Category: Uncategorized

Love Yourself

Who is guilty of negative self-talk? You know what I mean, phrases we say to ourselves that we would never say to another human being and definitely never to our favorite pet.

Phrases like:

“You’re such an idiot, I can’t believe you did or said that!”

“You’re such a fatty, you need to stop eating! No more dessert for you!”

“You’re so worthless, nobody could ever love you!”

“You are such a waste of space.”

I’m here waving my hands in the air. I’m guilty of this type of negative self-talk and so much more. Things I hope would never be said about another person, I say to and about myself. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Too many of us are too critical no ourselves and our lives show it. We are in terrible mental and physical health because we think we aren’t worth taking care of.

We are! We are worth it! We need to give ourselves.

I hear people say “I hate my body. I need to lose weight. I should diet, maybe I’ll start exercising.”

Do you hear what the motivation is? Hate. Hatred of their body. Does hate ever sustain anything. It can for awhile, but not forever.

We need to take care of ourselves because we love ourselves, not because we hate ourselves.

On July 5th last year, I decided I was worth it. I needed to love myself.

I began to eat healthier, not because I hated myself or my body, but because I love myself and want to be around for awhile. I know we can’t prevent all diseases, but we can make food choices that are better for us.

I also began to exercise. Again, not because I hate my body and wanted to punish it and the fat it was storing, but because I want my body to last for awhile longer. If I make it to a ripe old age, I want to be able to move. I want to keep my muscles and bones strong enough to support my body, I don’t want to be impeded by my choices. I want to be able to run after my hypothetical grandkids.

There have been positive consequences to choosing to love myself. My anxiety and depression are easier to manage without medication, I have lost weight and I’m a lot stronger both physically and mentally.

Please, love yourself and take care of you. There are people who want you in their life for years to come.

People With Mental Illness Should Be Hospitalized?!?!? #endthestigma

About a year ago, my doctor and I decided that I would try to manage my anxiety and depression without medication. This decision didn’t come lightly or because I’m anti-medication. It came because after years of trying different medications, with great success in the beginning, each one ended the same way; with me in bed, not having the energy or the motivation to do anything for anyone, even my children. After the last dismal failure of a medicine, I decided that I had enough of the roller coaster of emotions that they had been putting me on and I was going to try life without the meds.

I was scared.

I knew it would be difficult. I knew I would have to make changes. I knew I could do it though. I knew I had a strong support system.

One change I made right from the start was limiting social media. However, the past few weeks, I have fallen back into the habit of scrolling Facebook to see what my friends are up to. I quickly realized that was a mistake.

I saw this on there:

I’m mentally ill. My husband has a mental illness, my son has a mental illness. I have friends with mental illnesses.

I wasn’t aware that we all needed to be hospitalized. I’ll admit that there are some people with mental illness who might be a danger to themselves or others and may need to be hospitalized for a time, but in general, I don’t think that’s where we need to be.

People with mental illnesses can be teachers, doctors, police officers, nurses, students, hair stylist, singers, actors, plumbers, electricians, fire fighters, paramedics, lawyers, judges, we can have whatever job we want and train for. We can even be politicians.

According to the National Council for Behavioral Health, almost 50 percent of American adults will experience a mental illness in their lifetime.

That would be a lot of people taking up space in the hospital!

Now really, I know that mentally I’ll people do not need to be hospitalized. I truly hope the people who posted this image also know that.

What I also want them to know is that by posting images like this, they are adding to the stigma of mental illness.

They are making it more difficult for someone who may be struggling to feel strong enough to ask for help without fear of being judged.

They are causing people who struggle to stay hidden in the darkness for dear of being hospitalized or shunned or made fun of.

Please just stop.

Here’s a sign I see in lots of schools. Let’s apply it to everyone, not just kids.

And let’s apply it to social media too. Just because nobody can see you post it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt people.

Tears filled my eyes when I saw the image about mentally ill people being hospitalized.

My heart ached for all the others who would see it and possibly feel the same as me.

Broken.

Not good enough.

Hurt.

Angry.

Determined to…

Redbubble.com

Traveling With Anxiety

Our luggage for the 4 of us to be in Paris and London for 10 days.

