Illuminating Blogger Award

This is an extra blog post for this week.

My friend Nikky at Nikky’s Strength and Weakness recently nominated me for the Illuminating Blogger Award.

This is what the award website says about the award: “Food Stories is pleased to present the Illuminating Blogger Award, a fabulous award that anyone can bestow on their fellow bloggers for illuminating, informative blog content.”

I thank Nikky for thinking of me, and I’m glad for the opportunity to recognize other bloggers who provide illuminating and informative blog content on a regular basis.

Here are the award rules:

1. The nominee should visit the award site http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/ and leave a comment indicating that they have been nominated and by whom. (This step is so important because it’s the only way that we can create a blogroll of award winners).

2. The nominee should thank the person that nominated them by posting and including a link to their blog.

3. Share one random thing about yourself in your blog post.

4. Select at least five other bloggers that you enjoy reading their illuminating, informative posts and nominate them for the award.

5. Notify your nominees by leaving a comment on their blog, including a link to the award site http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/.

Here’s one random thing about me: My favorite color is purple and always has been. When I was a little girl in Sunday school, I always chose the purple crayon to color with.

Here are my nominees, who may choose to participate or not participate in the award process. But I hope my readers will visit each of these special blogs. I learn something every time I visit them.

Nadine Feldman

ocdtalk

Heal Now and Forever

Anxiety Schmanxiety

  Two Bears Farm 

I may be huffing and puffing, but I'm helping my depression and anxiety

I was breathing so hard I could barely inhale before I had to exhale. My heart was beating hard, and I was sure it had moved up near my throat. My feet felt like they were slapping the surface of the track. And my hip hurt.

I felt like that Thursday evening after work when I was exercising at the Y. I had started out walking but decided to jog a little.

All I could think as I pushed myself around the indoor track was, I am so out of shape. Then all I could think was, I can’t do this. And then all I could think was, this is supposed to make me feel better?

Conventional wisdom says exercise is good for our health, including our mental health. I decided to do a little research into why it was helpful.

According to an article on the website Science Daily, exercises benefits those with depression and anxiety disorders and should be prescribed by mental health providers.

The article was based on a news release in April 2010 about research that had been done that showed “the efficacy of exercise programs in reducing depression and anxiety.”

It said it could be helpful to those who could not or did not wish to access traditional therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy and medication. It said exercise could also, as one of the researchers put it, act as a “’supplement to the traditional treatments, helping patients become more focused and engaged.’”

The researcher went on to say, “’Exercise appears to affect, like an antidepressant, particular neurotransmitter systems in the brain, and it helps patients with depression re-establish positive behaviors. For patients with anxiety disorders, exercise reduces their fears of fear and related bodily sensations such as a racing heart and rapid breathing.’”

The Mayo Clinic website also discusses the benefits of exercise to those with depression and anxiety. The release of neurotransmitters and endorphins may help depression, it said, and exercise also reduced immune system chemicals that could make depression worse. It said the increase in body temperature that resulted from exercise might be calming.

According to the website, exercise was also beneficial because it helped patients gain confidence, took their mind off their worries, provided them with more social interaction and helped them cope with their illnesses in a healthy manner.

I can vouch for exercise making us feel better. After I walk or bike, I feel energized and positive. I feel good about myself because I took the time to exercise and followed through on a plan to be active. Even hours after I finish exercising, I feel calmer.

And exercising just makes me feel strong.

For me, exercise is an adjunct to my other treatments, including therapy and medication. It can only help my depression and anxiety, plus it has benefits for my heart, joints and other body systems.

I am committed to exercising more and setting some goals. One goal I already have is to run in the Giblet Jog on Thanksgiving Day. The Giblet Jog is a 5K walk/run held every year in my town. It will be my first race.

I have a lot of work to do before then. But I’m making progress. Remember all that whining I was doing about my exercise session? I found that the longer I walked (I stopped jogging), the better I felt. Even my hip seemed to warm up and relax.

