#inspired by how my dad and other dads react to child having a depressive episode

[here-comes-the-moose]

Crosshair: *laying in bed, having a depressive episode*

Hunter, leaning in the doorway and about to pick up some random objects and walk awkwardly around the room: Hey…

[jessi-31days-blog]

Day 3, Tuesday, October 3rd

I wake up at 9:30 am, attack my phone alarm with a vigorous "fuck that" and set it again for 10:30 am. My alarm goes off at 10:30 am, and I officially wake up.

I fell asleep around 1:00 am last night, and I mentioned yesterday how I love my 9 hours. I'll try to go to bed earlier tonight. I had a dream that someone was trying to force me to drink blood, so if any of you super cool dream interpreters can guess what that means, let me know.

Yoga class - "Pranayama Yoga To Move Energy" - 12:34:

SIKE!

 Apparently while doyogawithme.com has lots of free classes, but a few videos are subscription only. So when I click on the link to this video and see "subscription only" I simultaneously roll my eyes and harshly exhale out of both nostrils at this minor inconvenience. Ah, yes, minor inconveniences; the bane of any millennial's existence. The same video is provided for tomorrow, so I will have to find yet another replacement for it for day 4. Okay, now for real this time...

Yoga class - "3 Yoga Breathing Exercises for Anxiety" by Caren Baginski on YouTube - 7 mins:

If you try this video, you'll noticed I picked a pretty easy video for today. It was very helpful, especially the switching nostrils one (forgot what that one was called). I'll need to remember these when I have anxiety.

Guided Meditation - "Transform Yourself" - 15 mins:

Okay guys, I have a confession to make on this one. My brain could not shut off and I was too restless, so I only made it through 8 minutes of this guided meditation. I tried to follow the imagery of imagining light flowing through my body, and I did my best but it didn't help much. One thing the speaker said that I will mention is that you choose how you think and feel about yourself, your life, and your surrounding. And while people with mental illness such as myself can often think the opposite, that you can't control how you feel or think, in many ways you actually can. More often than not it's within the means of actually forcing yourself to replace the negative intrusive thoughts with positive or realistic thoughts than actually making yourself feel something, but if and when you continue to make yourself think healthily, you'll start to feel better emotionally. This is easier said than done, but it is true.

Read a Proverb - Proverbs 3:

This is a pretty famous chapter of Proverbs for Christians and Catholics of the world. In it are these verses, 5 & 6: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take." I first read these verses in early 2010. The fact that I can actually remember the year is pretty cool, since my memory pretty much sucks. Actually, my memory basically works of it's own will, selecting at random what information I will and will not remember. Anyways, these verses have always had a lot of meaning to me. It pretty much sums up God's intended experience for a person who believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His salvation. That's why I don't worry too much about how my life goes and the way I choose to live it. As long as I'm saved, and I believe I am, regardless of what happens to me, I know how things will turn out for me in the very end.

The rest of the chapter reiterated the theme of Proverbs, which is to delight in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, so that you live a good life. It ends with some good general pieces of advice for life: use common sense, when you see someone who needs help, don't hesitate to help them, don't hurt people, don't pick petty fights with people, don't act like violent people act, and if you dedicate your life to wisdom, you will "inherit honor".

Blog post - TWLOHA - "Beyond Shades of Gray" by Sharleigh Thomson:

At the beginning of this article, Sharleigh defines how we as a society talk about something clear and defined. "You've either attempted or you haven't." But then she begins to describe what she calls a gray zone as the place where you desperately want to escape from the pain and being willing to die to do so. "A place where you might have the means, the will, the plan, the note—everything but the follow through." And good fucking god, I know what the gray zone is like. I instantly identified with the author of this blog post. She proceeded to describe how she was once unable to find the words to truly explain her experience and her pain. That there weren't enough syllables in the English language to describe just how hard what she was going through was. She started talk therapy, but had trouble opening up and finding the words to explain herself to her therapist. He suggested that she start writing down how she was feeling. My therapist told me to do the same thing, and I reacted the way Sharleigh did: with stubbornness. At that time she believed that writing was some sort of cop out. I used to believe that if I couldn't find a way to say it out loud, how the hell can I get it one paper? Well, as I've discovered, the opposite is true sometimes. If I can get my thoughts, whether they are complete sentences or not, out on paper (or most likely, the notes app on my computer), then I can form the way to say it out loud. As a matter of fact, writing down my train of thoughts has lead me to more epiphanies than I ever expected... I've got to start doing it again.

