This is the second part to my "Mental health support" post. This one is about what I have done to create an environment for myself that prioritized my mental health.
At some point when my mental health was at an all-time low, I thought about all of the things that were bothering me and adding to my depression. I put things in columns: one column was things I can change and the other was things I couldn't change.
The list helped me realize that I cannot change all the bad things happening to our family and I can't change how people feel about me. However, I can change the support around me and I can change how I feel about all things that happened. I went home to be with my family and friends during my husband's deployment and to give myself a chance to process the past couple years.
Getting myself out of the situation also gave me a chance to think about what I liked about being at home with support and all the ways life was less hard when I wasn't going through it feeling so alone. It helped me know that not everything was just in my mind and gave me the strength to get through our last 6 months at our current duty station. I decided that when the deployment was over and I flew back to the duty station and into the same situation as before, I needed boundaries to protect my recovering mental health.
One of my problems was that I blamed myself for everything that went wrong. I keep thinking about all the ways I failed myself, my family, any friends I could have made, my real friends, my community, and my blog {which really mattered a lot to me and I eventually shut down}. It felt like instead of moving forward, I let myself move backward and then I took everyone down with me. I also felt very angry about why all the bad stuff happened. Why did we keep taking hit after hit. Why was this duty station so different than all the other ones. Why didn't anyone want to be friends with me. Every answer pointed back to my failings.
I knew I had to let that go in order to move forward. Yes, I did fail in a lot of ways. But I also held on tight to the things that mattered and, on top of that, my close friends and family supported me unconditionally through all of it. Knowing that this core group of people extended grace during that hard time helped me forgive myself. Mostly because those people know my true self-- the one that wasn't overcome by hardship and depression-- and they loved me through the hard time and encouraged me to seek the support I needed to pull myself back up. Their unwavering support helped me see myself through their eyes and not through the eyes of the people who had only just met me and only knew me as this struggling, sad person. Competency and strength used to be strengths that I admired in myself and was proud of and I no longer saw myself having those traits.
It was hard to let go the opinions of people I had only met during the midst of these struggles. Their words constantly echoed in my head about what a failure I was. I took their opinion as truth of my character. When I had a success, I talked myself down because I felt I knew what they would say about it or what they were saying about me. I had never felt so unlikeable and it made me question everything about myself and to move forward from the hurt-- the hurt that had nothing to do with them, but everything to do with me and how I processed all the hard things that happened to us here. From the moment we moved here, we had medical issues after medical issue, both in my immediate family and extended family. It was a lot to process while on sea duty juggling deployments and the boat schedule and no close friends, along with my own failing health.
Thinking all of this also let me know that my self-confidence was shot. Once at my parents' house with all that built-in support, I decided that one of the best ways to build my self-confidence back up was to work towards the goals I had set for myself before all of this happened, things I had to shelve when life became derailed. I signed up for classes. I made getting back in shape a priority. I was tired of all the extra "baby weight" from all the time I was taking it easy and on bedrest from my last pregnancy, plus from taking it easy and recovering from my post-partum complications and surgery. My back hurt all the time, which made me sleep horribly. I wasn't comfortable sitting or standing and holding my kids was exhausting. I no longer was battling my post-partum complications, but my body didn't feel like "mine." I spent a lot of time putting together outfits that I didn't "look horrible" in, not that I "felt great" in.
Finishing that first class while my husband was deployed and I was working out and taking care of 5 kids {with help from my friends and family}, felt like a massive ego boost. I felt capable again. I signed up for another online class for the following semester. I finally had solid goals I was working towards. When we went back home after the deployment was over, I laid out more goals.
From the get-go, I knew I needed to focus on myself and not on any local friendships. I had been at that duty station for 2.5 years and was never able to build the support I needed. Now that I wasn't in bad health and could actually handle my kids and day to day life, I decided to not try and build that support with only 6 months left here. I decided to focus entirely on the goals I had laid down, on continuing to build my self-confidence, and on bettering myself.
One of the supports we have here is our local YMCA. My kids all do classes there. I am there 4 times a week just for them. I set down a goal that I would work out at least 4 times a week at the YMCA, not at home where I'm still parenting, but at the Y where all my kids are in classes or childwatch and I can focus on my work outs and get some "me" time. I started enjoying this time so much that I pursued classes there and going more than 4 days a week. I started laying out more and more fitness goals for myself. Hitting these small goals felt like an achievement, a win. They could be even the smallest goals, like not quitting on a difficult work out. I was surprised at how much I looked forward to my work out sessions. {I actually wrote a whole blog post about my gym time.}
Plugging in at the YMCA also let the staff really get to know my family. Our last 6 months at the duty station are packed full with stressful land mines. The staff at the YMCA know my kids, know me, and they have truly been a support to us during this time. I have people to talk to there, who encourage me, and who use positive words regarding my progress. It feels good knowing people care about us and who work to meet our needs in real ways.
