Answer Addiction

Tag: self care

  • What Happened When I Spent Christmas Eve in a Basement with a Crazy Cat

    I didn’t exactly catch the holiday spirit, but I took a suggestion that kept me hanging on by my claws through the Next 12 Days of Christmas…

    It was Christmas Eve, 2013, and I was scooping poop from a litter box in my neighbors’ basement. Leticia and Dana had rescued a feral kitten whose new habitat extended from the hot water heater to the washer/dryer. Although it was icy outdoors and toasty within, this foster feline wasn’t buying into her rehabilitation. But I was. I was three months sober.

    Kitty was ambivalent towards humans. She darted about the boiler room, kicking up supermarket circulars that had been neatly layered for her comfort. As I shook Friskies into the bowl, she shouldered up to me, twitching her tail against my forearm, her throat vibrating under a flea collar. As I reached to pet her, she caught my wrist between her paws and bit down hard on the hand that fed her.

    I was tempted to punt the little ingrate into the sewer trap, but instead I dialed a sober friend. Darlyne listened as I droned on about what I was sure would be my worst holiday ever, the bluest Blue Christmas imaginable. After fourteen years of marriage, my husband and I had agreed to call it quits in September. Here we were now in December, Yuletide upon us, and that sparkling snow globe of a mental construct—the family Christmas—was shattering. There would be two trees this year instead of one, two piles of hastily-wrapped presents, and even two plates of sugar cookies, left for two Santas, because our younger son was only six, and very much still a believer.

    I never doubted my decision to divorce, but I had misgivings when it came to the kids. I feared the emotional fall-out from all those times when mom’s temper met dad’s radioactive passive-aggression. I saw an acid cloud of neuroses raining down upon my sons from their parents’ split, a psychic soaker that would take them years of therapy before they’d start to dry out.

    I watched two lines of red dots on my forearms swell and connect where the beast had scratched me. Then I lost it. I broke down bawling on the basement floor. After a while, Darlyne interrupted me. “Viv I get it. I do. it’s a rough time. A really rough time. And it’s good you’re letting it all out. But we’ve been on the phone thirty minutes now and I’m gonna pee my pants.”

    “Ok,” I said as I blew my nose into the deli section.

    “But listen,” Darlyne said before signing off, “I want you to do something.”

    Change or Die

    I had no idea what she was going to say, but I already knew I didn’t want to do it. The default of my defiant alcoholic mind—then and now, drinking or sober— is “NO.” But recovery, I have learned, is about change. And change often means saying “YES” instead of “NO.” It means being willing to take suggestions—often awkward, tedious or unsexy actions that force me to sit with feelings and stretch my tolerance for discomfort.

    “It’s just going to be so weird for the kids to wake up Christmas morning and not see two parents!” I wailed, ignoring my friend’s bladder. I wasn’t done catastrophizing.

    “Just listen,” Darlyne was louder now. “I want you to do something, and I promise it will help.”

    At that moment, I had a choice: take in what my friend was telling me, or tune her out. Sobriety is about making choices, and I’ve made some doozies in my fifty-five years of frolicking between a few zip codes in New York City, with or without a Bacardi and Coke in hand. And the takeaways from all my choices—good and bad—have always been there too. Only now I’m actually able to take these takeaways. Free of mind and mood-altering substances, I’m present for each new experience, and I can see my part in it. Sometimes I repeat the same mistakes, but these successive ones occur less often, and feel less calamitous. It’s getting better. And that feels good.

    But I wasn’t feeling good that morning. I was cold and panicky.

    “What is it?” I choked.

    “Make a list of ten things you’re grateful for,” said Darlyne, “and save it in your phone. Then read it back to yourself, over and over again, for the next two weeks. Got it?”

    “I got it,” I sniffled.

    “You’ll feel better. Trust me.” Then she hung up.

    I was skeptical, and I didn’t feel better yet, but I did it. I squatted on that cellar floor, my tailbone pressed against the cold cement, and I took that sober woman’s suggestion. It was one of the better moves I’ve ever made.

