Edit: This Post has taken a very different turn from the beginning of it to the end. I’ve started on one topic and ended up committing to a very public and accountable goal. Enjoy – J.

I haven’t posted in a while so I figured an update was long overdue. I am preparing for releasing the Not A Stigma Podcast, and because of my own insecurities I have re-recorded every episode I’ve been working on 5 or 6 times (so far). In my head, I understand that nothing is perfect first time out, but I’m not at the level I want to be for conveying the messages in the episodes. It’s a unique podcast and I want to be able to give my best to it so it’s taking some time.

However, it and other things have taken me away from my blogging lately. I’ve noticed that I have withdrawn a bit and have put the site to the side and even the podcast recordings as I have been getting frustrated. I was reminded by those in my Personal Support Group that “you get out what you put in”, and distractions of my more mundane yet important parts of life like work have absorbed my time.  

Sometimes we lose touch with our goals and even the balances that are needed for good physical and mental health. I for example, haven’t taken a vacation in years. I’m sure I’m not the only one out there and as much as I’d like to, the thought of taking a vacation sometimes puts more stress on me which is exactly the opposite of what a vacation is supposed to do. So instead I feel like a rechargeable battery that can only charge to about 50% instead of 100%. I even got sick because of my inability to take enough time to relax.

There is a direct correlation between relaxing and your health not just mentally but physically too. So, I did a little research to see what experts and people more in the “Know” say about the subject. The way you feel mentally can influence your physical health over time if you don’t take the time to decompress, center, and learn to let things go. (I am a great example of what NOT to do for the most part. I take on a lot of projects and I leave myself less and less time to reset.) Stress, being overworked, anxiety, and a host of things we allow into our head daily that we don’t let go of can manifest in some/all of the following physical issues:

• Headaches

• Muscular pain in our neck, shoulders or back

• Fatigue and low energy levels

• Raised blood pressure

• Palpitations

• Increased pain thresholds 

• Poor sleep patterns

• Poor breathing

• Suppressed immune system and increased susceptibility to infections 

• Increases in blood sugar and cholesterol levels 

Not only these symptoms but of course over time it gets worse such as raising your risk for heart attacks! Yes, stress kills, and IT DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE NOT READY. Now why do I state this in such a dramatic fashion? Because, we should all care about living long enough to reach our goals in life. This scared me to want to change how I’m doing things and I’m hoping it scares you enough to do the same.

So, what do I do? How do I avoid the stress of my daily environment, pressures, and surprises that come up? Well it’s something I’ve had to give a lot of thought to because this is a generalization of my own specific question to myself. We all have different things that stress us out, leave us vulnerable, make us more susceptible to fatigue and physical manifestations of our stress. For me it’s not taking the much-needed time for myself to relax, recharge, and re-focus.

Time to Change Habits!

Take a moment to see what your usual day/week is like. Identify the points where you would like to make a change to your routines. Let me show you an example:

• Monday – Friday: I start work too early and leave too late. (outside of scheduled work hours)

  • Talk to boss about their expectations and my expectations. My boss had NO CLUE that I was working so much and was angry that I didn’t come to them sooner. (My expectations were too high for myself.)

• Weekend: I’m not getting out enough.

• I watch too much TV. (This does not count as relaxing. You don’t enrich your life by knowing what is going on with Game of Thrones.)

• I don’t see my parents enough.

• I’m taking long naps

The solutions are self-explanatory: Do the opposite of these things. To change what you are doing you should be aware of what you are doing that needs changing, then make the effort to change them. Continuing the effort until it become a normal habit for you. (That was a very lazy way to put it!) How about this: Start making goals that work towards what make you happy. Define your passions on a piece of paper, then do what you need to take them from that page and give them life.