On June 4th, my family was able to take a an incredible trip to Paris and London. I have wanted to go to Paris since I was 15 and learning French in Madame Funge’s class at Tokay High School. My daughter has wanted to go for thenpast four years, since she found out the Women’s World Cup Soccer Tournament was being held there this summer. My son wanted to see a play in London, and my husband is willing to travel pretty much wherever we want to go.

The thing is, we each have some form of anxiety or other mental health issue that makes travel so much more difficult for us.

I’m sharing this experience from my point of view, how travel with my family affects me and how I handle it as a person who has anxiety. I’m not a doctor or therapist and I can’t tell you how to do your life. I only want you to know that if you have anxiety, you’re not alone. If you have anxiety and want to travel, you can.

As much as I was looking forward to this trip, I was terrified of this trip. I have a child who needs to have structure, doesn’t do well with changes and is very picky about food. I have another child recovering from a concussion, I didn’t know how she’d handle an 11 hour plane ride or all the plans we had. Then there’s me and my brain, able to leap to the worst possible scenario in a single bound. All the “what if” questions that constantly swirl through my mind. Beginning with “what if we miss our flight?” to, “what if there’s a terrorist attack at the stadium?”

I’m telling you, I didn’t sleep more than 5 hours a night, on a good night, for weeks leading up to this trip or during the trip because of the thoughts.

So, what did I do to help myself?

First, I planned. Then planned some more. Finally, I did even more planning.

One page from my four page itinerary.

My family laughs at my itineraries, I make them for every trip we go on, except to the beach. It helps me stay calm while on the trip. All the decisions of where to go and what to see are done before we leave. I think they all secretly enjoy knowing what we’re doing too, because each evening they ask me what we’re doing the next day. I think they like knowing there’s a plan.

Planning also helps me make sure we have downtime. Especially for the concussed kid. She needed time to rest each day, whether that meant an early evening or an afternoon break. I can make sure we do that and don’t just let the day get away from us while we’re out sight seeing.

My family knows that traveling terrifies me and triggers my anxiety, but they also know, that I will never allow anxiety to stop me from traveling. There are so many places I want to explore.

It’s important for them to know that anxiety doesn’t rule my life. Sometimes it beats me up a little bit and knocks me around, but it doesn’t keep me down.

As nerve-wracking as this trip was, it was even more amazing, incredible, awesome. I got to see places I’ve only seen in pictures and movies, like the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, Notre Dame and the Pantheon. I got to see places I’d never even heard of before I started planning this trip like the Paris Catacombs or Novelty Animation in London. I got to see 2 Women’s World Cup Soccer matches in Paris, Matilda, the play, in London, the Harry Potter Studio in London and I got to go to Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios in Paris.

Not only did I get to do and see all that, but I was able to experience most of it with my whole family. (My husband got a sinus infection and had to skip out on a few things.) Sure, the kids argued some, and I was only able to get them in one picture, but we have memories that will last a lifetime.

Anxiety sucks! It will tell you that you can’t do things.

It lies!

You can do things!

Notre Dame

Letter to My Students

I end each year of school with a letter to my seniors with words of advice and encouragement for moving on. This year I decided to give that letter to all the students in my sociology classes. And now I will share it with you.

This is my last chance to socialize you. My last opportunity to teach you some important life lessons; some of the “latent functions” of education or parts of the “hidden curriculum.” I hope you take it in and choose to learn from it, but that’s up to you; I can only put it out there.

Know your worth. There are some mean people in this world who make it there point to cut other people down and for some reason we tend to believe what they say about us. DO NOT DO THAT! THEY ARE WRONG! You are an amazing human being with so much to offer this world. You have friendship to offer, you have your sense of humor, or your wit, or sarcasm, or athleticism, or intelligence, or understanding, or… or…or… You have so much to offer. You are so valuable! Know that! Know your worth! If people treat you as though you are worthless, get them out of your life, because you are valuable beyond compare.

Love people. There is enough hate and division in this world, so love people. Unless they are personally hurting you, love people. Hate takes too much energy. If what people are doing goes against what you believe, but it doesn’t interfere with your life, let them be and love people. If it does interfere with your life, move on without them and love people.

