Tag: anxiety

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Coming out on the Sunny Side

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!

Related posts:

  1. Lexical Abandon’s Life Lately
  2. Exercise: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 2
  3. Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1

Exercise: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 2

This post is all about the second (and probably just as important as the first – sleep) of the 50 anxiety management strategies I wrote about in my last post: EXERCISE.

The Background

Long before I even knew I had a thing called generalized anxiety disorder, I used exercise as self-care and a coping mechanism for my anxiety. I wrote a blog for a couple of years when I was in high school, and it’s definitely relevant for me to pull a few quotes from there for the purposes of this argument.

“I went for a run this afternoon in the freezing cold rain. It was awesome. I went partly because I was royally pissed, and partly because I haven’t been for a run since friday, provincials. I was really mad because of my afternoon at school… I needed to pound it all out with a good run.:) Felt amazing.”

“That was wicked. Just got back from my run, it was pouring. I feel sooo good. It was a long day at school and after that I am so refreshed.”

Even though I didn’t realize that I had anxiety and I didn’t realize I was practicing self-care and using exercise as a management strategy, I recognized in myself that it was helpful and did it because of that.

Also, exercise is another one of those things that my co-worker’s counsellor friend said had to be in place before they would treat someone for anxiety: 30 minutes of physical activity outside 5 times a week. Not that I want to validate her argument, but it is a counsellor-validated method of managing anxiety.

Ways to use Exercise as Self-Care:

Again, referring to my leading argument, exercise is not the be-all and end-all of mental health management. But it is DEFINITELY beneficial for me, just like sleep hygiene.

1. Exercising outside is extra-beneficial, because experts argue that spending time in nature helps people with mental illness:

3. Have an accountability partner to keep you on track, or use a tracking program if you think you are motivated enough to keep yourself honest.

4. Make sure that what you’re doing is something that you enjoy. Otherwise, it doesn’t work as self-care, even if it is good for your body!

5. Be careful not to overdo it. Listen to your body. Speaking from experience, it is a slippery slope to start to do extra, because then you start to feel bad when you don’t, and you can also make it worse by getting to tired and falling off the wagon entirely. It’s important to strike a balance between getting enough exercise so that your body is happy and healthy, but not doing so much that you’re tired and sore all the time.

The next parts of the post are deeper dives into how I make each of these 5 strategies work for me!

Running

Running is my jam, and it’s been my jam since I was thirteen. I was overweight and unhappy, and my dad introduced me to the Running Room beginner running program, which takes you from running 1 minute and walking 5 all the way to running for an hour without stopping. Its step-by-step, foolproof, structured delivery format made it so easy for me to stay on track and it felt almost magical – just as the program promised, when I completed it, I could run for an hour easily.

As I mentioned earlier, running has been a self-care/anxiety coping strategy for me for a long time. Adding to that, it’s always been something I do outside, rain or shine. I actually often enjoy running in the rain (again, see above). So this definitely hits both on the requirement of exercise to help boost those endorphins and make you happy and keep your body healthy, but also on the need to spend time outside. It helps that I get to run on what I would argue is the most beautiful track in the world, the Stanley Park seawall.

I know that running isn’t for everyone, but the emphasis here is to find a kind of exercise that feels good for you!

Half-Marathon Training Program

Half-marathons are my form of achievable running goals that help me stay motivated. I know that running a half-marathon is achievable, because I’ve done it twice already. I make it a bit more challenging for myself each time by working to run it slightly faster each time. And the Running Room program that I follow gives me an easy way to do that, because it has training programs for different speeds. These programs are laid out perfectly, with runs of varying distances on the same days of the week every week – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s just perfect. I plop all the runs into my bullet journal well in advance, and then I check them off. Check, check, check. At the end of the program, I’m inevitably shocked that I can run 21.1 kilometres exactly in my goal time, but it’s pretty foolproof! Amazing, and definitely motivating.

May 2017 with my Dad and Sharon, having completed my second half-marathon (BMO Vancouver)!