And one of my birthday gifts was a pair of biking gloves. I am ready to go!

For some general information about being physically active, follow this link.

What is your favorite form of exercise? How does exercise benefit you?

Will God zap me if I'm too happy?

I have been feeling a lot less depressed lately. I have more energy. I don’t want to sleep as much. I have a more positive attitude. I’m able to accomplish more. I laugh more. I feel more capable of handling personal interactions.

I will never know exactly what is causing me to feel better. Most likely, it is a combination of things. My doctor recently adjusted my medication, and I’ve been in CBASP (Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy) treatment weekly for a while.

I am happy and grateful that the depression has lifted as much as it has. I am hopeful. Life is good.

So what is my concern? That it won’t last.

Why I am afraid

During one of our sessions, my therapist talked about the associations our brains make and the way we can end up with beliefs such as, “If I’m too happy, God will zap me.”

I’ve written about the many health issues my family members had as I was growing up.

When I was a child, I thought that God would make me sick when I became an adult. I wasn’t born with physical handicaps like one of my brothers, and I didn’t have the other health problems he and the rest of my family had.

I thought I would get my share of the sickness when I grew up.

Why did I believe that?

I would guess that it stems first from feeling helpless about my circumstances. I could not keep my brother or other family members from getting sick and going into the hospital. I could not make everything OK.

I also felt a lot of guilt as a child, a result of my relationship with my parents, especially with my mother, which I’ve written about before.

My sense of guilt grew as my obsessive compulsive disorder developed and got worse, and my religious scrupulosity led me to pray compulsively for the safety and health of my family. If someone got sick, then, I reasoned, my prayers hadn’t worked because they hadn’t been done right, or because I had sin between God and me.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I started to believe that I deserved the illnesses that I did get, the OCD and depression.

And if I deserved them, then any improvement would be just a mirage, something that would disappear as soon as I started believing in it too much.

How I’m going to handle it

I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to expect to fall back into depression. I don’t want to miss the improvement because I’m paying too much attention to the possibility of it ending.

And I’m aware that down times will still come around.

I’ve decided to be proactive about this.

*I try to be grateful, mindfully appreciative, that I am doing better.

*I am continuing to do the things that seem to be helping me: taking my medication as directed and going to therapy.

*I know I can continue to develop practical skills to handle life’s problems better, to avoid a sense of helplessness.

*I try to cultivate an active sense of hope.

I don’t believe that other people “deserve what they get.” They don’t deserve to be sick, physically or mentally.

I need to keep reminding myself that I don’t deserve to be sick either.

Have you ever been afraid that improvements in your health and life wouldn’t last? How did you handle the fear?

Beginning my 50th year

Today I turn 49 (I’ve already updated my blog profile to reflect the new age).

I don’t mind birthdays. In fact, I like them. I like turning a new age. It’s like turning over a new leaf for me.

I think I’m wiser today than I ever was at 19 or 29 or 39. I wouldn’t want to go back. I’m happy with where I am now at 49.

As I face turning 50 next year, I see it as an opportunity to get some parts of my life in better order. So I have been writing down some goals over the last several days, some things I want to get better at and some things I want to accomplish by the time I turn a half-century old.

Me as I begin my 50th year.

In doing this, however, I don’t want to look forward to turning 50 so much that I forget about now. I just want to begin a process of mindfully trying to improve my health in all areas.

So here are some things that I’m going to be working on over the next year and will continue to work on even after I turn the big 5-0.

I will be more specific about these as time goes on, so bear with me if what I write seems to be too general.

My physical health

I’m in pretty good health. I have asthma and high blood pressure, but I handle those pretty easily.

A special concern of mine is that I have a family history of stroke. My father had a major, disabling stroke when he was just 54, and my mother has had several strokes.

I know I need to take better care of my health now for better outcomes in the future.

Exercise, nutrition and stress relief will be part of my ongoing plan of action.

