It's been three years since I've dined in the community room of a psych ward with some fellow depressives...trying to slice a piece of rubber turkey with a plastic knife while wondering what I had to do to get out of there. I would like very much not to return. I came up with these steps to help me. But they are good sanity tools even if you've never made it to the community room.
1. Keep a consistent rhythm.
I'm not talking about rap, or your tempo on the drums. I'm referring to your circadian rhythm, the internal biological clock which governs fluctuation in body temperature and the secretion of several hormones, including the evil one, cortisol.
Here is how you establish good rhythm that assists you with the whole sanity thing: you live a boring life.
Sort of.
You have to go to bed at the same time every night, and wake up at the same time. Preferably with the same person. You can't befriend Australians, or if you do, you can't visit them. Because travel, in general, and especially travel to different time zones, will throw off your circadian rhythm. During the fall and winter months, I stare into my HappyLite for an hour a day because, fragile creature that I am, my brain mourns the sunlight that it gets in the spring and summer.
Folks with seasonal affective disorder and bipolar disorder have to be especially careful to prevent disturbances in the circadian rhythm in order to keep their friends and their jobs. And long-term disruption can actually do mega damage, like messing with the peripheral organs outside the brain, and contributing or aggravating cardiovascular disease. Chronic disruption of the circadian rhythm can suppress melatonin production, too, which has been shown to increase the risk of cancer.
2. Don't be a cooking frog.
Psychologist Elvira Aletta recently reminded me of the lesson of the cooking frog: You put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it jumps out to preserve its life. You put the same frog in cold water, turning up the heat gradually, and he stays in there...acclimating to the temperature. Until, that is, he boils to death.
I can feel the temperature rising in my pot lately, so I've just ordered a bunch of ice-cubes -- a vacation, vitamin D supplements, extra therapy -- to cool things down.
3. Team up.
Think of the buddy system from Boy Scouts. Teaming up with someone means that you have to be accountable. You have to report to someone. Which lowers your percentage of cheating by 60 percent, or something like that. Especially if you're a people-pleaser like me. You want to be good, and get a badge or checkmark or whatever the hell they're passing out, so make sure someone is passing out such reviews.
Also, there is power in numbers, which is why the pairing system is used in many different capacities today: in the workplace, to insure quality control and promote better morale; in twelve-step groups to foster support and mentorship; in exercise programs to get your butt outside on a dark, wintry morning when you'd rather enjoy coffee and sweet rolls with your walking partner.
4. Squeeze in some downtime.
There is another kind of rest that is almost as crucial to your mental health as sleep: downtime.
What is that? I don't have a clue but my sane friends tell me it's great.
Downtime lives in quandrant II of Stephen Covey's time-management matrix I talked about in the video I published awhile back. This kind of rest is important but not urgent. So we say "fuhgedaboudit." But we really shouldn't "fuhgedaboudit," because downtime is our cushion against stress. If your body is without a cushion for too long, the pieces tend to fall apart. Like Humpty Dumpty. And, I hate to bear the bad news, but sometimes the doctors can't put you back together again.
5. Know your triggers.
After twelve years of therapy and 21 years of hanging out in twelve-step groups, I think I have finally located my triggers: Irish bars loaded with inebriated folks, super-sized Wal-marts with over 100 aisles of products manufactured in China, Chuck-E-Cheese restaurants with life-sized rodents singing melodies to screaming children, and conversations with people who think mental illnesses are like mermaids -- not real -- and that absolutely every health condition can be fixed with the right thoughts plus a little acupuncture.
6. Preserve your willpower.
Managing your emotions is like being on a permanent diet. If you start off eating celery with hummus for lunch every day, your diet will last approximately six days. At least that's when I threw out the bag of celery and reached for a BLT.
No. You have to pace yourself -- throw in a small piece of dark chocolate...or a pound -- so that you keep the momentum of eating right.
Science supports my claim here: Humans have a limited amount of will power. It's like coal. So don't even try to quit smoking when you're eating veggies, or abstaining from your Pinot Noir if you're de-cluttering your house.
One character defect at a time.
7. Pray.
I'm not talking about reciting the Stations of the Cross on your knees or praying the rosary in the back of church with the over-80 crowd on their way to an early bird special. I mean the process of "waking up to God" that Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rost writes about, or that Barbara Brown Taylor describes in her book, An Altar in the World:
When I look up from feeding the outside dogs to see the full moon coming up through the bare trees like the wide iris of God's own eye -- when I feel the beam of it enter my busy heart straight through the zipper of my fleece jacket and fill me full of light -- I am in prayer.
Originally published on Beyond Blue at Beliefnet.com. To read more of Therese, visit her blog, Beyond Blue at Beliefnet.com, or subscribe here. You may also find her at www.thereseborchard.com.
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http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/boiledfrog/
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/frog.html
Ultimately I ended up with atrial fibrillation, and was given some heavy duty beta-blockers which made me really sick and foggy-headed.
