Sore Makes Me Less Sorry For Myself

I had an old friend check in on me yesterday. Whenever life mentally beats me down, I kind of go hermit and hide from people. I start to refrain from checking in and just kind of try and keep afloat. We have become better in the last year of the every few months check in and as someone who I would consider one of my closest friends and someone I admire in life and motherhood, her check in came in right on time.

Having confessed to her last year my personal struggles with all things life and then finding out hers was similar and not all smiles and cute kids, she always asks about my big struggle. Yesterday I told her "I work out, A LOT, to burn off some of the stress."

I added an "LOL," to lighten the heaviness that might come with that commentary and realized this morning how happy I'd felt all week being so sore and sleeping so well, because I had kicked my butt physically. I think being sore made me feel less sorry for myself after my relapse of high anxiety and deep depression last weekend.

I think it's something that can be hard for people to grasp but because my mind is often like a hamster spinning on a wheel to nowhere, a focused workout or even a treadmill run takes all my mental energy and harnesses it for good, leaving me able to rest at ease later. I wish I could call it a vanity thing like I wanted to be "hot" and "slim" but that has almost nothing to do with it. I like to look healthy, which has a wide definition, different for everyone, but skinny is not my goal.

When I had my first realization of how deep my depression and anxiety where I was about 22 or 23. I had lost both of my grandparents within a year and my mom had a cancer scare with a large tumor removed. I had been through a lot with personal relationships and was mid-college trying to figure out this thing called life. In my therapy they emphasized the importance of routine, physical activity and structure. 

I would say I religiously follow that rule about my personal struggle with depression and anxiety that physical activity is tantamount to my mental recovery. I always feel badly when I don't work out and the sore is better than the sorry for myself. I always catch myself being at my worst when and if I'm not moving around enough.

Working out has always been my therapy, especially when we couldn't afford someone for me to talk to. When I work out it's usually just myself and my music. Music is therapy part two. There is nothing I can't do, and no mental anguish if I have the perfect play list, even if that play list is all depressing stuff.

I rest better at night, both physically and mentally, when I know I have physically exhausted myself. This can sound kind of masochistic but I actually just love that sense of accomplishment. I know plenty of people who live on protein shakes and hardcore diets and serious fitness goals and I'm happy that works for them, but I like knowing I can indulge in ice cream guilt free because I kicked my ass throughout the day.

When I feel sore, not only am I far less sorry for myself in general, but I know I did something right to keep feeling that work out as the day goes on. Yesterday I was laughing out loud at how much it hurt from soreness to run and to do other exercises because I had given myself consistently great workouts throughout the week. 

This morning I realized how imperative my workouts are for everything. I recently started taking my daughter to the gym with me. Not only is she old enough to actually take in what I'm doing, but she can sit and chill while I get my workout in, and if it's slow enough, join me a bit. Now my mom gave me a huge complex about my body, which I am fighting tooth and nail to NOT to do my daughter at all. I always tell her she's fantastic. "Fat" is like a swear word in our house. I want her to understand health and happiness, so I try to lead by example.

Some people may view my twice daily workouts five days a week as excessive or obsessive. But one could also say the same for Keto-dieters, taking all kinds of supplements or meal-planning, weight watchers and so on and so forth. To each their own. For me it is 90% mental health practices and 10% fitness related.

Also, I like working out. It is something I actually enjoy. I don't "enjoy" running but I'll do it sometimes. I do my best to make anything that makes me sore, at least less of a chore than other things. We all have workouts we like, and workouts we don't. I try and keep a decent mix.

For me working out is part of health care. It's preventative and part of a healthy lifestyle. Look I eat cookies, and cake, and many "unhealthy" things but all in moderation. So working out is meant to bring me some balance, both physically and mentally. It's what I strive for.

I think it would be easy to see my posts and say I'm a work-out-aholic. It could be easy to exchange one form of obsession or compulsion for another, but I think the work out obsession may be safer than a binge-eating situation. Some of the most functional people I know have a good workout routine and decent eating habits, even if they have a cheat day from time to time.

After my recent mental mis-step I'm just taking pride in the fact that I'm very aware of what to do to get myself back on my feet, so to speak. I know what my mind and body need and I'm not afraid or ashamed to share that. I love that being sore keeps away the "sorrys." I don't need to throw myself a pity party because we all have our mental woes. I need to continue to heal, and continue to grow. My fitness regimes feed that growth and healing and keep those endorphins flowing freely!

Also, Elle Woods is my girl so, I kinda like to follow her life model. Happy Friday!

The Definition Of Relapse

Relapse, by definition is "a deterioration in someone's state of health after a temporary improvement." When you grow up with an addict, the word relapse pertains directly to using drugs or drinking alcohol again. In mental health, a relapse could be anything from engaging in behavior you felt you had control over once again, having a bad day of anxiety, or a weekend of depression. Okay, that is my mental health definition of a relapse, and also, an interesting segue into this post.

I have said that things were going good, going well and calm. I was feeling pretty okay with the flow of things in general. I wanted to blame my anxiety on the drama of the whole Hurricane Dorian watch. I wanted to say it was induced by the bad moods and general hysteria of the people around me in the world. Now that I have my head above water again, I can call it what it is: "a relapse."

