MENTAL HEALTH: Let's go to some uncomfortable spaces to help ourselves

I sat in her office. She nodded as I spoke occasionally writing something down. She repeated “How does that make you feel” after everything I said. It was getting frustrating. As a person who hates awkward silence in a conversation, I just kept blabbing to my human parrot. My first experience with mental health treatment was not going well. I did two appointments and never came back.

“She wasn’t the right one for you”, my friend said to me.

I wasn’t going to try again. I felt one attempt was enough and it didn’t work. I’m much more self-drive to find answers than having someone asked me “How does that make you feel?” for $55 a co-pay. I can do that for free at home with my dogs if I’m going to be the only one talking.

Mental Health Struggles are real, and on this World Mental Health Day (October 10th) we need to embrace what keeps us from being our best selves.

We’re going to go into some ugly, uncomfortable spaces, so buckle up.

The World Health Organization says that mental health conditions like depression and anxiety have a $1 trillion dollar price tag. That’s $1,000,000,000,000. Yet worldwide, we’re only putting 2% of government health dollars into those issues.

Add into that – many of us are scared to ask for and even acknowledge we need help. Angry all the time? Anxiety riddles your life? Feeling worse than sad consistently? Wonder if this world would be better without you, even for a split second? Eat or starve your emotions? Can’t get a good night’s sleep because of the demons in your mind? Those are all mental health issues that need to be addressed.

MORE: Read how to stop that nasty little voice in your head from ruining your life. You wouldn’t let a friend talk to you that way, so don’t let you talk to yourself that way.

It’s not your fault. Nobody ever wakes up and decides to be depressed or have anxiety. Nobody says, “Hey I’m going to be bi-polar today!”. These are things we can’t control, like when you break your arm, get the flu, or need to check your heart checked out because of odd palpitations.

You might not even realize you are dealing with it. The mental stressors we face each day can be present or hidden. I don't think anyone knew I was depressed, as I presented a very "ready to work" person. It was just anytime after work I was in the abyss. If you push it down and ignore it, it will rear its ugly head in ways like passive-aggressiveness, irritability, inability to focus, feeling overwhelmed with a routine task.

Some of it could be the way you were brought up. The childhood experience influences us in every way – if our parents (if they were married) were happy, if you were abused, if you were neglected, or if you didn’t get the care you needed. Empath and Narcissists are born in the early childhood years, with hours upon hours of trying to either make someone happy who can’t be made happy or building an alter ego that was born from never fully completed the toddler development stage and believe the world revolves around them and everyone else is but to serve them.

Mental health disorders can also be hereditary, like eye color and risk of heart disease.

You can’t control these things. You CAN manage them.

Today, I ask you to be brave. Make that call to the company EAP. Look for a counselor or psychiatrist online and send them a message while you have the courage. What’s that saying from “We Bought A Zoo”?

“Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of courage. Just literally 20 seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something amazing will happen.”

It’s true.

After my dad died last year, and the uncontrollable personal, professional, emotional, and psychological cliff dive had me considering seeing someone. I was drowning internally and being pushed down even further by factors in my life. Every step I took there I was taking a punch from what felt like Mike Tyson. I needed to punch back.

I waited until I had my “20 seconds of insane courage” and called. It was going to take 2 months to see the person I wanted to see. The woman said, “You want to call back in a month and see if there is earlier availability for someone else?” I was honest, “No, you are lucky I haven’t hung up on you yet because I have a hard time asking for help. Give me the appointment.”

I had to wait, but I was waiting for something good. As my friend advised, I DID find the right person for me. I told her, “I just need to close the 500 Google Tabs in my head that are open all the time and keeping me occupied”. Know the feeling?

One thing people might not realize about me who have worked with me, when I’m talking to you, I would generally have 30 other conversations or crises going on in my head that I could not shut up. When I get quiet while we’re spending time together, I’m still very busy in my brain sorting through files and information and to-do lists. You think I’m being distant but I’m just trying to keep up with the massive amount of information swirling around in my head, corralling the most important and flagging the less important for later.

She explained my head to me and why this happens. She made me feel like I wasn’t weak or broken for my experiences. She told me I was amazing. She told me she believed in me. She told me she was there the rest of my journey, as long as I would have her. She also made it so when I go to sleep the Google Tabs are closed to and I can actually rest. ??

Look, I get it. Being depressed, grief-stricken, anxious, whatever you are – it’s scary at first. Then it’s like a comfortable warm blanket. It’s easy to live in this cozy, nasty place. It is easier to complain than to fix. More people will talk to you when you are complaining, heck they might join in, than will sit and listen to you talk about if you are just sad or actually depressed. A lifetime of complaining is a nice cozy place too, but it’s a cozy place in hell. It’s more palatable to have a panic attack every couple of days or so than spend a hard hour a week, month, quarter talking about REAL issues you need to address and putting in the work to make it impactful.

I felt for a long time that my sadness of losing my mom was normal, and I didn’t realize until it was too late I was already in that cozy warm hellish place. I liked it, being held hostage by depression.