I also loved continuing my education, even though I was only taking one online class during this time. It is a small step towards my goal, but it is still forward progress. I was proud of my grades, proud of my example to my kids, and proud of myself for carving that time out for myself even though I was worried about balancing that with everything else we have going on.
To also support my mental health, I have also been extremely cautious in my relationships. I did not want to dive back in to where I was this time last year. I took the pressure off by making clear to my husband, who is in the Navy, that I wasn't sure at what level I would be participating with the wardroom or his functions during our last 6 months here. I felt like the past 2.5 years at this duty station that I had been spinning my tires making friends, burning myself out making time for all the spouse groups and local groups and things I had initiated on my own, and I wasn't going to do that our last 6 months here. I wasn't sure that I would say yes to any social invitations. I am an extremely social person that relies very heavily on my close friends and their opinions about me and so I didn't want to put myself back in a position where I was seeing myself through the lens of people that do not have a high opinion of me. I knew I needed to keep making forward progress on my own terms.
In the end, I didn't have to worry about the social aspect. While I had been away, new people had moved in and it was instant friendship magic. I think any military spouse can relate to the moment when you meet a new friend at a new duty station and you instantly know that she is best friend material. Those are the people that I met when I moved back from being away during the deployment. My calendar became pretty full in my last 6 months here and with social engagements with people who had invited me and who wanted to spend time with me. It felt amazing and was entirely unexpected. It also made me feel very likeable again.
I have had some hiccups during this time. My marriage took a major blow and left me feeling like I was back at square one. For a couple weeks I felt the depression creeping in and felt like I was going to go right back to where I was a year ago. I retreated into myself again and burnt myself out at the gym. I told myself all of the bad things that everyone has said about me and really felt like I was worthless and unlikeable all over again. I had one work out session at the gym where I just really bottomed out and I realized that I was literally the only one saying those things to myself. I also realized I wasn't working out for me anymore, but because I was really angry.
That's when I stepped back and thought of my list: things I can change versus things I can't. Steps I can do to change the things I can and steps I can do to make the things I can't change easier. I also realized that whatever happens with my marriage, I have to be whole again. I have to love myself. I have to be strong for myself and for my kids. I have to make life work. It got in my head some that people are gossiping about my marriage or about me, but I realized, "So what. What if they are. They aren't in my life and I am not going to change their opinions." That hasn't been an easy thought for me but it is true. I can't let other people's opinions affect my life so much. I have to create the life I wish to live and a life I am happy with, a life that is best for me and my family.
I strapped up my sneakers and held my head up high. I focused on my goals. I focused on my gains. I focused on being my best self at this moment. And each day, my best self became more confident. More sure. I have a lot of stress on my plate at the moment, but I am managing it and supporting my kids through it. I know I have hard choices up ahead, but I am feeling better about facing them and working through them.
When I assess my mental health now to a year ago, I feel like a different person. I felt so defeated then, broken. When I think about my mental health compared to 6 months ago, I feel like I have come such a long way to an even healthier spot. I feel like I am less angry and more solid in my opinion of myself. I don't blame anyone. I don't feel that I have blamed anyone for my mental health. The struggles we dealt with were not because of anyone. I do wish people were more understanding, but I also feel like maybe they just didn't get everything going on in my life. I've noticed in the last couple weeks that I am able to approach my current "stress mountains" and find a way to tackle them, that isn't just absorbing the stress and burying it down. I feel like I am processing things in a healthy way and working through them in a healthy way and, even better, going through all of this with people who care about me-- not alone. I feel supported. I feel capable. I feel strong. I feel like myself.
These changes did not happen over night and they took time and deliberate planning. I knew where I was when I started and I knew where I wanted to go. I knew I needed to shift my thinking and process everything that happened. I knew I needed to be less angry and more forgiving, not just to others but also to myself. I also knew that in order to achieve the mental health I wanted that I would need to make it a priority in my life and not try to just push through. It felt very selfish at first when I started this mental health journey, and maybe it is. But I think there is a time to be selfish and a time when a person must support themselves in order to make it through. This was one of those times for me.
I was very upset when I found out that I would have to live at this duty station for 6 months before we moved on; I had hoped to stay at my parents' until my husband got new orders. I did not want to come back here. Now that I'm here, I do not like the challenges and stress that these 6 months have brought into my life. But, like the 200 kettlebell swings that I finished at the gym the other day, I have found the strength inside myself. I did not know I had it. I did not know I could do it. I will be glad when these challenges are over, but I have a sense of pride for accomplishing them-- not hanging on and getting through, but for digging deep, planting my feet firmly, and making the choice to pace myself and finish this circuit. In that sense, these 6 months have been a blessing.