Here is an example of my own goal not born out of passion but out of a healthy necessity: I need to go to the gym, it’s just a fact. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, and coincidentally the oldest! My plan is to start with walks with my wife early in the morning, on the weekends. We have a stationary bike, so I can utilize that too. (I hate them, but I hate the idea of having a heart attack or diabetes more!) I’m not ready to die so I’m willing to try. (That is my get healthy mantra until I start to get buff then it will be “WOLVERINE”!) *

All this sounds like work, and does not seem to fall under the category of relaxing. Well, yes and no. The point of relaxing should be to do what you WANT to do, not what you HAVE to do. You have to work, you have to eat, you have to sleep it doesn’t mean that that is all you should be doing with your life. Relaxing is about what you do to make those experiences less stressful, and adding more fun to your life. You are not a machine so don’t act like one. The reason why I added the humor to my goal of working out is to keep my goal positive and make it fun for me because it is not yet a passionate hobby. I need to motivate myself till I see and feel the results. I’m not putting pressure on myself but I identify the priority with the fact that I am getting older, and I should be more fit.

Little story about me working out: I was working out around 2008 with a trainer who held my accountability (and money), however I saw results, good ones. I didn’t notice until I was on the toilet and the shape of my knees looked odd because the muscles had gotten to a point where they defined enough to lessen the “knobbiness” of them. That put me into a level where I became passionate about working out. I stopped working out because I had surgery to remove my gallbladder, I got into lazy habits, and my mental health issues were giving me trouble.

I haven’t talked about my mental health too much or the correlation of relaxing and its impact on it. Well, think about it. If you can diminish even a little of your stress, anxiety, or find a bit of fun because of changing your habits and allowing yourself time to pursue your passions, that you are giving your brain enough of room to help medications work a little easier, for therapy sessions to go a little smoother, or even conflicts in other areas to be resolved in a different way because of the reduction of the things that stop you from focusing? I think it’s worth the little bit of work to balance your life a little more with some relaxing habits and creative outlets.

*Now, I have put it in writing that I’m going to work out. I am making myself accountable for what happens next. If anyone is interested I will update my progress to see what goes on with my mental and physical changes, challenges, and we’ll see what happens. I’m going to the doctor for a physical, so it seems like a good way to start. When I get the OK I will start from there.

I recently celebrated my 41^st birthday and every year, in the days leading up to my birthday I take a piece of paper and write a list of things I believe to be true about myself that are good. One for each year. It’s an exercise I’ve been doing since I was 34. I do this to see how far I’ve come, to see the person I have become, and to stay on track with my self-esteem.

I also write my goals down for the coming year and evaluate where I am in my 1 year, and 5 year goals, to make sure that I am where I want to be, or if I need any course corrections either because I haven’t met my goals or because during the year I find that those goals no longer fit me. It’s my way of seeing progression of breaking those boulders that were before me into pebbles and sand.

I learned these exercises from my therapist back when my self-esteem was non-existent, and I had no clue who I was. I was aimless, depressed, confused about what I wanted out of life and where I was supposed to be. “Who was I?”

My therapist told me to write a list of things I liked about myself as homework for the next time we met. For a week I struggled with it like she asked me to invent a way to time travel. I called my friend to help me put thing about myself on a piece of paper. I went to an external source to tell me who “I” was. When I went back the next week I had a small list of 5-10 things that I really didn’t believe. She knew, threw it out and told me to try again. “This time, look at yourself, for yourself, by yourself.” That was all the instructions I got, and I took it quite literally. I went home and for an hour each day for a week I did something I never did, I looked at myself in a mirror. I found features I liked about myself first: The color of my eyes, the symmetry of my face, the fact that my hair was soft and that I had it still. Then I went deeper: I like my laugh, my eyes are warm and kind, I was empathetic…. Wait! I found something, a real trait! Something I that wasn’t superficial, something I believed. After a week that was about all I came up, but it was a start.

My therapist was proud of me as she crumpled the paper and threw it away. She told me to do it again. I did it 3 more times, 2 of them were basically repeats of what I had written, but by the third time I observed what others saw in me based on how they reacted to my presence, how they listened to me. I was taking a personal inventory of who I was.

When I realized what I was doing I became more aware of myself just a little but enough to know I had worth to others and I had worth to myself. I knew because I made a list, and I believed it. When I got to 34 things I stopped it took a long time to get there, the last list didn’t have a time limit and she never asked to see it, and I figured that this time the list was just for me.