My mental health

I haven’t yet discussed a specific timeline with my therapist, and I know it’s hard to predict how quickly therapy will move forward, but I hope to be done with the CBASP therapy for the chronic depression and the CBT for the OCD in a year.

I’m talking about formal therapy here. I know I’ll continue to work with the techniques I’m learning for the rest of my life.

I want to focus on taking my medications properly, participating in therapy and studying and reading on my own.

I also want to add more fun and joy to my life. Or perhaps I should reword that. I want to recognize the things around me to be joyful about.

My spiritual health

I want to further develop my meditation practice and incorporate mindfulness more deeply into my everyday life.

I also want to be more in service to others. I want to more clearly understand my faith tradition while honoring other faith traditions.

I want to be at peace and be a source of peace.

I also want to be confident about my purpose, my work and my vocation.

My intellectual life

I want to keep learning until the day I die. I want to die with a book in my hands.

Who is this person?

Have I just described a perfect person? It sounds like it, doesn’t it? I fully realize that I probably will never reach the ultimate in any of these areas of health. My goal is to move forward, though. Keep moving forward and changing for the better.

The next year will also be a time for my husband and I to consider how we want to spend the rest of our lives. Larry is 15 years older than me. He’s already retired. We would like to have plenty of time to spend together as we get older. Figuring out how that would play out with me working or not working a formal job is an ongoing discussion.

Thus I begin my 50^th year. I am thankful that I’ve made it this far, and I’m looking forward to the future.

  What is your attitude towards birthdays—love them, hate them, somewhere in between? Do you have goals and plans for improving your health? Do you see your health as more than just physical health? If so, how?

How I use "Brain Lock" to fight my OCD

   I’ve turned off the shower, but I want to push on the water turn-off again to make sure it’s off.

I’ve turned off the light in the laundry area, but I want to turn around and check and make sure it’s off.

I’ve turned off the ceiling fan, but I want to check one more time to make sure the blades aren’t moving anymore.

Are those blades moving?

I want to pray again for forgiveness, for the safety of Larry and the cats and my relatives and the whole world. And again. And again.

I want to drive back and make sure the pothole in the parking lot that I see everyday really isn’t a person that I just hit with my car.

The role of “Brain Lock”

These all are daily, or almost daily, compulsions that I feel the urge to do. Slowly, but surely, I’m following through with the urge to do the compulsions less and less.

The steps that Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz outlines in his book “Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” is helping me to do that.

When I started cognitive behavioral therapy, I wrote about how my therapist uses a form of the four steps Schwartz advocates in fighting OCD: Relabel, reattribute, refocus and revalue.

Basically, to relabel is to recognize obsessions and compulsions and call them what they are, OCD.

To reattribute is to name the cause of the obsessions and compulsions: a medical condition.

To refocus is to do something else instead of giving in to the compulsion. It’s learning to shift the attention elsewhere and tolerate the anxiety until it goes down on its own, without doing the compulsion.

To revalue is to place a lower value on the obsessions and compulsions because you know what is causing them.

My therapist taught me to combine relabeling and reattributing and then move on to refocusing.

How I do it

Here’s an example of how I do that.



Is the water turned off?

   After my shower, I turn off the faucet. I want to keep pushing on the turn-off handle. I’m afraid if I keep doing that, though, that I’ll break it. And it’s unnecessary and takes up time. Most importantly, it’s giving in to a compulsive urge.

So after I turn it off, I make myself get out of the shower. I feel some anxiety because I am afraid it’s not turned off properly. I want to reach back and push it one more time. Instead, I focus on drying off and then start blow-drying my hair or getting dressed.

Another example: I turn off the light in the laundry area in the basement. I see the darkness. I turn around and start walking up the basement steps. I really want to turn back and look again. I feel anxious, and I think I won’t be able to relax or forget the light unless I do.

But I keep moving and don’t allow myself to look back. I get to the top of the steps, turn off another light and close the basement door behind me. Then I go off to do something else.

