I’ve found that people don’t really know how to deal with crazy people. Especially crazy people in crisis. I think that is because most people are “fixers”. The vast majority of people need to do something to feel like they are helping. They need to fix a problem and they need to see results to feel like they have helped. The problem is, depression can’t be “fixed’. It just has to be survived. Kind of like a storm. You buckle down, make it through and when the worst has passed you evaluate the damage, try to pick up the pieces and move on with whatever you can salvage. There is no fixing in the middle of the storm. And there are rarely positive results afterwards to measure your “success”.

I have a lot of experience in being there for people who are struggling and I feel like I have learned a lot in the last couple of years from living through the storm myself. So I am going to share a little bit in the hopes that it can help you if you want to take on the supremely hard but incredibly important work of being there for someone. Here are three things that helped me when I was in crisis.

1. The most important thing you can do is to not do anything. You need only be there. It sounds simple but it is one of the hardest things you will ever do. To just be there for someone. To just sit there steeped in the pain without words, not giving advice, not actively doing anything can feel impossible. Especially when the pain is thick in the air and it hurts your heart just to be close to it. But the best thing you can do is to just be present. We as people want to help, we want to fix, we want to take away the pain. But sometimes there is no helping, there are no words, and you just can’t help with the pain. During my darkest times my husband asked me on so many occasions “What can I do to help?” The answer quite simply is nothing. There is sometimes no helping these dark scary feelings. But you can be there with them. You can stay with them, hold them as they cry, listen to their pain, show them with your presence how important they are to you. It won’t fix anything. But it may just give them the strength to keep trying.

2. Express how important your people are to you. Love is powerful. At my lowest point I felt like I was a burden to everyone around me. My brain lied to me, telling me I was worthless, that nobody loved me, that the world and my family and my friends would be better off without me. And I believed it. All I really wanted was to hear that people loved me to combat the lies my brain was telling me. That they valued me. That I meant something to them. Unfortunately most people don’t say these things. And for some reason “I love you” is so hard for some people to say. It takes vulnerability and I think deep down we are all afraid that others won’t reciprocate so we keep it to ourselves. If you know somebody who is struggling tell them how much you care for them. How much you love them. How important they are to you. How valued they are. There were days where one person reaching out to say “I love you and I am thinking of you” was enough to keep me going.

3. Check in when you are not with them. Check in so they know you are thinking of them. This helps to combat the feelings of being worthless, of feeling unloved. It is a tangible way to show that they are on your mind not just when they are right in front of your face and not just when it is convenient. It shows them how important they are to you. Even a short text can accomplish this. A note here; Check-ins are helpful and important but trust is even more important so if you tell someone you are going to check in later you need to follow through. If someone is in crisis and they feel like nobody cares about them and a friend says “Hey, I’m worried about you, I’ll check in later” and then doesn’t follow through that can wreak havoc in a brain that is already distorting and lying to you about how nobody loves you. One of the worst things that happened when I was in crisis was one of my closest friends saying they were worried and they would check in but never following through. They did this often. It sent me spiraling more than once thinking that if my own best friend didn’t care about me enough to follow through and to check in when they were admittedly worried for my well being how much could they really care? Would they even notice if I wasn’t here anymore? I probably wasn’t as important to them as I thought I was. It reinforced my fears that my brain was right, it wasn’t lying, nobody cared about me. After all If one of my closest friends couldn’t bring themselves to care why would anyone else? If you are saying you care enough to check in be sure you follow through. That trust can be impossible to gain back.

To summarize if you are looking to help someone out… Be there, tell them you care, show them they are important. Three steps that are difficult yet also so simple. If you don’t know what to say you can try “I’m here. I love you. You are important to me.” I think those are the most important words you can ever say to another human. You have no idea how much they can help someone. Even if it gets them through just one more day. That may be enough to gain some momentum for the next. It may be enough for them to feel like they are worth it.