Bullet Journaling

As I just mentioned, I keep track of my training program by writing it down in my bullet journal. Bullet journaling is definitely a whole other post (or even series of posts), but briefly, I tend to use my bullet journal for to-do lists. If I can check it off in my journal, I’m much more likely to complete a task. So instead of having a friend or family member help keep me motivated, having “training run” on my to-do list motivates me to get those kilometres behind me.

But if you’re not a pen and paper kind of person, having an accountability partner is a great idea to keep you motivated!

Just Love It!

It’s important to love what you’re doing for exercise. I know exercise is necessary for physical health, but in order for it to feel like self-care, it has to be something that makes your body and soul and heart feel good. For example, I hate running on treadmills. So I can’t use that as self-care. But I do love yoga, running, and lifting weights. So I can definitely use those!

Not overdoing it

This one is really important. It’s something that I struggled with when I started training for half-marathons. I always want to push myself further than is necessary, and that inevitably results in injury or exhaustion. That sets me back in the long run. It takes a while to set goals that are achievable but not too easy. You want it to be a bit of a challenge to do, because you get a lot of satisfaction from completing it. However, you don’t want to make it so hard that you hurt yourself or give up. If it happens to you, take a deep breath. It happens to everyone, the very best of us! Each time it happens is a new marker for how to measure your own limits.

Best Wishes!

Hopefully these strategies, if you haven’t thought about or tried them before, will help you like they help me. Exercise is definitely one of those things that I find it hard to motivate myself to do. It’s enjoyable and it makes me feel good, and it’s still hard. It’s especially hard to motivate myself to run when it’s really dark out all the time and almost always raining (a.k.a., November through March here in Vancouver).

But something that’s been my mantra for the last little while is this: Doing Feels Better.

If I run on Monday or Tuesday, I find it’s easier to go for more runs that week. If I don’t, it’s harder to motivate myself and I feel worse and worse because I haven’t been going.

Doing. Feels. Better.

Get moving!

Peace and love,

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. Medication: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 3
  2. Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1
  3. Thankful Thursday 3: Slowing Down
  4. Thankful Thursday 2: Sunny Vancouver Spring

Small Town Big City

I have lived in the big city of Vancouver for 7 years. When I was 18 years old, I left New Brunswick for British Columbia to attend UBC. The official anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here my entire life. Other times I can’t believe it’s been that long. I definitely felt both of these feelings multiple times when I went to visit my hometown last week.

I grew up in the Kennebecasis Valley, which is an umbrella term for the two adjacent towns of Quispamsis and Rothesay. These are suburbs of Saint John (not to be mistaken for St. John’s, NFLD). Throughout this article I use the blanket phrases small town and big city. However, the experiences I write about are specifically drawn from the KV and Vancouver.

[Language nerd alert: I wrote the title for this post a couple of days ago. Current me is loving past me for subconsciously making it sound like “Sit Still Look Pretty,” by Daya, one of my current favourite songs. Just had to put that out there.]

The longer I live in a big city, the more interesting it is to go back to my small hometown. It’s so interesting the way a person’s perspective, and even personality, can change based on the environment they live in. There are things I used to love about my small town upbringing that I really dislike now. I do still miss some of the things I thought I would when I first left, like seeing the stars and having a backyard. However, I’m surprised to dread returning to some of the  other aspects of a small town. Here’s a look at some of the things I’ve found to be very polarizing between big cities and small towns.

Things that are drastically different when comparing a small town and a big city:

Driving.

1. Definition of traffic.

In a small town, people define heavy traffic/”rush hour” as “more cars than none.” It won’t affect your travel time at all; the added vehicles will only affect the amount of space you have around you as you drive. In a big city, people define heavy traffic/rush hour as traffic being stop-start rather than flowing. Heavy traffic in cities severely impacts travel time. I find this contrast amusing.

2. Distance.

Because of this difference in traffic, measurements for distance are different. When measuring distance in a small town, people use minutes. It rarely ever takes a longer (or shorter) amount of time than usual to get anywhere. In a big city, you use literal distance, (here in Canada km). This is because even a distance as small as 10km (like my drive to work) can fluctuate as much as between 13 and 105 minutes. No joke.

