Bad Mental Health Days

An honest conversation about mental health and the things that I have found helpful in dealing with chronic anxiety. 

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Transcript

0:16

Hey, my friends, if you've been around the podcast for a while, you know that I have anxiety disorder, and as with lots of chronic illnesses, you can be all right for periods of time and then have A flare up all of a sudden. My anxiety seems to work this way. There is a normal level of low level anxiety that always kind of exists and that I find really normal and manageable. Then sometimes there is like a flare up, where my anxiety level will just spike really high, and I'll feel every bit of the term mentally ill. I used to be obsessed with finding a cure for my anxiety, but I had to come to terms with the fact that this anxiety disorder doesn't get cured. It gets managed. And part of that management is managing the flare ups. So that is what I want to talk about today. Some things that I have learned that help to deal with mental health flare ups. I think even if you don't have a diagnosable mental illness, you can have bad days that can be dealt with much in the same way. So this episode will be valuable for you, even if you don't have any diagnoses. And I want tosay this disclaimer, I am not a doctor. I cannot give you medical advice. All I am relaying here is things that have helped me manage my chronic anxiety, none of which should be a replacement for talking with a healthcare provider. Okay, now that we got that out of the way. One of the things that I have found to be very important in the way of mental health is actually taking care of your physical body. As much as we like to act like they're disconnected sometimes, the mind and the body really are interconnected. Not taking proper care of your body doesn't just affect physical health, but really affects mental health as well. Are you drinking enough water every day? Are you getting adequate nutrition? Sometimes I will literally think I'm having anxiety when it's really that I forgot to eat lunch and my blood sugar is going crazy. Not to mention that there are vitamins and minerals that the brain needs in order to function. So if your diet isn't providing those, you can start to feel it. Are you getting enough sleep? This is a huge one for me. If I don't get enough sleep for too many days, my anxiety will have a flare up, like guaranteed. These are just the body basics. So often when I'm feeling like I'm having a flare up, the first thing I'll check on is my body basics and how I'm doing on those. Body basics isn't a cure, but it does help, and it does provide a solid foundation for overall health, and I always believe in starting with the basics. The other thing I always check on is medication. Am I taking anything new? Because I have noticed that it's been a pretty common occurrence for me to have extra anxiety be a side effect of medications. I can't remember what the medication was, but it was something I was taking short term for, like a two week period and during that two week period, I had a noticeable uptick in anxiety like nightmares and everything. And as soon as I stopped taking that medication, it went back to normal. Medication side effects and interactions can totally be a thing that can make you feel off. It's something that I talk to my doctor about if it gets really bad. A more recent discovery of mine is that isolation makes my anxiety worse. The sucky thing is that when I'm feeling really anxious, I want to self isolate. But isolation actually makes it worse. Feeling connected to other people really helps with my mental health. This has been a really tricky one for me, because as a survivor of abuse, I have found it harder to connect with people afterwards. I tend to want to isolate more than I used to. But I've also noticed a negative impact on my mental health. I like to think of myself as like a lone wolf and all that, and I like to pretend that I don't need anybody, but lately, I've had to begrudgingly admit that I just have less anxiety when I have more or better connections with people. So that's something to consider if you're feeling off. Have you been more isolated than normal? I'm really indoorsy. I think it comes from growing up in a place that is so hot for most of the year that you're just kind of stuck inside. But the times of the year when I can actually get outside, it does me really good. Like, even just short periods in nature seem to have a really calming effect. I know this has been backed by research where they found that, like, dirt has natural anti depressive properties in it. So people that garden and get their hands in the dirt regularly tend to be less depressed. There are people who claim that you can literally co regulate your nervous system with a tree. Which I have not tried because there are not a lot of trees where I live, but I am anxious to try it, because that would be really cool. If any of you try it before me, you'll have to let me know how it went and if it worked. I am continually learning to practice self compassion where my mental health is concerned. I spent a lot of years hating myself for being the way that I am and just wishing that I could be so called normal. I would get mad at myself when I had a flare up, and it's been quite the journey to practice self compassion instead. But I can tell you that beating yourself up for something that really isn't in your control doesn't make it better. It makes it worse. Practicing self compassion and trying to take care of myself during a flare up makes it go so much smoother and easier and less intense. We all know that if someone screams at you to calm down, it does not make you calm down. It makes you even less calm. And that is what a lack of self-compassion is like for your mental health. And honestly, a lot of it is just white knuckling through it until it passes. Because it always does pass, even those times that it feels like it just won't fucking end. It will and it does. And my job is just to take care of myself until it does Hit the basics. Reach out to people. Go outside. And do things that I like. There are a lot of things in life that aren't in our control. Having an anxiety disorder is one of those things for me. I didn't choose this, and I can't change it, but I do get to choose I think about it and how I handle it. Those things are always in my control. Those things are always in my power. Alright, my friends, that is what I want to leave you with this week. Until next time, be well.