These are just three things that have been on my mind. Things that were helpful to me and that have been helpful to others. There are so many other things and everyone struggles differently so these may not help everyone. If you have advice or things that have helped you please feel free to share in the comments section. I would love to have tools to add to my box. We could all use a little more to help in the fight. Every little bit helps.

Yesterday I had therapy. I started therapy about 6 months ago. Back in June I realized I was no longer able to deal with my mental illness on my own and I could no longer find reasons to want to keep living. I never went so far as to make a plan to end my life but I spent a great deal of time wishing I wasn’t here, thinking of why everyone would be better off with out me, imagining “accidents” that could happen to me, longing to be done with life. It got worse and worse. After a couple of long nights one week where I lay in bed all night not sleeping, praying that if God really loved me he would just let me die, thinking I didn’t even care if it was cancer or something long and horrible and painful because I probably deserved that, I just couldn’t do this anymore, I decided it was time to get help. Being a person who is not a fan of medicine I decided that therapy should be my first step.

So I scheduled an appointment. I started out weekly. For months I went every single week and sat in that office and talked about dark, scary things. I talked about the past, the horrible memories and feelings I had and how they had messed me up deep down inside. As I dealt with all of these feelings and learned to process them instead of push them down and ignore them I was sad. Sometimes I was inconsolable. I was filled with dread for how long and hard this journey would be. I sometimes lost hope. I felt emotionally destroyed. Sometimes I was so damn angry. Mostly though, I cried. Every single week I left that office and I cried. At first for days at a time as I tried to process these feelings and make sense of everything I was learning and remembering. Then after a long time just on the same days my appointments. After months and more hopelessness and more wanting to die and more hard work and more setbacks and finally meds things started to get better. I still cried but only right after my appointments. I was making sense of things. I was learning to process and cope. I had tools for dealing with the pain and the difficulty.

About 3 or 4 weeks after starting meds I left my therapy appointment and I didn’t cry. For the first time since I started. We had still talked about hard things. There were still bad things happening but we talked through them. We made a plan and talked about my feelings and I didn’t cry and I didn’t feel that familiar sense of hopelessness. I felt so successful. So proud. I had worked tirelessly to get to this point. We decided that I needed only come every other week. I was elated. It felt like for the first time in years I was succeeding.

Yesterday was appointment day. I no longer have anxiety attacks before I go. I no longer get the feeling of dread deep in the pit of my stomach. I feel like it is just another day. Just another thing I am doing for myself to make myself more healthy. This week a few really bad things happened. Things that would have sent me into a spiral of self-hate and hopelessness in the past. But as we talked we realized that I’ve got this. I am coping in healthy ways with difficult situations. I am not blaming myself or hating myself. I have supportive, amazing people surrounding me and helping me and loving me. I am enough. We decided yesterday that I do not need to come back for a month. A MONTH! I felt so proud of myself in that moment. I can’t help but think of how I felt 6 months ago. I have come so far. I have put in so much hard work. And it is finally paying off. I am finally feeling some happiness.
My first day of therapy was one of the hardest days of my life. I left exhausted. In fact, I felt that way for months. Learning to be completely honest about scary stuff not only with another human but especially with myself felt impossible. The work I was doing felt impossible. There were so many times when I thought I was not strong enough to do this work, to keep going. But I did. And it turned out to be the best thing ever. I feel strong and healthy. I feel like I can handle anything. I know that depression and anxiety will always be here. They do not really go away. But now I have a box full of tools to help me in tough times. And I have learned through this process which relationships are healthy and which people are really there for me. My support system. The ones who have showed up every day. The ones that have showed me that they love me not just at my best but also at my absolute worst, at rock bottom. The ones that were here when it felt impossible and even though there was nothing they could do they were present. They just sat with me and said I am here; I love you no matter what. That is the greatest gift I have ever received. And I never could have done this without them. They gave me the strength to keep on working.

