Strength From Within, Part 3 - Facing My Fears

This is the third post in my series on Strength From Within.

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us an entirely different person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my body being different- learn how to deal with the changes and discover myself all over again.

In the second post I talk about having to grieve my losses and let myself feel all the negative emotions so that my heart could have emotional freedom and space to discover myself.

In order to discover more of who I am, I needed to get rid of things that were holding me back. The biggest of these is my fears. This post is all about facing my fears.

I have had fears running through my head for as long as I can remember but they were always controllable. However, around the time I was pregnant and after my first son was born these fears ramped up and almost took over my life. Post Partum Depression didn't help with this. I could see in my head, like a horrible dream or fantasy, every single possible bad outcome that my fears predicted.

They swirled around and around in my head over and over and over. It was like a repeating slideshow or movie of everything I never wanted to see happen. A lot of my mental energy was directed at trying not to see them and they kept coming anyway, so that wore me out. It was a really dark, depressing, and terrible time for me. I just wanted to run away and hide from life, and I often did that as much as possible (avoidance coping mechanism!).

After some counseling, adjustments, medication, and some longer periods of sleep (newborn, remember!?),  I realized I couldn't keep living with fear like this. It was hurting me. It was hurting my relationships, especially with my husband and my new son. It was keeping me from going out of the house and doing much of anything at all.

So, after a lot of reflecting and working my courage up, I decided to do something scary.

Seriously scary.

I told myself that for one minute I would let my fears and horrible fantasies about my fears just play out in my head till the end. All the fears about losing my husband and son in awful tragic ways, all the ways others might be hurt by painful things I caused, all the rejection I could feel from those around me, all the love I longed for and was afraid I wouldn't have... every single thing.

It was hard. One of the hardest things I've ever done. I wasn't sure I could do it without being sucked into a vortex of emotion that would just consume me. But, I knew I needed to try something. I couldn't keep living the way I was.

So, when a fear came over me and was too strong for me to ignore, I would let myself feel it, experience it, and live it out in my head. But, only for a minute.

When that minute was done I would stop that internal picture, the self flagellating monologue in my head, and just breathe.

And breathe.

And breathe.

Then I would tell myself, and show myself an internal picture, that even if the worst should happen with this fear I would still be ok. God has His hand around mine and will not let me be destroyed. I would be shaken, I would be hurt, I would be wounded, I would be saddened, but I would not be destroyed and ultimately I would be ok.

This took a lot of courage and some scary times over a several month period, but it changed my heart and my circumstances in ways I'm still feeling the effects of today. This also came hand in hand with working through my faith, which I will share in part five.

I no longer have the consuming fears that threaten to swallow me up. I still have fears that are hard, but most of the time I can push them aside because I know now that I will be ok without having to play it out in my head. I am in a much better place now after going through this step.

As we were in the process of choosing the name for our son I had just started to feel the wave of fears wash towards me. One of the reasons I was drawn to the name Reilly, spelled with the Irish spelling (has to be the Irish spelling!!), is because one translation stated that Reilly meant brave and courageous. 

I paused on it every time I read that because that was what I so wanted to be! Every so often along the way we have told him what his name means- brave, courageous, and what those words and ideas mean. He loves it. And, he lives it. When he gets scared sometimes he will shy away or say something about it being scary. But, then he tells himself and us, "It's ok! I'll be brave!".

 [This picture was from our trip to the beach last year. Previously he had been afraid of the water 

because it rose really high on him all of a sudden and knocked him down a couple years ago. This trip he 

played in the sand and kept looking at the water. Then he just stops and says, "Mommy, Daddy, I'm going
to be brave and go in the water!". He did. He went in the part that had almost no waves, and towards 
the end he went into the water with the normal waves. We were/are all proud of him and his bravery!]

I don't think I would have been able to tell or show Reilly effectively what it means to be brave if I hadn't decided to face my fears and be brave myself! It was and still is so hard to do, but it is definitely worth the effort!

Read Strength From Within, Part 4: Recalibrating My Thinking

Strength From Within, Part 2 - Grieving My Losses

This is the second post in my series on Strength From Within.
These steps are what I have had to do, and continue to do in some ways day after day. I hope you will be encouraged if you determine that you need to do some of these steps yourself!

In the first post I talk about how Dr. Oz stated that each person's body changes every 7 years on a cellular level, leaving each of us as an entirely different person. I talk about how I struggled in my different body with Fibromyalgia and what I now had to do when faced with my body being different- find strength from within, learn how to deal with the changes, and find myself all over again.

In order to find strength within me I first had to realize what I have lost. This post is about grieving my losses. 