Love yourself. I’m not talking about being conceited and arrogant and all about yourself. I’m talking about loving yourself enough to take care of you. You have to be important to you. You need to love yourself enough to exercise, eat right, to seek out doctors to help keep you healthy and friends to talk to when things get tough. There are so many important things that go along with loving yourself. Figure out what those things are for you and do them. Make you a priority in life, not something to get around to if you have time. If you don’t make time to take care of yourself and keep yourself healthy both mentally and physically, you will be forced to make the time when you get ill.

Be humble. Never put yourself above others. It is possible to love yourself and still build others up. Life isn’t a competition, we all just want to survive. Always bragging about yourself just tears others down and makes them feel worse about themselves, so be humble. Accept praise with a polite “thank you,” and you’ll be well on your way to being humble.

It’s been a great privilege to have been your teacher this year. Good luck in all your future endeavors. I hope to hear great things about you. You are amazing!

Have Fun! Be Safe! Make Good Choices!

What I Learned From My Mom

It’s Mother’s Day and it’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Coincidence?

Maybe, but there are many, many people who struggle with their mental health partly because of the relationship they had with a parent.

There are many others who struggle with Mother’s Day in particular because of the loss of their mom or their inability to become a mom.

What I’m trying to say is, for some people, Mother’s Day takes a toll on their mental health, including me.

So this year I decided to look at all the positive things I learned from my Mom and put them in a list ( I love lists.)

  1. I learned to be resilient. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary resilient means having the ability to recover easily from misfortune or change or capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation. Those who know my story know I’ve been through a lot of junk and I’m not permanently deformed because of it, I’ve been able to recover and have a wonderful family and life that I love.
  2. I learned how to be a mom. Growing up, I kind of made a mental list of what not to do as a parent. Once I became a mom, I used that list to be the best mom I could be. I’m sure I make mistakes, but I’m doing the best job I can at being a mom, based on what I learned from my mom of what not to do as a mom.
  3. I learned to show and tell my kids I love them. I may not be the most hugging mom in the world, but there are plenty of other ways for me to show and tell my kids I love them. For one thing, I do actually tell them that I love them. Then I’m there for them. I listen to them, encourage them, talk them through things, support them…so many ways to show live besides just giving hugs and pats on the back.
  4. I learned to take care of myself. I may not have been an excellent chef, but I learned to cook, clean, hold down a job, and take care of the bills all well enough that I’ve been able to be in my own since I was eighteen. Being able to take care of myself has expanded to being able to take care of my family as well.
  5. I learned to ask for help. I watched my mom struggle on her own for years, too proud to ever ask for help. That taught me to never be too proud to ask for help. I’ve sought help for my mental health through both medication and counseling. I’ve asked for help in my marriage and as a parent. I’ve had mentors at work. I go to a doctor and dentist regularly.This life is too hard to do alone, I need all the help I can get.

This holiday can be hard, but today I chose to look at just a few of then positive things my mom taught me. It helped.

The best part of the day though, that I know not everyone has, are my two kids who made me a Mom and allow me to celebrate Mother’s Day from a different perspective.

They hate pictures.

“They are so OCD or Bipolar or…”

May is a great month for so many reasons. It’s the last month of school for me. This year I get to send my son to science camp. It’s finally spring, with wonderful spring-like weather.

And it’s Mental Health Awareness Month!

There are still way too many people who use mental health terms as negative adjectives to describe people whose behavior they find different from their own. All that does is minimize the people who suffer from those conditions and make them feel ashamed and less than everybody else.

You don’t hear people say “They’re so broken leg.” or “They are so breast cancer.”

These are all very real illnesses that affect people in very real ways. Just because you can’t see how anxiety or depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder affects someone doesn’t make it any less debilitating than a broken arm.

Just ask the person who can’t leave their house because of overwhelming anxiety that causes a panic attack at the thought of driving down the street or the one suffering from suffocating depression that leaves them too exhausted to get out of bed on a daily basis.

Statistics say that 1 in 4 people will suffer from a mental illness in any given year. That’s a whole lot of people! And all those people know people so it’s very likely that ever single person knows somebody who is suffering from a mental illness. If you know somebody is struggling with a mental illness, do you really want to make them feel worse by using their illness as a negative adjective when it’s really just a noun?

This month is all about raising awareness of mental health. I firmly believe that everybody should have a therapist on speed dial, but not everybody has health care that covers that (that’s a whole other topic), so…

Please be aware that not all illnesses are visible. That not everyone who is in pain is going to show you. Maybe its you who’s hiding the pain behind a smile, or an “I’m fine.” Maybe it’s your best friend that you don’t even know about their struggle because they’re too ashamed to tell you because of the words you use.