If you are struggling I strongly recommend seeking out the help of a therapist. It can be overwhelming and daunting to think about starting. Especially knowing that the first one you try might not be the right one. But when you do find your person it will absolutely be worth it. And it is so much better than the alternative. You deserve some happiness. We all do. And you are absolutely worth it. Just like me.

I have been on anti-depressants for about a month and a half now.

Starting meds was the hardest thing I have ever done. I fought it and made excuses for a long time because I was so terrified. I was scared for so many reasons. I thought the meds would change me, numb me, make me less-Beth. I thought they would take away my spark. I have high highs and low lows and I have always been okay with the lows because the highs are so amazing and I have never been willing to give that up. But the lows were getting scarier. Every time they got lower and darker and I didn’t know if I could survive if they got any worse. So even though I was sick of doing hard work and making tough choices I made one more. I started meds.

The other day we were driving home from school and Melissa was telling a story about one of her teachers. He told their class that if they were ever rooting for someone to fail just because they didn’t like them they should probably consider getting therapy. I laughed and said I was a horrible person because there have been a couple times where I might have thought that but joked that I am in therapy so at least I am trying to get better. The kids talked about how much better I was doing. I talked about the hard work I was doing and how helpful therapy is. Then Melissa said “I think it’s the meds Mommy.” It was funny and we all laughed but I thought about it later.

The meds are one of the best choices I have ever made. They have made things significantly less dark and scary. They have taken the edge off. They have significantly decreased my anxiety and given my brain space to process things more. I am not in a constant state of worry about every tiny thing and every single person and every situation in my life. I am not constantly blaming myself for EVERYTHING. Taking responsibility for everything. I am learning how to let that shit go. Now I know this isn’t all the meds. It is a combination of learning better coping mechanisms and having realistic expectations and getting more than 2 hours of sleep a night and working through some really bad, really scary shit from my childhood and taking time away from severely unhealthy relationships and realizing exactly how much my partner and many others care for me and love me because they have gone beyond the call of duty to show it. It is all of these things. But I couldn’t do any of these things the way I felt before. That broken part of my brain could no longer recognize the good and sift through the shit because it was just so damn busy worrying and being in pain all the time. Take that edge off and it is amazing what can happen.

So I am not less-Beth. In fact for the first time in a couple of years I feel like me. The real me. The way I used to be. The Beth that I loved and missed more than I have words to express. At therapy the other day my therapist said she felt like she was meeting the real Beth for the first time and she was so happy for me and everyone else in my life because she had heard so much about this Beth and she is every bit as wonderful as she suspected. I almost wept with joy.

I have so much work to do still but for the first time in a long time I feel like I can actually do it. I am ready and less weary. I have the tools. I know it is worth it. All my hard work is finally paying off. All of those tears and sleepless nights and hard decisions have brought me here. I am finally getting better.

But then again it’s probably just the meds 😉

The other day a friend of mine tagged me in something on facebook. It was a shirt that said “Be you. Relentlessy, Courageously, Authentically, Unapologetically. Be you.” It got me thinking. Two years ago this was exactly how I lived my life. It is how I teach my kids to be. I shout it from the rooftops to every single one of my teenage daughter’s friends. I tell them no matter what happens just be you. If you are too much for some people then they are not your people. Never change yourself to make other people comfortable. And never apologize for who you are. Because you are absolutely perfect and beautiful the way you are.

But depression and anxiety changed me.

I haven’t been confident in my skin in a very long time. My mental health issues have made me smaller. They have made me more scared. They have made me second guess every single thing I do. They have stripped my confidence. I feel overwhelming guilt all the time. I apologize for every single thing I do, sometimes even the things that make me me. I assume that literally every bad thing that happens is my fault. I have not been the real me in ages. I have been something less than. A sort of smaller more blurry reflection of Beth. In fact I had almost forgotten who I was. When my therapist asked me to start making a list of things that make me Beth, Beth things, I had a full blown week long anxiety attack and went into a full-on crazy-spiral.

