SAD, shopping and stuff

Humph. So have Mondayistis and SAD on one day.  How unfortunate!  Suppose it’s not surprising to feel miserable when it starts raining outside when one feels miserable when it’s sunny outside, but whatever.

But I have decided not to let the arrival of autumn get to me.  I put on my new AA wrap dressand made the effort to put makeup on.   It made me late for the bus (well, the early bus, since I was trying to get to work early to do work I was not motivated enough to do last week) but it felt good to preen.  I’ve really gotten into beauty stuff these days, from reading beauty blogs and magazines to playing with all the craploads of makeup I’ve collected over the years, and more recently, on my Retail Therapy binges.

I also put on the mimco scarf I bought after my first counselling session last year. Dr S asked me to imagine a little girl, sitting alone on a set of swings in a park. She was crying, but won’t respond when I try to talk to her. What would I give her to comfort her? My answer was a scarf. 

Dr S said that was an interesting choice. Why did I give it to her? Because I thought she might be cold (it was cold and windy on the day in question), and scarves are good when it’s cold.  Apparently the little girl was supposed to be me (obviously), and my imputation of coldness was supposed to show how I felt… ie unprotected from the elements of life. The

My project for the week was to go and get myself a scarf. Not any scarf, not the first one I saw, but one that I was drawn to and just really wanted. So I got a pretty trendy, lambswool/chashmere pink and grey number that had little silver thread knitted through. It’s hot. I love it. And was my little security blanket last winter; I’m bringing it out for battle again this year.

falling back down the rabbit hole?

I struggled to get out of bed this morning.  I eventually hauled ass to work, but was, of course, late.  My un-used muscles are screeching and whining after the fitness assessment I went to yesterday (so that I can compare the results after bootcamp), but I had a distinct feeling that my reluctance to crawl out from under the covers had little to do with being tired.

I slept fine, and for 8+ hours at that. I do not have any (obvious, to the outside viewer) stress in my life right now. I had a lovely Chinese-takeaway-and-DVD-cuddled-up-in-bed date with M last night.

But I didn’t want to get up.

And this is a very familiar feeling.  It feels just like when I didn’t want to get out of bed in the first half of last year, before I went to see a doctor (other than my mother).  Those doona days when it felt like the only way you could be happy was not to let yourself out of the safe coccoon of your sheets and have to interact with the world.

I got up to turn the snooze off, but jumped back in bed and checked my mobile gmail.  I had an email from my cousin asking if my mother was ok, because cousin hadn’t heard from mother and when that happened it meant that something was up with my mother.  So I rang home and got the typical, guarded, ”yes of course, everything is fine” response, which, I have only just realised in the last few weeks, my mother has been giving me for over 20 years, during which time everything has not been fine in our family.  I will try to get out all my family issues here eventually, but oh, where do I start?

Anyhow, I was (eventually) on the bus and started doing my Facebook status update via my phone.  I had typed out “is stumbling around in the dark and about to fall into old holes, but feels like she cannot do anything about it” in the status field, but I couldn’t let myself hit the ‘update’ button.  So I changed it, to “is sore and regretting ever signing up for bootcamp”. Update.

I don’t know why I couldn’t say what I really felt.  The whole reason I’m writing this blog is to talk about what’s going on with me, but I am clearly having trouble doing that.  I haven’t told anyone about this, not even my lovely, sweet, caring boyfriend who has been my rock through thick and thin.

Maybe it’s ’cause I’ve always ignored emo status updates from my ‘friends’, and even un-friended someone I barely knew cause I was bored with reading about her whining, and knew I’d being a hypocrite if I whined myself.  Or because I have Facebook ‘friends’ who are merely just acquaintances and probably don’t care nor need to know.

So. I’m tired for no reason.  I’m avoiding people.  I also haven’t felt like eating, am finding no pleasure whatsoever in my glamorous job, blah blah blah, yada yada yada. 

It’s scaring me. But I don’t know what to do.

I guess I should make an appointment to go see my shrink again. I was supposed to see him this month, but it’s such a pain in the ass to get to appointments and stuff now that I’m working full-time. And I’ve got my first appointment with a new psychologist next week, so I feel as if it’d be overkill to go see the first guy. But maybe I do need it, though. I dunno.

writing your way to happiness

The Black Dog Insitute is doing a study on how writing affects people’s mood:

Over the centuries, many people have been naturally drawn to writing about their life and their experiences, through journals, creative writing, and other forms of written expression.   Day to day life can be stressful as people strive for balance between family, friends and work.  We are interested in whether certain kinds of expressive writing can be helpful for people in managing their moods, stress levels and general health. The ‘Writing and Mood’ study is investigating whether particular ways of writing about our lives and our experiences can offer benefits for our moods, emotional and physical health.  We are also interested in whether people with certain personality styles find writing in certain ways to be more helpful than others.

I thought it was quite fortuitous that I found about this research the week I decided to start blogging in an attempt to work though my depression treatment. I’ve signed up for the study, and I’m looking forward to going through the exercises. It’ll probably help to do more structured writing tasks than me just blathering away about random stuff.

There was a pretty intense questionnaire that I had to do, which left me with some thought-fodder to work with later.  But it involved lots of thinking-about-myself and I think that’s enough for now.

yoga makes people happy.

And happy people just don’t shoot their husbands. They just don’t.
– Elle Woods, Legally Blonde

An interesting study (which was discussed on another wordpress blog) suggests that doing yoga increases the levels of the neurotransmitter Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) in the brain. Apparently this GABA thing is important in brain areas involving emotion and anxiety.

The study was done with teeny sample groups (8 who did yoga, 11 who just read) though so I’m gonna take that with a grain of salt, but I reallyshould do yoga again.

I always feel really good after going to a class, it’s just the lack of momentum to actually get there that’s the problem.

But, knowing the thing about exercise that my doctors/psychologists/psychiatrists/websites have always said helps in the treatment for depression, I dragged myself out for a quick walk this morning. It was very quick, but better than nothing.

I’ve signed up to do a bootcamp with a bunch of law-school mates, which starts next week, so I have 2 sessions of exercise a week for the next 4 weeks booked out. There’s a pre-course fitness assessment at 6am tomorrow morning and I RSVPed that I’d be there, in the hope that having committed to someone else, not just making a mental note to myself, will make me get out of bed.

And maybe, just maybe, I will get to the yoga school that is literally up the road from me.