Finally, after another suicidal episode, Sharleigh gave in and began writing. She said that it started out dark and emotional, but eventually became something personal, beautiful, and hopeful. She found a way to break down her problems in her writing. Then she began to write plays, poetry, and blog posts about her experiences with mental health and suicide. Hey, I'm doing that last thing now! What a coincidence.

I haven't written poetry since I was a teenager. My poetry back then varied in quality, a good portion of them being angsty emo depression poetry about how much I hated my life. But I'm sure if I looked back into my old journals (which I somehow still have after losing the rest of my belongings over the course of a few months before moving to Florida), I could find two or three good ones. I wish I remembered how to write poetry. Not that it's all that hard, so long as you're good with words. But I have no idea what to write a poem about. I don't want to write one about my depression or anxiety, because I have grown to enjoy poetry that ends on a positive note, and I have yet to find a positive note for a poem about depression. It's not that I'm this huge pessimist, I know there's a light at the end of this dark ass stanky ass tunnel, but I just don't know how to end a poem anymore. I don't like writing poems about nature, because those are boring. I have a sense of humor, but for some reason I'm put off by funny poems. Oh well, maybe I'll find something to write a poem about someday.

As the blog post starts to near it's end, Sharleigh tells of how she rebuilt herself through writing, and how while she still feels darkness, she's still willing to keep creating things and searching for hope when times get hard. I'm trying to have that same attitude. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. She ends the post with some encouragement to stay alive, to find a way to make your voice heard, and most importantly, to find what you were made for. I appreciate the encouragement she offered, and I hope others who read that article find comfort in them, but more often than not I read inspiring words and ideas and they have little to no affect on me. It's the reading equivalent of "in one ear, out the other" (in one eye, out the other? I don't know). But when push comes to shove, I do get it. Really, I do. And she's not wrong. I suppose one day I'll find myself smack dab in the middle of what I was made to do. Maybe I'm doing it now. Regardless, though I don't feel encouraged, I'm choosing to be encouraged. I'm making it my state of mind rather than waiting to feel warm and fuzzy. It's all I've got right now.

Encouraging someone on reddit - r/anxiety:

I found an easy one. And when I say easy, I mean I had the experience to give to this person who was nervous about increasing their dosage of their antidepressant. They said they were afraid that increasing their dose from 10mg to 20mg would make them feel "weird". I let out a light chuckle when I read that, because if any psychiatric drug is gonna make you feel "weird" (or in my case, a fucking zombie), it's not the antidepressants; it's the antipsychotics. I told them about how I was misdiagnosed a year ago during my mental breakdown and was put on some VERY HEAVY antipsychotic drugs, which made me act like a robot. Ask my dad, he saw me a lot at that time. I had no emotions. My mother, who at this point lived across the country from me, even noticed that I was different. Now I'm not saying antipsychotics are bad, because some people really do need them. But if you don't need them, they definitely make you more numb than anyone needs to be, and not the "high" kind of numb, but the "I feel literally nothing; good or bad" kind of numb. I then told this person that I have had times in my life where I was only on an antidepressant. I've tried a bunch, and coincidentally, along with my vast experience with psychiatric medications, I've also experienced being on Lexapro alone. So I told them it doesn't make you feel weird, and that it is more likely to help them than anything. Or a bit less likely (but still possible), it could just not work for them at all and they need to try a different antidepressant. All in all, I hope I at the very least encouraged them not to be afraid to increase their medication, so long as the doctor says it's best.

Walk:

The neighbors came by today to let us know a few sex offenders live in our neighborhood. One guy even lives just a few houses down. Fortunately, all the ones closest to us are child sex offenders, so I'm pretty sure I'm too old for them to want to assault. Regardless, my mom made me take her stun gun with me while I went for my walk. I listened to another one of my favorite bands, Gazpacho, this time. It was nice and peaceful. On my way back a dog started following and barking at me for a few yards, until its owner got it to go back to its house. I laughed as this was quite amusing. Instead of getting followed by creepy sex offenders as my mother fears, I was getting followed by a medium sized brown yapping dog. When I got home I felt refreshed, and my depression went from like a 8 down to a 6, so there was some improvement. End of Day Notes: I don’t know if I feel any different yet. But then again, it’s only the end of day 3. Any noticeable improvements seem small: the morning pranayama yoga centers and calms me for the day, I’m starting a routine which always brings a sense of accomplishment, I’m learning a few things from what I’m reading, and I’m getting better at giving encouragement or advice. So at least it’s something. P.S. I promise I’ll make this blog look pretty at some point. I could have done it today, but along with all my goals, I spent 3 hours cleaning to whole house, so I didn’t have time to work on this blog’s appearance. 

