When It Feels Weird to Manage Your Life Well

When I'm going through periods of high anxiety in my life, the all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking kicks in hard. If I can't cook dinner tonight, it means I'll never cook dinner again. If I'm not in the mood to write, I'll never write again. If my husband is disappointed we couldn't do something, he's disappointed in me and doesn't love me anymore. The list of ludicrousness goes on and on. I'm particularly adept at telling myself I can't have a normal life because I can't cope with it. Therefore, when I do cope with it, as I am now, it feels really weird.

I've been pretty certain that I'd be doomed this year. I was the host for Thanksgiving; my husband's family is visiting for Christmas; I've had lots of dental appointments for readjustments; my sister moved almost all the way across the country, and I've thrown a lot of social events for no other reason than to torment myself. Any one of these things can be torture when I'm very anxious, so I get a little anxious each time something pops up that this will be the one that sets me overboard again. Then, it doesn't happen. What am I supposed to do with that? It's like everything I think I know is wrong!

Well, that's anxiety. Everything you think you know that comes from a place of anxiety is either wrong or really over-exaggerated. That's like the definition. It's disarming because I can get used to not having anxiety attacks that are extra bad. Then, when they happen again, I'm all "I wasn't ready for this! Better be more vigilant (read: more anxious) in the future!" I've come to see this for the parody that it is. The self-fulfilling prophecy of stupidity. I hope my self-awareness can have some affect on my anxiety in the future, but I'm not holding out. Usually, my self-awareness is limited to the negative tendencies I have. That's probably not very helpful.

Luckily, I've learned to adapt. Instead of avoiding things just in case I get anxious, I've loaded up my agenda. I'm going to do all the things until such a time as I do get too anxious to do them again and have to start from the beginning. I get a lot more done that way, and you can too with my tried and true method of actually having a life! (Read that last bit in an enthusiastic Home Shopping Network voice). Anyway, here's to time well spent! I hope you're out there spending yours wisely, no matter what your brain tells you.

Hope you are all well or at least well enough.

You're Coping Well . . . Now What?

I think playing on swings is the way to be.

Mental illness, whatever your diagnosis may be, comes with its ups and downs. No one is at their lowest all the time. No one is coping well all the time, though some of us excel at coping most of the time. The yo-yo of symptom severity can make it tough to enjoy the down time when it comes. When you are coping well, and life isn't controlled by symptoms, you can sometimes forget what to do with yourself. You may also feel like the shadow of your illness is waiting to jump out at you any time. Therapists give us all these tools for dealing with being sick, but what do we do when we're not feeling sick?

It is important to be somewhat diligent about how you treat yourself mentally and physically no matter where you're at with your symptoms. Feeling great? You can either hasten a decline in your mental health or you can bolster your well-being. At the risk of sounding like your mother or your doctor, here are a few things you shouldn't do: Drink alcohol to any sort of access, do drugs, engage in self-destructive behavior, etc. Here are a few shoulds to balance it out: Eat relatively well (I say relatively because you have to splurge); exercise as much as you can, practice your coping mechanisms, etc.

Now that we've got the "nurture yourself to stay better longer" part out of the way, I want to get to the short and simple answer to our question. What should you do when you're coping well, even if you're afraid of your symptoms coming back at any moment? LIVE. Check off some shit on the bucket list. Build strong and healthy relationships by bonding with loved ones. Go to a movie theater. Visit friends. Travel. Hey, coping well might mean you still have limitations. For instance, I still have anxiety all the time, so I still don't travel far when I'm coping "well," but let's push the boundaries while we're up for it. Let's dare to have fun. Give yourself memories to help you get through the hard times. Love every second of it.

Distraction is a Good Thing

Here I am distracting myself with water

Whether you have OCD or not, you've probably heard that distractions are a bad thing. They take your eye off the prize! They keep you from fulfilling your potential! They do all manner of unspecific things to your life, leading you on a spiral of chaos that will only lead to you never facing a challenge head on! Okay, you've heard all that. If you have OCD, you've also heard distraction isn't good for your recovery. I want you to consider that perhaps distraction isn't a bad thing at all.

