Facing the Storm

In Tampa, during the summer, it rains a lot! There are storms almost everyday, or at least that is how it has been this year. Even in the rain, summer is beautiful and I learn a lot through it. 

In my life, I feel like I get rained on a lot too. I feel like my life is a storm. There are ups and downs, and a lot of the time, I feel like it is mainly downs, it feels like it is raining and raining and raining and the thunder and lightening roar down around me.  The sun doesn’t seem to be up at all. 

This bird though, he just stands tall in the rain!  He stands out there and faces it!  Jumping from car to car, playing in it, basking in the rain!  He doesn’t hide from it.  He doesn’t run away from it.  It doesn’t hurt him.  Sure, when we have problems in our life, it may be hard, and it may hurt, but we can still stand tall going through them.  We don’t have to run away.  Just like this bird, we can go out into the storm, we can stand in that rain, we can face it. 

When I saw this bird, I was walking out to go to my NAMI meeting.  I wasn’t having the best day, I was going through a “storm.”  But I saw this bird on top of my car, then he jumped to the car next to mine.  He just freely exposed himself to the elements.  I needed to be like that.  I needed to push myself to do that – to be stronger, to not curl up into a ball.  I know I am strong, I just need to come out of that curled up ball and show my strength to myself. 

Being Friends with Someone With Mental Illness – What You Can Do To Help

Friendships with someone who has a mental health disorder can be quite tough at times.  In fact, my group of friends is quite small.  Most of them actually are other people that have a mental illness, because they understand what it is like.  But I have friends that do not, and they are great! 

I know that sometimes, being a friend or in a relationship with someone with a mental illness can be hard sometimes though.  You don’t know what to say when certain topics come up, you don’t know how to react to certain situations, or maybe you don’t know what they are looking for or what help they want.

Being someone with a mental illness, there are a few things that friends do that really help me and I think most people with mental illness would say they look for in a good friend:

 

1) They listen – My true friends simply listen.  They don’t judge me and they just listen.  They don’t try to think ahead to what they are going to say next or how to respond while I am talking.  They carefully pay attention to what I am saying, then they take the time to form a response if one is even needed.  Many times I don’t need a response, I do not need advice, I just need someone to listen.

2) They support me – They validate my feelings and show me that I am not alone.  They cannot always be present in person 100% of the time, but they let me know that I can text them or email them, Facebook them or leave a voicemail, and when they get it they will get back to me as soon as they can.  They let me know that they care and that they are going to be there for me.  They are empathetic. 

3) They ask how they can help me – Sometimes, they don’t know what to do.  Sometimes I don’t even know what I want them to do.  I just ramble on and on.  So they ask me what I am wanting.  What do I need?  This question gets to the bottom of things.  Do they need to drive me to a therapy appointment? Do they need help studying for a test because of stress? What type of support is needed.  It may seem direct, but there are nice ways of saying it, “What can I do to help you?”, “I want to do my best to support you right now, how can I do that?”, “What are some of the things you need right now?”

4) They are educated about mental illness – They know what is going on with me.  They do not assume I am faking it, that it is all drama, or that I am “crazy.”  They do not stigmatize mental illness.  They take the time to learn about what is going on with me by either listening to me tell them about it or by doing their own research (or both!).  This helps so much in the friendship.

5) They support me healthy coping skills – My good friends do not tell me I just need to have a drink or smoke pot or have sex to feel better.  My good friends tell me I need to do something nice for myself, get a massage, read a good book, exercise, talk to them or my therapist, etc.  My good friends understand that going out and partying late at night and drinking alcohol will interfere with my psych meds and mess up my sleep schedule thus possibly throwing my mental illness into disarray.  My good friends encourage me to go out with them for alternative activities like a movie or a comedy show.

6) They take care of themselves – I don’t want my friend to feel like I am a burden on them.  I want them to have their own lives and I don’t want to be clinging onto them.  Knowing that they take care of themselves first and put up boundaries protects them and me.  If they get overwhelmed by me, then it puts their mental health in jeopardy and most likely I will also be losing a friend.  It is so important when you are friends with someone with a mental illness – or anyone for that matter – you take care of yourself first.  Because if you cant take care of yourself, how can you take care of anyone else?

Daily Post – Predicting the Future, Looking at the Past

Word Press Post A Day – Back on January 21st, we asked you to predict what day #211 would be like. Well, July 30th is that day — how have your predictions held up so far? If you didn’t reply to the prompt at the time, is this year turning out to be as you’d expected?

 

I wasn’t even on WordPress back on January 21st, so I definitely didn’t predict what today would be like.  I do often think about my future though.  I think about my past and my future quite a bit.  I look back on my past and question why things happened, what would have happened if I had done something different, why didn’t I do this or that.  I focus a lot on my past.  People always say to look towards the future though.  I listen to them, I do look towards the future.  I question my future just as much as I question my past.  What is it going to be like, am I ever going to be “normal.” Yes, yes, what is normal?  I guess I should say, am I ever going to overcome this mental illness completely?  Will I be able to hold a job, be happy, be able to socialize with others without being in a panic, will I ever just be ok?  I can’t say that back in January I was expecting for that to all magically happen in July, especially on this day – but I do wonder if it will happen, and if it does, when will it happen.

I know it won’t though.  I know I am battling a lifelong battle.  I know that I am always going to struggle.  And sometimes, even seeing a future for myself in general is hard. 

In January, I did expect July to be better than what it has turned out to be.  I was hoping that I would be happier.  I was actually planning on moving back up to Indiana earlier in the summer, but in January I resigned my lease to stay an extra year here, to give it another chance.  I thought by now, I would have found out that it was nice here. It is nice here, but I’m not happy here, well not happy yet.  I suppose I still have until April of 2015 to find out if signing that lease for another year made a difference or not.  I just thought it would have happened already.

Living with mental illness is hard.  You can’t focus too much on the past.  You cant focus to much on the future either though.  There are too many what if’s both ways.  Too many should I have, could I have, and why’s.  The questions are endless.  I really have to stay in the present moment, and just think about today.