3. Courtesy.

As a rule, in a small town, people are too polite as drivers. Just this last trip, we were driving on a road with a 60km/h limit, and the car in front of us slowed to about 35km/h because he saw that someone coming from the opposite direction was waiting to cross our path to turn left. Just let that sink in for a second. He slowed to a crawl to let someone turn left. Was there a long line of cars behind us? No. The other car’s path would have been completely clear for him to make a left turn as soon as us two cars had passed. Unreal.

Also, the old “You go!” “No you go!” game happens all the time, especially at 4-way stops and in parking lots. That shit causes accidents. There’s a reason there are rules for those things. Honestly. You want to make me panic? Force me to play chicken with a small town driver who’s trying to be nice.

4. Urgency.

People really take their time as drivers in small towns as well – again on this trip, we had a person take a good minute to reverse into his driveway in front of us all the while completely blocking our path. And that’s not the entire parking job. That’s just how long it took them to get out of the way of oncoming “traffic” (aka us). In a big city, you need skill at performing precise maneuvers quickly, or you face the wrath of the masses. It’s made me a better driver, but also a sometimes more anxious one, especially when parking (usually parallel).

Also, more likely than not in a small town, a person will slow down at a yellow light. In a big city, you’ll get honked at if you don’t speed up and go through it.

Light and Sound.

Small, low-population areas are very dark. Both in homes and on the road. My street back east literally has zero streetlights. I find it very difficult to see while driving at night, even with my glasses on. In my bedroom with the light off, I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. This gives the bonus of being able to see the stars more often, which I like, but I’ve always been afraid of the dark, so the city glow of home is very comforting to me.

Light “pollution” is such a negative term – I’ve always found it beautiful. Although I do sometimes miss seeing the stars with ease, I have always loved city lights. I adore throwing open my curtains and revelling in their radiance. It’s also nice to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without having to turn on a light. Rather than pollution, I like to call it illumination.

The view from our bedroom window.
The view from our bedroom window.

Just as they are dark, low-population areas are also very quiet. Living in a big city has really heightened my ability to sleep through noise. I used to wake up at every little sound, and now I can sleep through anything from drunken debauchery to emergency sirens and car alarms (but thankfully never my on-call ringer or my alarm clock). It’s very eerie to fall asleep in absolutely silence when I visit my hometown.

Social Encounters.

In a small town, you literally can’t go anywhere without seeing someone you know. It’s necessary to factor into your excursion time the extreme likelihood of meeting someone or several someones and having a chat or three or four. It’s often hard for people with anxiety to deal with spontaneous social situations like this. Going back east is hard for me in that respect, especially because everyone hasn’t seen me in a while and wants to hear my life story. It’s a lot easier to just say hi and be on your way without feeling bad if you regularly encounter a person. There’s a lot of guilt involved in trying to avoid having a conversation with a person you like and haven’t talked to in a long time.

In a small town even when you don’t meet someone you know, people are always striking up a conversation with you anyway. The usual culprits are the cashier or another person waiting in line. Can’t I just buy my bananas in peace?!

It’s really nice knowing that in a big city I can do groceries and the only things I’ll have to say are “No thanks I have bags,” “Mastercard please,” and “Yes, thank you.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s a novelty to meet someone you know when you’re out running errands in a big city. It’s fun and I usually get a huge kick out of it. Especially if it’s someone I didn’t know moved out here, like old high school acquaintances – it’s happened three times as far as I can remember.

Getting places.

In a small town, pretty much everything requires a car. Want to go to a friend’s place? Car. Need groceries? Car. Going to work? Car. Going to school? Car (or bus). Need to go to the pharmacy, mall, or to get takeout? Car. Want to go to the gym, for a walk (YUP), or to the beach? Car. Want to catch some Pokémon or capture a gym or two? Car.

My husband and I have lived together in Vancouver for 6 years and we only just got a car a year ago. That’s not to say that there weren’t times it would have been convenient to have one. We definitely love doing our groceries and Costco runs with a car now. But it wasn’t necessary. We have hiking trails, beaches, gyms, banks, grocery stores, malls, schools, work, restaurants, coffee shops, clothing stores, art galleries, movie theatres, sports stadiums, Pokéstops and gyms, and more, all within easy walking, biking, or super-fast, cheap, and convenient transit distance. Everything is within reach.