Please be aware of the words you choose to use.

Please be aware that sometimes people just need you to be there for them to listen to them; to hold them; to let them be who they are and let them feel how they feel and to let them know that it’s okay to not be okay.

If you or someone close to you is struggling with mental health issues or thoughts of suicide please use one of these hotlines or visit one of these websites or reach out to someone for help. In the case of an emergency call 9-1-1.

National Suicide Hotline–1-800-273-8255 or go to
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

National Alliance on Mental Illness– 1-800-950-6264 you can also text NAMI to 741-741 or visit
https://www.nami.org/Find-Support/NAMI-HelpLine#crisis

I am 1 in 5; I am 1 in 3

If you’ve ever been sexually assaulted or raped, know that you are not alone.

The statistics are staggering, yet we rarely talk about it. Since the #metoo movement, there has been more awareness, but still not enough in my opinion.

And we definitely don’t talk enough about men who are sexually assaulted or raped. It happens to them too, women aren’t the only victims of these crimes.

When we do talk about sexual assault we, as a society, tend to teach people how to not get raped.

Don’t go here…

Don’t wear this…

Don’t drink that…

Don’t say this…

It is never the victim’s responsibility to stop an assault before it happens or while it is happening. They can try to stop it, they can fight back, but it is always the perpetrators fault for a sexual assault.

It doesn’t matter matter where you are, or what you are wearing, or drinking or saying or doing. Unwanted sexual advances are not your fault.

If you are the victim of rape or sexual assault, you are not alone. There is an army of survivors out here, fighting along side you for your survival.

I am a survivor!

If you need someone to talk to, please reach out to someone you trust or use one of these hotlines:

The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network 1-800-656-4673 or use their online chat at https://hotline.rainn.org/online

National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-8255

No Means No!

So many times this week, more than usual it seems, I have had to tell multiple students that “no means no!”

It seems obvious to me. If you ask somebody for something and they tell you no, that’s the end of that conversation, move on, walk away. It’s over and done, they gave you their answer. But that isn’t the case most of the time.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Instead of “NO!” what they seem to hear is, “keep asking me the same question over and over.” It annoys me, so I can only imagine how it makes the person being asked feel. Ignored, unimportant, good for only one thing?

I step in whenever I hear the conversation continue and tell them that “no means no” and to move on with their life.

If we don’t teach our children that “no means no” in situations that seem unimportant, like sharing toys or food, how can we expect them to know that “No means no” as adults in situations that carry life long consequences as in forcing or coercing someone into having sex with them?

Rape culture starts at a young age. What we teach our toddlers and children about the right to say no and the responsibility to respect when people tell us no goes with them into their teen and adult years where rape and other sexual assault happens. We don’t want to teach our children the wrong thing. We want them to be able to tell someone no, with conviction, and stand up against them, when they continue to beg, but we also want to teach our children to respect the right of others to tell us no.

April is sexual assault awareness month. I was in Junior High the first time that somebody touched me without my permission and I never told anyone until a few years ago. I was 15 years old when my boyfriend raped me, I was too ashamed to tell anybody what happened for over a year and when I did tell, most people blamed me since I didn’t break up with him right away.

According the the National Sexual Violence Resource Center Website ( https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics ) one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old. One in five women and one in 71 men will experience rape in their lifetime while one in three women and one in six men will experience some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetime. If you want even more heart breaking statistics, feel free to check out that link.

The only way we are going to change rape culture is to change what we teach our kids. Instead of teaching our daughters not to get raped, (well both genders, but girls do tend to get raped at much higher rates than boys) we need to teach our kids not to rape. They need to know that “no means no,” but so does silence, and “go away,” and “leave me alone”…

If you or a loved one has been affected by sexual abuse or assault and needs help call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4473 to be connected to a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.

Mental Health and Kids Movies

My kids are almost done with Kids Movies, but last week we went to see Wonder Park. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting too much from this Nickelodeon movie. I thought it’d be along the lines of Sponge Bob, maybe a little funny, but mostly a waste of time, money, and most importantly, brain cells.