But lately that spark that makes me Beth has started to return. Instead of acting like everything is ok when it clearly is not I decided to start talking about it and that has helped immensely. Because how can you be authentically you if you are pretending a huge part of you doesn’t even exist? This is who I am. This is what I struggle with and I know I am not the only one. So why hide it? People say it takes courage to talk about the hard things I talk about but really it is just me being unapologetically, authentically me. I am a messed up broken person but that mess and those jagged edges have made me what I am. They have helped refine the best parts of me. They have helped me to understand other people’s struggles, to love them even more than I did before. Without judgement. To realize that we are all struggling with something and doing the best we can in this moment. All of this has helped me to just be there for people. The good in me sees the good in you y’all, even if you can’t right now. And I will try like hell to help you see it, too, because that is what my people have done for me. They have reminded me that the Beth I loved is still in there, I just had to do some searching. And even though she has changed a little she is better than ever. I am ready to be me again. I am ready to stop apologizing and get back to just being that person that I used to love so much. But a little bit new and improved.

So join me. Be you. Relentlessy. Courageously. Authentically. Unapologetically. Be you. Whatever that looks like. Because you are pretty fucking awesome. Just like me.

 

“I just don’t want to love people anymore. It hurts too much.”  There is a reason I am in therapy y’all.

 

This weekend I had a slight emotional breakdown on the beach at the end of Park Point mid-run in the freezing cold wind. And by slight I mean I sobbed for a half mile leading up to this quote and it culminated in 10 minutes of ugly crying and yelling and slimy snot running down my face. It ended with me weeping into Dana’s shoulder telling him I just felt so bad because I didn’t want him to be stuck with me forever. It was beautiful. I wish you could have been there. Talking about your feelings is awesome!

 

One of the biggest things I struggle with and my main focus in therapy right now is relationships.  I am not super good at healthy relationships. My personality is sort of all or nothing, and when it comes to relationships and loving people I err on the side of all. I am really great at loving people but I have no boundaries. I am all in, 150%, and there will be no doubt that I love you but I open myself up to all sorts of hurt in the process. I am not good at “acquaintances” or “surface friendships”, I am all about being your bestie. I am a care-er and a do-er and I will care and do like all of your happiness hinges on my ability to make you feel loved and I take it as a personal failure if my people are not happy. It also doesn’t help that the level of empathy that I have for others is frightening so I feel everybody’s pain deeply. I am compassionate and I will sit with you through your pain and suffering, be a source of unending support and comfort. I will be with you and share your pain but I will take it with me and I feel it later, I will worry on it, I will cry about it. And because I am uniquely qualified to love broken people because of said empathy and compassion I surround myself with them and feel a sort of constant ache in my heart for those that are suffering around me. It is a recipe for misery.

 

The way I am a friend to others and my ability to love are both my biggest strengths and also my biggest liabilities. We are working on making them more into strengths and less into liabilities. The building blocks are all there. I want to be able to continue to love people in a way that shows them that they are important to another human. So that they feel that love deep down and completely in their soul and that there is no doubt that they are valued. I am good at that. But I need to learn to do it in a way that is healthy for me, a way that doesn’t hurt so damn much. And I need to realize that if somebody cannot love me back that is not a failure on my part. I get my choices and they get theirs. I have to learn to let that shit go. It is not going great right now but I am working on it.

 

I have a particularly hard relationship that I am dealing with right now that led to this breakdown. A friend that I care about and love an enormous amount but it is one of the most unhealthy relationships I have ever had. It is nobody’s fault, it just is, because we both are the people that we are. I need to find a way to move on and be healthy. But love and pain have a pretty deep correlation so because I love this person so much it is causing me an enormous amount of pain. And I don’t want to let go of the good because of the bad. But the bad is hurting me a lot. It’s complicated I guess but I need to figure it out because it is emotionally draining. Also I have approximately 350% more feelings than an average human and I feel them 5 times more intensely than anyone I know so that doesn’t help an already emotionally charged situation much.  I guess the moral of this situation is that love is complicated and sometimes it hurts us in the end. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on it completely. I need to realize that just because this one relationship is causing me pain it doesn’t mean I should give up on all of them. Just because my ability to love so completely caused me so much pain in this one situation I cannot stop doing it altogether because it is valuable. It is not all or nothing.