But I kept saying to myself, "My mom, my BEST FRIEND, died, and shouldn't I be sad about that? I certainly don't want to be happy!"

People had stopped calling to see how I was doing, making depression worse. People who did call were frustrated by my sadness. The few times I said on a Saturday night “Do you want to come over and eat pizza and watch a movie”, generally were met with “Why don’t you go out anymore? You used to be so fun!”. Hang up the phone, back to the cozy warm grip of depression where I was able to wrap myself up and cover my eyes to the world. Depression was always there for me. I even ceremoniously threw out all my party dresses one day and felt the need to tell the social media world about it.

This comfy, warm place comes with real-life impacts. ALL of these in the list below are a kind of mental health/psychological disorder. Some items on the list surprised me.

• Anxiety disorders
• Mood disorders
• Psychotic disorders
• Intellectual disabilities
• Developmental disorders
• Personality disorders
• Eating disorders
• Sleep disorders
• Dissociative disorders
• Sexuality-related disorders
• Substance-use disorders

I once had a boss who made jokes about Adderall all the time. It was awful and I felt so uncomfortable. I’ve taken Adderall in my lifetime and it’s not something to joke about. At times it’s a lifesaver. Yes, it can be misused, but for people who NEED it, they need it, and it’s not their fault or a weakness. Is it a weakness when you have high blood pressure and take medicine for it? No! Any meds that help you fix something wrong in your body can be good if you choose to take them. ?

I’ve always had a terrible relationship with food. Doing research, I found out a drug used to mostly treat AHDH was also approved by the FDA to treat “Binge-eating Disorder”, which is an actual eating disorder, as much as anorexia or bulimia. It’s for people who just can’t control themselves, much like an anorexic can’t stomach the thought of eating a full meal. It’s not just over-eating. It’s consistency over-eating past fullness looking for a dopamine burst to keep them happy, followed by immense disappointment in themselves for being weak. The drug, Vyvanse, gives you the “full” signal your wonky body doesn’t normally. You learn better eating habits. It’s not an Ephedra to lose weight quickly. It doesn’t work for everyone and for me the side effects were gnarly, so I had to stop.

I’ve been on anxiety medication for years now, having tried several to find the right one. If you haven’t taken any depression or anxiety medicine – be aware that you are in for a ride. It’s not aspirin for a headache. There are so many options and they all come with benefits and side effects. It took me three tries to find the right one over the course of a year. Headaches, intense sweating, nausea followed until I got the right one. Then we had to find the right dosage. Take the time to find the right one for you. Let the people you love know you might be a little “off-kilter” as you work to improve your mental health. Think of it as a hard workout – you might limp the next day from DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), but you know when it’s gone you’ve grown stronger.

While admitting this isn’t easy, I can tell you I watched my mother for years be a nervous wreck, and given what I know now I wish I could magically go back in time and tell her there was relief from a life of always waiting for the bomb to go off. Always feeling like something bad is about to happen. Feeling justified when something bad does happen. There’s a world where anxiety is controlled to be used only for fight or flight. I grieve she never knew that and that I couldn’t help her aside from making her laugh when she got into an “anxiety mode”.

I know that my anxiety partially makes me good at what I do. Always being worried about details or having a mind going a million miles a minute makes me super-efficient and detail-oriented, never mind the ulcer it was causing. My anxiety is tied to my news gut – knowing inherently (and as an Empath) that something bad was going to happen. Or that a fire call was going to be MORE than just a regular fire. Having the sense that “this storm” was going to be the big one.

I remember as Hurricane Irma ebbed and flowed with her weirdness before she hit Florida, we were in an all-staff meeting with the weather team. They were saying that at current models there wasn’t much risk for damage. The Chief even said, “I’m not boarding up my house at this time.” I looked at the person next to me, a new manager, and said “That sucker is coming right at us. I just know it.” He gave me a strange look and a courteous smile. I. Just. Knew. I didn’t need a spaghetti model to tell me what my gut was anxiously screaming at me. It’s a blessing and a curse to have anxiety. Weeks later this new manager said to me “I thought you were crazy when you said it was coming this way. The weather team full of experts didn’t even see that coming.” Honestly, they were reading the data the best they could. They did NOTHING wrong. Irma was as jumpy as Frogger. All I could say was “They were going on science. I was going on my anxiety level and gut feeling. I don’t know why, but I just knew it.”.

The great thing about anxiety medication is that it doesn’t kill all anxiety, at least not for me, but it kills the UNNECESSARY anxiety. The worry that the door is unlocked, the ongoing fear my mother instilled in me that I left the curling iron on, and we are going to have a burned down house when we get home, the fear that I’m going to get into a car crash when I’m running late for a meeting.

