Rebuild from Depression Blog

The line between quirky and crazy is a fine one. You hear that all the time but I am beginning to see how true it is. I stayed in Fresno with friends last week to attend the Organic Pastures press conference. I nearly missed the press conference because my friends and I were engrossed in a fascinating topic: my mental health and the fine line between quirky and crazy.

The friends are both therapists. In fact one heads the mental health department in a nearby county.

"You are much more than a diagnosis," she assured me as we laughed about some of my crazy antics.

If you have read much of this blog you probably have some sense of my "quirkiness." I expect the event in early August may be the one most worthy of a call to mental health professionals.

Of course, the big question is how much of that quirkiness is just my personality and how much of it is worthy of a diagnosis. Apparently the line can be a fine one and the key distinction is to what degree your "quirkiness" is affecting your social relationships and your ability to be a good family member and good citizen.

That question became the question of the morning as they diagnosed me.

The problem with living every day in a black hole of despair is that we see things differently from that hole than do people around us.

“Buck up!”

“Just make the call!”

“What’s your problem?”

We’ve all heard it and the problem is that if you could “buck up,” you would, but you can’t and you can’t really explain why because apparently it seems so easy to everyone else that “bucking up” should be easy.

My son just lost his first tooth and his world just about fell apart. The tooth was loose and all of the adults in the world talked about what a great milestone it was. He should be excited, right? We thought so. Of course, he’s only five-and-a-half and none of his friends have lost teeth. This was unknown territory for him.

One day I worked in my office with the door closed and although he was playing with his grammy, he barged into my office and curled up on my lap. His tooth was suddenly more loose and he was scared.

By the next morning, the adults had forgotten about the tooth but he was still in emotional turmoil. My husband took him to a movie (a forty-five minute drive) just to distract him. On the way to the movie, the tooth came out. He was suddenly better and fascinated by the thing in his hand that looked like a tiny piece of chopped almond. He nearly lost it about seventeen times before he got it home.

At home he put it into a small silk pillow that is made to put under his own bed pillow. He nearly fell asleep watching another movie that evening until I roused him to go to bed. He headed to bed half asleep but clinging to that little silk pillow like his entire world revolved around it.

And the fact is, his world did revolve around that microscopic piece of bone. His emotions were tied up in it for nearly a week. We didn’t quite “get it” because, of course, we thought he should be excited about losing a tooth. Perhaps the next time will go a little better. Perhaps next time the adults will have a better understanding of the child’s perspective.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I work too hard. When I feel like I have no choice (with a newborn baby and contract deadline), I work too hard. Even now when no one is riding me hard to meet a deadline, I work too hard.

When my son lost his tooth, I told him “it won’t be long before you will be a man.” He got upset. This is what he said to me:

“I don’t want to grow up because I don’t want to work all the time like you do.”

Yowch.

The lyrics to “Cat’s in the Cradle” came to my mind immediately. In fact, I had been promising him a trip to “the coast” with me for about six months.

At my six-month check up yesterday and cleaning, I asked the dental hygienist “how old” my teeth are. “You know that book ‘Real Age’ that adjusts your calendar age for bad habits like smoking and good habits like exercise to come up with your ‘Real Age’? What’s the ‘Real Age’ of my teeth?”

First of all, no patient has apparently asked the question before and she explained how no algorithm exists to answer. However, she did say that my teeth were pretty much on target for hitting their first 39th birthday just last week.

She said, “You have no major signs of inflammation and certainly none that couldn’t be solved with more regular flossing.”

“Inflammation? You can see it in my teeth?”

A big part of my depression story was lack of food nutrients. The memoir portion of the book (which is coming very, very soon) make that fairly clear. As I move past those very bad years and have friends and family conduct their own professional and amateur analyses of my psyche fairly regularly, I start to realize that the long game for me is about a lot more than the right foods. I have had moments in the last six months where I have wondered if I had some major degenerative disease and then when I take a break, I go through a miracle cure.

I have been seeing a chiropractor and my adjustment needs are directly related to the stress in my life. I wonder how many really bad mental health episodes I need in my life to learn my lesson at last and take it easy now and then. The crazy thing about it all is that much of the stress comes from “extra-curricular” activities such as food politics work. Leave it to a crazy person to discover the importance of food by having nutrient deficiencies and then to go bananas over food advocacy work. Just for the record, I am not going bananas, not just yet. I do realize, however, that many of the circumstances that led to depression and psychotic episodes back in the day are things I did to myself. I need to make changes for the long game.

We got in this discussion Easter Sunday as we were discussing inflammation and depression. Inflammation may be an underlying cause of depression. Nutrients such as fish oil and B vitamins reduce inflammation, but so does yoga and sleep.

Someone asked over Easter dinner, “Which one is more effective at fighting depression, fish oil or yoga?”

“Are you in more desperate need of Omega-3 fatty acids or relaxation?” I responded.

At this point in my life, relaxation would be much more effective since that is apparently what I am now deficient in.

Most of us know what our biggest problem is. Fixing it just is not always all that easy.

Nutritional deficiencies are a big part of my own depression story. I spent the formative years of my life on low fat diets of bagels and imitation cheeses. Nary an Omega-3 was to be found. I proceeded through life managing nonetheless until my body was charged with making an entire new person. As my son’s brain developed in my womb, he sucked the limited Omega-3 stores out of me and I went bananas from the lack. I produced the food that grew him out of his infancy as well, a food that also required Omega-3 fatty acids and many other nutrients. We just celebrated his sixth birthday and I am finally feeling recovered from my task of producing him.

Omega 3 fatty acids were a critical thing I was deficient in and until I fixed that deficiency, all of the talk therapy in the world would not have gotten me very far above zero. It may have helped keep me out of a deeper hole, but it would not be effective on its own in improving my health.

What has happened as I face the rest of my life and establish structures for myself to maintain my mental health, I realize that the key for all of us is to determine what we are most deficient in that we can change. Focus on changing that. The food nutrients are in our control. It is a fairly easy place to begin.

What I am finding more challenging for myself is engaging in positive behaviors like rest and relaxation. It is sometimes difficult to give ourselves what we really need. Here are some of my reflections on my own life and I am working hard to integrate them into my lifestyle.

Every day should have a wee bit of vacation in it.