Ownership - the truth is staring at me in the mirror

Ownership. At some point in life we need to take some ownership.

It might be of the path your career is taking, it may be your financial situation, it may be taking control and ownership for some of the issues and problems in your life. Or as is my case, taking ownership of my health. 

Oh yeah folks, sorry it is one of those blogs. Woe is me. Ass is kicked. 

For over the last year or so, I've been feeling pretty damn exhausted, all of the time - where is my bed?! EXHAUSTED. I've also gained weight (around 10kg). I've sat back and blamed my tiredness and weight gain on PhD life. PhD being my life, and eating far too much cake and drinking far too many caramel lattes. Accepting that to eat this way and to feel this way is normal. Hey a PhD is seriously stressful, don't judge unless you are doing one! The hours are long and the rewards are few, so why not a donut now and then to keep going? Afterall the sugar will boost my energy.

It's not all bad, I'm sort of proactive about my health, i hit the gym at least 5 days a week, it is all about the quantity right? (yeah wrong!) I workout so much that i am permanently injured. So i mean weight gain, it isn't me, it is all about my stressful, unbalanced life. Logically, i know this to be a bunch of twaddle (great under-utilised word twaddle), but it has been all too easy to lay the blame elsewhere. I could blame my medication, but this has always felt like one lie too many to myself. 

I could have kept on lying, denying the truth, feeling disheartened that so much is going wrong in my life. PhD - not giving me results. Time and love for running - disappeared into the ether, enjoyment of Judo - what even is judo?! I do so little. Even the gym has lost its gleam. Then slap bang!! A trip to the doctors for a routine check up and...................HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE! 

NOT NORMAL AND NOT HEALTHY. 

So there i sat, waiting for my gym class to start when everything stopped. That moment of realisation came at me. High blood pressure is bad, really bad, being exhausted all of the time, it isn't normal. Yes the majority of PhD students are tired, but unable to focus all of the time, NO. And weight gain? Well, this makes me miserable, can only be my fault from eating too many cakes and the stress of being so unhappy with myself is probably contributing to my high blood pressure. Not to mentioin never having an quality down time.

SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE. 

The recognition that i can no longer deny my situation. I have a huge imbalance in my life. I have got to take some ownership of that. I'm overweight (well maybe not in terms of BMI, but it is getting there and i feel pretty awful), only i can change that. I'm stressed all the time and no longer find relief or enjoyment in running, judo and even the gym is loosing it's charm.

HOW?

I can change what i eat. Relative to everything else, that is easy. Finding the motivation to train harder at the gym? (quality not quantity...might help with the tiredness). Not so easy. Re-finding love for judo and running? I have no idea on that one. Reducing my blood pressure and finding a work life balance?? Not the foggiest. I'm not kidding. I'm staring at a wall of granite with only a miniature pick axe to take it down.

All I can do is take ownership of my situation and strive to make positive changes. Starting with my diet. What goes from there i do not know. I have no idea on how to tackle the other issues. 

But one thing is apparent. I can no longer sit back and deny the truth. 

I'm sure in later blogs i'll update you on my progress, but all advice or links to information gratefully recieved. I hope that my striving to be honest, others in my situation know they too are not alone and all advice will hopefully not only benefit me, but also other readers.

World Mental Health Day 2015

Today marks world mental health day. 

We all have mental health, you might not think you are affected by mental health problems, but you probably know someone who is. In this blog i'm giving a small insight into my mental health. I thought when setting this blog up that i would only post about happy things, but since when is a person happy all of the time. I'm sure as hell not.

Depression

Depression is defined as: feelings of severe despondency and dejection.

To some extent everyone has experienced this. The problem comes when you experience this 'all of the time'. 

This probably isn't going to be the best written blog folks, i'm finding it difficult to find the words to describe what i deal with. 