Perspective.

This last one is a little trickier to define. People just seem to have a different outlook if you compare small town to big city. There are so many less options in smaller places. People have to settle all the time, and they’re just fine with that. Here in Vancouver I have everything I could ever want right at my fingertips – and often multiple options for the same thing.

A great example would be Starbucks. There are about 5 within 10 minutes’ walking distance of our apartment. Out east, there is one, and it’s about a 20-minute drive from our family homes. I looooooooooove Starbucks coffee, but when I visit KV, I don’t go there. Tim Horton’s is only ~5 minutes away in the car. Plus, the SJ Starbucks always gets our order wrong. Sometimes in multiple ways. A NF Vanilla Latte and an Iced Grande Coffee with Milk are really not difficult.

Ordering issues at coffee shops and fast food places really trigger my anxiety. That’s another reason we don’t go to Starbucks back east. In Vancouver, I’m able to choose the Starbucks that best suits my needs – a) most friendly baristas that b) always get the job done in c) an efficient and d) correct manner, and e) close by.

I often feel that in a small town, the mindset is Oh well, it’s my only choice. None of that out here. I don’t have to compromise my comfort, values, convenience, or money to get what I want in a big city. It enables me to avoid anxiety triggers, get better deals on things, have better experiences, and just be happier in general.

There is one issue with that perspective, though – I find that in a big city companies have so much competition that they REALLY try hard to sell you things, and to give you the very best all the time. Most of the time, this is great. In radio, however, it’s annoying. The amount of times I’ve texted my mom about this FANTASTIC “new” song she just HAS to listen to, only to have her reply that she’s been listening to it for months, are innumerable. Radio stations here tend to play the same top 20 songs over and over simply because they’re the most popular. They also won’t début a new song until they’re sure it’s a major hit. My favourite radio station in my hometown, 97.3 The Wave, is constantly introducing super new music and has really great variety. I often listen to it online from Vancouver.

I’m not trying to say that big cities are better than small towns. Each has their pros and cons, and different people like different things. I do, however, find it very interesting how environmental changes can seemingly change a person. As a child I LOVED my small town. As a teenager it was stifling and I couldn’t wait to get out. When I left, I found the transition to Vancouver very difficult, but loved the city so much I decided not to leave it as an adult. Now, I find it difficult to go back east.

Has living in a big city made my anxiety worse? Quite possibly. It is easier for me to avoid the things that trigger my anxiety. You’re also potentially more likely to have issues with your mental health if you live in a big city. I’m probably going to talk about that in a future post. But you could also say that being able to avoid triggers is a good thing, and I definitely feel more anxious when I visit my hometown than I do when I’m at home in the big city. That could be circumstantial, but at the very least it’s interesting.

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. An Ode to Vancouver’s West End

Creativity, Anxiety, and Courage

I learned three important things quite early on.

One, that creativity requires courage. Two, that anxiety demands courage. And three, that being creative with anxiety requires even more courage than either of those alone. For a long time, I found it too difficult to muster the courage required to share my creative passions because I was crippled by anxiety about the value of, and possible response to, my work. You may be thinking to yourself, “Just do what you love, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.” That’s easier said than done when you’re battling with anxiety. It wasn’t until recently that creating became worth the effort again. I want to share that story.

First, creativity requires courage.

For anyone. It’s courageous to create something and put it out into the world. I have always been a creative person, and until anxiety came around, I was able to find that courage regularly.

Second, anxiety requires courage.

It’s a similar kind of courage to that required by creativity. Anxiety causes me to fear and worry about almost everything. But I live my life despite the worry and fear, and that is courageous.

Third, creativity and anxiety together require even more courage, for me at least.

I wrote creatively a lot in high school but I stopped when my anxiety got worse. Why?  I worried endlessly about what people think of me and what I put out into the world.
First, I have an incredibly strong need for people to like me. I also have a terrible fear that people will dislike me. I worry about these constantly.
Second, myself and my creative work are the same. I put so much of myself into what I create. I think that a valuation of my work is a valuation of my person.