My body is different. My body is no longer a body that can easily move about. My body is no longer going to just be able to drop myself on the ground to take a picture any place I feel like without suffering intense pain. Even playing on the floor with my boys is a struggle. My body will not be able to handle traveling for long periods of time without suffering every mile in pain with days of recovery. Just walking can be painful at times. My body is now limited.

My brain is different. My brain will no longer be able to handle intense periods of concentration without feeling like I've worked all day. My brain can't handle stress and tense periods of time very well. My brain struggles to come up with simple words sometimes (Ask my husband how many times I ask him about the thing that goes with/in/on/from the thing!). My brain so often feels clouded over as if my brain is mushy, foggy, or empty. Just thinking is difficult at times. My brain is now limited.  

These things and so many more I have had to grieve the loss of. Loss of freedom, loss of movement, loss of impulsiveness, loss of free creativity, loss of normalcy. These losses are hard losses to bear when it's an ongoing struggle day after day.

If you've gone through a grief process for loss of a loved one or another type of loss, you may be aware of the common 5 stages of grief:
Denial: “This can’t be happening to me.”
Anger: “Why is this happening? Who is to blame?”
Bargaining: “Make this not happen, and in return I will ____.”
Depression: “I’m too sad to do anything.”
Acceptance: “I’m at peace with what happened.”

You may notice that these stages alternate a type of thinking with emotion: thought, emotion, thought, emotion, thought. However, not everyone goes through all of the stages or in this order. I never went through denial. The anger and depression kind of cycled back and forth. I didn't really bargain, but you can believe I prayed and prayed about it, asking God to take Fibro away, and desperately wished I could have some of these losses back. I accepted it as fact, but it took months for me to be at a place I would characterize as being at peace with having Fibromyalgia.

It's hard to let myself feel the emotions of these losses. Emotions are overwhelming to feel sometimes, and especially with these because anger and fear are two of the strongest more negative emotions. I have a post in mind just about emotions because they can be so much and so overwhelming, and (especially if you have an avoidance coping mechanism- Hello, books!!) so avoided in feeling them.

 But, I knew and know that not allowing myself to grieve these losses would just keep them bottled up and cause more emotional distress and overall stress. It is easy to only focus on the losses and become bitter or negative. It would be so easy to do that and justify it because of all the pain I am in and all the losses I've had.

It would be easy but it wouldn't be the best thing for me or my family. Being bitter and negative doesn't help me at all and only hurts me. Being bitter and negative would make me a person that would be difficult for my family to handle and they already have been impacted just by my limitations, let alone my attitude. It wouldn't let me remain a good friend to those I have, or be at all open to making new friendships when that is already difficult for me. I would pretty much just be bitchy, witchy, and twitchy all the time, and who wants to live with that?!?

Grieving these losses meant having emotional freedom and a lighter heart, a better attitude and a better life. I have needed this to move onto the next stages, have strength from within, and discover who I now am in my different body.

I do have a lighter heart after grieving these losses, but this is also an ongoing process. Every so often something will hit me again and needs to be grieved and let go. This happens less often as time goes on, but still happens. Letting go can also be difficult, but still very necessary. I will talk about this a little more in later posts!

Read Strength From Within, Part 3: Facing My Fears

Strength From Within, Part 1 - New Body, New Self

I once heard Dr. Oz give a commencement address. He was interesting to listen to and very engaging. I have a few vague ideas as to what else he said during the address (I was distracted trying to find a particular graduate amidst all the others!), but one section was very clear. He stated that everyone's cellular structure changes every seven years.

[Doesn't this look like a beautiful collection of various flowery and plant items? 

Nope! These are some of the cells in your body on a microscopic level!]

So, every seven years you are an entirely new person with new taste buds (ever find yourself suddenly liking or disliking how something tasted that you hadn't before?), new lungs, new heart, new eyes, and new ears, among the rest of you. There are some aspects about this that I'm not sure how it works, such as those needing transplants. However, as he's a widely renowned and respected doctor (and I'm not), I'm willing to trust he knows what he's talking about. :) Perhaps, rather than using the word new we should use the word different. We have an entirely different body.

During my teen years I had pretty bad asthma. Shortly after I went away to college, though, it went away enough where I could go places without feeling like leaving my inhaler in my room was a risk. I knew my body was different, but I didn't know why! This was my 21st year, though, so perhaps I now have an answer for that!

My mental, emotional, and physical states were also different than they had been. I thought about things differently, felt things a little differently, and felt physically better than I had in years (I have had back pain since my teen years but it wasn't as bad around this time and stayed mild until my Fibro flared up). So, you would think I would be used to having a body that changed. However, these are relatively normal life changes.

