Mental health support

Man, what a tough week with such amazing people ending their lives. There seems to be a lot more talk recently about mental health and I am all about it {if you have read any of my blog posts in the last year or the past 5 minutes, you probably already know this}. I had a mental breakdown last year. I've gone over my story many times, but basically my husband is a submariner and went back to sea duty, which means deployments and the boat schedule and duty days. I had our 5th baby here and it was a complicated pregnancy in which we almost lost her many times, almost lost me, and I battled preterm labor. After I had her, I kept telling myself it would get better, but then life carried on as usual. Our 2 asthmatics had flair ups. My grandmother had a stroke. My mom completely severed her Achilles tendon. My husband's boat schedule kept changing. My post-partum complications were horrible and made me feel like less than a person. Just... everything. Everything was a struggle. I didn't have close friends. Support had been an uphill battle this whole tour. Childcare was always a struggle and I needed so much of it with all my appointments, etc. Life was basically just hard and my hope that getting past the difficult pregnancy would "fix things" was shattered and I fell into a deep depression.

At the time, I knew I was depressed. I tried talking about it, but since I didn't have those close relationships in the first place at this duty station, people were not looking to connect with the depressed lady with 5 kids and no pelvic floor. The standard answer I got from pretty much everyone was that I needed to go on meds and go see a therapist. This really frustrated me as I was not able to get childcare for my appointments for my surgeries and I didn't know how I would find more childcare for therapy? It also felt like instead of being willing to invest in me, acquaintances {not medical professionals who fully agreed with exercise plan instead of meds, by the way} were brushing me off by telling me to get on meds over supporting me through this hard time. At the time, I took it like a rejection because what I wanted was connections.

I have struggled with depression and anxiety in the past and been to therapy and taken meds for them in the past. My family struggles with depression and anxiety and take meds. It is something that we openly talk about and do not feel shame in taking meds. I think anyone who has taken depression or anxiety meds can tell you that it makes you feel... different, sometimes. It can take a minute to get your meds regulated, especially when you don't have a relationship with a new doctor and you are starting doses in the middle of a hard time. They aren't something that is fun to take. For me, personally, knowing myself and my history as well as the situation I was in, I felt like I had too much on my plate with too little support. I felt like I was situationally depressed and I didn't want to go on meds because I didn't have friends and needed surgery. What I wanted was to feel less alone and for life to be a little easier.

It is hard not to have close friends locally. I felt like every time something came up as an emergency, I had 30 minutes of phone calls to try and line up childcare for my kids. I felt like I had to haul my kids every single place I went. I felt exhausted doing day to day tasks. I felt like I had put myself out there in lots of ways to try and attract friends and I felt like I had put in the effort to cultivate friendships and it just didn't happen. I felt like I just hadn't met my people and I didn't know why, but I know with all this moving we do as a military family that it does happen. We have had duty stations in the past where close friendships were slow going for a long time, through nobody's fault. We just had never had such an abundance of needs or problems on one tour.

During my husband's deployment over the holidays 1.5 years ago, I hit bottom. My kids had the stomach bug for literally a month. They missed so much school because we kept passing it around. We didn't leave the house. We didn't see anyone. I just stayed home and caught vomit and changed liquid diapers. I caught it during that time too and taking care of 5 kids-- one a breastfeeding infant-- while puking with no pelvic floor felt like the lowest I had ever been. And then we caught pink eye while also dealing with the stomach bug and I pretty much wanted to move away from this duty station right then. On my 10 year wedding anniversary, I had to sign a waiver to have testing for my surgery done all on the same day. Because it is such rigorous testing, they normally break it up over multiple days, but I could only line up childcare for one day and they said they would work with me; it had to be done within a certain window for my surgery. It was incredibly painful and after the testing, I had to go home and take care of 5 children, followed by a fresh wave of the stomach bug. I have never cried so much as I did then. My mental health was at an all time low. I had never felt more alone. I knew things needed to change.

The following month, I had my surgery. I focused on my recovery. My family came out for the surgery and that was amazing. But all my help eventually had to leave and my husband went back to work before I could lift 10 lbs, which is hard with a nursing infant. I ended up passing out alone at home with all 5 kids and my son had to go get a neighbor until my husband got home to take care of us {and because he left early that day, he had to work that weekend... which was not so helpful}.

My family kept taking hit after hit and I realized that I wasn't going to overcome this depression alone. Yes, things were getting better in a sense. I felt more like myself again after the surgery. I felt like I could do things without worrying constantly about what my body would do or how exhausted it would make me. I could take my kids places without needing long periods of rest afterwards {impossible when you are home alone with 5 kids}. I started cooking a lot more, which is one of my passions. I started exercising, focusing on yoga and Pilates and walking-- just to get my flexibility and core strength back before jumping into more difficult exercises. I was moving in the right direction and feeling much more capable instead of bowled over by life.

When my husband had a long deployment coming up, I knew that my mental health was still shaky. I was making progress, but I knew if he left again and we dealt with a month of stomach bugs or a crazy asthma flare or my daughter's dairy allergy got worse... I would be back at square one. I decided I needed to go home to be around friends and family during the deployment. It was the right call. I had people to help. I didn't have to take all 5 kids with me everywhere I went. When I had an emergency, I made one phone call {or I turned to the person sitting next to me because I was usually with friends or family} and I had immediate childcare, whatever I needed. I didn't feel alone.