 

I have a gift. A pretty incredible one and I do not want to stop using it because it occasionally emotionally destroys me. I have to find some balance. I have to see some grey. And thankfully I have a team of people helping me to do that. A partner that lets me feel all of my irrational feelings and tells me they are okay because they are mine and holds me on the cold beach while I break down and is my constant voice of reason and is forever trying to help me be the best me. Children that deal with my crazy in ways that are both beautiful and humorous and that have an unending stream of love for me. A few friends that love me fiercely and make damn well sure that I know it on the daily by giving me constant support and affirmation. A community of other crazy people I have met through sharing my struggles who are so supportive it blows my mind. I am lucky. And I need to keep reminding myself of that. Especially when things get hard. Because loving people is hard work. But it is absolutely worth it.  

About 6 or 8 weeks ago I went through one of my darkest times in recent memory. I had a hard time making it through each day. I took that time to share more specifically my struggles with mental health on Facebook and I wrote the following post:
“Most of you know I struggle with depression. Persistent major depression to be more specific with a little bit of anxiety sprinkled in for fun. I have good times and bad times but for a number of reasons this week has been an especially bad one. Damn near impossible actually. The darkness has been closing in pretty relentlessly and the light has been at times almost impossible to see. I have had a few days where I have not known if I would be able to put one foot in front of the other to make it to the next day, and the nights have been particularly long and restless. My heart aches. My therapist tells me when things get really impossibly hard I need to try to see the good around me. It is nearly an impossible task sometimes so I ask others to help me. Because when the dark is so all encompassing you forget how to see the hope and light. I have almost given up on social media because of the hopelessness of the world right now. But instead of giving up I’m creating a space of happiness and a little hope. A space to help me and others see the good that is all around but sometimes too hard to find. So please join it if you like. Let me know and I will add you to my group. You can invite others too. Here is a little description of the group’s purpose:
Please share any random acts of kindness you do (none too small) or that are done for you or just random kindnesses you witness or especially happy news stories or adventures or beautiful pictures of sunrises or nature or art or something that made you thankful today or anything that makes your heart sing. Don’t think for one second that you are not being humble by sharing your kindness accomplishments. I promise they will help somebody’s heart. Let’s make a community of hope and love and encouragement because I need it more than anyone and I’m sure others do too. This is a space for only positive things. A space to fight the darkness. Let’s all share some love.
So join if you like. Invite others. Let’s make this huge. The only rule is to keep it positive. Because love wins, even if I can’t seem to see it right now.”
A few days after I posted this I saw a friend of mine and we were talking about my struggles and my hopelessness and the darkness I was feeling. She said a thing that stuck with me and probably always will. She called me a “joy magician”. She told me that despite living in a place of darkness and feeling utterly hopeless and feeling no happiness I managed to create a space of joy for not just myself but for others who are struggling as well. She said that I was creating joy from literally nothing. I think it was the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me. And it helped. I didn’t see my group as that. I just saw it as a way to cope and maybe, hopefully make it through one more day at a time. But my friend made me feel like I was actually doing something. Quite an accomplishment when you are going through “crippling depression” as my kids affectionately call it.
We can’t always be joy magicians. But we can try to find joy in small things. We won’t always and when that happens it helps to have people around us who try like hell to help us see. If you are on Facebook and would like to join my group go ahead and search for “Random Acts of Awesome/A Little Hope for Humanity”. We would love to have you. Even if you never post anything it is a beautiful space to get away and find a little hope and perspective. To be reminded that there is good in the world. All are welcome. And if it helps you find a little bit of light in the darkness then I think it is worth it. So come join us and let us help you see the light.