What I’ve learned

What I’ve discovered is that the anxiety doesn’t last very long and I actually forget about the obsession pretty quickly.

If I do give in and perform the compulsion, I still try to tell myself that it was the OCD that wanted me to do it, not me. That’s something that Schwartz recommends.

If I give in to the compulsive urge, I have also discovered that I get more anxious and it’s harder to turn away from it. It’s just not good for me to give in.

I’ve learned the following:

*I can tolerate more anxiety than I thought I could.

*Uncertainty is not fatal.

*I don’t have to have an in-depth thought session on every obsession and compulsive urge. I don’t have to resolve anything about it. I just have to move on.

*The anxiety will eventually go away if I don’t perform the compulsion.

*Focusing on something else is the key to my forgetting about the obsessions and compulsions.

*It’s not the end of the world if I give in and do a compulsion. It just means that I will learn better for the next test.

Have you tried the “Brain Lock” steps? If so, how did it go? How have you learned to tolerate and deal with anxiety that is a part of everyone’s life?

Memorial Day and my father's legacy

Flags covering the National Mall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Americanflags.jpg

Note: Today is OCD Monday, but more importantly, in the United States it is Memorial Day. So this post is mainly about what Memorial Day means to me.

A year before my father died, I visited him and my mother on Memorial Day. As I walked up the steps of the deck in the back of their house, my father came to the door to greet me.

“Happy Memorial Day,” I said. “I don’t actually know if you’re supposed to tell people that.”

My father smiled and said, “Well, I’m just grateful to have made it home.”

This was 1996. My father had been discharged from the Army on Dec. 25, 1945. Fifty-one years after he “made it home,” he was still grateful.

On Memorial Day, I, along with millions of others, think about the soldiers that didn’t make it home. I think of the families grieving for the child, sibling, parent, relative or friend that didn’t return home from service.

I also think of my father on Memorial Day, and his gratitude and his service to his country during World War II.

My father was drafted in 1942. He was a young farmer who had lived in rural Central Virginia all his life.

He was pulled from basic training before he was finished in order to begin training as a medic.

His company was eventually sent to the Pacific Theatre.

He was on the island of Peleliu on Sept. 30, 1944, in combat when he was shot in the arm. He recovered on a hospital ship and then returned to combat.

When I was growing up, my father didn’t talk specifically about his time in service. We met some of his former Army buddies and their families, and he told general stories of life in the Army, but not what it was like for him.

My father was not a person to talk about emotions.

Have you ever read “The Greatest Generation,” by Tom Brokaw? It tells the stories of people who returned from war in 1945 and took up their lives with purpose and resolve?

My father was like that.

When he was in his early 70s, I asked him if he would write down his life story for me. To my surprise, he agreed, so I bought a notebook for him and he wrote.

He needed a second notebook to finish.

In those written words, he was much more open about what it was like for him going into battle. I found out things about him that I never would have known otherwise.

So on this Memorial Day, I think about him and his gratitude, and I think, how can I be less grateful for life?

To my readers who are in the United States, may you have a safe Memorial Day. And to all my readers, may we be grateful for every bit of time we have.

  What does Memorial Day mean to you?

My medication story



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:42-aspetti_di_vita_quotidiana,_medicine,Taccuino_Sanitatis,_.jpg



The first medication I took for depression and obsessive compulsive disorder was Anafranil. This was in early 1990, right after the FDA approved the drug for use in treating OCD.

My psychiatrist told me it was the first drug approved for OCD specifically. Since Anafranil is a tricyclic antidepressant, it would work on my depression too.

Anafranil did help me. It took about three months before I saw the full measure of its help.

I wrote about the day I recognized how truly helpful the medicine was.

It took away the worst of my cleaning and checking compulsions. It made it easier for me not to give in to compulsions. And it lifted me out of a deep depression.

I will be forever grateful for Anafranil and for other medications that I’ve taken since then that have helped me deal with my mental illnesses.