At some point when my mental health was at an all-time low, I thought about all of the things that were bothering me and adding to my depression. I put things in columns: one column was things I can change and the other was things I couldn't change.
The list helped me realize that I cannot change all the bad things happening to our family and I can't change how people feel about me. However, I can change the support around me and I can change how I feel about all things that happened. I went home to be with my family and friends during my husband's deployment and to give myself a chance to process the past couple years.
Getting myself out of the situation also gave me a chance to think about what I liked about being at home with support and all the ways life was less hard when I wasn't going through it feeling so alone. It helped me know that not everything was just in my mind and gave me the strength to get through our last 6 months at our current duty station. I decided that when the deployment was over and I flew back to the duty station and into the same situation as before, I needed boundaries to protect my recovering mental health.
One of my problems was that I blamed myself for everything that went wrong. I keep thinking about all the ways I failed myself, my family, any friends I could have made, my real friends, my community, and my blog {which really mattered a lot to me and I eventually shut down}. It felt like instead of moving forward, I let myself move backward and then I took everyone down with me. I also felt very angry about why all the bad stuff happened. Why did we keep taking hit after hit. Why was this duty station so different than all the other ones. Why didn't anyone want to be friends with me. Every answer pointed back to my failings.
I knew I had to let that go in order to move forward. Yes, I did fail in a lot of ways. But I also held on tight to the things that mattered and, on top of that, my close friends and family supported me unconditionally through all of it. Knowing that this core group of people extended grace during that hard time helped me forgive myself. Mostly because those people know my true self-- the one that wasn't overcome by hardship and depression-- and they loved me through the hard time and encouraged me to seek the support I needed to pull myself back up. Their unwavering support helped me see myself through their eyes and not through the eyes of the people who had only just met me and only knew me as this struggling, sad person. Competency and strength used to be strengths that I admired in myself and was proud of and I no longer saw myself having those traits.
It was hard to let go the opinions of people I had only met during the midst of these struggles. Their words constantly echoed in my head about what a failure I was. I took their opinion as truth of my character. When I had a success, I talked myself down because I felt I knew what they would say about it or what they were saying about me. I had never felt so unlikeable and it made me question everything about myself and to move forward from the hurt-- the hurt that had nothing to do with them, but everything to do with me and how I processed all the hard things that happened to us here. From the moment we moved here, we had medical issues after medical issue, both in my immediate family and extended family. It was a lot to process while on sea duty juggling deployments and the boat schedule and no close friends, along with my own failing health.
Thinking all of this also let me know that my self-confidence was shot. Once at my parents' house with all that built-in support, I decided that one of the best ways to build my self-confidence back up was to work towards the goals I had set for myself before all of this happened, things I had to shelve when life became derailed. I signed up for classes. I made getting back in shape a priority. I was tired of all the extra "baby weight" from all the time I was taking it easy and on bedrest from my last pregnancy, plus from taking it easy and recovering from my post-partum complications and surgery. My back hurt all the time, which made me sleep horribly. I wasn't comfortable sitting or standing and holding my kids was exhausting. I no longer was battling my post-partum complications, but my body didn't feel like "mine." I spent a lot of time putting together outfits that I didn't "look horrible" in, not that I "felt great" in.
Finishing that first class while my husband was deployed and I was working out and taking care of 5 kids {with help from my friends and family}, felt like a massive ego boost. I felt capable again. I signed up for another online class for the following semester. I finally had solid goals I was working towards. When we went back home after the deployment was over, I laid out more goals.
From the get-go, I knew I needed to focus on myself and not on any local friendships. I had been at that duty station for 2.5 years and was never able to build the support I needed. Now that I wasn't in bad health and could actually handle my kids and day to day life, I decided to not try and build that support with only 6 months left here. I decided to focus entirely on the goals I had laid down, on continuing to build my self-confidence, and on bettering myself.
One of the supports we have here is our local YMCA. My kids all do classes there. I am there 4 times a week just for them. I set down a goal that I would work out at least 4 times a week at the YMCA, not at home where I'm still parenting, but at the Y where all my kids are in classes or childwatch and I can focus on my work outs and get some "me" time. I started enjoying this time so much that I pursued classes there and going more than 4 days a week. I started laying out more and more fitness goals for myself. Hitting these small goals felt like an achievement, a win. They could be even the smallest goals, like not quitting on a difficult work out. I was surprised at how much I looked forward to my work out sessions. {I actually wrote a whole blog post about my gym time.}
Plugging in at the YMCA also let the staff really get to know my family. Our last 6 months at the duty station are packed full with stressful land mines. The staff at the YMCA know my kids, know me, and they have truly been a support to us during this time. I have people to talk to there, who encourage me, and who use positive words regarding my progress. It feels good knowing people care about us and who work to meet our needs in real ways.