The courage required to conquer these two things together – anxiety and creativity – was too much to muster all at once for a very long time.

It is partly that fear that has prevented me from starting this blog for so long. Remember when I said it took me two years to write my first post? I was afraid that people wouldn’t like my writing. That they would think my opinions weren’t well thought-out. I was nervous that I would get attacked for my ideas. It wasn’t the expanse of the Internet I was afraid of, or even the most grizzly, snot-nosed, pockmarked Internet trolls. That’s another aspect of my anxiety – I’m not afraid of people I don’t know. Only people I care about. To some, that might seem backwards, but it makes total sense to me. The people I care about are the people whose opinions about me worry me the most, because I don’t want them to stop liking me or to stop wanting to be in my life.

The more I value a person’s opinion, the more I fear sharing my creative work with them. Case and point: I didn’t tell my husband what I was writing about on my blog (although he did know I was starting it), nor did I directly share my work with him, because I was too nervous about what he would think. I only found out he’d been reading it after last week’s (my second) post. When he told me he enjoyed reading it, I felt like the weight of my patronus fell off my shoulders. (Nerd joke alert, my patronus is an elephant. Quite possibly the subject of another post.) I also told very few of my friends that I was even thinking of starting a blog before I linked my first post to my Facebook page.

If there is one thing that has increased my courage in terms of pursuing and sharing my creative passions, it has to be an Instagram community that I recently joined called Bookstagram. Users create accounts with bookish (“of or relating to books” – Merriam-Webster) names and post exclusively about books and related fandoms. I have no idea how it began, but it now has thousands of members and probably millions of users interacting with it daily. It is undefined, and markedly different from Instagram itself, while working within its boundaries.

I discovered it a while ago and it interested me immediately – I already loved reading, talking about books, collecting, and taking photographs. But I was hesitant to join. I worried that my photos somehow wouldn’t meet imaginary standards and that the community wouldn’t accept me. Looking back now, that sounds ridiculous. I don’t know that there exists a more welcoming or inclusive community on Instagram. Regardless, I watched from afar for a good couple of years. I didn’t see the point because I assumed I would never have any success with it, and I felt shame for wanting to be just like them – what kind of 20-something collects figurines associated with books and TV shows, and spends most of her time reading and photographing her collections? I was ashamed of and anxious about my passion.

In November, I was feeling comfortable in my new job, and had begun reading for pleasure a lot for the first time since high school. I also had the funds to be able to buy more books and start collecting funko pop! vinyl figurines. I started following more Bookstagrammers, took photos of my books and funkos, and even posted a few on my regular Instagram account. I really enjoyed it. Suddenly, something clicked. The worry about what people would think of me and the shame I was feeling began to weigh less than the enjoyment I got out of finally being passionate and creative again. A few months later, I mustered up all the courage that I could find in my body and created a Bookstagram account. It was more successful than I ever could have hoped, and it brings me so much joy.

My whole point here is that sharing one’s creative work always takes courage. Doing it as a person with anxiety inherently requires even more of that daring.

Through my experience with Bookstagram, I realized that doing what I love feels way better than not doing it for fear that it will negatively impact people’s opinions of me. My whole point here is that sharing one’s creative work always takes courage. Doing it as a person with anxiety inherently requires even more of that daring. It’s scary stuff, putting yourself out there. But it’s so worth it.

That feeling is what bolstered my courage and helped me begin writing this blog as well. No one could ever have convinced me that people would enjoy my writing. Just like no one could have convinced me that people would think my enormous book and funko collection and my photographs of it were awesome. The only thing that could and did quiet my fears was putting those things out there and observing the response (which ended up being very positive).

That brings me to my next point. I realized something new about my anxiety when I started to take leaps and share my creative work: even if the response to my Bookstagram account or my blog hadn’t been positive, that wouldn’t have been a problem, because I wouldn’t have had any scary “what if?”s to worry about anymore.

I have to experience firsthand the things that worry me to be free of them.

