors, depending on your diagnosis.  The shitty part is that psychiatrists, far from being well rounded, or having an in-depth knowledge of psychology, are pretty well versed in the DSM 5 or whatever version they're onto now and use a simple set of criteria to pick out scary drugs to prescribe in abundance.

When I went to rehab, I had to fill out a drug and alcohol history, which I had hoped proved I was ok to go home.  The counsellors weren't having it, I'd already disclosed to many life or death situations I'd willingly subjected myself to, high and drunk out of my tree.  I really was powerless over my addictions and my life had become unmanageable.

The crazy thing about all of this is that I'm in a similar predicament with substances, 10 years after rehab, but these were all prescribed to me by a series of GP's and Pychiatrist's, who were well meaning and thought their drugs were an integral part in me living well with mental illness.

It took 9 years before I walked through the doors of the Cochrane Counselling centre, and spoke to the first psychologist that actually got through all of the questions necessary to understand what was really going on.  She figured out that I had ADHD, and depression from trauma, from growing up getting bullied, seeing my parents train wreck marriage, witnessing verbal and mental abuse at home, and causing myself more trauma in active addiction, including being sexually victimized by predatory men when I would get loser drunk.

I'm actually happy to know I have ADHD, that my depression is treatable, and that I can retrain my brain with DBT and other modalities.  Before that, I was wrongly diagnosed as bipolar 2, and thought medication and acceptance were my best solution.  I felt victimized my the label, not empowered, because it wasn't accurate.  The pyschiatrist who diagnosed me had just finished reading Kay Jameson,  famous bipolar psychiatrists,  book on Exuberance.  He asked me if I'd ever felt exuberant, and I said yes, I've been high on rave drugs starting at 15.  That was that, I was bipolar for 5 years, and got more and more drugs shoved my way.  I'm kinda disappointed in pychiatrists, none of them reviewed his diagnosis and I really wanted answers from the doctor that gave me that label, not drugs.  I told him my whole life story thinking he was going to see that is made perfect sense I had the issues I did given my experiences, but that's simply not his training which is disappointing to say the least.

While I'm glad I got this last piece of the puzzle, and the right diagnosis, I'm now facing a situation where I've been over prescribed medications, and feel powerless once again.  I was given a stimulant for ADHD, and I've been struggling because it doesn't work that great with all the drugs I was given for depression and bipolar.  I'm now over stimulated, feeling wired, edgy, like my skin is crawling, having to much adrenalin etc almost everyday.

My last pyschiatrist told me I was doing well, that I had this all under control and would be fine if I stopped letting assholes sleep in my bed, which I thought was great, but now I have to get my psych meds under control with my GP.

Its been pretty humbling, Im no longer Queen Sh#$ of Recovery with 10 years of sobriety, I need recovery as much today as I did then, but now its due to my powerlessness with stimulants.  I have had to quit smoking, and probably caffiene is next.  I have had to reduce antidepressants.
All of this because my GP and last psychiatrist are convinced that Vyvanse really helps ADHD.
All I know is that as I sit here shaking and writing, I feel alot of compassion for everyone in recovery, no matter what page you find yourself on.  Struggle reminds me that life really is JUST FOR TODAY,  to Trust the Universe,  reach out to others, and to believe in myself, and that I really do have the tools I need to OVERCOME my challenges.