Don't Rock the Boat

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The month of June was a little more stable for me. Even with going home to Iowa, which caused a minor homesickness break down, June was pretty good. I am still not back to doing everything I know I should or even want to because it scares me. I was explaining to Eric that right now I am floating but stable in a tiny little row boat. I know if I put the oars in and start paddling I will make more progress and go where I need to go. But I am scared that in the process of getting my oars ready and starting to move that I will rock the boat and start to sink again. It isn't the best way to think but that was the only way I could really explain it.

Eric and I have a really big decision to make about a job in the next six to eight weeks and I know I need to get back to reading scriptures and praying so I will be able to be in tune to what the Spirit tells us about the job.

It is time to start rowing.

Changes Part 1

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Today is my husband's 31st birthday. In a month I will be following him and turning 31 as well. Even though I still have a month to go I have started reflecting on my last year. A lot has changed since I turned 30.

*A new job
*Three different callings (assignments) at church
*Stopped taking medication for depression
*Added a second car to the family
*Started attending a weekly support group for depression at my church
*Made great new friends

These things have been a factor in either an up swing or a down swing in regards to my depression.

My old job as a nanny was really hard because I was too isolated. The other factor was that I loved the children so much that it became very difficult to not be the mom and only be the nanny. There weren't huge differences in parenting styles but small ones here and there. In the end when I was leaving things got rough for a variety of reasons; some my fault, some not my fault but it shook me up just the same. One of the hardest parts about leaving is that I have not seen the children since.

The different callings at church hasn't been too bad other than my current calling doesn't really allow for a lot of personal spiritual development at church. My focus is on if we have teachers and who is where and when do they need to be there.

When I originally started taking medication it was supposed to be for a small amount of time so I could learn some coping strategies and then move on. In the end I was on medication for four years. I choose to go off of medication for a lot of reasons and I don't regret doing so. It was hard for me to always have to remember to take my pills, take them with me when I traveled, check before I took anything else to see if there would be an adverse reaction to mixing medications etc etc. Since going off the medication I have been wishy washy on doing things that are good for me.

Adding a second car has only been a good thing. Even money wise it hasn't been too much on an adjustment because we paid off my car shortly after purchasing Eric's car. Eric has had to commute to DC for the last 5 months and not having to take him to the train station or pick him up has allowed life to go much smoother for all involved.

When the group at my church was started I was asked specifically to attend. I would have gone anyway but the special invitation made me feel all the more welcome. Through this group I have made a few really great friends. I will admit there have been nights when the group might not have been the most helpful. But because of  the relationships that I have gained from the group that has made the not as great nights worth it. There is a great balance between talking and hanging out as girlfriends and then really learning about and working on depression. I love that I can go and know I am not alone in my battle with depression and also talk about treating depression in the context of my religious faith.

All of these have been really big changes that affected me and now I need to find the courage to make changes that will affect me in positive ways as I work to pull myself out of the slump I have been in for the past month.

Hope

I think one of the hardest things about depression is hope. Depression for me goes in cycle; I call in my ferris wheel. When I am on the top top I am hopeful that this time the depression won't come back or at least stay away for a long time. Then
                                            down
                                                            I
                                                                              go.


The depression comes back. I cry. I tell myself I am not going to get hopeful. I go back up and the hope returns. Round and round and round I go. The dissapointment that comes when the depression comes back is very exhausting. If there was no hope there would be no expectations and thus no dissapointment.

On this round of depression the hope hasn't really come back. I also have been fighting it a bit as well. I almost don't want to allow myself to go back up because the pain of coming back down is a lot to bear. Whenever I think about my depression in this way I remember the movie "Bounce". In the movie Abby is left a widow after a plane crash and her friends tell her that "only the plane crashed, you have to bounce" to which Abby replies "... so that's what I've been doing all this time, bouncing... it's like crashing, except you get to do it over and over again". That is how the depression feels sometimes. I just go up and down, hope and crash, happy and sad over and over again.

A Broken Ship

Three weeks ago at my support group we did some art therapy. The leader told us to draw a picture that included the ocean, a rocky cliff, a light house and a boat. This was my drawing. Once we were finished Holly (the leader) told us what each thing meant.