This is simultaneously the hardest and easiest part of my anxiety to manage: I have to experience firsthand the things that worry me to be free of them. This is difficult because I tend to want to avoid the things that worry me or wish they would go away. It is also magical, because there is a sure-fire way for me to stop worrying – to tackle what I’m worrying about head-on.

I post some photos that are less successful. That’s too bad, but at least I don’t have to worry about the response to them once they’re posted. Whether it’s positive or negative, my brain no longer has to worry about making up scary possibilities. It’s much easier to deal with what is than to worry about the things my brain makes up about what could be. All I have to do is take a leap and share my work. I say “all I have to do” like it’s nothing, but it really does require a big dose of courage. I’m getting better and better at this with time.

There will always be people who love what you love.

Generally, I find that if you create something with passion, people will respond well to it. If they don’t, that’s too bad for them. Friends are there to support you doing what you love, and if they’re unsupportive, they’re not worth your time.

There will always be people who love what you love.  People who are inspired by the joy that you take from what you invest yourself in. People who try to put you down for the things you love really don’t merit your energy.

Having these realizations doesn’t mean that I don’t worry about the quality of my creative work or people’s opinions anymore. Anxiety doesn’t just go away. But now, the joy of creating and sharing things is more important than the worry that tries to prevent me from doing those things. The good outweighs the worry.

Courage is the choice to still be anxious, but to be creative and put my stuff out there anyway. To take the leap any time I share something.

Now I just take a deep breath, pick up my tool of choice, and create.

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. What is Lexical Abandon?
  2. Self-Care for Anxiety: 50 Strategies
  3. Lexical Abandon’s Life Lately
  4. Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1

What is Lexical Abandon?

As with most things where I am concerned, the answer to this question comes in the form of a story.

For me, as a person with anxiety (and I’ve trained myself to say it that way – I’m not an anxious person; my disorder doesn’t define me), the best way I can describe my anxiety and moments of panic is as a tornado of words directly on top of my head.

I’m not an anxious person; my disorder doesn’t define me.

In a situation that feels normal to me, when I’m comfortable, I picture myself speaking by easily selecting words from a database – for the purpose of this metaphor, a cloud – that functions as a library, dictionary, or whatever you’d like to call it – a drawer set, an archive, of words. If I’m talking about something that excites me, like books, nature, or blogging, I easily and inventively (at least I like to think so) pull the words I want from their compartments in the figurative cloud above my head and combine them to make something certainly sensical, and hopefully beautiful.

Then there are the times when I’m experiencing anxiety.

This occurs on varying levels, from feeling a knot in my stomach, to a sense of dread, to an incessant debilitating worry, to full-on panic – about a specific thing, or, as also often occurs, just feeling anxious or worried in general. Then, not only is my ability to act, or even move my body, taken away from me, but so is my ability to select words from the cloud. Partly because the worry and/or panic make me feel paralyzed, but also because the cloud above my head transforms from a lovely wisp of cirrus that swirls gently and provides me with millions of options per second that I can easily pinpoint to choose from, into a terrifyingly dark cumulonimbus, borderline tornado, that swirls above my head. It smashes words together with cacophonous booms, making it almost impossible for me to pick any sequence of words out of it that I could in any way shape into something coherent, let alone grasp even a single word that might signify to any other party what is currently happening above my head, let alone in my body, mind, or heart.

It is easy to play something off as not a big deal when you don’t have the tools to recognize or understand it.

For the longest time, talking about my anxiety has been effectively just like the above situation, only I’m not having a panic attack or worrying about something specific when I’m trying to do it.

I’ve just never been able to share one of the most important parts of me – the way my brain functions. For a long time it was because I didn’t recognize it for what it was. Only recently has talking about and de-stigmatizing mental health become common. I didn’t know what generalized anxiety disorder was until university at the earliest (which, for me, began 7 years ago). I had encountered depression and eating disorders earlier in my life – as early as my pre-teens – and developed an understanding of them, but I didn’t know anxiety existed (even though it presented itself in myself and some of my friends) until later. It is easy to play something off as not a big deal when you don’t have the tools to recognize or understand it. Like my friends often said, I was just “being Becca,” or “having a Becca freak-out.”

It has only been in the past two years or so that I’ve begun to recognize my anxiety for what it truly is.