In my Fibro Story post I wrote, "There is nothing worse than waking up one day feeling awful and, as time goes on, realizing that your body has betrayed you. " And later, "I began feeling trapped in my body and wanted desperately to either have my body work properly and let me feel right, or to not be in my body anymore." I felt like my body was different and would never be the same again, but this wasn't a positive change. This was change in a really negative way.

I recently watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again with my husband. At the end of the last movie Frodo asks this... "How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on... when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold." He says this right before going on a trip that would redefine him and his place in the world as it now was- a new life.

I thought, How perfect is this?!? What came before is your old life. Everything that happened, that changed in your body, that changed in your heart and mind, has changed who you are... there is no going back. Frodo was physically, mentally, and emotionally damaged, and deeply changed in such a way that he would never be the same again. He had a hard time coming to terms with how these changes and damages affected him. It is the same for Fibromyalgia.

So, what do you do once you realize you now have a body that is so different than it had been before that there is no going back and everything will be different from now on? For me, I have had to learn how to deal with it, find strength from within me, and discover myself all over again.

Through the next several posts I will describe steps I've had to take, and areas in my life I've had to assess and change, in order to get to where I could start living my new life in my changed body rather than merely enduring and existing.

I warn you now that few of these steps are easier, and more of these steps are hard and scary. But, they have all been necessary to living a better life- one filled with hope and being able to enjoy my family and friends more than I've been able to in the past. It's not all sunflowers, puppies, and roses now (I still have all my symptoms of Fibro and still struggle with depression, after all! Besides, I'm allergic to puppies.), but that weight of depression, and the inner turmoil of Fibromyalgia has lessened through following these steps.

I won't phrase these steps in terms of what you can do, though you can certainly decide to follow these steps on your own. These are what I have had to do, and continue to do in some ways day after day. I hope you will be encouraged if you determine that you need to do some of these steps yourself!

Read Strength From Within, Part 2: Grieving My Losses

Q & A

A post in which I briefly interview myself.

Q: You have a lot of information on your blog about Fibromyalgia (Fibro) and Depression. Where did you learn this stuff? Are you a doctor?

A: No, I'm not a doctor! All of the things about Fibro, depression, and other related issues I have written about, I learned from searching the internet, talking to my doctors, reading books, my counseling classes for my degree, and from my own life experiences. If you want to know something for sure about a topic I write about I suggest that you do your own internet searching, or talk to your doctor.

Q: You have a lot of pictures of babies and little kids in your posts. What's that about?

A: Babies as a whole represent new life, hope, joy, and wonder. With the deeper topics I often tend to talk about, since Fibro tends to be difficult and complex, I try to remind myself and hopefully those reading it that there is more to life than what I'm feeling/thinking/doing right now. There is life outside of myself. Plus, babies are adorable, they have fun expressions, and make me smile! :)

Holding Onto Hope- Combating Depression and Fatigue

If you haven't read my first post on depression yet I hope you will read it first. I talk about zombies in it, so really, why wouldn't you want to read it?!?

Once you have, I want to tell you that if you suffer from depression and still want to try to live a full life, there are several steps I would urge you to take.

Step 1: Find Hope
In my previous post I stated that, "you want to believe there is hope for things to be different when you so often feel like there isn't any." When you suffer from depression, especially deep depression, hope is what you need to hold on to. You need a reason to hope. You need a reason to keep going even when you don't feel like it. Even when everything seems impossible, everything feels like blah blank boring empty nothingness, you think you can't possibly go another day the way you are...ness. You need to find something, or several somethings that give you a reason to get up day after day, to resist giving into the blahness, to continue to form and maintain relationships even if you keep thinking there isn't any point. You need a reason.

Allie's reason was kind of nebulous- she was able to laugh hysterically at something small (a piece of corn sitting all alone under the fridge), so maybe everything isn't hopeless. However, when everything seems hopeless, when you have no reason to keep going... A reason, however nebulous, is enough for a while.

 
After a long while I realized I had three reasons to hope, and things I hold onto to maintain hope: My God, my husband, and my child (now children). The more reasons you have, the more motivation you have for making yourself do things that seem impossible when you are lying in bed thinking everything seems too difficult.

I can't tell you how many days I woke up lying in bed thinking, "Why am I awake? Why should I even get out of bed? Why should I even care about getting up?" Once my first son was born, the answer always became, "Because Reilly needs me. I love him. I'm his mom and I need to take care of him because there isn't anyone else to do it when Steve is at work." Reilly gave me reasons to get out of bed, and often I got smiles which made a little pocket of happy in my day filled with zombie like foggy thinking.