The lighthouse: Christ and God

The Rocky cliffs: trials

The ocean: life

The Boat: me

As you can see my boat is not doing so well. This pretty much sent me into a tail spin. The last three weeks have been really bad. When I looked at my picture I just felt so helpless and hopeless. For the past five years I feel like I have tried to many times to overcome the depression but always ended up in the same place. The irony is before I drew my picture I felt like I was doing really well. In reality I was just covering the depression and pretending it wasn't there.

When I looked at my drawing I felt like I was slapped across the face and my depression came roaring to the surface. It was the lowest I had been since the Summer/Fall of 2008 before I started taking meds. This was also one of the longest times I have had where even my faith in God was shaken. When I looked at my picture I could see the light leaving the light house but it wasn't aimed at the boat. That was how I felt in my life as well. I told Eric multiple times in the past three weeks that God must want me this way since He hasn't changed it and since He does want me this way what good does praying or showing faith do. I have a feeling this is going to be a long road back to being okay, let alone great.

The Ups and Downs

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When I started this blog I was on a pretty good UP and I believed I was done with my DOWNS. Last week proved me way wrong. On Wednesday I had the day off from work and I just kept feeling worse and worse the longer I sat but when I tried to get up and do something I just kept thinking about all I hadn't done.   Once Eric got home he knows enough about what is going on the get me out of the house. We went out to eat and then did a Wal-Mart run.

It is the hardest thing to feel a DOWN coming and not really be able to fight it. I am always grateful when Eric comes home but he also makes me acknowledge what is going on. When I am by myself I can get lost in my movies, T.V. and books. I would like to say that I can choose to stop sliding DOWN and only focus on the UPs but sometimes it is stronger than I am . I will admit that this DOWN was helped by PMS and this one was a doozy.

The other factors with this DOWN was my fault. I will admit that I haven't reading my scriptures, praying, working out, eating right or sleeping appropriate amounts. There are times when I feel I am strong enough to fight the depression without doing the above things but I am not. Doing those things doesn't keep the depression away all the time but it does help me fight back a little harder.

Now I need to choose to work on doing the things that help make me stronger.

General Conference

This past weekend my church had it's annual General Conference. Instead of attending church there is a broadcast from Salt Lake City with sermons given by the Prophet, 12 Apostles and members from the Quorum of the Seventy. If you are curious, the entire conference can be viewed at www.lds.org.

Conference brings out some warring emotions in me. Half of me feels spiritually fed and uplifted; the other half feels guilty for all that I am not doing. Eric and I were talking about this last night and he reminded me that there is no reason to feel guilty and that God and Christ care more about progression than getting it perfect the first time.

On Sunday Eric was gone all day so I felt a little lonely but I was quite proud of myself because I made a lot of good choices through out the day. However, at dinner time I was still feeling a bit down and overwhelmed. My mind kept battling between "You are enough" and "You will never be enough". It is exhausting.

One of the areas I really want to work on is self-motivation. If I have made a commitment to someone else I am really good about following through. If I make a commitment to myself there is about a 15% chance that I will follow through. With the depression I feel like overcoming personal shortcomings is twice has hard. When trying to describe this to Eric I decided to use an analogy he would know: X-Men. In "X-Men First Class" Mystique works to keep her appearance "normal". At one point Magneto tells her if half of her attention is on her appearance she is only half paying attention to whatever else she is doing. That is what it is like with depression sometimes. Half of my mental energy is going towards keeping the depression at bay leaving me with only half of my mental energy to do everything else.

Still a work in progress

Last night I attend a weekly depression support group that my church hosts for women. While we were we talking the topic switched to dealing with grief. While the group was still uplifting it was more somber than it had been in the past couple of months. When I got home I was met by dirty dishes, unfolded laundry, and wet sheets I forgot to put in the dryer. Eric had been working all evening trying to catch up on logging patients since his co-resident had been sick for two days. I felt myself sinking into a "woe is me, my life isn't perfect" mentality. While I was getting ready for bed I felt myself getting more and more black on the inside; anger over nothing, frustration with Eric over made up things, self loathing for not living up to my idea of perfect, etc, etc. As soon as my face was washed I was in my bed on my knees praying my heart out.