Recently, on Bell Let’s Talk day, I shared on Facebook with anyone who I have as my friend (exactly 750 people, at the time) that I have anxiety, and have dealt with the disorder for at least 12-13 years. Prior to sharing my experience, I had only told 7 people. 7 people, in 13 years. Only 7 people who really understood what shaped so many of my decisions and coloured how I went about my life. Like I mentioned, people had known my panic attacks as “Becca freak outs.” People dubbed my anxiety (as I now know it) as “super-organization” and “ultra-involvement,” but never as a disorder, a physiological, psychological problem condition. The most attention (and I struggle to use this word; I definitely didn’t want any more attention placed on it) it ever got was off-hand remarks and (sometimes not-so-light) teasing.

The response to my post was overwhelming, and enlightening.

I was on the verge of tears all day – sad, happy, and cathartic. These feelings were especially strong because I was teaching that day. I shared with each class, mostly of 13-14-year-olds, about Bell Let’s Talk day’s importance and the impact mental health had already had on my life in my short almost-25 years (two suicides and one attempt – people I knew well, significant others and friends with depression, eating disorders, BFRBs and/or anxiety, and the struggle with stigma that surrounded all of it). The students responded incredibly compassionately, and some even shared stories of their own. Likewise, so many people responded to my post. By commenting, liking, or sending me direct messages. And I never would have dreamed that so many of the people who reached out to me were dealing with the same things as me.

“You talking about your anxiety helps me understand.”

That day, that post, finally gave me the jolt I needed to know that I was not alone and that sharing more of my experiences would help not only me, but hopefully many of the people in my life. I first put it into practice by talking to my friends and family more freely. I said to my dad, “It’s so difficult to talk to you about my anxiety because you don’t understand.” (This is true – he finds it difficult to understand the concept of not being able to stop thinking about something that worries you, of being physically debilitated by worry.) He responded with, “You talking about your anxiety helps me understand.” I find that talking to people close to me is almost always more difficult than talking to those that aren’t quite so close. After getting such an enlightening response from someone I found it so difficult to talk to, and the beautiful abundance of messages from friends and acquaintances, I am finally ready to bring Lexical Abandon, something I’ve thought about, and planned for over two years, to fruition.

That begs the question, then: What is Lexical Abandon?

Lexical Abandon, to me, is the following:
– Finally grasping the words I’ve never been able pull from the tornado or combine into sentences to finally break my silence about the struggles I’ve had with anxiety for over a decade
– Abandoning my fears of lexical overload, and sharing my views about the world from my own unique perspective. Wordily. I’ve always been long-winded, and it’s always been something I’ve been anxious about, and even ashamed of. No longer.
– Poetry. It is my creative outlet, something to finally spark me to write, something I haven’t been doing nearly enough of in recent years. I find that if I have an audience (no matter how small), a readership, I feel an obligation (not in a negative way, but a positive drive) to write for them, for you, and for myself. Creating this blog has been a long time coming, because it has taken me a long time to find the intrinsic jolt to actually publish it. I purchased the hosting and domain two full years ago. I have had “Lexical Abandon” sitting on the back-burner of my mind for two years. It has meant something for two years, for so much longer than that, and it has finally caught fire and is blazing so brightly that I can’t just keep it to myself any longer.

Finally, Lexical Abandon is not just about anxiety.

It’s about how I interact with the world. How I exist in the beautiful city of Vancouver that is my home. My experiences in the professional arena of teaching. My identity as a young, married woman, as a Millennial (and not in a derogatory sense). My exploration of the Pacific Northwest, my soul space, as I like to call it. My life. This is a life blog. But at the heart of all of it is the beautiful way I interact with everything in my world – through the lens of a person with anxiety. Sometimes it is a negative thing, but it also brings a lot of light into my life. I hope that will become clear to those who read my words, and that anyone with anxiety will find solidarity, and hopefully comfort, in my wordy ramblings (and sometimes rants).

In solidarity, de-stigmatization, and love,

Bee.

Related posts:

  1. Lexical Abandon’s Life Lately
  2. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Coming out on the Sunny Side