Steve gave me reasons to care about other aspects of life and drew me more into being around other people, whether I wanted to or not. I wanted to because I wanted to see people, and to be and feel normal. However, it often seemed like a lot of effort and energy expended so I wasn't always sure I wanted to. Afterwards, I was always glad I did. Classic introversion made a lot worse with depression!

Steve, himself, is an amazing man, loves me unconditionally, and has often made me laugh or smile when I wasn't expecting it. At some point there will be a post all devoted to him as there are so many ways a spouse can help or hurt someone going through a chronic condition.

[Steve, Reilly, and I taken a few years ago by our friend

 Sarah at Sarah Zimmerman Photography]

My God is the underlying foundation beneath everything. I seriously think He's the reason I'm still able to show love when my emotions feel so much like nothing. He's the reason I push myself to care about and for Reilly and Steve, now Connor, and my other relationships when I could so easily just not care and let myself be isolated. He's the reason I even want to have hope, because life without God so easily seems hopeless. Holding onto my faith hasn't been easy, as I'll share in a later post, but it has been completely worth it.

If you don't believe in God, I would ask you to consider the reasons that keep you from it. I wouldn't be surprised if it had little to do with God and everything to do with people that gave you a reason to resist believing in Him. However, whether you believe in God or not, I urge you to find some reason, any reason, to have hope and hold onto it day after day.

As you go through each day find little reasons, little signs, that there is a reason for hope. It can be as little as a flower or sunset, and as big as someone showing you love in some way. Each person will have different things that give them hope throughout their day. I will tell you, though, that this can be difficult as it's easy to just ignore everything that could be a sign of hope as you continue in your depression. Still, please try. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Step 2- Find Ways to Ease Your Symptoms
Whether it's medication, supplements, exercise, relationships, dietary adjustments, or some form of meditation/spirituality, it is really important to find ways that help ease your symptoms. I won't list all the possible things of each you can do in this post as you can easily do a Google search and come up with a ton of information- although I may go into some of them in more detail later. I can tell you that the more you can do, the more it will help.

However, what works for some doesn't always work for others. Also, because there is a ton of information available, it can also be overwhelming to figure out where to start. Where I would start is with something that seems manageable that could help a lot- like taking a daily vitamin if you currently don't do that. A vitamin is such a little thing but I always feel better when I've taken them and always feel worse if I've skipped a few days. I don't always recognize it in the moment, but after I've started feeling bad I look back and realize I forgot to take them.

Another manageable thing is to just sit outside in the sun for 15-20 minutes every day with no sunscreen. Unless you have extremely sensitive skin you shouldn't burn during that amount of time. The reason you want to skip the sunscreen is that while sunscreen blocks UV rays, it also blocks the rays that carry vitamin D. Vitamin D can help your body feel better in general and most people are deficient. So, if you want to gain Vitamin D skip the sunscreen just for a little while.

A seminar I listened to said you can get all the Vitamin D you need for a day by being naked in the sun just for 5 minutes with no sunscreen. Now, I don't recommend that- don't want to scandalize the neighbors or cause issues with little kids running around (though if you have privacy areas, what you do in your home is your business)! However, with summer approaching, unless you are so deep into depression you can't get out of bed (in that case perhaps open the window and shades for a while?), it shouldn't be too difficult to sit in the sun with shorts and a t-shirt for even 10 minutes while you read or play games on your phone. Well, at least that's probably what I'd be doing (being honest)!

Step 3- Avoid Pity Parties
When you are in deep depression, and especially in that spiral of depression, it is soooo easy to throw yourself pity parties. Then, when you do get together with people you tend to invite them to your pity parties too. I could tell you some stories but they would just depress you. Just suffice it to say, Yeah... so easy!

Unfortunately, when your depression has a piece of it based on mood, internal and external factors, this just feeds your depression and makes it worse. It can sometimes feel like it's helping. After all, misery loves company! But, that's the thing... company in misery just makes more misery. It doesn't really help at all.

What helps with this is to replace pity parties with thinking something positive, even if it's little. When you realize you are in that place where you are entertaining your pity party, find one of your hopes and just embrace it. Immerse yourself in it, marinate in it, (insert favorite action verb that basically means to surround yourself with it here). Spend time/talk with that person, do that thing, look at that piece of beauty. Whatever your hope may be, just start feeling, thinking, and doing everything about that hope that you can so it blocks the feelings, thoughts, and actions of your pity party. This can take a while to get to where it's an auto shift in thinking, but you can do it.