[violetsystems]

#personal

I called my mom last night.  That’s how exciting my Friday night was.  She was sick again but she is a teacher and works around kids a lot.  We talked for an hour about a lot of things.  About how my grandmother raised me in a matriarchal household on the weekends.  I stayed at my grandparents a lot.  My grandfather on my mom’s side was Croatian and from a family of gypsies.  He taught me Bosnian curse words and let me watch ninja movies on Sunday afternoons.  My grandmother would sit in a chair and listen to the baseball game.  In the basement, my grandpa was an electrical engineer with a million different projects and circuit boards.  I would just go down there and hang out with him in the basement.  There was a time at dinner once when I did something tacky and my grandmother scolded me.  I gave the side eye to my mom and my grandmother just calmly said “Don’t you look at your mother.”  That’s the story my mom always tells me.  She also said that my grandparents said I was a very quiet and calm child.  That having me around watching ninjas rip themselves apart was somehow low key and relaxing.  My mom lives in that house now just outside of the city.  She usually takes public transportation to hang out with me.  We had talked about Christmas and she suggested we go to Chinatown on Christmas day.  I can’t say no to my mom.  She doesn’t know that I had plans with my Dad and his wife.  My dad is also very understanding of how delicate that all is.  Divorce sucks.  I don’t really ever plan on getting one.  Maybe that’s why I make very smart choices and work on myself first and foremost.  My mom said again on the phone that I never gave her trouble.  I never questioned things.  I was smart enough to figure out my own answers to problems.  This is all deep to hear in the current context over the phone on a Friday night.  We also talked about New York and how I never had too many girlfriends.  I did have a couple of rocky relationships but my mom stuck by my side.  We talked a bit more about me staying in Chinatown in Manhattan.  My mom said that New York and Chicago were two of the greatest cities in the United States.  I liked the synergy of that.  I said they were both easy to get around if you liked public transportation.   We talked about me visiting Brooklyn.  She asked if that was where my girlfriend was staying.  I just replied “Brooklyn is the borough.”  I was quoting Gang Starr or some shit.  I don’t know being vague is my specialty.  I like Vogue China a lot for the record too.

People at work keep asking if I have any big travel plans.  People are used to me flying around the world for weeks at a time by myself.  That’s a good five or six years of my life in the past that nobody has really acknowledged.  I learned a lot from that experience.  Just like you can look back on tumblr to August 2013 and see a similar but very different person.  That person and their feelings towards things has changed gradually over time.  I think it’s only maybe since August 2018 I really caught on to where I needed to be.  I’ve been writing on this platform forever and relying on the narrative.  Truth be told, people do read and empathize.  It’s not a very heavy handed validation.  The people I’ve come to know here whether they’re on main or not are always very honest in what they like.  There’s also a huge veil of privacy that comes with the territory down here.  For the past two years at least, I’ve operated through a sort of fog of war in real life.  I don’t have any hidden information about why the world is the way it is.  Everybody has come to know through this blog and the nature of the internet that I spend a lot of time by myself.  Last year when I wrote about it at this time I sounded depressed.  That’s the beautiful thing about reflection and having control over your own narrative.  When people tell me negative things about what I do I feel a fair amount of dissonance because I know it’s not true.  I don’t really react to people anymore.  I feel when you react emotionally to anything you give too much information away.  Everybody is waiting for you to show some sort of weakness.  But not everybody is paying attention that deeply to know that you know better.  Having control over your own narrative takes a good deal of reflection.  I spent more time since I got back from my trip last April with my personal finances in a spreadsheet.  I looked back yesterday to what I paid monthly in utilities.  My rent already went down.  My utilities did too.  I have a very clear indicator of an upward trend.  The probability is favorable that I’ll continue in that direction if I stay focused.  That is if I am left to my devices and apply myself.  I don’t really know what to expect.  Nobody does.  But I know what I have control over and that’s me.  And I know how to be safe.  Which may well come in handy when this site implodes next weekend.  Not that I’m going anywhere.  And not like I’ve changed all that much in the way of content since August 2013.