My relapse was born of many triggers. Triggers are so strange. Some of them make sense when you look into them. Some of them blindside you and seemingly come out of nowhere. While the hurricane stuff did push my anxiety high, I had something come up in life on top of it all that felt as though the rug was pulled from under me and I fell down hard, left to get up with no help. This unplanned thing, this new information, sent me spinning with no focal point or way to stop from spinning out. 

I tried to stay calm and use that internal dialogue to talk myself down, but the thing about talking to yourself is, it can be kind of one-sided. With other circumstances overruling schedules, I was left alone with myself, with no one really to talk to besides my six year old and I started to shrivel. My six year old is fantastic company, but these forces made feel sad and shrinkable. You know that scene in The Little Mermaid where Ursula shows you the weird shriveled plant people? Yeah that was me, the poor, unfortunate soul. 

I reached out to some people as a sounding board but I had to be selective on who could handle my situation. In my upset I wondered how much of this internal uproar was my anxiety, how much was a bout of depression, and how much was me just overreacting. I needed someone to check me a bit and give me a real answer. There was validation the response that I got, which was my feelings were not only valid, but what I was going through was really unfair. This validation victory was short lived.

The thing about relapse, is it's familiar. When you're healing and focused on progression and you're pushing towards your goals, it's easy to look back at where you were when you were in a less great place and be like, "I hope I don't go back there. I hope I don't feel that way again. Things are so much better now, I'm not going back." When the relapse happens then you get this cloud of "How did I get here?," above you; a fog if you will.

That fog left me disoriented. Maybe it was the hurricane's fault because much like Dorian, over the weekend I just churned slowly wreaking internal havoc mentally. It came out in random crying jags, and often. I'd be in the kitchen thinking I should eat something and just think about the situation and be crying into the sink. I couldn't focus my eyes when talking to my daughter or her playdates from time to time. I felt so damned blah.

I let my daughter see me through this, though. She asked about it and I said, "Mommy is having a hard time." The one time this weekend I lost my temper, the one time I became so unhinged wasn't even at my daughter, but rather in proximity to being pushed to my max. I immediately felt like shit because I scared her when I let out a yell about being done with things and how much I just tried and kept feeling like I failed. When we both calmed down and started to re-tell the events and how mommy lost it, my daughter said, "Turns out Labor Day is a bust." Somehow this just made everything in my heart light again. Not only was it completely accurate but she made it fun and sweet.

Yesterday I was half lifted out of things. I felt a baby step forward but was still not far enough out of everything to call it, "moving on, moving up." Today, though, I feel like I'm starting to process everything more constructively. Full on steps are happening for Wednesday.

Depression and anxiety are beastly. You can go for months using your coping mechanisms, therapies, tools for self care and everything else properly and then boom, something trips you up. It's the same with drug and alcohol recovery to where you can be sober for days, months, years, and experience something that just triggers you or throws you from your cadence, and before you know it you're using again. 

It shows me how delicate the balance is. It shows me just how careful you have to be with everything. It was difficult for me to reach out and to explain the whole scenario and talk about it. It still is, honestly. It feels multi-faceted and filled with back story; overly-complicated much like Shrek with onions having layers. 

I feel as though the past 5 days for me have just been the epitome of a relapse. In my personal therapy quest my therapist reminds me that this is okay and it will happen from time to time. This is all part of the growth process and recovery from trauma, but also just a part of life in general. Not being hard on myself is a struggle. I have to admit though, this particular relapse just completely wrecked me for a couple days there.

Everything felt futile and I felt extremely alone. I started feeling slightly insane as though I had made something into a "bigger deal" than it was in reality. That's a jarring feeling, in my humble opinion. It made me feel out of control, which is something I don't do well.

There are times when your patience and "go with the flow" abilities are essential. It is all you can do. There are other times when taking control, when gripping the wheel and getting back on course is essential. This is another delicate balance.

I don't like feeling as though I have no say in things and life just happens upon me. I no longer want to be just a viewer watching my life go by. I strive to be an active participant. I no longer just succumb to the whims of "not having a choice," or feeling like I can't have an opinion, a plan, goals and even dreams. I stayed quiet too long so now I feel like, "I'm very much allowed to say what I want to say!," at least in situations in my home and personal life.

While I feel as though this trip up in my mental health was really sucky and unfair, today I feel less wobbly about labeling it as an important learning experience. This relapse took me down for close to a week from beginning to end. Only last night did I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I felt as though I had been staying so positive that I was bound to feel a bounce at some point. After all, it is only fair because what goes up must come down.

Relapses are rough! I don't care who you are or what your definition of relapse is but any recurring flair of uncertainty and uncomfortable-ness is less than desirable. I don't pretend to be immune. As for this particular bout, I had a pretty good run beforehand. I have some more work to do now, some "extra" added on. This is my time to really plant my roots firm and push on the growth because it is situations like this one than can make those better days sweeter when the bitter days are overly sour. 

We easily take things for granted, whether we know it or not. The bad days put the good ones in perspective so I want to give myself that win. For anyone reading this who wants to reach out and talk, I hope you do. I may have felt super alone in my down time but I know that in reality, I'm not, and neither are you. 

Thanks to my readers for being patient with me for all of this and I'm so glad I was able to share. On this September Wednesday morning, I'm grateful we have just a couple more days to the weekend! We got this!