I’ve learned so much about myself and mental health while exploring on my own journey into what makes me tick and get ticked off. I’ve learned that some issues can be genetic. The National Institute of Health lists autism, ADHS, Bipolar, depression, and schizophrenia as possibly having genetic roots. One study showed 70-90% of bipolar disorders are attributed to genetics. You can’t help it sometimes. Add in the environmental factors? You might be the perfect setup for one of the long list of mental health issues. I also found out that bipolar depression doesn’t mean you are bipolar. I had no idea, I thought they were one in the same.

I have a nephew with autism who has turned into an amazing young man about to graduate high school. During his life journey, I learned a lot about the autism spectrum. I’ve even wondered if I’m on there somewhere, with my strong desire for people to keep 6 feet away at all times (pre-COVID), my hatred of being touched unless I know you very well, and my inability to tolerate repetitive noises (like clicking a pen or a phone ringing without being answered). Repetitive noises actually make me feel like my brain is about to explode.

There is SO MUCH we can learn about how our bodies and our brain work in tandem and the better we know ourselves, the better we can adjust the behavior we have and the health decisions we make. You can’t just wait for it to “Go Away”. There is so much about our behavior that impacts the workplace, our relationships, and our friendships. The quiet one might be dealing with depression, the loud person might be releasing misplaced anxiety, the person cradling their head might be two medications in and having a rough go of it. Give grace to the people around you and the battles they face you don’t know about. Support people who are facing battles you do know about, even when they are now “boring” or “no fun”.

I knew that alcoholism ran on one side of my family. I was always worried if I drank too much and if that made me an alcoholic. Then one night out with a relative we were partying it up, having the time of our lives. At one point I looked over and this person was drinking from a bottle of vodka and swallowing it like a marathon runner drinks water after the race. Ah ha. That’s the difference. While I never struggled with abuse, I also know I have an addictive personality and got to a point where I didn’t want to risk crossing a line. I turned a craving for an after-work drink into a workout, or a weekend nigh at the club with a night of giving my dog a good brushing (He’s a Golden, he needs a LOT of brushing). I don’t even really drink anymore (mostly because the hangovers stopped being worth the night of fun, to be totally honest).

Know your family history. Talk about it at the next family gathering. You might find some solace in whatever you are dealing with. It took me YEARS to know I was actually experiencing anxiety. I thought I was just getting rush an adrenaline rush all the time. I thought that those moments you can’t breathe were just excitement leaving your body. I literally had panic attacks that I thought were GOOD things because I didn’t know what they were.

Few things have hurt me more than when I expressed that I was in dire mental stress to people I trusted and was ignored. It was a sure sign that mental health wasn’t a priority, and it wasn’t a space I was welcome. It is no longer a space I can or will tolerate. It is not a space you should either. Keep the conversation and the openness of issues up for discussion. Mental health struggles are on thing deeply impacting the news industry right now. Does someone think that makes you weak and has the audacity to say it? That’s their own mental health issue they need to treat. Nobody is immune from what we do, see, and report each day. Some people just pack it deep down and let it come out in other ways.

I once worked with someone who was having a mental breakdown in the middle of a work shift. This person told me they wanted to self-harm. It was scary for me, as this isn’t something they train managers for, and I didn’t want to draw more attention to this person as I tried to work around the packed newsroom and a person in crisis. We had to send that person to the mental hospital that day, and it was nerve-wracking to see this person screaming at me “You did this to me! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT” as they loaded her in the ambulance strapped down. I truly hope that person got the help they needed. A voice to listen to them. A person to say that it’s okay to feel this way and we’re going to fix it. Don’t wait until your demons take over that much. Everyone has a breaking point. Everyone.

Even Jesus said on the cross “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” ??

We’ve opened the doors to the discussions about mental health, and we can start the discussions easier with things like World Mental Health Day, but you’ve got to take action for yourself or those you love.

It took me 15 years of being an adult to start treating my mind and body like an adult would. You younger people, you’ll be there someday. Needing to see why your blood pressure is so high. What I learned way too late is that blood pressure doesn’t just impact your heart. It can wreck your kidneys. You might also find yourself with more aches and pains than ever before as your body ages. Get them looked at as soon as you can. Follow the mammogram and colonoscopy guidelines. Don’t put it off. Don’t be “too busy” as I was for so many years.

Mental health is grossly impacted by your physical health as well. Anyone who’s gotten COVID or waited for a test knows the mental strain is really the worst part if you don’t get too serious of a case. Am I positive? Now what? Whom did I have contact with? How long was the contact? Am I letting my colleagues down? What symptoms come next? When does this stop? Is it ON Day 10 or after Day 10 I can return to work? Ugh. It’s a mental madhouse. When you are depressed, stressed, or anxious you are hitting all kinds of body parts with mental shrapnel.

You’ve got to find those insane 20 seconds of courage to make the call. Matt Damon was right, something amazing DID happen.

I’m currently the best version of myself I could ever hope to be, while still a work in progress, and I know that wherever I go next I can take care of myself mind, body, and soul without shame.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Helpline (SAMSA) any time – (800)662-HELP (4357). It's open around the clock. If you or someone you know is having self-harm or suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at (800)273-8255. To learn more about World Mental Health Day visit the WHO website.