Rants, ramblings, reflections and rhapsodies about what it’s like to be a young, married, millennial professional living with an anxiety disorder in Vancouver
Welcome to the third week of my Thankful Thursday, this time with a focus on slowing down.
Here’s my Thankful Thursday for the Week of April 27- May 3, 2018!
Things I am thankful for this week:
My hip is still pretty messed up but I went to chiro again and it was magical. This is the best chiropractor I have ever seen (and I’ve seen my fair share).
Also, I’m still able to run (albeit in pain) which means I’ll still be able to run Sunday’s race.
In the same vein… there are only three days until the BMO Vancouver Half-Marathon! I’m excited and nervous all at once. Five months of training and it’s nearly here!
I can feel the difference my new thyroid meds are making already. It could easily be placebo, but I’m sleeping less (more like 8 hours instead of 9) and still feeling rested. My mood is also higher and I’m more motivated and productive.
Dad and Sharon arrived safely in Vancouver and are staying really close to my place for two weeks! I’m so excited to have them cheer me on at my race.
We got a thank you card in the mail from friends we gave a gift to for their new baby.
My husband and I are quite possibly happier than we ever have been. We’ve always been happy, but things are just pretty swell right now, and we’re both taking notice. It’s awesome.
This 6am sunrise on my last training run before cutting things off to rest my hip:
Slowing Down
And the title of this post, slowing down! Because my hip and quad have been bothering me so much, I’ve cut some training runs out of my schedule and am spending a lot of time contrasting (ice and heat), and using my foam roller. It’s forcing me to slow down a bit and it feels nice, even though the injury itself is un-fun and stressful.
I’ve also been reading more. The catalyst for this was realizing that I had an Advanced Reader Copy of a book to read and review two days before the due date. So it forced me to spend a lot of Sunday and Monday reading. I managed to get the review published on time, which was great.
There you have it!
So, that’s my Thankful Thursday list for this sunny week. I hope it inspires you to make your own, and get on that gratitude train!
I do a lot of talking on here about my status with my mental illnesses, but not with my life just in general, so I thought this would be a fun little update post about life for me now!
But… before I get to the “lately” questions, I figured I’d share a couple of updates on my life, because it’s been full of excitement these last couple months!
I got accepted to UBC’s Master of Education in Counselling Psychology program. Starting in September, I will be attending part-time (while I continue to teach full-time) with a specialization in School Counselling. The end game is to become a high school guidance counsellor. It should take me about three years!
I also accepted a full-time continuing contract teaching for West Vancouver Schools (SD 45). This is a huge step for me because now, after four years of teaching, I’ve finally got that coveted job security I’ve been talking about. Right now it’s looking pretty certain that next year I’ll be teaching at the same school I’m at this year, which has never happened for me before! I’ll also know what subjects I’ll be teaching in May or June, instead of the day before school starts! It’s a breath of fresh air.
Finally, I just went on a Spring Break trip to Cuba with my mom!
Andrew’s not big on hot vacations and has a lot going on at work right now, so after not being able to visit my mom for a year, it was the perfect occasion for us to travel together! I had never been to Cuba before and it was absolutely amazing. Perfect beaches and weather. Now if only Vancouver could get itself together and start getting sunnier, life would be totally grand…
Lately I am…
Eating for breakfast: Oatmeal made with milk and mixed with a little maple syrup. I used to think oatmeal was disgusting, but milk makes a HUGE difference (over water). I’ve also found the most amazing brand of oats, Rogers. The kind that I get is called “Original Porridge Oats and Healthy Grains.” It’s a combination of oat flakes, wheat bran, oat bran, and flaxseed. It’s DELICIOUS. I buy it at London Drugs, and unfortunately I’ve never seen it anywhere else.
Reading: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket, and The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated to English from Chinese by Ken Liu ). If you’re interested in what I’m reading, I have a fully-dedicated reading blog over at Paperback Patronus, or you can follow my Bookstagram account at @paperbackpatronus. I’m in a book club, and the Liu is our March pick! We’re meeting this weekend to discuss.
Wearing on repeat: Jeans and floral, spring/summery tops. My heart is still in Cuba even though Raincouver is coming at me with a vengeance. Good thing I’ve overfilled my vitamin D stores, because otherwise I’d be risking an SAD relapse.
Inspired by: Jenny Lawson. See my upcoming book review of Furiously Happy for more details. But, suffice it to say that she’s an amazing mental health advocate, and her writing is both super hilarious and super relatable and uplifting.
Doing before bed: Reading. As always.
Listening to: The Gilmore Guys podcast (I’m late to the train on this one) and several other amazing podcasts. The podcasts I most regularly recommend to people are Homecoming, Serial, Reply All, The Pitch, Science VS, Sounds Good with Branden Harvey, and The Chasing Joy Podcast.
Wishing I was better at: Getting out of bed shortly after I wake up. I’m hoping this is just lingering effects of SAD and I’ll start getting up and doing some yoga before work soon.
Trying to stop: Wasting my time on my phone and eating (as much) dairy. I’m doing Ali Edwards‘ One Little Word project for 2018. The word I chose is “presence.” It’s a work in progress. On the dairy front, I’ve been having stomach problems since about June of last year. It’s the next thing that’s been suggested I cut down on. We’ll see.. like I said, milk in oatmeal has been a life changer for me. Anyone have any favourite milk alternatives (coconut? cashew?)?
See you soon…
That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed; I plan on doing this type of post at least a couple of times a year!