Even better, life didn't feel so damn hard. Life is hard. While I was there my dad's heart stopped 3 times in an afternoon. He was put in the ICU. It was terrifying. We thought we were going to lose him. But we went through that together. We weren't trying to navigate that time by ourselves, without support from each other. Being around so many friends and family made me realize that life really shouldn't be lived alone. I shouldn't have to push through those things without a shoulder to cry on, a friend to drink with, someone to call and meet for coffee because I need a face to face interaction. I should be able to have those relationships where my kids aren't a burden. I should be able to lay my ugly and bad and hard out on the table and have someone say, "Yup, my life is ugly too. Let's do this together."

When I came back to the duty station after my husband came back from deployment, I decided that my mental health needed to be a high priority. I am a sentimental person and so being in the same place with the same walls brings back all those old memories of how hard it has been here. I didn't want to get thrown back into it just by walking through my front door. I decided I would carve out gym time {which I wrote a blog post about} and continue taking online classes to pursue my degree. I decided I would focus on myself during our last 6 months here and not grasp at straws or beat myself up over all the "why's."

Dealing with someone who is depressed or anxious is hard. I do it every day with one of my kids and I have family members who have really struggled with depression. I know what it is like being on the other side, trying to help someone depressed. I know they say things wrong, do things wrong, and are draining. I know boundaries need to be set up. And I know people don't want to {and don't have to} make friends with someone they don't connect with. I know that we moved here with 4 kids and things were immediately hard for me. I know I was a time burden with my pregnancy and childcare needs. I know I was a downer with my post partum complications and subsequent deep depression. I know that I was a lot to take on and not prime best friend material.

I guess when I think back on all the missed connections and all the times I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, acted the wrong way, I think about all the times I really, truly put myself out there. Not just with my feelings or how I honestly was doing {which I know for a fact was extremely off putting}, but with meet ups and playdates and all these things I tried to organize to create the support I was looking for and showing all the things I was trying to bring into a friendship. Nothing moved past that. I desired a close friendship {like I wrote about in my last blog post} and it wasn't there and the support wasn't there. It still frustrates me when I think about how alone I felt in all of it and how if I was to go back and do it all over again now with the friendships that I have made in the last 6 months that I know for a fact that this duty station would be entirely different for me. I can't help but feel angry about the timing of it.

I do not blame anyone for my depression or the hard times we had. No one was responsible for all the blows our family took and how terrible our overall health was the last 3 years {I mean, literally 4 of us almost died the past 3 years}. I think what bothers me is how angry everyone was at me. I can think about some things I would do differently, but they are small conversations I had where I would shut my mouth instead of saying what I'm thinking. But even then, I feel like I honestly spoke my feelings. I didn't gossip; I am not a gossip. I tried way too hard to make people like me and to make friends. I feel like I kept reaching out to everyone around me trying to make connections and actually pushing them away. Then it felt like I was even more alone. I move back and forth between feeling like I did the best that I could and there isn't anything I would do differently to feeling overwhelmingly mortified that the last 3 years happened and that my social life is forever ruined.

That has been a hard aspect of depression for me, as an adult in a small community like the submarine community. I didn't realize how bad things were getting for me-- in life and in my own head-- until I was drowning and completely overwhelmed. By then, I had pretty much blown the social life I had. Any friends or acquaintances I had made were done with me. And now I feel like every bad decision I have made over the past 3 years is going to haunt me for the rest of my husband's career. Part of me wants to wear a shirt that says, "I WAS DEPRESSED" and the other part of me wants to hold my head up high and show the world that this now is who I actually am. And another, braver part of me, wants to say... no, no, I am who I am now and who I was then and I am not ashamed. I've always had a strong desire to own my life-- my whole life, the good and the bad-- and it feels really hard to know that there is this large group of people that only know the bad and that is how they think of me.

Mental health is complicated. I feel like reading all these posts about encouragement for seeking help and support are wonderful, but I also feel like people actually need to practice that. Supporting someone when they are having mental health problems doesn't mean being their therapist, their only friend, their every answer, the one number in their speed dial. It can mean dropping off a latte, sending a text that you were hoping their day goes well, watching their kids for an appointment, not gossiping about them, starting a meal train, including them in plans {especially open or group plans, "Hey, we are all going to the park Friday, want to come?"} and then actually chatting with them. I do feel like the military community especially should help each other during times like that because we move places where we don't know anyone, we don't have built-in resources, and we can't time when our lives will fall apart. It is hard. We, as the spouse groups, need to support each other because often, we don't have anyone else.

When someone you love with mental health problems asks for help in a specific area, try to help in that area. It can be hard for someone with mental health problems to shift their thinking... if they ask for baby-sitting for an appointment on a Tuesday but you had something you wanted to do on Tuesday, so you ask if they could they move their appointment to Wednesday? Try to meet the need they ask for. Because it feels like, when you are having a mental health problem, that life keeps piling on and it can be really hard to ask for help in the first place. Feeling like an additional burden or that you are ruining someone's plans can feel very heavy. Like when you are moving with the military and you have so many needs you have to meet and when someone throws something else at you, it feels overwhelming to shift your plans again, it can be a lot like that.

Remember: it is never your job to fix someone. It is never your job to stay in a situation or relationship that you feel afraid in. It is never your job to be someone's therapist or to let someone else's mental health damage yours. No, being a support to someone isn't about that. Being a support to someone means being understanding that their needs are different at this juncture in time. Being a support means finding ways you can help them. Being a support means giving grace and being a friend. Mental health problems are not visible wounds and some heal, some ebb and flow, some are constant. But underneath those mental health problems are people who are looking for connections and to feel less alone in a world that is made a little more confusing with their thinking.