Every time you shift your pity party to your hope it helps that much more. Any change takes a while to become automatic. First, it's completely hindsight- so it could be days in your pity party before you remember, and that's ok. The more you do it the better and sooner it will get. Then it becomes the same day, then hours, and minutes, until finally it's a pity party mode first with a quick shift to hope in almost the same instant. But, all this is a process. So, it will take a while. Give yourself grace in the meantime and don't give up on it.

[If you are a Doctor Who fan (because who wouldn't want to be!?!), you will immediately recognize 

David Tennant who plays the Tenth Doctor on the show. David Tennant did an excellent job at portraying 

the dichotomy of a deeply depressed individual who still managed to often find happy things in life 

and reasons to maintain hope, sometimes after indulging in a pity party. He's a favorite 

Doctor and actor for that alone.]

 
Step 4- Adjust Your Coping Mechanisms
A coping mechanism is anything you do to adjust to the effects of stress in the hopes of reducing the impact stress has on you. Coping mechanisms are most basically broken down into fight (e.g. learn more, attack the problem, seek help, blame others) and flight (e.g. avoidance, denial, distancing, humor).

Some of these are positive, and some not so positive. Learning more, attacking the problem, and seeking help are all positive coping mechanisms. Blaming others, denial, and avoidance (anything you use to keep from dealing with stress, such as substances, affairs, or overindulging in hobbies) are negative ones. You will notice I didn't mention humor as a positive thing even though you would think it was? I also didn't mention distancing in the two categories. Well, with these two it's not so cut and dried (ever wonder how we got sayings like that one?!?).

Sometimes distancing can help because it gives you space to look at stressors and the situation more objectively so you can handle it. However, you don't want to stay with that distance maintained. That is when it becomes a negative, and more like avoidance. At some point you will need to deal with the stress rather than keep it at arm's length. Humor is a form of distancing. It can be a stress reliever, but if you use it too often it can become annoying, unhelpful, and more stressful.

My go to coping mechanism is avoidance, and most often is with books. I tend to read a lot. No, I really mean a lot. Seriously, a LOT. If I had a physical book for each book I've read, including the multiple times I've read them, I think my entire house would be lined with books.

If you are a book lover of any kind this could seem like a dream come true! The only problem with my coping mechanism of reading is that I often read fiction... and when I read I tend to completely immerse myself in the story... so much that if it's a good book I can view what's happening in my head like a movie or as if I'm there. Book lovers won't see a whole lot of problem with this (I can totally hear you saying, "Of course not! Why is this a problem!?!").

Well, here's the problem... when I'm living immersed in the world of the current book I'm reading, I'm missing what is happening out here in the real world ("Well, yeah, that's half the point of reading!"). And, if I'm missing what is happening out here in the real world, while I am missing [read: avoiding] the stress, I'm also missing all the good stuff and memories that are happening with the people I love ("........*blink*.......But.....*blink*......").

Yeah, not a lot I can say back at that one...

Now, I'm not saying I don't read anymore. Far from it! I still have stress and have a hard time coping with stress sometimes. However, I try to limit it when I can. If that doesn't work during a high stress period, after a time I will have a book fast in which I don't read many books at all (I'm in one now and decided to start a blog- funny what can happen!). Sometimes this comes naturally after I've read all my favorite books again, and everything that I can find at the library, and am in a waiting spell for more books by my favorite authors to be published (sometimes with internal pouting... and lots of sighs...). However, usually I get to some sort of saturation point when I have gotten to a place where I've avoided for as long as I can mentally, emotionally, and physically take and just have to deal with the parts of life I've been avoiding.

So, how do you adjust your coping mechanisms? First, recognize the coping mechanisms you have in the list I mentioned above. If you are having trouble with figuring out your coping mechanisms, you are welcome to let me know and I will help you with this! Second, identify one or two coping mechanisms that you think would be good to do instead. Or, to do what I've mentioned, which is do what you can to keep it from taking over your life. With some things this will work. In other instances (substance abuse being a big one), you may need to abstain entirely and find another way to cope.

After these two things, you adjust similarly to the process I mentioned in the pity party section. It will take time, but you can adjust, you can do it, and it can become normal to have a positive coping mechanism that still lets you experience life in the midst of depression and stress. 

Hold onto Hope, even (especially!) when all you can feel right now is nothing. Feelings aren't facts and don't get to dictate your life. You can do it. Find your somethings to have hope and just hold on.

Blah and Nothingness- Fibro and Depression

I have been struggling with depression all of my adult life. It can be difficult at times to relate to people that have never experienced depression because it's so hard to remember a time when I didn't feel that weight of depression in my life.

