I’ve written several times before about my own personal struggles with depression and anxiety and tried to shed insight into some of the myths about these diseases that are still alive and kicking. \u00a0One of the worst offenders, in my opinion, is the “Just change your situation\/ get rid of whatever’s upsetting you and you’ll be just fine”.<\/p>\n
In many ways my life right now is the best it’s ever been. \u00a0I’ve been married 10 years to an amazing man. \u00a0I work for a great company and I have a job I enjoy and that challenges me every day. \u00a0I have hobbies. \u00a0I have friends. \u00a0I have my niece and nephew who I adore. \u00a0Life is good.<\/p>\n
Yet in spite of all that, a week ago I had the first panic attack I\u2019ve had in ages.\u00a0 It scared the living crap out of me and I immediately got on the phone with my doctor. \u00a0But once I started really thinking about it, there were signs for several months that the insidious fog of mental illness was starting to creep back into my life.\u00a0 Those old voices in my head telling me I\u2019m not good enough.\u00a0 The utter lack of motivation to do, well, anything.\u00a0 The inability to concentrate.\u00a0 The ability to sleep for 14 hours and still be sleepy. The feeling that, wherever I was, that I wasn\u2019t as important as everyone else.\u00a0 And even worse, that everyone else could see I didn\u2019t belong there too! \u00a0Those old feelings and routines crept back in so slowly I didn’t even notice them.<\/p>\n
For the most part I\u2019ve been able to hold it together when I\u2019m out and about.\u00a0 I have moments and entire days where I still feel pretty good.\u00a0 I felt great all day when I was at the Minnesota Blogger Conference, but in spite of that I almost skipped the after party.\u00a0 I was very tired, but I was also scared.\u00a0 Scared I wouldn\u2019t fit in.\u00a0 Scared no one would want to talk to me.\u00a0 Scared I wouldn\u2019t be good enough.\u00a0 But, my dear husband talked me off the ledge and I had a great time once I got some liquid relaxation (aka wine) in me.<\/p>\n
To be clear, my mental health is not great right now, but it’s not dire either. \u00a0I am not suicidal. \u00a0I am still light years ahead of where I’ve been. \u00a0I am (mostly) confident that with help from medical professionals I will get through this rough patch and back to (mostly) mentally healthy again soon so can continue to fully enjoy my (mostly) really great life that I wouldn’t change for anything.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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I’ve written several times before about my own personal struggles with depression and anxiety and tried to shed insight into some of the myths about these diseases that are still alive and kicking. \u00a0One of the worst offenders, in my opinion, is the “Just change your situation\/ get rid of whatever’s upsetting you and you’ll be just fine”. In many… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[23,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issues","category-myself"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/6R7KCXBEEE.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}