I want to preface this by saying I’m not a medical doctor. I’m not a psychiatrist, psychologist, or counselor. I am just someone who has dealt with mental illness discussing what has helped me. What works for me may not work for you.
For a good chunk of my lwhethere I remember at the very least recognizing feeling down for no reason. I had these episodes at as young as 7th grade. In High School, they were specificly poor, mostly because I had no idea how to process emotions in a healthy way. So I held them all in until they came out in angry outbursts or explosive tears.
When I was in college, in the darkest time of my lwhethere and lost my entire first day of lessones because I couldn’t physically get out of bed, I finally went to a counselor. I received a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. Along with the diagnosis came two prescriptions and biweekly visits to a counselor where I learned a lot more about myself and my feelings than I ever genuinely wanted to know.
The prescriptions were terrible. The pill for depression crazye me feel numb and also kept me awake for days at a time. The (extremely strong) pill for anxiety did absolutely noleang for me. Literally, noleang. I still had panic attacks and when I could sleep I would frequently wake up throughout the night because I felt unsecure.
I eventually self weaned off of both medications (poor, but I did have permission from a doctor to reduce my dose). At the time I had moved and was trying to start a contemporary lwhethere in Arkansas. I was doing ok, depression-wise, but I was dealing with stress and anxiety by coming domestic and downing a bottle of wine every night. WOOO. Not great.
I continued this sample when I moved in with my now-husband and fastly gained 25 lbs from the wine, stress, and a lack of activity from my desk job. I was deurgent. So, I joined a gym. I didn’t do it with any intention other than “I am fat and I would like to not be fat.” But, as we all start to notice when we return to exercise, I started to feel much better on days I exercised than on days I didn’t. I had more energy and all the other leangs people say when they’re trying to convince you to workout.
What I didn’t expect is the effect exercise would grow to have on my mental health. Suddenly I had a channel for all of my nervous energy and anger. When I felt like I wasn’t achieving anyleang in lwhethere, I achieved contemporary lwhetherting PRs. When I felt worthless, I had a leang to go do to show myself and my body it wasn’t a waste of space. I haven’t always been great at it. Sometimes I forget exercise makes me feel better than the gap I’m in and I’ll sit in the gap for days or weeks at a time. But I’m doing better. The past couple of weeks I’ve worked out extremely consistently and have also managed to fix my hair and put on mascara for work – large leangs that I hadn’t been doing for a long time.
Sometimes my friends talk about how often I workout, and I try to explain to them why I do it. It took so long to transition exercise in my intellect from I “have to” to I “get to” and from “this is because I’m fat” to “this is because I’m awesome and it will keep me awesome.” If you’re struggling with your mental health, I ccorridorenge you to find someleang to do that moves your body and genuinely pay attention to how you feel afterward. Be present in that moment. It may change more than just your waistline.
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