In the past praying was not the direction I would go in these situations. I would take it out on Eric, cry and let the blackness envelope me like a cloud. When I found that the desire to pray was the first thing I wanted to do I felt HOPE. Hope that maybe this change will truly be permanent and not just a phase. Hope that I am finally understanding what I have been taught and also taught to others for twenty years (I wasn't baptized and didn't attend church regularly until I was ten). Hope that I can be a better person and a better wife to Eric and a better mother to my future children and the children I work with at church every week.

I have been reading a fabulous blog and just found a post that expressed the concept of choosing happiness while having depression. The author expressed what I was trying to say in a previous post and I couldn't pass up re-posting here. I hope anyone who is suffering from depression will take comfort in the small victories that come day to day.

Depression and Choosing Happiness

Changing from the inside out

One of the books I have been reading about being more positive and making changes is "Goals" by Brian Tracy. One of Tracy's ideas is that our personalities have five layers like the rings on a target. The inner most ring is our values, followed by our beliefs, expectations, attitudes and then beliefs. When I was reading this I realized that so often I was trying to change my actions without really looking at how those actions tied into my values. When I failed to connect the two my actions didn't stay consistent. One of the big areas this has been true for me in the last couple of months is daily scripture reading. I have been taught since a child to read my scriptures daily but when my depression gets really bad daily devotion is one of the first things to get cast aside. January was a really tough month for me and I am still working to come out of that fog and pick all of the pieces back up that I let slide during that time. One of the big ones being daily scripture reading. I found I was trying to change my actions because it is something I should do or something everyone else is doing. These are not reason enough to really make a change. When I stopped and really thought about why daily devotion is important I have been able to connect my actions to my values and that has made a huge difference.

I am finding this to be true as I work to be more positive as well. If I am just trying to change my actions it might work but until I am able tie them to values it isn't a lasting change. Now that I am working on being positive as a virtue my actions are staying more consistent with my values.

When I am depressed my values all crumble making it very difficult to keep up with the actions of normal life. Even greater unhappiness follows because my circles aren't lined up. Now I know I sound like I am contradicting myself from my earlier post about action your way into feeling. In normal life this is very true especially with smaller things like cleaning house or doing laundry. When depression gets thrown into the mix there are all new rules. Sometimes acting first helps but sometimes that makes it worse. Depression is a beast all of it's own.

How I arrived here

For thirty years I have lived with the concept that I am not able to be happy because of my depression or because I am waiting for a change in my life that will fix all of my problems creating happiness. I have lived through multiple changes, all of which I thought would make my magically happy; none of them did. One of the big changes that I thought would make me happy was marriage. I am happily married.However, in my marriage I have committed a great wrong towards my husband. I put the sole responsibility for my happiness on his shoulders  Depending on another person for happiness is not a formula for success. For the past five years my husband has carried the responsibility of making me happy. That is a heavy weight to bear for anyone and I am very grateful that my dear sweet husband was willing to do so for me until I was ready to take back my own happiness and joy.

 I have known for many months now that some deeper change needed to be made; more than using time wisely, reading scriptures and praying daily , more than all of the outward things that need to be done. I needed to choose to be happy and to be more positive. Due to depression this can be more of a struggle for me than for others. After counseling and medication and an ongoing support group I am in a place emotionally and mentally where I can work to make changes. Working on changes also means making mistakes. When the depression has been at its darkest mistakes would not have been tolerated.

 In the past year I have come to terms with the fact that depression mixed with infertility are my trials that are meant to bring me closer to the woman I am supposed to be. There will still be days when the depression will rear its ugly head  but I am ready finally to stop being a victim to depression and to fight back even is that means falling down and scraping my knees sometimes. 

Like everyone, I have small trials that come up in day to day life but depression and the infertility are what I call my Big Two. Both are trials that I can not run away from. In the past five years I have moved over ten times and the Big Two followed me around the country. These are trials that I must use to become a person more in tune with God's will and His purpose for me. As I am accepting these trials as blessings and growing opportunities rather than punishments or mistakes I am growing as a person and feeling more joy coming into my life.

The purpose of this blog is to document my road as I learn to choose happiness and joy and learn to stop waiting for my life change or even start.