Trying to deal.

It's hard to describe what exactly I've been feeling these past weeks. I've been cycling through my highs and lows and an incredible rate, and things have been all around shitty.

I think the hardest thing for me right now is that I have all these ideas in my head. They keep coming and going and it makes it really hard to focus on day to day life. I've actually missed a fair amount of work because of it.

The problem with these ideas is that I have no way to follow through. I want to make this and do that, but in reality I'm just not as creative as all that.

Even this blog is kind of a shout out into the void, hoping that something will come to me.

The simple fact is that I just don't have a lot to talk about. Literally, the only thing going on in my life right now is my mental and emotional state, and that really isn't all that easy to write about, and I'm sure it's pretty boring to everyone else.

Part of me feels like I should try to improve my life, cause then I can improve everything else. Part of me just wants to give up on it all.

I guess that's why it's called bi polar disorder.

Maybe one day I'll get there. More than likely I won't. I know that I need to try though. So I will. I hope that someone out there would be willing to help me though all this ranting and raving.

Knitting Therapy

So, for the past couple of months, there have been a lot of articles about using knitting as a form of therapy. I'm really glad that this is getting the notice that it deserves.

There are all sorts of different theories about why this is and how exactly it's helping your brain, and I think it's worth a look into all of them.

Some say it's the repetitive motion that helps soothe the brain. Much like sitting in a rocking chair would. While I think that might have some merit, I don't think that by itself could be it. I mean, how many assembly line workers think that their job is peaceful? The same motion, over and over again, at some point will get boring. That's why we knitters have so many projects going at once. (Example: side bar to right of all the projects I have going on right now.) I, personally, don't find boring to be very soothing. Something simple like a garter stitch scarf can be nice, even meditative for a while, but then it just starts to drag, and then you don't want to work on it any more, so you start something else, then you go back and look at that scarf and just start to feel the guilt of never having finished it.

So for that theory, I say yes for the short term, but over time, not so much. A knitter needs some sort of mental challenge. Throw some cables or lace in there!

This gets me to why I think knitting really helps in terms of dealing with anxiety, and even depression. It's the having to focus on something other than what is going through your mind that is causing those feelings. A simple knit stitch isn't going to cut it! Once you've been knitting for a while, you can do them without even looking down. That lets your mind wonder back into those thoughts. I've had times that I've been working on my Featherweight sweater, which is just a mind numbing amount of stockinette stitch, and the thoughts just start rolling in.

I know that the main cause of my depression and anxiety is me, myself and I. It's my brain going off on tangents thinking about things I've screwed up in the past, or things I could possibly screw up in the future. These are the times I need to take myself away from my brain. I need to focus on something else. I do tend to spend a lot of that time playing MMORPG's, but while that does help, again, not for the long term.

When I take that energy that I use to hurt myself, and focus it into this thing that will be a beautiful thing that I can have forever, that is where the peace comes from. No guilt over wasted time or effort, just a thing to look at and say 'I made this!'.

Just my two cents on the matter. If' you have any other thoughts on the matter, I'd love to hear them!

Ladies Craft Night.

So my lady friends and I got together for a late night craft party the other night. We got together to make tiny hats. There was plenty of wine and laughs to be found. 

Bonus: My hat was freaking baller. I mean look at this

 

 That's some Mad Hatter shit right there. 

 

My friend Heather made an adorable EXTRA tiny hat. 

Heather was the only one who remembered to buy hair clips, so she's the only one actually wearing hers. I didn't get any pictures of my friend Steph because by the time she got done with her hat we were all way to drunk to remember to do that. 

Spending the evening with them made me realize several things. One, these ladies are very much my best friends right now in my life. Which is a little weird because they're both coworkers. Secondly, they are the first friends that I've actually realized that they really like me as a person, rather than someone who just was being nice to me because they felt sorry for me. 

I've had that a lot in my life. That happened a lot in my childhood. Once, when I lived in Vermont, I had a girl who would be nice to me, but then she told me (via in a note in a Junior Mint box filled with rocks) that she never really liked me, and for me to stop talking to her because everyone else was making fun of her about it. 

That one hurt. It hurt a lot. I was at a very low point in my life then. My mom and dad had just split up, my mom moved my younger brother and I from Texas to Vermont in the middle of winter. No one there liked me, and they were all very very rude. I still remember how those little shits talked to the teachers up there. That shit would NOT have happened where I was from. You just didn't do things like that. All and all, it was the worst 3 months of my entire life, and I will never get over it.

That may have been the big one, but other things like that have happened over time. I think that scarred me quite a bit. I've always had that feeling, that people aren't saying nice things because they mean them, they say them because their nice, and that's how we are here. 

In Vermont, people just didn't care about your feelings, which is why no one was nice to me. Here in Texas, most people are raised to have manners and to be polite to others, so the thought of just coming out and saying horrible things to people (whether I think them or not) is really foreign to me. 

Anyway, getting back on topic. I don't get that feeling from these ladies.  Heather out-and-out said to me that if she didn't like me, she would not be hanging out with me. She would not have invited me to her house. That made me believe her. No one has ever put it to me like that.