Almost two years ago I came across this post about depression by Allie on her blog Hyperbole and a Half. [Warning: If you are offended by certain words commonly used as curse words in our modern language, do not read it]  Her posts always include purposely bad drawings and often tell some sort of story.

As I was reading this post on depression, I couldn't help giggling... and laughing... and more giggling... and laughing so hard I cried.

Now, you may think this is strange... laughing... about a blog... about depression...?

But... here's why! Because in reading this blog on depression, it was as if a little voice inside me kept shouting and getting louder, "Yes, Yes, YES!!! Someone finally found words for all the things that I've been feeling inside!! This is what it's like!!!!" And that little voice felt relief, validation, and a little piece of happy.

Because depression isn't really just sadness. It's like a big blanket of nothingness just slowly creeps into your life until it's too late and you sit there wondering what happened. It's slow, it's sneaky, it's insidious (meaning stealthily treacherous), it's cyclical (you spiral down getting worse because it feeds itself at your expense), it's destructive, it's mind numbing, and it doesn't easily go away. In thinking about it, depression is like zombies.

 [You don't want to know how many gross pictures I waded through 

to find this relatively benign and artistic picture. You're welcome.]

Just think about it. Zombies are slow. Zombies are quiet. Zombies sneak up on you and then attack you. Zombies grow by feeding. Zombies are hard to kill because they just keep coming. Zombies don't care about anything except consuming, thereby making more zombies. And, zombies destroy life as you know it. See... depression is zombies!

If you don't like that idea (which, you really should because, hello... zombies!), you can just think of it like a sneak attack in a siege. Before you even know they are there, the enemy has already penetrated your defenses and have put up their own to keep you from casting them out. To make it worse they use a white foggy gas that makes you feel sluggish and difficult to move. The longer it takes to realize they are there, the harder it is to fight them. Before you know it, you have lost half the city and are struggling to keep them out of the rest.

Or, you could put the two together and have zombies doing a sneak attack during a siege in your city. Seriously... perfect! 

If you've never experienced depression before, perhaps the post by Allie and these descriptions and pictures give you some idea of what depression is like. I would like you to understand because it may help you when talking to someone with depression.

There are only two other things I would say as far as description goes. The first is that while some things are universal for everyone with depression, some things vary from person to person. Some may have mild depression and they are able to shake it off with only a little trouble, and some have deep depression, it's a life long struggle, and have given up hope that they will ever feel like a normal person again (if they even remember what that was like). If you really want to know what depression is like for a certain person, go and ask them with genuine compassion. Then, be prepared to listen (without talking) with open ears and heart.

I mentioned at the beginning that depression is a weight. It is. If you've ever read an older allegory called Pilgrim's Progress, you might understand exactly what I mean. If you have not, just imagine carrying a backpack around with you everywhere, and every day that backpack feels heavier and heavier and heavier. This weight is internal, but it is still heavy, weighs you down, and causes everything to be a whole lot more difficult. 

The other thing is that depression is isolating. You often feel alone, that no one wants to be around you, that you don't want to intrude your sad blahness into their happy, and that no one really knows or understands what you are going through.

Whenever I'm around people I try not to be too negative in how I talk about what's going on in my life and how I respond to the inevitable "How are you/How have you been?" I could easily list out all the aches, pains, emotional turmoil, mental difficulties and fatigue... but unless they are my oldest, closest, or dearest friends they likely wouldn't want to be listening too long (and if I only talked about those things, it's unlikely even those would remain my oldest, closest, or dearest friends!) to all my tales of woe. Also, this tends to feel negative to me, and I've learned that the longer I dwell on the negative the harder life feels (and I really don't need life to feel harder!). So, I will give an honest but vague answer to the merely inquisitive, or if I don't have time to get into anything more even to closer friends. Usually it's some variation of "Exhausted but here", "Things are difficult but I'm hanging on", or "Yesterday was rough but today is ok".

If there is one thing I would want those that don't know what it is like to experience depression, and those that have only ever had a mild form, to know is that you can't assume that what works for some people will work for others. You also can't assume that just trying to convince them to have an attitude change will work. Or, that if they consider themselves Christians all they need to do is have more faith.

These ways of thinking can be damaging because in order to think in these ways you are already assuming that on some level a person that is deeply depressed wants to feel that way, because otherwise why haven't they just gotten better by now? Just put a little more effort into it and I'm sure you will feel better! Yeah... that's not really accurate or helpful, and can potentially be damaging for the person you are talking to because now you heap guilt, self doubt, and inadequacy on top of their already mile high pile of tumultuous emotions and internal self flagellation. That's the emotional equivalent of having a person alone in the middle of the ocean, trying to make it to shore with only a small flotation device and then taking their flotation device away. It's just not very nice.

