Before I kick things off, just a little disclaimer:
I’m not at all suggesting that if anyone does *insert arbitrary number of things* you can be cured of your mental health struggles – that would be a flat out lie and kind of fucked up to say. I’m just a regular unqualified person (with a potty mouth) sharing my thoughts, feelings, struggles and newly inspired goals. I am very aware of the fact that mental health is deeply personal and it’s possible that absolutely none of the things that helped me will help you. What I am saying is that in my over 30 years of life, I’ve never experienced this level of calm in my brain and I can only guess that the things I did leading up to this state are the reasons why.
Anyway, onto the first and only thing I did/had in place for dealing with my shitty mental health for the first quarter of my life… If I can be expected to live to 100, which lets face it, #doubt.
The Fitness Crutch
I’m not sure how others deal with their issues and become great pretenders in the working world when they are suffering under the surface, but I kept my shit mostly under the radar to others (unless you count a few black eyeliner years of high school), the old fashioned way – by holding in all my thoughts and feelings and then violently releasing them though physical activity. Just not in the way you might think.
I grew up in a sports oriented family where pushing yourself physically got you merit points (and affection, which is something I’ll be unpacking in therapy for a few years). I also learned pretty early on in life that you can make your brain happier by elevating your heart rate and putting your body through physical discomfort. Runners high is no joke for the way it makes you feel, and the dopamine released from pushing yourself into that state was my drug of choice.
It’s not a new or interesting take that physical activity is good for your body AND your brain but I went all in on the brain part. I knew something wasn’t right with my thought process and I was determined to fix it myself. I’ve played soccer most my life, ran consistently and done half marathon distances on an untrained whim, lifted weights on a standard split since my early 20’s, joined and left multiple kickboxing gyms, rollerbladed every summer, dabbled in various other activities and specialty gyms to the point I’m physically active 1-3 hours a day, 6 days a week. Unfortunately, my knees are testament to the fact I’ve worn myself ragged trying to fix my angry little brain and spoiler alert, it didn’t work.
This shouldn’t have to be said, but here is another disclaimer: don’t run/do any kind of physical activity until you puke and/or your knees wear down to that of someone way past your age to try to help yourself mentally. I should also mention that fitness didn’t even stop any of those negative thoughts and feelings from surfacing… It was more that the thoughts and feelings became truly unbearable when I went a few days without doing anything fitness related. Any injury (which there were many) or rainy day completely ruined my mood. Solely fitness was never going to be enough to fix me but I was faking it enough to survive but not thrive.
I’ve had problems with anxiety, long bouts of depression and explosive rage since I was a literal kid and although finding the fitness crutch helped me into my early 20’s, I was still always in my own head. My brain was in a constant loop of “every single possible things that can go wrong, will go wrong.”, and being so worried I was unable to find the good in any situation. Or alternatively on the anger side of things, being incredibly antagonistic and looking for fights and transgressions everywhere, even when there were none. I have made myself sick from stress while simultaneously having a mean mouth that got me into plenty of trouble and more fist fights than the average person. It was like all my mental health issues were at war with each other.
It’s not the action but the timing
Since therapy and antidepressants were out of the question at that time in my life, but I knew I was still struggling due to the above issues, I decided to try some other things to take the edge off but they all felt really…stupid in practise. They are as follows:
1.) Yoga (but dedicating my time to moving that slow was boring…);
2.) Guided Mediation (but I questioned why the people guiding had to talk so slow and was irritated with the hippy dippy script);
3.) Unguided Meditation (but being alone with my thoughts was the last place I could handle being); and
4.) Self Help Books/Content (but I couldn’t get through any of those without rolling my eyes so far into the back of my skull it might be the cause of my visual snow syndrome (just kidding, that was caused by all the concussions from sports and fighting)).
That is to say, I wasn’t ready to utilize anything other than fitness at that point in my life because I had internalized issues with anything outside of my comfort zone. Ironically, I’ve tried the same above things in the last year and they have all helped me now that I’m in a better place where I can accept them for what they are – tools to help me manage my thoughts, feelings and mind body connection. I still use these tools but I have better ones that I will get into over the next few weeks that helped me navigate the issues I’ve had my whole life as well as the newer ones surrounding grief.
I suppose I could have made this whole blog and website about fitness if I wanted to. I have enough history in sports and physical activity that I could probably even coach others, but that would have felt disingenuous as I mostly used fitness as a crutch for something more sinister. I don’t believe anything I do physically to be an impressive achievement since my whole life has been this way to the point it’s innate. I don’t know others peoples aversion to sweat, muscle pain and discomfort because those feelings equal eventual elation for me… But starting to conquer my long ass list of mental health struggles and taking the steps to do a thing I’ve wanted to do but never had time or energy to do? That’s pretty fucking rad and worth talking about.
I still have bad days, they come and they will always come but the trick is not letting them stay. It’s a constant battle of doing things I know will help me, and limiting the things I know aren’t serving me anymore. Unfortunately there will never be a day where I wake up and know I’ve done enough to be fixed and can stop putting in all the work, because anytime I’ve tried those feelings creep back in. Instead there’s the trial and error of trying new things and hopefully coming to a place that was better than where I was yesterday, and then making the conscious decision to do it all again tomorrow.
So there it is, my first (but not recommended step) to holding my shit together until life’s stressors became too much and I had to find the next thing to manage my piss poor mental health. That necessary second step took place a couple years after my son was born when life got so much more beautiful, but so much more dark.
Until next week!
Sincerely,
Sammy
Oh and also:
Namaste
(because I can say that now without cringing)