The coincidence was that I didn’t know I got to 34 things till I pulled the list out of some pile of papers 7 months later (about 3 weeks from my birthday), when I counted the amount of things I had on it. I decided that I was going to start a new list and I was going to make it 35 positive things I knew about myself. I also decided that I was going to start making goals, so I did it all around my birthday. I’ve never stopped.

It’s gotten easier and easier as I learn more about who I am, and before I knew it, I had created tools that help my self-esteem and keep me in sight of accomplishments. I’ve found these tools VERY helpful in molding me and organizing myself. This method works for me, for about an hour a year I get my house in order on paper, then I get myself to manifest the goals and reaffirm what I already know about myself. I’m happier today because of it. This is one of the many things I do. I look forward to it, it makes getting older that much more enjoyable.

I was having a moment of high anxiety the other day, I don’t necessarily remember what brought it on, but needless to say I was on my way to a panic attack. I am prone to these sometimes in moments of stress or while dealing with irrational fears (phobias), or thoughts that overwhelm me in the spur of the moment (bills, or Walmart usually). So I tried to lay down for a moment and stop pacing around and slow my momentum towards the coming attack. At that precise moment my cat sat on my chest and nuzzled my face while purring like a little Mac Truck. I immediately got lost in the moment and rubbed my face against his, attempting to purr back in kind (failing miserably as I sounded like a man gargling spit), and petting him till he plopped down on my chest and fell asleep, still purring just a little more softly now. By the time he fell asleep, I had forgotten that I was escalating into a panic attack and looked for my next source of entertainment which happened to be my dog who seemed to be jealous by all the attention the cat was getting. So, I was now even more distracted by the licks on my hand as I tried to pet her.

We all have that problem, you lay awake at night in bed, looking at your phone or laptop when you should be sleeping and it goes on for days and days. Some of us don’t think they need 8 hours of sleep and will get by with less sleep. The problem is over time sleeping less can wreak havoc with us mentally and manifest physically too with sluggish immune response. Here are some tips to try next time you start getting into a bad sleep pattern and keep your mind and body in a better state in order to deal with life as it comes at you:

Depression seems uncontrollable, bigger than you. It can strike gradually or like water engulfing you from a dam breaking open. To me depression can sometimes be like a boulder on top of me, keeping me in one spot, stopping me from doing what I need to do. The weight eventually gets comfortable and I forget or just stop caring that I should be doing something else.

I went on Facebook and asked people dealing with depression how they would describe what depression felt like to people who have never experienced it, or didn’t know what it was like. Here were some of the answers:

I was asked a question on some app called Kiwi. The app is something from twitter where you can randomly ask and answer random questions. Well the question was “What do you see when you look in the mirror?”, and at first I was going to make a smartass remark as an answer, but I decided to think about it for a little bit.

What I see when I look in the mirror is not an easy answer for me. 1) I don’t look in the mirror for more than a minute a day, 2) I rarely look myself in the eyes. I understand the question is more than that. It’s actually a good question. I remembered at some point a few years ago, as an exercise a therapist asked me to write down a list of positive qualities about myself. I actually ran to everyone I knew to tell me something nice about myself, and that is how I came up with my list.

I didn’t even know how low my self esteem was that I couldn’t come up with my own list! It seemed like a simple exercise, a list with no minimum of qualities, just something to put on the paper. I realized I needed to understand myself better, trust myself, get to know who I am, and learn to love who I am good or bad.

One of the ways that I deal with my illness is having a well developed Personal Support Network (PSN). These are the “go-to” people when you are dealing with something that you can’t handle on your own. It’s important to have a network of friends and/or family for support, advice, or just to vent when your anxiety, depression, or whatever is ailing you is starting to take root. I have a network of people in place and regularly reach out to these people, especially when I have to make tough decisions that may impact my future and of those around me.  These are people who have known me the longest, and have shaped my personality. I know their strengths and weaknesses so I what topics are best to talk to them about. The best part is, they know all the bullshit I can throw out and can cut right through it. These people make for great support because there isn’t anything they aren’t ready for. They understand you, even when you don’t.