As a crappy student, I was always distracted. When I was younger, bullies and my efforts to keep my head down, metaphorically, distracted me. When I got older, I was distracted by boys, drugs (very mild, folks; calm down), rock 'n roll and all other manner of mild mayhem. Sure, if I had focused, I would have done better in school. Maybe I would have been happier or more successful now that I'm in my 30s. Nobody knows, so let's not speculate. I do know this, I was going to be distracted to some degree no matter what. Telling people distraction is bad is the same as telling them farting is disgusting. You've just made them feel bad about something they're going to do naturally.

Now for the other side of my distraction story, which is actually distracting me from work. When I fully realized I had OCD, professionals told me that ERP (exposure and response prevention) is the way to go. Most proponents of this method would tell you distraction is bad. Distraction helps you avoid the problems you are having, reinforces the "badness" of your OCD fears, etc. In some ways, they are right. In order to do an exposure, you have to be present, but what about when you are not doing an exposure or your anxiety is more generalized?

Here we get to the part where I tell you it's okay to use things like music, television, video games, family time and exercise to distract yourself from your mental illness. Firstly, your entire life is not an exposure. Sometimes, you need to reset your brain before you can get better. You need to break the loop of worry and reaction by just doing something else. This applies whether you have a mental illness or not. Do you have a cold and feel like shit? You're not going to dwell on it and tell yourself it's okay all day. You're just going to watch a movie and be miserable. The movie helps you forget that you're miserable for a moment. Sick people deserve that break.

I haven't fleshed out this idea as much as I would like to, but some thoughts don't need more than a few paragraphs. You get my meaning. Don't feel bad that you had to play a video game to keep your panic at a manageable level. Don't beat yourself up about needing some down time after a tough exposure. You don't need to live in your illness all the time. By all means, show up for your exposures. Be present. Challenge yourself to face your fears. Just don't forget to unplug when you're done. Really. You're not going to get in trouble or hurt your recovery. I promise.

Review of the Stress Free App by Thrive

Screenshot of the Stress Free
home screen

Stress Free is an app created by Thrive to give people tools to help them meditate, breathe mindfully and more. You can use it right from the website. There is no download required. However, there is about a £5 per month fee for a monthly subscription and a little less for a six or twelve-month subscription. You can try the app before you commit to a subscription.

Full disclosure: I was given a full month free trial of the app so that I could try it and review it. The opinions here are my own, unbiased view of my experience using the app.

While I was signing in for the first time, the site played soothing music. I wasn't having any particular anxiety at the time, but it was still relaxing. The home page featured an inviting beach animation, complete with rolling waves. Signing up was simple. I typed in the usual name, email and password to create an account. In order to log in, I had to confirm my email address.

Once you have an account, you will see a few options on the page arranged over a cartoon island. They include breathing, "Thrive," meditation, self-hypnosis and deep muscle. I clicked Thrive first to learn a bit more. It took me to a link to a blog, a mental health helpline and advice on how to get help from NHS after hours. I'm in the U.S. and these resources are based in the UK, so they are not super helpful to me. However, that wouldn't be a deterrent for using the app because people in the U.S. can find similar help with just a quick Google search.

Next, I went to breathing. I have some experience with breathing techniques, but it is nice to have guided options. Stress Free explains that breathing has some benefits and offers breathing exercise lengths between 3 minutes and 15 minutes. I went with three to start. A friendly voice explains that calm breathing can help you relax and tells you how to do it, at least insofar as telling you how long to breathe in, hold and breathe out. Page features a little animated dude and some more ocean scenery that I later realized were present for most of the pages. Be wary, the timer for the breathing practice stops when you click away to another tab. It resumes when you go back, so you have to really do the full exercise to move on to the next thing.

I tried meditation next. This is something I have significant experience with, though not enough success. Sessions last from 5 minutes to 25 minutes. Again, I went with the shortest to start. I wanted to get a taste of what Stress Free had in the way of meditation before I dove in. Right away, I realized something interesting about the method. Stress Free asks users to repeat a mantra when distracted by thoughts when meditating. It's not my usual method, but I gave it a shot. It kind of reminds me of the "cue word" technique used by a former therapist of mine. You could definitely use this to develop a cue word.

Deep Muscle didn't unlock until I finished the meditation session. I was wondering what it was because I've only every heard the term deep muscle in reference to massage. It turns out that this is basically a body scan meditation. This one does not have length options or tell you how long it will be. I kept track and it took five minutes to do the muscle exercises. The app then led me through a series of questions that for some reason made me relax more. I'm not sure how long that lasted. I closed my eyes and felt a lot like I should take a nap.

