Attacking Your Mental Health And Staying Safe

Good morning everyone. Kind of doing back to back blog entries here. I was up late and wrote one last night, but I don't know if anyone even saw that post. I thought of just re-sharing that one, but decided to just do a whole new one. Maybe I should have just added to that one. I'm just kind of figuring all this out as I go. Slight warning, things get pretty deep and heavy below with some self harm talk, so be cautious before reading further. That's the hard part about stream of consciousness blogging I suppose.

I actually slept longer last night so thats a start. Then saw I got paid from a place I used to work with years ago I had forgotten about, but I guess they still owed me some money. That's always a nice suprise. It wasn't a ton, but every little bit helps.

Before I went to bed last night, I cut my hair. I started cutting my own hair earlier this month to save money and time. I hadn't gotten my hair cut since before the holidays and had gotten super shaggy and thick and just gross looking. I kind of felt like a hobo. So I got a clippers and used the attachments to cut my own hair. Thing is, I only used one short attachment all the way around so I kind of looked onion shaped.

Last night I used 2 or 3 attachments and figured somehwhat out how to fade while leaving it a little longer on top and I'm actually pretty happy with it. Small victories. That's what we have to do during times like our current world. Celebrate the little wins and go easy on ourselves.

One thing that I am enough of most times is hard on myself. When I make a mistake or screw up in any way, I want to crucify myself as much as possible. Something I never talked about publicly but I'll share now, when I'm really angry at myself over something I feel is really big, I'll punch myself in the face. Hard. That usually scares my wife when I do that and once I come down I text my therapist, but its not really a good or healthy thing to do. Plus it doesn't help anything.

Bipolar often manifests itself different for everyone. When I was with my ex-wife who also had it, she would direct everything at me to the point of being abusive, both physically and emotionally. I turn everything inward. I fantasize about dying and think or act out ways to inflict pain on myself. None of this is pleasant and I apologize if I'm frightening anyone but I feel these things need to be talked about.

Way too often people say "Oh yes, I support mental health!" Until someone shows actual scary symptoms like psychosis, or acting out self harm or outbursts, over stimulation, or anyone of a list of unpleasant symptoms, then its "Oh, this person is very toxic!" and off they go. I tell you I've wanted to scream when I see someone on Tik Tok saying "I had intrusive thoughts today to dye my hair!"

Going through my divorce, my intrusive thoughts were really bad, like depression and sadness. See my blog on Taylor Swift to see how I got through it. Anyway, I had found a website with various awful things an would watch videos of people jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I then would fantasize about jumping off myself. Now, mind you I'm in Texas, so it would have been a bit of a drive. But it was before I was diagnosed and medicated, so that was one of a thousand awful thoughts I had in a given day.

Once again, I apologize if this is too upsetting for anyone, and honestly when I started this post I didn't expect it to take the dark turn that it did. Fact is, it doesn't have to be this way. My medication has helped me a ton. I kind of have a multi-prong approach to staying mentally healthy and grounded:

Medication

I know a lot people don't like to hear this but being on medication got me stabilized very quickly. It took a year or two to find something that worked best for me without the side effects, and I know not everyone will have the same experience. But for me its been a life saver. Over the years, I've tried to wean off at different times thinking I was ok enough to do so, and used herbal supplements to maintain my moods, but nothing worked the same and I ended up a mess. So back on it I went. I'm on a good dose now to where i'm not sleepy all the time and can do things like write long winded blogs during the day and still get my work done.

Therapy

I know  this isn't accessible to everyone and can be very hard to find a therapist you trust. My therapist is great and he's very open minded. I'm a practicing witch/Nordic Pagan and I tell him about my spiritual practice at times. I usually preface it with "Ok, this is gonna get weird so don't commit me." But he just laughs and says anything that helps me he supports. So, if you can find a therapist you can trust, by all means do so.

Meditation

This was huge for me and led to many breakthroughs. I also know its hard for a lot of people but over time this takes many different forms. You can meditate as you journal, while going for a walk, while doing art or crafting. It doesn't have to be sitting silent with your eyes closed. I still do that sometimes, but for me blogging is even a form of meditation. Whatever works for you is key.

Spiritual Practice

This is also huge for me. I was a staunch atheist years ago before my breakdown. And I'm not knocking atheists or saying you can't be one. I'm simply relating my own experience here. I had been meditating for a few months when I started having various visions. I then started noticing different strange signs around me when out and a bout. I won't outline all those things specifically, but it led me to getting some books on witchcraft and pagan deities and I started finding my path. This book was incredibly helpful to me early on. It has been long and winding and still goes, but for me I've been much mentally healthier allowing myself to go with the flow in the spiritual realm and being open to various experiences. It's been a major grounding force for me. Once again, this can be something totally different for you. The key is just finding how that spirituality (not necessarily religion) manifests itself for you.

So, these are the main things that I focus on, not always all at once but at various times and I often mix and match and tweak things as needed. Never be afraid to make changes if that will help you. Also, anyone when it comes to mental health who tells you you're doing it wrong, or that there is one size that fits all, run far far away. Staying mentally healthy will look and and feel different for everyone. I've never met another person whose experience completley mirrored mine and and that is ok. Find those "prongs" that help you and tweak them as needed to get to where you need to be.

Anyway, this blog ended up much longer and more intense than I intended, but I think that's a good thing. A lot of meat in this one. Once again, its rough out there, especially now. If we want to survive these next four years we need to take care of ourselves and our minds first and foremost.

I care about everyone reading this, so I hope someone finds it helpful. As I said, I'm not a doctor or therapist and none of this is medical advice. I'm simply sharing my own mental health experience and journey.  I want you all to know you're not alone. There are many of us, a lot just don't talk about it. So, I'm trying to end the stigma and let you know you can talk about it and there is nothing wrong with you. We simply live in a broken world, but we can overcome it and we can thrive.

That's all  I got for today. Stay safe, take care of yourselves and thank you once again for checking in. Feel free to comment if you have any thoughts or feelings on what I sharted today. Take care everyone. Until next time.