[Side note: Depression is caused by one of two things- chemical imbalances or external/internal pressures. Some that have a mild form of depression that started with external/internal pressures can change their attitude, make other healthy changes in their lives to manage stress, and are able to feel better and get better as a result. Those that start with a chemical imbalance, even if they have a more mild form, can't usually feel better just with those things. Also, even if it starts with external/internal pressures, once they hit a certain level of depression their chemicals automatically go out of balance, and create the beginning of cyclical depression. In this case, the sooner you start treating it and changing things the easier it is to get to a place where you start feeling better. Not easy, but easier. Once depression has cycled several times by either cause, it is difficult to get better by yourself. You need help with medication, counseling, or both, in addition to supplements and other methods.]

I assure you, those that suffer lifelong deep depression don't like it, don't want it, and would give anything to not feel the way they do anymore. They just have tried everything they can think of, and nothing seems to help, or only help for a time. Believe me when I say that you want to believe there is hope for things to be different when you so often feel like there isn't any.

When it comes to having Fibromyalgia, it's very difficult to not feel depressed because fatigue and depression feed off of each other, and fatigue and Fibro go hand in hand. The more tired you are, the more depressed you become and the more tired you end up being. So, depression is a major factor in having Fibromyalgia and in how you feel mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Because Fibro is a condition you have for life, if you have Fibro you will pretty much have depression for life. However, just because you have depression doesn't mean you need to stay in an isolated state of blah nothingness! 

In this post I will talk about some of the things that can help, and some things that are necessary to maintain a state of hope in the midst of foggy fatigue and depression.

New Normal

I struggled for a number of years before I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. You can read about this journey here. After I was diagnosed and finally knew what was going on in my body, I still struggled to come to terms with it.

One reason is because Fibro is a lifelong condition. It's possible at some point those in the medical fields will figure out a cause or some way to treat the cause without just masking or treating the symptoms. But, until that point I will have this Fibro condition that won't go away.

Another reason is because Fibro is nebulous, relatively unknown, and invisible.

Invisible because people usually can't just look at you to tell you have it. There isn't a test you can take for it. You know how you feel but you still look the same as you always did to everyone else.

If the Fibro symptoms are relatively mild, you may also still seem the same to everyone. My symptoms have not been mild since my first son was born and since my second son was born in February of this year my symptoms have ramped up even more.

I knew it was likely my symptoms would get worse after child birth ever since I learned that physical trauma was a factor in developing Fibro symptoms. I decided it was worth it, and Connor definitely is!

[Actual picture of our son Connor James]

However, I don't think I will be able to have another child, in large part due to how much more debilitating another childbirth could be, as well as because it's all I can manage now to handle two kids. I don't think I would be able to manage a third. I have had to be very honest with myself through this process and have had to know where my limits are. This is definitely one.

Back to Fibro! It's relatively unknown- both as far as how to diagnose it, treat it, and cure it, as well as in the minds of the general population. Now, it is much better known than it was even 5 years ago. There have even been commercials promoting certain medications to treat it and more and more people have been diagnosed with it. However, compared to other illnesses and conditions, it can often be overlooked and misunderstood.

Fibro is nebulous. Yeah... People don't always know if they have Fibro the way they can with other conditions. You just slowly feel more exhausted, more depressed, and in more and more pain.

Once you are finally diagnosed (since there is no test for it there can be a long waiting period while the doctors run tests and tell you everything you don't have), it is still nebulous because there is no clear cut prescription, no definite list of things to avoid or do to change it. Some things work for most, a few things work for some, other things work for the rest. There are guidelines, suggestions, and possibilities, but you have to try them to see for yourself if they will actually work for you. And so- Nebulous.

So, perhaps you can see some of why I was struggling after learning that I definitely had Fibromyalgia. I was doing what I could to manage my symptoms but I was struggling a bit with my attitude. Some days I was fine, and some days I was... irritable and depressed.

I met with a dear friend for lunch who shared with me her grandmother's struggles with forgetting things and being less able to do things she was previously able to do. She would try to encourage her grandmother when this happened, so when something else was forgotten or not able to be done anymore, she would tell her grandmother, "It's alright. This is just the new normal," and helped her learn to live in the new normal.

This shift in perspective was really helpful and really applicable to having Fibromyalgia! It changes, often for the worse, and then will stay the same until something triggers another change, or gives you a flair up. So, thinking of Fibro this way was a big help!