The final category on the first island was self-hypnosis. I'm not a fan of hypnosis because I think it's pretty much guided meditation with an element of suggestion. Since we're "self" suggesting in this instance, I played along. This too was a lot like conditioning yourself to respond to a cue word or phrase. There is no length option. It takes roughly 3 minutes.

I finished the first "island" on all of the shortest settings. I then clicked the little palm tree icon on the bottom right that would take me the next island. There was a section there called "Zen Garden."Zen Garden is a cool little area where you can create your own virtual versions of Japanese Zen Gardens. It's meant to help with meditation. It's a nice idea. I suggest shutting off the sound while in the Zen area. The beep it makes when you click on items is distracting. I'm not sure if there is a way to shut that off and keep the music. I know you can shut off the music in the settings section too. You can always play your own relaxing music on another device while using the Stress Free app.

The second day I logged in, the app asked me my mood based on its mood meter so that it could suggest exercises. When I finished, it didn't suggest anything. In fact, the categories weren't even visible. When I reloaded the page and logged in again, the categories were available and deep muscle was highlighted as my suggested activity. I'm pretty sure that should have happened the first time, but it just glitched out for a second. No big deal. It was back up in no time.

On the final island, after the Zen Garden island, you can check your progress, write messages in bottles to other users and use the mood meter. There is a thought trainer section in the progress area. I have no idea what that is. I can't find anything that has to do with thought training and I've made no progress in that area in my own treatment. I would like to thought train, but I just couldn't figure it out. Sorry about that, guys.

My final word on the Stress Free app is that it's pretty cool. I personally have never paid for any of these services because I know where to find them all individually free. However, if you have the budget for it and prefer your breathing, meditation, hypnosis, etc. in the same place, this app could work for you. Do I think it's a magic fix for anxiety disorder? No. Don't expect to be cured when you finish, but don't be afraid to use the app as a tool to get through panic attacks or stressful days. It has the potential to help.

Note: I reached out to the developers on Twitter to see if they had plans to make it a mobile app and learned that the app is now available on Android and Apple! I didn't test the mobile versions, but I do imagine this will make it more accessible to those who need it. Furthermore, Thrive does intend to continue develop the app, which means more islands and other features in the future.

What To Do When Your Therapist Leaves You

I knew it was coming. K, my therapist, is moving on to greener pastures. We've been working on my bullsh*t together for about three years now. She's helped me through getting married, two relapses of OCD-related anxiety and depression, countless family dramas and learning how to love myself. I'm still working on most of that, but I'm still alive, so she did her job. She did it well and I really like her, so I'm understandably sad that she is going. However, I'm very happy for her and maybe a little bit hopeful that change isn't so bad. If your therapist up and leaves you for something better or just because they change offices like I change med schedules, you can do what I'm doing–at your own peril.

1. Pretend it's totally cool. Say things like "That's awesome." "I'll be fine." and "Don't worry about it."
2. Go about your scheduled therapy like nothing is different. Talk about your family, your job and your "homework" like you would any other day. Change the subject when it comes to the impending breakup.
3. Acknowledge the fact that not only has your therapy buddy decided to move on, you have to find a new therapist.
4. Panic.
5. Cry.
6. Frantically research therapists in the area in case the other ones at your soon-to-be estranged therapist's office are d*ckwads or flakes.
7. Continue to go to therapy and act like nothing is wrong. "Who me? Worry that the therapist who talked me through a wedding when I couldn't leave my house without panicking a year earlier and who called the doctors when I stupidly checked into an in-patient facility and explained that I'm not an addict or a psychopath, so give me my meds and then let me go home is not going to be calling me on my sh*t anymore? That doesn't sound like me. I'm fine."
8. Pull up your big girl panties and seriously talk about the next move, meaning finding a new therapist.
9. Find new therapist.
10. Try to find fault with new therapist whom you have yet to meet.
11. Resign yourself to new therapist.
12. Say goodbye to old therapist while crying and telling her to keep in touch with you, as if that is an ethical move on her part. "What do you mean boundaries?!"
13. Meet new therapist.
14. Chill because new therapist is cool.
15. Cry all the way home because old therapist was cool too.

. . . and that's all I have so far. I'll give you the other 20 steps once I've completed and identified them. Good luck on your journeys from therapist to therapist. I know we all do it and some point or another.