So yeah, pretty much the point I'm trying to get across here, is that if anyone is reading this, and you have the same fears of rejections, come out and ask them. Think of them and how they are. Are they the type of people that would ever do that? If you know these people who are genuinely good people, do you really think that they would invite them into their life all while thinking venomous thoughts about you?

My therapist said that kind of thinking is to protect yourself. I would think that about everyone in my life (my husband included, who honestly could have left me years ago and not have felt any shame in doing so) was only trying to be nice to me because when they came out and said it, it wouldn't hurt as much. 

This is one of the big things I need to work on. 

 

Word have meaning.

So the other day, I wrote in my journal something that I should say to myself, kind of as a mantra:

Never be ashamed of the things that give you joy.

I thought it made sense, and would be a good thing. It wasn't until I was thinking about it today that I realized there was something wrong with it. That word, ashamed. That's not a good word. That's not a motivating word. 

That statement is me trying to be defensive against some mysterious force. That is me having to defend myself again what others might think about me. To protect myself from something that it's really there, or at least something that I shouldn't really need to protect myself from. 

That is the opposite of getting rid of the anxiety. I think that feeling on needing to protect myself like that is exactly whats CAUSING my anxiety. 

I thought at first that maybe saying "I'm proud of the things", but that's still from the same thread of thinking. The need to prove to someone that what they think of me doesn't matter, but then, the fact that I have to prove it means that it really does matter to me.

So maybe something different. Maybe something that I tell myself to REMIND myself, rather than having to DEFEND myself. So I came up with this:

Love the things that give you joy. 

I know it's not exactly the newest line of thinking. It's that little change that makes all the difference, It's that little bit that makes me have to remember to give myself joy, rather than protecting that joy from some perceived threat that's not even really there. 

Working on things.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. There's been stuff at work going on and I'm been having some in-law issues, so trying to find the time to sit down and really think on how to change my life gets kind of pushed back. It seems silly to think that just sitting here typing out my thoughts would make a difference, but it really does.

So I had another visit with my therapist yesterday, and she sort of got onto me for not doing my 'homework'. The biggest thing was that I really need to go somewhere that's (at least slightly) crowded, and sit down, and be okay being there by myself.

I got some points for going to a 4th of July party where I only knew two people, but when I mentioned that I kinda stuck by their sides the whole time, she said that I need to try it without a crutch.

She suggested a coffee shop would be the best place. I've always kind of wanted to be one of those people, though I don't exactly know why. Maybe because that's what I perceive as normal? Anyway, that would be an ideal place because there would be people, but they're all kinda focused on their own thing, and if I needed to make a quick exit, I could without any problems.

I kind of always feel weird is these kind of situations. My main coping mechanism is knitting, but I still always feel weird knitting in public because it's different than what other people do, and might attract attention.

I spoke about this with her, and she brought up a very good point. I live in Austin. Knitting is not exactly the weirdest thing anyone's ever seen. I mean everyone is almost immune to the weird.

Example: At my work, we see a lot of people who have just moved here from other states. We've had a bunch of people comment on it, particularly about the dude that rides his bike wearing nothing but a G-string. My first response? 'Oh yeah, him. He rides around here a lot'.

If someone can ride around being as close to naked as you can get, why do I think that people would judge me for sitting in a coffee shop knitting. So yeah, that thought helped. So now all I need to do is actually go and do that. Maybe I'll post pictures.

Back and trying again

So, I'm gonna give a run down of what's been happening for the last year that I've been gone.

Things got a little better, then they got much much worse. The doctor that I was getting my medications for my anxiety turned out to be a total nut case. She was so flaky that it just caused more anxiety to try to get in touch with her and get her to keep a appointment. When ever she did, it was just several hours of her spouting nonsense and basically put me off from going back.

So things spiraled, my work suffered, until I had a really really bad week and forced me to find a new doctor. This guy is good. He spent most of the time actually listening to what was going on, going over family history, even had me do blood work to make sure it wasn't something with my thyroid or anything else. After going over all that, he said that he thought that I was being treated for the wrong thing, and that Xanax was not what I needed. So I'm now on mood stabilizers for type 2 bipolar disorder.

So that being said, I've been on Lamotrigine for about 3 months now, and I can tell that it's helping. I still get a little crazy every now and then, I still get those insane needs to do all the things that make me feel guilty later, but I can now understand them for what they are and keep myself under control.

I started seeing an actual therapist who I really like. She really supports the idea of using my crafts to help me deal with my anxiety attacks, and that it would be better than having to rely on medication. So I just have to remember that when I knit or spin, that is what I focus on and try to stop my thoughts from going to other places. I've found that once I get the thoughts out of my head, even for a few minutes, I'm able to deal with the situation much better.

She suggested that I keep a journal, which I'm doing for the very personal stuff, but I think starting up the blog again will help too. I think it's good for me to try to reach out to people who are dealing with the same thing I am, with out the social anxiety of going to group therapy.

TL;DR, back to blogging about how my crafts are helping me cope with my anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.