Janet at the blog ocdtalk inspired this post. In an excellent post called “OCD and Medication,” she wrote she thought it was important to share our stories of our experiences with medications, because medication was a sometimes controversial topic when discussing treatment for mental illnesses.

As Janet points out in her post, people have different experiences with and attitudes towards medication.

Let me preface my story by saying that I know not all medications are for all people. And what works for me may not work for someone else. Not everyone needs or should take medication. Any decision about medication should be made in conjunction with your doctor.

Medications have been quite literally a lifesaver for me. I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic when I say that I’m not sure I would be here today if I had not had the help of medication.

I have had serious bouts of depression. Long ago, I made plans to end my life. Medication combined with talk therapy kept me alive.

Anafranil was not the first medication I took. I was prescribed Prozac and took that for about a month before Anafranil became available in pharmacies.

Anafranil was not without its problems. I gained a lot of weight while I was on it.

I also eventually fell back into depression and lethargy. For the past 20 years or so, I’ve been on Zoloft, Luvox, Celexa, Buspirone, Seroquel, Abilify, Wellbutrin, Cymbalta and Klonopin, and different combinations of the drugs, for depression, OCD and anxiety.

My family doctor told me once that medications could stop working. That seems to be my story.

Some of the medications helped, some didn’t. I felt horrible on some of them. Seroquel and Cymbalta were not good for me at all. It was during a period of trying different drugs, including those, under the care of my family doctor that I developed paralyzing anxiety.

I was afraid all the time. I would lie in bed at night, whispering over and over, I’m so afraid. I couldn’t drive. I didn’t want to be around people. I faced any task with extreme anxiety.

I couldn’t concentrate enough to read or write. I felt antsy and ready to leap out of my skin.

It was one of the worst times of my life.

I don’t know for certain that the medications caused my problem, but I do believe they contributed to it.

When I finally started seeing a psychiatrist again, he just shook his head at some of the medications I had been on, saying, “You should have never been on that.”

He is treating me for OCD, depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

He started me on Lexapro, which I’m still on. It has been of tremendous help to me. I haven’t had a difficult time with side effects either.

I am on 30 mg/day of Lexapro, which is a high dose. This is a problem only when my insurance company refuses to pay for that dose, and my doctor has to send authorization showing that I really do need that amount.

My doctor said the insurance company really isn’t concerned with the dosage I’m on. They are concerned by the fact that I have to get 45 of the 20 mg pills for a 30-day supply of the medicine. In other words, they had to pay for 45 pills instead of 30 pills.

My doctor eventually added Wellbutrin. I was on 300 mg, but I asked him to cut it down to 150 mg because I believed it was making me hyper.

And he recently added just 2 mg of Abilify, which has been very helpful for the depression.

I also take a low dose of Klonopin every day. I wasn’t taking it every day, just when I thought I needed it, but the doctor told me he wanted me to take it every night, that it would help with anxiety the next day.

Years ago, another psychiatrist told me that Klonopin was good for people with OCD because it gradually went into the system, instead of giving a quick relief.

I’m also prescribed Trazodone to help me stay asleep during the night. My doctor said that it’s not addictive. I don’t take that very often, though, because even a low dose makes me feel groggy the next morning. I’m doing this with my doctor’s knowledge.

That’s a lot of medicine. But it’s a combination that works. I don’t feel drugged, sluggish or hyper like I have on some medications.

Here are some things I’ve learned along the way about medication:

*Not all medications work the same way.

*Not all selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the same.

*Some medications work faster than others.

*Combinations of different drugs can be very helpful.

*It’s important to discuss any concerns you have about medication with your doctor.

*For me, a medication plus therapy is working the best.

*There is nothing to be ashamed of in taking medicine for mental illnesses.

*Taking medicine does not mean that you are not working hard to battle mental illness.

What are your thoughts on taking medication for depression, OCD and/or anxiety? What have your experiences with medication been like?