I also loved continuing my education, even though I was only taking one online class during this time. It is a small step towards my goal, but it is still forward progress. I was proud of my grades, proud of my example to my kids, and proud of myself for carving that time out for myself even though I was worried about balancing that with everything else we have going on.
To also support my mental health, I have also been extremely cautious in my relationships. I did not want to dive back in to where I was this time last year. I took the pressure off by making clear to my husband, who is in the Navy, that I wasn't sure at what level I would be participating with the wardroom or his functions during our last 6 months here. I felt like the past 2.5 years at this duty station that I had been spinning my tires making friends, burning myself out making time for all the spouse groups and local groups and things I had initiated on my own, and I wasn't going to do that our last 6 months here. I wasn't sure that I would say yes to any social invitations. I am an extremely social person that relies very heavily on my close friends and their opinions about me and so I didn't want to put myself back in a position where I was seeing myself through the lens of people that do not have a high opinion of me. I knew I needed to keep making forward progress on my own terms.
In the end, I didn't have to worry about the social aspect. While I had been away, new people had moved in and it was instant friendship magic. I think any military spouse can relate to the moment when you meet a new friend at a new duty station and you instantly know that she is best friend material. Those are the people that I met when I moved back from being away during the deployment. My calendar became pretty full in my last 6 months here and with social engagements with people who had invited me and who wanted to spend time with me. It felt amazing and was entirely unexpected. It also made me feel very likeable again.
I have had some hiccups during this time. My marriage took a major blow and left me feeling like I was back at square one. For a couple weeks I felt the depression creeping in and felt like I was going to go right back to where I was a year ago. I retreated into myself again and burnt myself out at the gym. I told myself all of the bad things that everyone has said about me and really felt like I was worthless and unlikeable all over again. I had one work out session at the gym where I just really bottomed out and I realized that I was literally the only one saying those things to myself. I also realized I wasn't working out for me anymore, but because I was really angry.
That's when I stepped back and thought of my list: things I can change versus things I can't. Steps I can do to change the things I can and steps I can do to make the things I can't change easier. I also realized that whatever happens with my marriage, I have to be whole again. I have to love myself. I have to be strong for myself and for my kids. I have to make life work. It got in my head some that people are gossiping about my marriage or about me, but I realized, "So what. What if they are. They aren't in my life and I am not going to change their opinions." That hasn't been an easy thought for me but it is true. I can't let other people's opinions affect my life so much. I have to create the life I wish to live and a life I am happy with, a life that is best for me and my family.
I strapped up my sneakers and held my head up high. I focused on my goals. I focused on my gains. I focused on being my best self at this moment. And each day, my best self became more confident. More sure. I have a lot of stress on my plate at the moment, but I am managing it and supporting my kids through it. I know I have hard choices up ahead, but I am feeling better about facing them and working through them.
When I assess my mental health now to a year ago, I feel like a different person. I felt so defeated then, broken. When I think about my mental health compared to 6 months ago, I feel like I have come such a long way to an even healthier spot. I feel like I am less angry and more solid in my opinion of myself. I don't blame anyone. I don't feel that I have blamed anyone for my mental health. The struggles we dealt with were not because of anyone. I do wish people were more understanding, but I also feel like maybe they just didn't get everything going on in my life. I've noticed in the last couple weeks that I am able to approach my current "stress mountains" and find a way to tackle them, that isn't just absorbing the stress and burying it down. I feel like I am processing things in a healthy way and working through them in a healthy way and, even better, going through all of this with people who care about me-- not alone. I feel supported. I feel capable. I feel strong. I feel like myself.
These changes did not happen over night and they took time and deliberate planning. I knew where I was when I started and I knew where I wanted to go. I knew I needed to shift my thinking and process everything that happened. I knew I needed to be less angry and more forgiving, not just to others but also to myself. I also knew that in order to achieve the mental health I wanted that I would need to make it a priority in my life and not try to just push through. It felt very selfish at first when I started this mental health journey, and maybe it is. But I think there is a time to be selfish and a time when a person must support themselves in order to make it through. This was one of those times for me.
I was very upset when I found out that I would have to live at this duty station for 6 months before we moved on; I had hoped to stay at my parents' until my husband got new orders. I did not want to come back here. Now that I'm here, I do not like the challenges and stress that these 6 months have brought into my life. But, like the 200 kettlebell swings that I finished at the gym the other day, I have found the strength inside myself. I did not know I had it. I did not know I could do it. I will be glad when these challenges are over, but I have a sense of pride for accomplishing them-- not hanging on and getting through, but for digging deep, planting my feet firmly, and making the choice to pace myself and finish this circuit. In that sense, these 6 months have been a blessing.
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