Mental Health

This is a really emotional piece for me to write today, almost exclusively because I just started “lady week,” as I began calling it during my deployment to Kuwait, so as to make it sound less yucky to the men I was surrounded by. Lady week brought some humor and light-heartedness to my serious emotional outbursts, and to the sensitivity I would suddenly show in response to the same jokes and arguments on and off duty hours that were always made, during the days leading up to and following my period each month. The guys knew lady week was coming before I even knew, without fail. I am on lady week, which to me explains why last week, my own lack of patience with my new little buddy (3 years old) in my new host family in Italy frustrated me so much and I had a little miniature breakdown. I know I’m good with kids, I know I’m capable of patience and understanding when helping a three year old learn and do just about anything. I was super angry at myself and guilt-ridden when I couldn’t seem to muster up patience for his tantrum-ing (normal) or his slow pace (um, duh, super normal, he’s three). Having my period explains that moment of intense sadness, and the emotional and intense breakthrough I had before and after this travel weekend. Surrounded only by strangers and brief chance encounters, the universe sent the people and experiences I needed, and I was able to still be mentally and emotionally open to experiencing them to “recover” from the emotions and guilt of last week.

I want to tell you a little bit about my background since I keep vaguely alluding to it; I joined the US Army during my last semester of college in 2011 so that they would pay for me to go to Graduate school. If you don’t know me from real life, and are just following this journey online then you may not have caught that yet. If you do know me personally in life, post age 17 or so, you may not be surprised to hear that I felt my absolute most ME on my deployment to Kuwait, than I had felt in a really long time. I mostly attribute that to a really awesome team – shout out to Distro platoon and a few of my homies in Maintenance and Headquarters – who supported each other to no end. We were all living the same “hell” (I am using the term Hell very loosely here because I had the time of my life TBH, but being away from loved ones and thrown into a 24/7 camp of strangers can really be considered Hell to a lot of people, and there were moments that even I hated it). It became really apparent really quickly that even though we all came from different backgrounds – aged 18-50, some had college, some had done 6 deployments and had 15 years of military under their belt, some had new babies and postpartum wives at home, some were really inherently great at their jobs, and some we called shit bags and sham artists – nmw the background, we all had loved ones back home that we really fucking missed… whether they were our spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or parents, we were separated for an entire year from these people.

I intentionally have tried, since 2011 when I enlisted in the military, when I met someone new, to leave out the minor detail of my enlistment, because I believed that it made strangers make a hasty judgment about me that I didn’t appreciate. People would ask me about guns, self defense, push ups, if I’d ever killed anyone. These are all reasonable questions I suppose, but I can only shoot certain weapons that I’ve been trained on well enough to hit my target when the conditions are right… and I don’t know shit about any other weaponry. My military affiliation doesn’t mean that I have a strong opinion on military spending, or a stance on gun laws. As far as self defense, the last Combatives class I took was in January 2014, and I have an old IG picture posted of the shiner I got on my left eye, so my self defense would probably be better if I had continued training. I’ve been in a couple of fights in life, but mostly they were yelling matches, and in short, I am a confrontational, but nonviolent human being; I prefer to resolve arguments through reason and logical discussion, and best with sources cited for reference. I basically didn’t want people to think I was manly, militant, feminist, or worse, Republican (I kid, I kid), so me not mentioning it was part of my shame story, and controlling what people thought of me.

Since Kuwait, I wear my Military experience with pride. I grew from that tour as a soldier and as a woman in ways I never could have anticipated. I had learned a lot in my 5 years of Army training before that as a Reservist, but Kuwait really proved to me that I could manage my time effectively, create joy, could seriously help facilitate a strong community, and really do anything I put my mind to.