It's amazing how much of a difference a shift in perspective can be for you. I felt like I could manage things, be less irritable, and practically buoyant compared to how I felt before. I could sit there, take a few breaths when I felt overwhelmed, and just remind myself that everything was ok. Everything didn't suddenly feel wonderful, but in the midst of exhaustion and depression I could still have a tiny piece of happy.

It has still been a struggle, but since that shift in perspective it has been easier. My faith has helped a lot too, which I will share in a later post.

Have you had to make any attitude adjustments?

My Fibro Story

Since Fibromyalgia doesn't have a known cause, it's hard to say where my Fibro story started. However, there was a time I definitely knew something was wrong...

When I was 22, very close to celebrating 23, and away at college I woke up one day and realized I felt like I had never slept at all. I was exhausted. I dragged all through my classes and activities that day until I finally was able to sleep and get rest. Except I woke up the next day again feeling like I hadn't gotten any sleep.

Soon I was falling asleep in class, feeling awful, and struggling to focus on homework and assignments, even to comprehend what I was reading in my textbooks. [That fatigue and fogginess in thinking and concentrating has continued. Some times are worse than others]

After a week of this I knew something was wrong. No amount of sleep changed how I felt. I finally went to the doctors and they took a number of tests. At the end they told me I was perfectly healthy and nothing was wrong. Have you ever wanted to throw a total tantrum but as an adult? So wanted to here! I still felt awful so I knew something was wrong!

There is nothing worse than waking up one day feeling awful and, as time goes on, realizing that your body has betrayed you. If you have never experienced this for some kind of debilitating condition, illness, or disease it is difficult to convey the horror, confusion, and grief this makes you feel.

A few years went by while I met my husband and got married (one of the best decisions of my life!), I started my masters in counseling (also one of the best!), and still- no matter how much sleep I got I felt exhausted. Eventually, after reading online, I figured that I had chronic fatigue. I had a lot of the same symptoms. I still went for tests every so often as things seemed to get worse. The tests still came back saying I was perfectly healthy.

At this point my husband tentatively suggested that perhaps since the tests said nothing was wrong then maybe nothing was wrong? I responded with exploding, responding that I felt awful and it was in no way normal to feel this way. He learned to keep those kind of thoughts to himself. :) I learned to not respond badly when someone asks a logical question, even if it's upsetting.

I worked at an independent bookstore for several years around this time.

 
I learned that one of my co-workers had Fibromyalgia. She would occasionally call out sick the morning of work, need help lifting the boxes, and other little things like that. I remember thinking a little ungraciously the third time in a row I was working and she called out sick, then finding out later that she had been gardening (one of her favorite hobbies) or something a little more physically strenuous.

If I could talk to her now I would tell her, "I soooo get it now! I am so sorry I ever thought anything ungraciously and wish I could have thought to make it easier for you." Because it is hard. It is hard to get out of bed, and hard to resist doing something you love, even knowing you might pay for it later in pain and stiffness.

A couple years later (and a lot of difficult nights and foggy days) we decided we wanted to have kids and I gave birth to our son.

[Actual picture of our newborn son- Reilly Christopher]

Now, my son is wonderful! But the process of birth and recovering afterwards was awful. I was completely wiped out physically from the pain. I was drained mentally and emotionally from fatigue. I developed Post Partum Depression, which kept me in a constant state of stress and emotional distress. Reilly's whole first year is probably the worse year of my life so far because of all this. Reilly himself is the best part of that year!

If you've read my post about what Fibro is, you will have noted that one of the risk factors is physical trauma. I believe that the pain of giving birth ramped everything up. I started having pains in my hands and feet. My arms and legs would tingle periodically in a way that itched and drove me crazy. I had a hard time even walking because it was painful. My hips began giving me trouble. It felt like I was developing Rheumatoid Arthritis in all the major joints and all those in my hands and feet.

 As this year went on, I began feeling trapped in my body and wanted desperately to either have my body work properly and let me feel right, or to not be in my body anymore. Please understand, it isn't that I wanted to die. I was not suicidal. I just didn't want to be in my body anymore because I was so tired (having a newborn didn't help with that!) and so tired of hurting and not knowing why.

After a couple months I was able to go to an RA doctor, and received the orders for another series of tests. However, this time I got a diagnosis back- Fibromyalgia. Finally, after 7 years, I had gotten a doctor that both had the knowledge and took the time to really listen and figure out what was wrong!

It was both relieving and depressing. Relieving because I finally had a definite diagnoses in which everything I was going through made sense! Depressing because I already knew that Fibro was a lifelong condition and there was no cure for how I was feeling- I hadn't wanted that reality.

It took a while to completely come to terms with having Fibromyalgia and how different my life would be with it. More of that in this post.