I’m also really feeling like I’m out of the woods on my SAD funk. So, I’m hoping to get the next post in the self-care series up in the next week or two!
I think Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) was probably the first mental health issue I ever knew about.
If you’re not super familiar (and you may not be, if you live closer to the equator than I do), here’s a quick definition from the Mayo Clinic: “Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that’s related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. If you’re like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.”
I first heard about SAD from a friend who self-identified as having it around middle school.
I grew up in New Brunswick, which has terribly snowy and cold winters, although there is still a fair amount of sun. Its impact wasn’t very real for me until I moved to Vancouver, however.
Affectionately known by many as Raincouver, part of the notoriously rainy Pacific Northwest, and quite near to the rainiest place in North America (Henderson Lake, Vancouver Island), Vancouver borders the biggest temperate rainforest in the world.
I regularly say that Vancouver has two seasons: “rainy,” and “hot and less rainy.” The “rainy” season runs from about October through April, and the “hot and less rainy” season is (clearly) May through September. Usually every rainy season, we have at least a span of 20 days without sun. They’re not necessarily all wet, but most of them are. This January, we had 24 rainy days in a row, and October and November 2016 had 47 days of rain.
Long story short, it’s wet here. It’s also grey.
And because we’re in Canada, from November to March it’s also pretty dark. I know we’ve got nothing on northern Europe, the Canadian territories, or Alaska, but on the darkest day of the year, the sun rises at 08:05 and sets at 16:16. When I was in Williams Lake for the 2014-15 school year, on the darkest day of the year the sun rose at 08:15 and set at 15:58.
All of this is a pretty perfect recipe for SAD, especially for someone already prone to depression and anxiety.
For years I’ve had suspicions, but I think this year is the first time I’ve actually fully acknowledged that on top of generalized anxiety and periodic depression, I also have SAD. Looking back on it, my first serious experience with it was probably my first year in Vancouver when I was a freshman at UBC. I missed my husband (then boyfriend), I missed my family and all of my friends, and I was going through that stressful first-year university time when I realized that school was actually going to be hard for once.
Now I recognize that it usually starts in early November, and kicks around until mid to late March. Does this time period sound familiar?
My SAD symptoms
When I’m in the midst of SAD, I sleep more but don’t feel more rested. I usually fall asleep within minutes of starting to read in bed, when normally I can stay up reading for an hour or more. Accordingly, I end up sleeping about an hour more per night (usually about 9pm – 6am).
I also drink more coffee. Both because I feel more tired, and because it’s my comfort drink, and I find myself seeking mental and physical comfort more than usual. In the depths of SAD, all I want to do is curl up on the couch with five blankets and pillows, sipping on a steaming mug of coffee goodness, scrolling my Instagram feed, and poking my nose out occasionally to search for a tiny sliver of nonexistent sun.
I feel listless, tired, burnt out, unmotivated, and down.
Getting out of bed in the morning is so hard. I dread going to work. My job is awesome and I love it, and I always feel fine once I get there, but in the midst of SAD, I do not want to go.
How do you know you’re not just depressed, you ask? Well…
When the sun occasionally comes out, I have the best day of my life.
I think this is how I finally realized I was dealing with SAD. It was a Saturday, and the sun had come out after that above-mentioned stretch of 24 rainy days. I woke up earlier, my energy was up, I was ultra-productive, and I just felt so happy. At some point early in the day, my husband turned and looked at me, and said in surprise, “You’re super happy today.”
My response was, “Yup! It’s sunny! And nice! and I feel good! YAY!”
It was pretty black and white.
After having this epiphany, I knew I needed to write about it on the blog.
That was two months ago.
I find it hilariously and incredibly affirming that I’ve only been able to sit down and write this post now I’m in recovery. SAD is real, people, I don’t make this shit up!
Strategies I use to help with SAD
Vitamin D. I have no idea if this actually works, but I take it every day of the rainy season. I think it helps? It might just be placebo, but I’ll take it. The Globe and Mail says that Health Canada’s recommended daily intake of vitamin D for people aged 1-70 is 600 IU per day.
Exercise. I’ve already talked a lot about how exercise is one of my main sources of self-care, as is a regular sleep schedule. These are fantastic when I’m not under a dark cloud. During SAD-season, they barely keep me above water, but at least they do that. It doesn’t help when my runs have me swimming in icy cold rainwater.
Running the West Van Run in 2017, in snow and rain, looking like a drowned rat.
Extra sleep. I’m an advocate of giving my body what it’s asking for, so when my eyes want to close two pages into my book instead of 50, I let them.
I think recognition is the most important part of all of this.
This year it was a lot easier to handle SAD because I realized what I was dealing with. I made sure to really soak up the sun every time it came out. My 5x weekly half-marathon training schedule made sure that I was usually outside on sunny days. If it was an off-day, I tried to make sure I got outside, even briefly, anyway.
Especially with opportunity to see cute raccoons on the seawall.
I also really worked hard to bottle the sunshine inside of me. On those rare sunny days, I would sit in a pool of it on the floor just like a cat. I’d meditate on how amazing it made me feel. Then, I would package that feeling up. I’d imagine locking it into a special compartment in my heart. I could pull it out when I needed it.
Finally, I just did what my body wanted. I drank more coffee. Got cozy more often. I snuggled with my magic bag a lot. I slept more, took care of myself.
Happy first day of Spring! Here’s to hoping the rainy season (or snowy season, for those of you not in Vancouver) is on its way out.
Peace, love, and heart compartments full of bottled sunshine,
Bee.
P.S. – Next post on self-care for anxiety is coming soon!