I got home from my deployment just before the summer of 2017, a moment I had been counting down for well over 100 days, a moment that I cried for before I’d even left for pre-mobilization, a moment I had been dreaming about. I got home and I had 2-3 weeks of sheer bliss. And then it happened. I went into a depression. It was, maybe my 5th or 6th really notable wave of depression in my life, and I therefore recognized it almost immediately because it was no longer a new feeling. What WAS new, was I had this really awesome military veteran health insurance, and a whole support channel (military one source, a squad leader/squad, family, friends, siblings, etc.) encouraging me audibly to seek professional help. Suddenly, under the guise of “Military PTSD” (despite that my deployment was in fact during a time of general peace and in a peaceful non-combat zone), it was finally ALLOWED that I was facing depression.

My depression wasn’t advertised on social media. You wouldn’t have seen it at any of the weddings I went to that summer, or the trips I took, or the social gatherings I was at. But I went from feeling me, AF, in Kuwait, surrounded by strangers that turned into family, to feeling completely alone, passionless, and miserable at home – the place I most wanted to be for every moment of that year in Kuwait. I was unhappy in work, I was worse in my relationship, I was uncomfortably anxious about the prospect of being surrounded by people (strangers or friends), and things that previously brought me joy, no longer did. I felt the most uncomfortable in my skin, and in my head, than I ever could remember in my life, and there seemed to be no way out. I started going to therapy, I started self-medicating again with pot, I learned how to enjoy Whiskey. I was a little bit burnt out at work, even though I’d only been working this job again for a couple of months after a year long break from it for the deployment, but I would learn 16 months later that it wasn’t just work, or just my relationship, or just PTSD. It was a combination of those factors, with the much bigger issue of that I was hiding behind who I THOUGHT that my boyfriend, my job, and society needed me to be, and not being true to anything I was meant to be or felt called to. I wasn’t having authentic conversations in life, I wasn’t facing my fears or my feelings, and I was numbing with drugs and alcohol; I was talking in therapy mostly about work, and not about everything else that was making me feel so hidden and ashamed.

That is my very long-winded intro to this entry, the long-story-long, as that is the only story-telling tactic I know, to tell it as I recall it, in meticulous detail of minor things and no detail of major things, and with a million tangents along the way. I hope you’re still with me.

When I began to travel, a year and some months post-deployment, I was no longer seeing a professional, and I had to work through any loneliness and waves of sadness that would come at me on my own, through facetime to loved ones at home, and with strangers/new friends. In a recent post, I mentioned one of my goals to my therapist was to not be afraid of being by myself. Months earlier, just moments after the break up, I had set a goal with my Doc to allow myself to feel. This was because, in the past, I filled every spare moment with a phone call, a book on tape, a podcast, or just busy work to keep myself from feeling really anything. In my travels, I allowed myself to sit with my thoughts, and allowing myself to speak these thoughts truthfully to people I would meet, I slowed down and I examined the feelings. Let me say that again. I slowed down. When I stopped rushing from one activity to the next, one distraction to the next, one relationship to the next, I felt. I felt the good, and felt the bad. I stopped overthinking because I was being more honest with myself and more direct with others, so there was less room for misunderstanding. I stopped pouring from an empty cup because I was able to LEARN about myself what filled my love tank, what made me happy, and what was a joy-thief, what made me sad and empty. After my 3-month trip last fall, I dove into the darkness again after being home for a few weeks, but this time, that sadness and loneliness only lasted a few days, because I talked about it, out loud, almost immediately as the feelings were happening. I took away the power of the feelings. The anger that was masking fear of failure or fear of rejection… The sadness that was masking loneliness, distrust, shame or disgust. I talked about it with my mom and dad, and strengthened those relationships. I talked about it with friends, and strengthened those too. I talked about my feelings, and created a safe space where anyone I had opened up to suddenly felt more able to open up to me. I realized that is what I had in Kuwait. A community of people who cared about me. I still HAD therapy while I deployed and while I traveled abroad, but in like, a handful of strangers, turned family. This is why we need community, and I strongly believe that this is why we are so disconnected as a society, because of the distrust and disengagement — our communities and circles are large, but there is no sense of authenticity or closeness. We need to create that. And the only way that we can create community is through love, and honest, authentic conversation.

