Struggling past my own mind

Well, I've tried twice, but the photo is not uploading. But it is of my new mini fridge. Only the new one is bigger than my old one. And most important of all, it has a separate door for the freezer. For the first time in over two years, I can buy frozen food and actually expect to keep it frozen! My old one had a tiny freezer compartment within the fridge, but it froze parts of the refrigerator while permitting part off the freezer to thaw out. Thus, it was only good for things that didn't HAVE to stay frozen for food safety reasons.

 So that is my happy news.

On the mental health front, I have to "baby" myself. At least that is how it feels. This poor brain here does fine sometimes, but other times the tears come. Which is interesting because it has been a while since I've cried this much. And frustrating because I find myself needing help. Needing the extra hug. Needing to cry with a friend. Very annoyed at needing my friends, but also very grateful to have them.

Today was Sunday, (duh,) which for me involved going to church and Bible study. The sermon was about taking responsibility and serving at church, not as a we-need-help-in-such-and-such-ministry, but as in it will help us grow in our relationship with God. The context was graceful, not legalistic. But through my cloud of depression, I heard, "See? You are sinning by taking a break from helping on the music team." That wasn't what the pastor was saying; that was just what I was hearing.

 Then came Bible study, and more mishearing. This time with tears. Bathroom break! Thankfully my eyes seem good at hiding tears (or at least are good enough that I think they hide my tears, and my perception is most important in this case :-)... But afterwards, I was able to talk to a friend who was able to confirm my suspicion that I was mishearing. Who was able to assure me that it really was okay to take a break from helping with music.

And then I took a nap.

So I am too much in the vulnerable nitty-gritty of mental illness to advocate to the general public about mental illness this year during mental health awareness week (which technically has already ended yesterday). My mental health struggle is generally reserved for people like you who I am fairly confident won't respond with judgement (or will at least keep it to yourself :-) ). Because I'm not ready to stand against stigma right now. Hey, I'm busy fighting the stigma in my own mind. But later, when I'm better, I hope to advocate with less reserve.













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My merry-go-round

I've been keeping a mood log since sometime last May, or maybe June. I've done it on the OpenOffice software similar to Excel. This means I can do cool stuff like make charts and graphs to see how my mood has swooped around over the last year. This last week, I found that you can also put in a trend line over your chart. This was neat, but disturbing. I used it over charts made from week averages for the last 10 or 11 months. I learned that: My depression at its best (each day, then averaged per week) is getting better. My depression at its worst (each day, then averaged per week) is getting worse. My anxiety is getting worse. My sleep time is increasing. My exercise time is decreasing. Or, in short, my worst is getting worse. So then I wonder if I'm using the same standards to judge my mood as I was using in May last year. After all, the mood ratings are subjective, done each day, or occasionally every few days. But what if anxiety that I called a 5 in May would ...
Read more

OCD meddling in my education (again)

Image
What do you know, the insert picture function thingy is working today! Hence my photo not taking over more of the blog than it should. Today, if OCD were little g gods, I would have offended the gods. Actually, I did it last night. Thank you so much, professor, for giving OCD the opportunity to knock me to my knees. I'll have you know, however, that I am making some small show of resistance. Which I will explain. This is what I did. I did the communication screen with a little kid as per the instructions. Then, looking over it at home, I thought I missed something, so proceeded to correct something to say how the child actually pronounced it, not how I forgot and left it. And then the monster pounced. Because, being an hour or so removed from the situation, I no longer knew for absolute certain how the child said that word anymore. But I had just struck through the assumed mispronounced sound. So do I go all the way a...
Read more

Sunday

Well, played guitar in church today. I only dreamt about it two nights since Wednesday when I agreed to play. And neither dream was a total disaster... Anxiety, how much you do for me. Glad that's over until I start working up to playing next Sunday, too. Two Sundays in a row. Probably good for dealing with the anxiety monster. The pastor preached on Psalm 4 today, the second half of the (very short) chapter. It included dealing with upsetting emotions. He was good about saying that having the emotions themselves wasn't the problem, but then we have to deal with it. By stopping. A good old "be still" type verse is stuck in there, along with that vague "meditate" word (but not in my version; mine used other words for about the same meaning). The pastor's paraphrase of the meditating part was to address yourself, telling yourself to "be still" etc. Anyhow, by the end of the sermon and the chapter, he was hoping that people around us would see t...
Read more