I have always been a glass half empty kind of girl, years of bullying at school left me feeling like a shadow of a person. Not worthy of time or notice by anyone. I grew up with a mother with severe mental health problems. When I was 16 she was placed into a special hospital unit. I had to grow up fast. When she came out, 'mom' was gone. I would get home to from to school to find her still in bed, unable to function as a person. For any 16 year old the kind of situation i was in was difficult to deal with, you aren't emotionally mature enough for it. I couldn't cope with the pressure and responsibility put on my and i completely messed up my AS-levels. 

At 19 i went to uni and slowly came out of myself, i discovered a love for the gym, but 'mom' was still there with her issues, using emotional blackmail to get me home, for me i was so stressed i experienced constant and excruciating migraines, coupled with decreased sleep of around 4 hours a night. At 21, on my 21st birthday, with a smile on her face as i got through the door from uni, 'mom' announced she was self harming. Happy Birthday to me right? It occurred to me at this point, i would be spending my life as a carer. Hard to deal with, even harder was returning home from uni and living back with the parents. dealing with the unstableness of my mother's bi-polar. 

I got a job, i meet a great friend, who was super encouraging, she gave me the confidence to take up Judo, which helped massively with my self-esteem, she encouraged me to go back to uni and get a masters degree. Cheers Pea, you are a star.

So here is when it happened. I got through my masters, sleeping regularly on 2-4 hours sleep a night, i was the healthiest and happiest i have ever been. I had met wonderful friends, a fantastic judo club, loved my degree. So decided on a PhD. And then I cracked. BOOM. FULL STOP. HALT. NOPE NOPE NOPE. 

Like a bolt out of the blue, my life flipped, turned upside down. I couldn't function. I didn't function. I wasn't happy, i wanted to cry all the time, i felt apart from people, i could sit in the same room and feel so utterly, despairingly alone. Life had no colour, it was varying shades of black. I was down to 2 hours of sleep or less a night. I was in a situation i couldn't get out of, that i had no help or support with and then i had to do my PhD. I was less than a person, i'd get to judo and then find myself having to leave the room to cry. I didn't want to exist, do not understand me, i didn't have suicidal thoughts, i just didn't want to exist. 

In adverts they always show a person alone in a corner, this was literally me. 

People would ask what was wrong, the answer was always 'i'm fine' - yeah, no, i was anything but fine. I couldn't tell anyone that though, who would understand?? People don't understand something they can't see. Even worse, what if someone said i was like my 'mom' -crazy, needed to go in hospital, never ever going to be able to lead a normal life. Therefore i couldn't tell anyone.  I had to deal on my own. To tell people you're fine when actually:

To get to the point, i eventually told someone, and they told someone else, that someone else helped me, he made me understand on an intellectual and emotional level i was not my mother. I was DEPRESSED. I got help. I take medication daily. I'm still prone to depressive episodes, mostly i think when people see me being mental and hyper, it is me trying to deal with the fact i'm not happy and i am trying to bust through that temporary wall. 

I also used to be totally anti - anti-depressants, i never wanted to take them, but now i do, and you have to take them daily, it isn't like paracetamol, you have to take them even when you don't think you need them. I function as a person now. 

Key thing here, anti-depressants don't make your life perfect, in fact far from it, i'm still a sensitive person, i still get upset at criticism, or when i think people dislike me for no reason, it really bugs me and hurts me. And they can have side effects, i suffer from irregular nightmares and it has made me gain a LOT of weight. And this is an issue for me, i eat well, train lots (arguably too much) and yet i continue to steadily gain weight and this makes me really upset and it makes me feel ashamed of myself and my body. I look in the mirror and i feel so embarrassed. But the tablets also make me well enough to go to uni and work, to get to the gym and sweat stress out, to get up and dressed and face the day. 

So here it is, my brief tale of 2 years of dealing with depression. I can count on one hand all the people in my life that know about it, and only two of them are family (no not my 'mom). I still feel the need to hide it and we shouldn't, depression and other mental health issues should be talked about. It is nothing to be ashamed of. 

So if you take one message from this, then take either the message you aren't alone if you suffer depression, or take the message of World Mental Health Day and spread it to engender understanding.