A Guest Post

Laurie is a long-time friend who I met way back in the late 1900s. Last night she was feeling a bit bored and asked me for ideas of things to do. I said that she could write a guest post for my blog. I didn’t really expect her to, especially since I didn’t have a suggested topic. I was pleasantly surprised when she got a post back to me after just a couple hours! Enjoy her post below.

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My Bout with Unemployment and Depression

by Laurie Guerrettaz

I have been unemployed for about two months now. I have been fighting off mental health struggles as well. It’s been a learning experience and a joy. Just kidding. It has been boring as eff a lot of the time. I have managed to learn a couple of things, though.

First off is self-respect. While in an intensive outpatient therapy group, I identified self-respect as one of my top values, using Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead list of values. I started asking myself, what would I do in this moment if I want to wake up and respect myself in the morning? Overeating, drinking, and ignoring tasks rate at the top of actions that can have me feeling discouraged and much less motivated. I’m currently on a self-respect streak of not vaping for the past two and a half weeks. I’ve also lost 8 pounds by respecting my decision to stop overeating. I haven’t been perfect, but my goal is improvement, not perfection. Sticking to a routine has helped stave off the depression. I have a morning routine of meds, breakfast, and skincare. Then I move on to activities I’ve planned the night before. I generally end the day by watching tv or movies.

I’ve been implementing is a list of fun and/or important things to do. I use this list daily to make sure that I am filling up my hours with activities that align with my values: kindness, gratitude, self-respect, productivity, and FUN!

The first item on my list is yoga. I’ve been getting over some minor health issues, so I’ve gotten off track with my goal of doing yoga twice a week, but I feel confident that I’ll be back on my non-bullshit next week. Doing tasks around the house causes my back to commit crimes against my general well-being. To help, I’ve been doing about thirty-five minutes of neck, shoulders, upper and lower back yoga. I discovered Yoga with Adriene on Youtube. The yoga itself is pretty easy. It’s more about stretching, rather than strength building. Adriene is great. She’s a little silly, and sings “Rock With You” by Michael Jackson at the end of one video. I like that she uses a kind and encouraging tone. She understands yogis like me who need a gentle approach, rather than a “grind” mentality. Believe it or not, I have watched yoga videos that completely miss the point of connecting with your body. I feel that to do its job, yoga should help me to really feel “in” my body and help me to extend kindness and gratitude to myself in the process. Feeling disconnected from the body is a nervous system response to things like stress and trauma. Doing yoga with mindfulness definitely helps.

Taking time to read is another of my weekly goals. Originally, my goal was to read twice a week for a couple of hours at a time. I’ve decided to cut the goal down to reading twice a week for fifteen minutes. My amazing therapist, Ida Marie, helped me to recognize that I was comparing my reading goal to others’ ability to wolf books down whole. I feel like a lot of us fall into the comparison trap when approaching a new book. Instead of being a b-word to myself, I plan to sit down with a book for a short time and be happy with accomplishing my goal. Once I’ve met the goal in the upcoming week, I’ll up my time to thirty minutes. Of course, if the book really catches my attention, I will totally spend more time with it. Book I DNF’d: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. The subject matter is just too heavy right now. I’m now on Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.

Other things I’m doing to fill up my time in ways that make me happy include going to the movies, talking on the phone with a couple friends, coloring in a Hello Kitty coloring book, doing my nails, doing chores, going to therapy and med-management. Activities that are out of my comfort zone but on my list are planning a meal and cooking; and making plans with a friend. I have made a couple of new friends online and through group therapy, but I’m pretty resistant to the idea of making plans with them. I’ve had some disappointing online friendships end in the past couple of years, and it has kind of put me off sharing my time and attention with new people.

I switched from a mandala coloring book to Hello Kitty because honestly, the repetition of the mandalas drives me crazy, coloring the same shapes repeatedly. I like a bit of three-dimensional shading in my Hello Kitties. I’m using crayons and Prismacolor markers. On a related note, today I really started considering painting again, even though that’s definitely outside of my comfort zone. Having once pursued schooling to make art a career, it’s tough to sit down to paint as a hobby.

I saw The Odyssey by myself last week (hooray for getting out of the house!) and I plan to see the new Spider-Man movie next week.

I took up a new hobby this week: making tea. If you know me, you know that I am bisexual and fit the stereotype of having multiple drinks around me at all times. I have the requisite sodas, water, and sparkling water, plus making a trip to Starbucks once or twice a week. I’m starting my days with Earl Grey – two bags plus a little milk and one Splenda. In the evenings I enjoy Hibiscus Strawberry, a nice fruity herbal tea, or Genmaicha, a savory green tea with brown rice. Drinks, hooray!

To help me get started with my months of time off work, I enrolled in a group therapy program that met three times a week for three hours each night for a period of six weeks. The first two hours meant listening to people talk at length about whatever issues they were struggling with. That was the hardest part for me. I didn’t find it difficult to share, but listening to others and hearing them cry made me become more aware of my own emotional numbness. I can’t say I ever got used to it. My psychiatrist and individual therapist reminded me that I’m an empathetic person and I can take on others’ psychic burdens without realizing it. That awareness helped me not to judge myself as harshly. Being resistant to listening to people’s trauma translates to being resistant to my own empathy. It’s a way to avoid pain, which is natural. I’m working on it.

The third hour of therapy was psychoeducation – learning about practical coping tools. A building block of psychoeducation is learning about cognitive distortions like jumping to conclusions or discounting the good. Most of the psychoeducation was not new to me, but I appreciated reviewing and learning a couple of new things.

To sum it up, I’ve been avoiding the “depression hole” using these tools, while remembering gratitude for my health, safety, and general peace.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my life these days. I’ve enjoyed being a guest on gRegor’s blog. Be well!

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