So, I started researching natural alternatives for my A-Fib, and discovered that a magnesium deficiency could cause irregular heartbeat. So I've been taking magnesium supplements for that condition (along with Taurine and other heart-healthy supplements) and I haven't had a moment of A-Fib in over 4 years now.
Recently I realized that since I've been taking extra magnesium, my depression, anxiety, and panic attacks have disappeared right along with my A-Fib.
If you Google "Magnesium for Anxiety and Drepression," you will find about 150,000 sites that discuss this. One example:
"Did you know that magnesium deficiency is one of the most common nutritional deficiencies? A normal diet in the Western world is said to contain only two thirds of the RDA for this mineral although magnesium is said to be one of our most crucial minerals. One major study concluded that close to 75% of our diets are lacking adequate magnesium levels.
Some of the symptoms of folks with a magnesium deficiency include anxiety, depression ,..., insomnia, reduced attention span, memory loss and confusion. ..."
I just thought that I would share this, because it certainly has helped me.
1. Embrace your insanity. It's who you are. Why deny it? Let it lead you down interesting paths, and only pull back when you're on the cusp of self-destruction.
2. Travel. A lot. See sights and keep lots of interesting friends in lots of interesting places. Look at the whole world, not just your little corner of it. Jet lag is a small price to pay for seeing Australia.
3. Find something you enjoy and then do it a lot. Some might call this "addiction". It's only addiction if that thing is unhealthy or harmful.
4. Have sex. Lots of it. It's absolutely essential to your mental health. Masturbation is not an adequate substitute, because it's not just about the orgasm: it's about the human intimacy. If the sex isn't fun, then you're with the wrong partner. Find somebody who's a better match for you.
5. Accept that you are going to die some day and chances are that in one hundred years no one will care that you existed. Define success according to your own happiness, not others'.
6. If you do not like where you are, move. Repeat this step until you find somewhere that fits you.
7. Don't give yourself time to be lonely. Just live.
My fondest memories are from Guam, I'm staring at 2 pictures I had taken from my apartment on my wall. It's one of my best uppers. In fact I took a course from Sister Naomi at the big church on the hill & have been trying to see if she was still there, just recently. Guam was the most mellow place I've ever stayed. I didn't want to leave & have been thinking about going back.
Do you run into alot of people who get "Island Fever?" If you know the guy who owns the pool room, tell him I said HI! Guam is its own meditation in itself.
Oh, have you gone to the spot on the hill overlooking the ocean where you stop ypour car, put it in neutral then it backs up the very steep hill by itself? Do the locals still have their open fiestas every week? Are the bands still all Korean girls? Is the food still the best I ever had? So much to do and see there. Don't miss anything.:)
Don't be fooled into thinking that the staff are the sane ones: they just have pass keys.
Check with yourself twice before doing anything - (If you can't agree, keep it to yourself).
Relax: the only thing different about being in a psych ward and not being in one is: now you have an excuse.
Good luck.
Thank you for writing so candidly about what is still, in 2009, a taboo subject for many. I've battled crippling depression since adolescence, but I don't even bring up ADD anymore. People think they know it all: it's just hyperactivity (roughly half never are), only children have it, cut down your caffeine, created by big Pharma, character flaw, MTV's fault, etc.
What got me in was the SI after going to the ER. You're treated like a child, it's so humiliating, and they didn't even know about SI (not to mention boys do it too). Plus, the psychiatrist there was a pompous ---. His DSM-IV looked like it'd never been cracked open. He had all the answers yet knew nothing. Medice, cura te ipsum!
Thankfully, in the intervening years I've already figured out a lot of your steps on my own through trial and much error (though going back to childhood my sleep pattern never has been regular). I've been off meds for a while, trying to get by without insurance, but I don't recommend it. Still, I've been okay for a few years now, and don't self-medicate anymore, either. I try to get out, go to church (UU, praying not our thing), volunteer and be social (one character defect at a time though!).
The first victims of the Holocaust were psych ward patients, killed as a sort of mass extermination practice. (See the book Mass Murderers in White Coats.)
Consider that in the US, doctors supervise all killings under the death penalty.
From what I've read, state torture programs almost always employ doctors to assist.
The atrocities committed in the name of psychiatry are extreme, including the crimes of one shrink (under contract to the US military) who completely erased his victims' minds with huge numbers of shock treatments and other methods.
Cameron was a Canadian, but did a lot of his most frightening and disturbing work, which included alternating massive electroshock treatments with massive overdoses of LSD for seventy days at a time (in an attempt to "erase" mental illnesses), under, as you say, secret contract to U.S. military and intelligence services (C.I.A. at that time diverted a lot of money to funding drug research, looking for "truth serum"). He was at times head of the American Psychiatric Association and its Canadian counterpart; he was, in fact, as "mainstream" and "respectable" a doctor as you could imagine, despite his mad sadistic medical practices.