Truth be told, almost two years ago exactly I chose to quit drinking.  That was a huge change for me.  Before we earmark this very special episode of Tumblr let’s not speak of how many times I’ve waked and baked in 2018.  Let alone how many times a week I’ve spent at the gym in the last five months.  Or how many times I’ve thought of you specifically.  It all sounds so dramatic and yet if you know me I always try to keep the peace.  Nobody cares I quit drinking other than me.  Nobody really cares I’m in the best physical shape of my life either.  Or at least it’s seemed that way here for a long time.  The irony is I did this because I felt motivated.  Nobody ever really asked what or who I was motivated by.  And the beautiful part of that is only I know the answer to that.  Another person too most likely.  At least that’s how I’ve lived my life the last five months.  Through an intense fog of war where nobody seems to know anything for sure.  Some people are very uncomfortable with that.  I don’t believe I’ve given off the impression I am.  I quit a lot of social media last year.  It’s quieter down here.  At the same time, the time I spend down here seems to inspire me just as much as it did years ago.  I don’t look at any of it with the same eyes.  I think that’s the beauty of being able to connect with people on here.  People fall into these vast rhizomes of data naturally.  Drifting together based on our desires.  Some of us drifting away from the platform entirely after December 17th for many reasons.  I don’t know that it’s my place to judge.  I don’t think it’s useful.  There’s some of us here that drift in an endless sea of meaningless images for a purpose.  Which sounds super fucking pretentious.  But I read a lot of William Gibson novels as a child too.  Idoru is one of my favorites.  Maybe it’s the one novel that speaks the most to me.  How this rock star ends up having this bizarre relationship with a synthetic personality.  It’s part of the Bridge trilogy.  My favorite character is Colin Laney.  Colin Laney who uses his peculiar talent of sifting through vast amounts of mundane data to find "nodal points.”  That’s from the wikipedia.  Sometimes it sounds like it’s from my life.  Led around on a taut line like this was Sega Bass Fishing.  Hooked into something I can’t escape.  Truthfully I don’t want to escape it anymore.  It’ll find me where ever I go and sometimes I think I love it too much to let go after all this.  So I decided to go Brooklyn that particular Sunday to visit.  Maybe it will follow me around and lead me towards good luck.  It is the borough after all.  I’m positive of that much.  <3 Tim

[loweredexpectations365]

Alternative Facts & My Approach to the Constant Struggles of Life

In my over nearly 30 years of experience on earth (if you don’t get the “over nearly” joke, watch the New Girl season 5 episode 2, “What About Fred?” - it’s very funny), I’ve developed a scientific (read: not based on science at all) approach to life that, over time, has helped me better frame the world around me and has even (occasionally) reduced my misery just the slightest bit. This approach is what I call "Lowered Expectations": the practice of reducing (and even eliminating, as much as possible) your expectations of any given situation in life. 

Having lowered expectations allows you to spend less time worrying about the future, and helps you focus on the present by letting go of your expectations of yourself and everything around you. This means less overall disappointment, self deprecation, guilt and remorse when things in life don’t meet your expectations. Now, I’m no expert, so obviously this is mostly stuff I made up in my head, but it’s 2018 and most things on the internet are made up nowadays, and Trump is president, so nothing really matters.

I genuinely (am trying to) have lowered expectations for what the impact of writing my thoughts down is on myself or anyone that stumbles upon this nonsense. That’s the beauty of lowered expectations: my productivity increases because I spend less time worrying about the outcome of a situation and whether it will meet my unreasonably high and unrealistic expectations, and more time executing with at least a shred of confidence. I imagine it’s an extreme version of this type of approach to life that has made Donald Trump so “successful” - he clearly has zero expectations of himself to be a decent president or human being, yet he keeps operating with exponential levels of confidence at everything he does. I’m not saying having lowered expectations will help you become the next president of the united states of america (although apparently we’ll pretty much let anyone do it), but theoretically, having lowered expectations could help you decrease the time you spend worrying about things that don’t matter and holding yourself back.

For some context on my current state in life (maybe this will help you decide whether you think this blog is any source of value or not): I’m currently traveling to India to visit my family for the next 3 weeks. I’ve wrapped up my work and my apartment, left my cat with my roommate (separation anxiety has already ensued - also it should surprise no one that the author of a blog called "lowered expectations" has a cat), and hopped on a 16 hour flight to Delhi with my mom. This flight will be followed by a 2 hour layover, and then a final 3 hour flight to Bangalore - where my uncle will pick us up at the airport and drive us 45 minutes through nightmarish India traffic to his very nice apartment. I figure being on a plane with the sound of babies screaming and children kicking my seat and the horrible headache inducing lighting is as good a time as any to practice being in the moment and invest my time in something I care about while blasting music as loudly as I can in my AirPods (to drown out the screaming). The problem with small children on planes is that they are absolutely adorable to look at, but they NEVER SHUT UP. Without fail, I am always seated near an infant that can’t stop wailing for my entire 5 million hour flight. At this point, I don’t expect my international flights to be peaceful - so I have to create my own peace by writing (that was cheesy, sue me).

