The acceptance of my situation is very up and down at the moment. One
moment I’m all like, okay, I can do this, then the next I’m in a fit of
depression wishing I didn’t exist. Every time I do try and fight against the
mental and physical health problems I find one of them flaring up and I become
over powered. It hasn’t helped that I’m not sleeping or eating, and constantly
being sick (Since writing this I've been able to eat a bit better which I'm happy about). I’m trying to get these on track but there’s a lot of factors mixed
up together and I’m trying to figure out what is causing what (that’s bad
English but you get my meaning I’m sure).
It’s very hard to know if it’s the
physical health, or mental health, or medication that's doing certain things
to me. My current objective is to figure this out. I do think I’m starting to
get some insight into why I’m so messed up and a lot of it I confess is
psychological, at least when it comes to anxieties and panic-attacks, but I’ll probably talk more about that in a following post. That
said, I still have a suspicion there are some physical things not accounted for
properly, but I guess mental health is a lot to do with chemicals and therefore, physiological. All of that aside, today’s post is about a peculiar experience I had a
couple of days ago.
I was feeling very fatigued
and despairing, but decided to literally force a massive smile on my face for a
long time. It sounds very silly, but I thought that maybe forcing a positive
aura or persona might help in some way. After all, I’ve lost the balance I
tried so hard to maintain over the years and it’s tipped negatively, so why not
tip it back with the opposing force.
I’ll confess I’m struggling to
know what’s right, whether balance and control is best, or to try and fight
with positivity. As I’m about to show, I still think balance and control is best,
but I’m starting to see there is a lot more room for expression of all emotions than I’ve
sometimes believed.
So I began my smiling test and it was very
challenging. Maintaining a smile for what ended up being hours was hard work.
During this time I did have some dramatic changes. For one I did feel a lot
happier. It grew and grew and by the time I settled to sleep for the night I
was in a strange but beautifully tranquil state. I also noticed that a lot of
the tension and horrible stomach feelings had vanished. I was trying not to get
ahead of myself and think that suddenly I had found a way to fix myself but it
certainly felt like it. I fell asleep in this state, but within an hour I was
awake again, wide awake, and unable to get back to sleep without medication to
help me.
On waking up the following
morning I felt really depressed and sick. I was so tired and scatter brained that the hope I had
from the night before was snuffed out. I tried to get it back but was too
exhausted. However, from my little experiment I now value the expression of
emotion a little more and the impact it can have on the mental health side of
things. As I said, I still think it needs to be balanced but I’m going to try
and do a bit better at channelling all my emotions.
With this experience I’m just
starting to wonder more and more if there has been underlying stress and
tension which I feel I have contained, but are in fact building up in my
subconscious. I’m not sure though, as I think there are a number of contributing
factors here: these include being under a lot of anxiety and stress because of
doing more than I should (relatively speaking), because the move to Scotland
failed and I don’t know what to do now, because of money worries and the
feelings of lack of independence and purpose, and because of the
ongoing health struggles.
It’s all just tipped the balance I had and I’m
struggling to see how to get it back, or even make something of myself with my
life. And, yes, I have to learn to chill out, relax and not expect too much
from myself, but it’s easier said than done. It's important to note here that I'm expressing how I've been feeling openly and honestly and do not mean to be negative. I would prefer to always say happy things, but this blog is about fighting for the light while living with the dark. The smiling test was my way to try and fight, and in a way it worked, as I've learned from it.
So, to go back for a second,
I’m currently unsure how to approach the emotional side of things, and the
physical, and the mental. It’s so complex that just thinking about it is
probably causing more stress on my system. I do think I’m getting some
understanding of my current inability to cope though. It’s partly because I
feel so hopeless and lost. I would love to take up a new hobbie, or get a job would be preferable, but I'm struggling to think of one, and anything I do think of will impact my health. I’m also starting to think on a subconscious level
that I’m sabotaging myself because I feel trying to cope is too hard, which is what
actually makes it too hard (There are some curiously powerful links between
self-belief, wants, acceptance, failures, expectations and many other things). Today has a
reasonably good day, but finding the motivation to do anything is proving
extremely hard. And then at times I know I should be doing nothing and resting so I can heal, and this also is extremely hard.
What’s pushing me forward the
most right now is my family. I want to get better for their sake so I’m not
such a burden; I have a few mantras’ I’m using which have helped today. I’ll
try to keep using them each day and heal as best I can, but I know I have to
want to heal and I think that’s what the smiling test has shown me. It showed
me that through the positive I can feel better. I just have to do it in a less
extreme way than I did a couple of days ago. And with all that said, maybe
today I’m feeling better because the medication (Sertraline) is balancing
things out, who knows.
Hindsight Note: it’s been
three days since this experience and it’s most certainly the medication that
made me have the tranquil state. The smiling would have contributed and that
positivity did help my stomach and eating, and still is, but having experienced
the same feeling on and off I now know it has to be the medication.
Speaking of the medication, I
guess it has helped me with the panic-attacks. They were out of control, but with
all the varying side effects of the medication I’m hoping some balance occurs
soon. Sure I like the tranquil feeling when it washes over me, but it’s false
and not worth the manic depressive states. They say it can take weeks for the
Sertraline to get into the system properly and when it does it will hopefully give me a sense of
consistent control. I've just realised I'm not even sure I know what it is the medication is actually meant to do. I always just say I hope it will help. I guess it's meant to help my mental state, which I'm assuming is balance and stopping the anxiety. If it does that then I'll be delighted! I just don't want the panic-attacks anymore.
I’ll do a brief post about the medication next time
and talk about how I feel. And just for the fun of it I'll also give a list of the effects it has seemed to have had on me so far. Then at some point I will continue other discussion points, but who knows when that will actually happen :).
Education: I short presentation I found that encourages smiling :)
Fun: Don’t ask why I remembered this, but this was one of my favourite
things to watch back in the day, yes I was a cool thirteen year old. This is a random one I’ve
picked.
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