I. Was. Wrong.

While this movie has some plot holes that left me with questions that will never be answered, it has an excellent message about depression, specifically for kids.

According to the Center for Disease Control, 3.2% of children in America 3-17 years old, have been diagnosed with depression. That’s about 1.9 million kids, diagnosed. That doesn’t even take into account all the ones who haven’t been diagnosed!

That’s a lot of kids with depression alone. Also according to the CDC, anxiety affects 7.1% of kids in the same age group, or 4.4 million who have been diagnosed. Again, that’s those who have been diagnosed, there’s bound to be many more undiagnosed kids suffering out there.

Movies like Wonder Park and Inside Out from Disney a few years ago, are a great way to increase awareness of childhood mental health disorders, but so is just talking about it.

Parents, grandparents, aunts , uncles, parent’s best friends, etc. can educate themselves, know the signs (also be aware that there’s not always signs), talk to kids. Know what’s going on, listen to them. Let them know they can tell you anything without judgement from you. Let them know that you are a safe place for them.

In Wonder Park, they don’t call it depression, they refer to it as “the darkness.” There’s one part I disagree with. The main character says she has to fight it alone. She doesn’t have to fight it alone. She has her friends there to help her.

Nobody needs to fight depression, or any other mental illness alone. We have family and friends who will be by our side. Maybe not all of them, but when “the darkness” comes, we find who will come along side us and help us through it.

If you or a loved one is struggling with depression, anxiety or thoughts of harming yourself please ask for help.

This is the National Suicide Hotline

1-800-273-8255 suicidepreventionlifeline.org

A Glimpse Inside My Mind

That’s not the greatest picture ever made, but I wanted to depict how my mind feels sometimes. John Green wrote a book titled Turtles All the Way Down. In it, he talks about thought spirals and I wrote a previous post about that.

Sometimes I have thought spirals, where I follow a thought with question or thought about it until I’m caught in the spiral of it spinning out of control until the next one takes hold. Then the next and the next. Forever. Until I’m exhausted and I try to sleep, but the thoughts keep me awake.

That’s why the picture has all the different spirals coming out of the head. It depicts all the spirals that bombard my mind at any given time. Of course some days are better than others. Some days there may only be one or two spirals, other times there are too many spirals to count. Other days there are so many spirals fighting for attention that I end up curled in a ball in bed doing breathing exercises or having a panic attack in public, or crawling under my desk in my classroom or, snapping at my family because I can’t take one more thing being added to the spirals in my mind.

So for fun, I though that instead of this organized, thought out writing you’re used to reading in this blog, I’d finish it off by just writing what comes into my mind.

Today’s a slow day, my mind is pretty calm, you might be bored. Bored readers won’t come back to the blog. People won’t read if I don’t write regularly. I haven’t been writing regularly. So many reasons why. Been busy with both kids, one has so much theater the other has so much concussion stuff.

I hope that she heals completely from the concussion. I have a student that had a concussion three years ago and still has some lingering effects. She’s back to her sport, but she still struggles with school. That’d be hard for my kid. She’s always done well in school and enjoys the challenge.

The first time a teacher told me she was in the challenge group I was horrified. To me that meant she was a challenge to have in class. She was in Kindergarten. Her teacher quickly told me that it was a reading group to challenge her.

I wish more kids enjoyed being challenged, most seem to want the best grade for then least amount of work. I graded a project today for my class. I’m going to have to deal with a lot of upset kids and parents I’m sure. At the beginning of the instructions I put that if any of the assignment was copied they would get a zero on the 140 point assignment. Probably a quarter of the students got a zero and that’s just the ones I caught. There were others that I could tell it wasn’t their work but I couldn’t find where they copied from. Some grade dropped dramatically. I hope if I get really irate parents that I have admin support.

I wonder what it’s like to be married to me? Is it hard? Do I irritate him by always worrying about everything and over planning? Does he get upset when I don’t feel like cooking dinner? What if he hates what I’m making tonight? I’ve never made Mac and cheese bites before. They might be disgusting, then what?

What color was the sky the day we got married. It rained that day so it was probably gray-blue. We’ve almost been married for 18 years. That’s a long time! Wow! Maybe it’s not too hard to be married to me. We should be able to make for 18 more. We need to start saving money so we can celebrate our 20th anniversary…

I think you get the idea. I need take my thoughts with me and go make dinner.