I wrote this 4 weeks ago when I started meds for the first time. It was one of the hardest, bravest things I have ever done. I will post an update on how I am feeling after a month of being on meds sometime later this week but figured this might be helpful for those of you who haven’t read it. Enjoy 🙂

I’ve been struggling mightily. For 2 years now I have struggled with major depression. Over the last few months I have tried everything to help. I go to therapy weekly. I exercise daily. I run, I hike, I do yoga. I spend time in the woods. I practice mindfulness and I practice gratitude, counting blessings every single day. I have made major dietary changes. I practice self care. I serve others. I spend time with my beautiful family and have surrounded myself with a solid support group of family and friends. But still I struggle.
Lately it has gotten worse. There is a disconnect. I see the things around me that should make me happy and have in the past and I recognize them but I feel nothing. No joy. No happiness. Just grey. To make it worse I feel a deep pretty much constant hopelessness. It is dark and scary inside me all the time. And then the guilt comes. I have a great life. I have a great job and a great family. My kids are healthy and happy and pretty much the best kids on earth. My husband would do literally anything for me and has. Over and over. I have no reason to feel this sad. And I feel like a burden to everyone around me. They pick up all the slack. They carry me through this dark time. They comfort me daily when I feel like I cannot go on. And I bring nothing.
I am not a medicine person. I don’t even take cold medicine. I occasionally pop ibuprofen for a migraine but that is about it. I am not a fan of drugs. But that disconnect brought me to the doctor last Friday. Something is not right in my brain. So we talked about meds and I left with a prescription. I was scared for so many reasons. What if I lose my spark? What if that crazy every-day-is-the-best-day-ever part of me gets numbed or disappears? What if I lose what makes me Beth? I wept on my way back to work. At first out of fear and then because I felt like a failure. But then I realized nobody has worked harder than me to get through this. And this is just the next step. As scary as it is I have to admit that I cannot do this by myself.
On Friday I was brave. Probably the bravest I’ve ever been in my life. I know that but I don’t quite feel it yet. I cannot go on the way I was going. I would not be able to survive it. And also I need to be able to listen to my kids tell me about their days and share in their joy and be excited with them again. I want to feel the complete and utter joy I usually feel when I see the beauty of nature in autumn. I want to gasp at the sight of a sunrise again. I want my husband to have a partner again. I just want to feel a little happiness.

And this is the next step to get there.
I am struggling but I know I am doing the right thing. It just feels really hard in this moment. But I will keep going and I will keep being brave. And if you are going through something similar I want you to know that you are brave too. Sometimes just getting out of bed in the morning and trying again in a world that feels dark and scary and hopeless is the bravest thing you can do. And I am proud of you. And I am proud of me. Get the help you need because everybody keeps telling me it’s worth it. And I am choosing to believe.

For those who do not know me yet, I’m Beth. Over the last few months I have shared my struggle with depression and anxiety on social media and have had friends encourage me to start a blog. So here I am. To be honest I am a little terrified. This feels like a lot of pressure for someone who could barely get out of bed a few weeks ago.

I am a big believer in publicly sharing my struggles with mental health because through the years when things kept getting worse and my world was getting more and more dark I felt so alone and was sure that I was the only person that felt this way. When I started sharing I had countless people reach out both publicly and privately to share their similar experiences and all I could think was “why don’t we talk about this?” For once I did not feel alone. I did not feel like some kind of freak. I did not feel like an ungrateful jerk who couldn’t be happy with all of the amazing things I have in my life. So many people have gone through the exact same thing. And their shared experiences gave me hope that it gets better. They helped me have the courage to get out of bed and keep moving forward. They gave me the strength to try another day.

My hope is that my oversharing and brutal honesty can help another human who is struggling. I hope that we can make these kinds of talks more normal. That we can stop the stigma associated with mental health. At the very least I want to create a community of hope and love for those who struggle like me. A place to share our struggles but also to share our triumphs. Whether it is getting the dishes done, or going for a walk outside, or even if it is just getting out of bed and showering today.

So join me. We’re all crazy here ❤