I believe I have always been an empath. But upon opening up about my own journey and starting this blog, people have come to me about the death of a parent, a boyfriend’s deployment, being raped, siblings with addiction, learning to have a healthy relationship with food and exercise, the effects their divorce has had on their children, eating disorders…. the list goes on. The more I open up about my own fears and anxieties, the easier it becomes for me to talk about it, and the more people open up to me about their own fears and their own story. I am in love with this process because I’m not talking about bullshit that I don’t care about anymore. I’m not talking about superficial things (unless those superficial things are the barriers that need to be discussed and broken down to get to the true fears and shame). I am owning my pain, exposing it and taking away its power, and I believe I’m helping you to expose yours [re: I hope]. What you guys are individually reaching out to me with, telling me WHY this blog/this IG account resonates with you…. that is MY why. Why I want to push the boundaries. Why I want to talk about things that MY community is not talking about. If you are reading my story and reflecting on your own, then we are one step closer to building this community of authenticity, kindness and compassion.

I’m real with you, you’re real with me. It gets easier with practice. I have these conversations often with strangers. We frequently hug after. Ask my roommates in 2013 if I was a hugger when they met me — spoiler alert, I was not. The more we PRACTICE difficult things in loving ourselves and others, the more easy those things become (Gary Chapman, Five Love Languages). These conversations are with people 10 years younger than me, and 10-20 years older than me! Humans benefit in their level of happiness from cross-gender, cross-generational relationships, so create them, and watch your DAILY life satisfaction increase… and the happiness of those around you. If you’re following this account’s instagram @lizwithoutapillow, you may have seen my story about the first friend I met on the shuttle from the airport in Naples, an older gentleman, Giovanni, who had lost his wife a year earlier. In 15 minutes of knowing each other, and without prompting from me, he told me about the depression that ensued after losing his best friend of 45 years, and the thoughts of suicide that followed. He told me he had to “transform the mind, [because] life will always have struggles.” Fear and anxiety is just part of our human existence, everyone goes through phases of sadness, as this is the ebb and flow of life, yet we are not talking about it nearly enough.

According to the Mental Health Foundation in the UK, nearly half of adults in the country believe that in their lifetime they have had a diagnosable mental health problem, yet only one third of them have received a diagnosis; every week, one in 6 adults experiences symptoms of a common mental health problem, such as anxiety or depression (The Little Book of Lykke, Meik Wiking, Chapter 5). What this means is that a lot more people are struggling than what we’re talking about or reporting. Instead of seeing humans for what they are, “a complicated mix of negative and positive character traits [and mistakes],” we emotionally withdraw from one another, and we judge harshly, on the exact things we are afraid of being judged about; life becomes “a stage of constant artificial high drama – everybody is either a hero or a villain” (this quote is from a podcast. I DEEPLY disagree with the APA/MLA/other citation recs I’m finding for the casual nature of this blog – so, just give it a listen if podcasts are your thing, it’s Russell Brand’s Under the Skin, episode #068 with Jon Ronson, screenwriter, author, researcher). Why would it be bad to be in our emotions? Why is someone a “villian” (or crazy) if they have emotional outbursts or breakdowns, and why is mental illness still taboo, when half the world or more is struggling on any given day? We ALL have feelings that are uncomfortable! Many times, the deeper emotions are feigned by anger or resentment, but when we stop and really examine the feeling, it is guilt, shame, fear, rage.

I quote this statistic constantly, so if anyone reads Rising Strong or The Power of Vulnerability, please find exactly where she says it and lmk: Brene Brown surveyed 1500 Americans on the number of emotions they feel daily, and the average response was three. Three emotions. Humans have a range of over 30 emotions, and those surveyed replied “happy, sad, and angry.”