The concept of lowered expectations was inspired by my extremely zen goal of having fewer expectations of my life, myself, and the people around me. This way, I wouldn’t be disappointed when life didn’t meet my expectations, because I didn’t have any to begin with. Having lowered expectations became a goal of mine after reading a bunch of self help books when I was terribly depressed last year. 2017 was an absolutely terrible year for me. Against all odds, Trump had just been elected, then my best friend suddenly passed away, I went through a rough break up with my boyfriend of 3 years, and then I got freaking psoriasis on my legs (if you look at my shins, it now looks like I was in a motorcycle accident, and it’s incurable - super attractive). It sucked. But 2017 wasn’t the only shitty year in my life. It seemed like I spent most of my life being sad because life didn’t meet my expectations. As a child, my dad left, so my expectation of having a normal and happy family was shot. When I got older, I dated a bunch of asshole guys who lied and cheated and were generally awful, so my expectation of what love looked like was shot. When I got to college, I struggled with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and ulcers, making my college experience far from what I expected.

Time after time, I was disappointed by my life, and it brought me to a very low point that I’d never reached in the past. I needed a change - so a year ago, I suddenly decided to quit my job, search for a new one in San Francisco, and move away from my hometown in the PNW, and everything I knew my entire life. It felt like everything in my life was upside down, and I had no idea how to fulfill any of my expectations of myself, even though I was making these big life decisions. I felt lost (full disclosure, I still do) and empty and terrified of everything. I didn’t know how to move forward with my life, I felt stuck and everything around me felt over-stimulating and overwhelming.

So I started to try to have fewer expectations of myself. It’s a practice, and it isn’t something you can always do as default behavior, or something that happens overnight. You have to consciously let go of your positive expectations in any given situation, because we as humans are programmed to develop expectations of ourselves in situations in order to push ourselves to accomplish what we want to in life (or something - I’m not sure if that made any sense or if it’s remotely accurate, but I think it roughly translates what I’m thinking into words). But I believe that we shouldn’t need to have expectations of a situation in order to motivate ourselves. We can evolve past that, continue to be positive and hopeful in our lives by trying to see the bigger picture and not wasting time on having specific expectations of individual situations in life.

Letting go of our expectations means we spend less time being unproductive and tied to hopes and dreams that likely won’t happen, we invest less emotional energy in situations up front, and in feeling bad later on. The Stoics have a similar concept: 

“‘the art of acquiescence’ - the giving up and assenting of how things are so that they can be what they are to become.” - The Daily Stoic

Letting go means we spend more time doing things we want to be doing, because we’ve stopped worrying about what we expect out of the situation and how badly we’ll feel if things don’t go the way we hoped.

Having lowered expectations of a situation requires 3 main things: 

1. you must objectively assess that situation  2. be present in the moment as it happens  3. clearly reflect on it afterward.

This mindset does not allow you to feel guilt or sadness because things didn’t go the way you wanted them to - because the process of reflection is not tied to any set idea of how that situation would go. Instead, reflection is just that, thinking about the situation and the facts of what actually happened, how you reacted, and, possibly, what you might do differently next time.

However, having lowered expectations is extremely difficult. On some level, I think that if we didn’t have at least some expectations of life, we wouldn’t have any motivation to live it - thus having no expectations is impossible. On the other hand, if you’re anything like me and you overthink, overreact, and beat yourself up for every situation because you have the confidence of a child that was raised in a basement, lowering your expectations of yourself and those around you can help you better navigate your life, and reduce some of the extra noise your brain makes - and allow you to “Just Do It” like the wise age-old Nike ads tell you to.

Here’s a boring personal example of how lowering expectations has a impacted my own life that doesn’t matter to anyone but me: I’ve been terrified of blogging for a very long time. Despite having been passionate about writing my entire life, wanting to write and publish a book as a child (and reading constantly), studying English in college, and leaping head first into any project at work that requires me to write in any capacity, I’ve been afraid to even try to express my real thoughts. 

Here and there I’ve written nonsense in spurts, letting the words tumble out like word vomit and blast into the black hole of the internet. I never truly tried to write anything I cared about or tried to be disciplined in my practice of writing because I was too scared. Whatever I’ve been able to write in the past has been steeped in misery, insecurity and/or insanity. I was worried about what people would think of me and what I had to say, what I would think of my writing and myself, and whether anyone would want to read what I wrote. It wasn’t until I stopped expecting my writing to mean or be anything specific that I realized I actually had something to write about - something that mattered to me - and that I could finally articulate my thoughts a way that I wanted to dedicate my time to.

Notes

The New Girl, Season 5 Episode 2, “What About Fred?”. Released: January 12, 2016. 

The Daily Stoic, “Letting Go is the Next Thing”. URL: https://dailystoic.com/letting-go-is-next/. Accessed: December 11, 2018.