First of all, you guys aren’t excited, enraged, fearful, and surprised on a daily basis (among other things)?! Do you know the meme that compares (using emojis) a day in the life of a guy vs. girl, and the girl has 300 different emojis and the guy has 2? The 300 emojis is definitely my life. I feel the feels. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Second of all… WHAT?!?!? So we can recognize sad, that is good… but we aren’t even ALLOWED to feel it, so that is not so good. We quickly say “it’s okay” or “don’t cry,” whenever we see anyone
upset (man, woman, or child). We are squashing our authenticity and vulnerability by not allowing ourselves to feel, and by teaching things like “boys don’t cry,” “man up,” “toughen up,” “rub some dirt in it,” “never let ‘em see ya down,” etc. We encourage this hardened exterior at work, because it’s more professional, but we are thwarting our ability to create, to innovate, to improve, to develop. I am in Italy currently, and able to see the beauty of human hands and minds from the Roman Empire as a result of funding for their people for education, literature, the arts. Do we, as a modern society, believe that thousands of years of humanity were wrong, and that in the last few hundred years, we have a greater understanding of the human experience? We NEED to feel, to create and to have purpose. When you start to acknowledge what is in the depths of your heart to people you love and trust, you start to take away the power you associate with that negative or positive feeling, and you can disconnect it from whatever association you’ve made to that feeling (ie. if I let myself fall in love too quickly, I will get hurt; if I let myself be seen, he or she will think I’m weird and not like me; if I love too deeply, I will eventually lose this person, so I shouldn’t let my guard down, if I try and fail, my parents/significant other will not be proud of me, so I’d better not try, etc.). When you voice the emotions that you have been blocking out, or numbing yourself from feeling, with whatever your choice vice may be, the vice is far less appealing, because you seem to be naturally happier. It is okay to feel uncomfortable in your jealousy, in your fear, in your shame, in your passion, in your shock, in your excitement. We’re afraid to let ourselves be seen, but it is in our most imperfect selves that the people who love us deeply for WHO we really are… it is then that they see our most beautiful, unmasked self. Your perceived flaws are what make you unique, they are what make you you, and they are personality traits that are celebrated in children. Bring them back. Be you, because, so cliche, but really, fucking really, that is your super power. There is NO other you, and you are absolutely worthy of healthy relationships, feeling a deep sense of love, and a deep sense of belonging in your community. We need you. You have so much untapped potential, and you have so much to offer.

Start talking about your mental state. Start being really deeply wholehearted, compassionate, and empathetic with people about their mental state. There is NOTHING wrong with a wave of depression. There is nothing wrong with being sad. When we ruminate in our sadness, when we don’t talk about it, when we don’t socialize, and when we GIVE UP, that is when there is something wrong with the feeling. Questions that you can ask to promote these conversations and a truthful and authentic relationship within your community:

“How are you doing” (and have a real interest in their answer and do not accept “fine”), follow with: “but how are you really doing?,” or “I’ve been worried about you;” “can we talk about what you are experiencing? If not, who are you comfortable talking to?” Another one is: “It seems like you’re going through a difficult time, how can I help you to find help?” Or “I  am someone who cares and wants to listen, what do you want me to know about how you’re feeling?” There is more advice on these hard conversations at www.mentalhealth.gov under US dept of health and human services (The Little Book of Lykke, Meik Wiking, Chapter 5). I love you guys, and I want to help in the conversation to normalize talking about anxiety and depression, because for about a decade I was quiet about mine. Now I speak freely on it, and people speak about it to me. I am empowered, more courageous, and less depressed. My anxious and sad moments last only a few hours or days, and I have the capacity and calmness to let myself FEEL the feels, and then pull myself out of that dark place.

Building trust within our social circle (or with a therapist) and being authentic with those around us about things NOT being perfect, and that being perfectly OK, creates an authentic energy that people will meet you at (I’ve discussed this “raised frequency” in another post). When we start to tell others our truth, they are more truthful with us, and then we begin to trust people’s intentions and motivations because we are more trusting of our own. This is part of building that community of kindness and support, which starts with loving ourselves (see Self Love & Kindness Pt 1 and Support & Community). Encourage this conversation you guys, be kind, and spread love.

The comments are finally working (grateful for tech support, because that is not my gift)! Comment here, or DM me on IG to tell me your thoughts on this post and others!!! Go forth authentically my friends, and lean into love.