    …

    Ten things I’m grateful for:

    1. My sobriety
    2. My sons
    3. My family (most of the time)
    4. My soon-to-be ex (He’s a good dad after all.)
    5. All my friends (from 4th grade to the present)

    What else?

    1. My first cup of coffee in the morning
    2. A good mattress
    3. Food in my stomach
    4. The sun rising over the rooftops

    I don’t remember the tenth. So I’ll just add something now, something that could have been on that first list.

    1. Pannetone

    Yes, the fluffy bread, loaded with raisins, that you only see in supermarkets at the holidays. To go with number 6. For me, the small things on my list have come to matter too. Even when the big ticket items are absent—like the job with benefits, or the boyfriend—the small, quiet things are always there, if I look for them. Like the neighbor with the beehive in his backyard, who feeds my Poohish habit with a steady supply of golden honey nine months of the year out of twelve.

    There! I read the list in my cupped palm. Then I reread it. Well, I wasn’t jolly yet, but I was functional. Mrs. Santa Clause dried her tears in an ad for holiday ham, then stood up and got on with the business of making magic for her kids that Christmas Eve. And she muttered that merry mantra over and over for the next twelve days and arrived at the new year, clean, sober, and—to her surprise—not absolutely miserable for every second of it.

    Flash forward to 2020, amicably-divorced and effectively co-parenting, I feel far-removed from that bleak midwinter morning spent bawling in a basement with a bipolar cat. I still have days where I forget that I’m wildly blessed, days where I watch my teen on the tennis court and forget the shattered ankle, the surgery, the cast, and the flawless recovery. I still have sour days where I see only another wet towel on the bathroom floor and pistachio shells on the pillow case.

    But on these days, thankfully, I remember what will slap me back into gratitude. I know that if I just jot ten things I’ve got going for me, it’ll make me feel better. I also know that when I neglect to count my blessings, I’m more likely to cry over every glass of spilt milk or busted garbage bag.

    When my twelve-year-old quips: “Quit trying to make your own disgusting chicken fingers and just take me to McDonald’s,” I don’t collapse in tears on the linoleum anymore; instead, I rattle off my list. My sobriety is always on top, and my sons still take the number two spot (except today, the younger slides down to number eight). My good health follows, then my elderly parents and my brother, who mows their lawn and drives them to doctors’ appointments. I acknowledge my good neighbors, my shrink, my deep pre-war apartment bathtub, fat dogs with short legs, and my self-respect.

    Then I turn to Liam and say: “Put on your hoodie, we’re going to McDonald’s.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 7 Ways to Be a Rebel…in Sobriety

    7 Ways to Be a Rebel…in Sobriety

    Alternate rebellion can help shake up ennui and distress, otherwise known as life. It’s a great act of self-acceptance in a world that wants you to follow their dumb unwritten rules. Guess what, world? I do what I want. 

    People who have struggled with addiction and alcoholism are rebels by nature. If you disagree, you’re just proving my point. Getting into recovery and following the rules we need to follow if we’re going to stay sober and have a better life can feel like something’s missing – that old Eff You to the face of the world. But what if there were ways to rebel that didn’t leave a trail of dumpster fires and broken bones in your wake?

    Alternate Rebellion, which is taught in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), is the idea that there are healthy, nondestructive ways to rebel, or “act out.” There are many ways to feel like yourself without hurting yourself. It’s also highly effective as a tool for distress tolerance (a term that describes one’s capacity to cope with or withstand negative emotions or stressful conditions).

    What follows is a list of several acts of alternate rebellion I have found to be very satisfying, and a link to a more comprehensive (and less aggressive) list. We already know how to get creative under pressure when it comes to self-destruction. Now, that same energy and talent can be used in ways that make you feel good about yourself before, during, and after. After all, everything we do in life is because we’re searching for a certain feeling. There are so many more ways to get there than the limited world of self-harm.

    1. Cut off a friend you find boring

    I had a friend — I suspect most of us have had this friend — who was sweet and loyal and utterly boring. Half the time I didn’t know, or care, what the hell she was talking about. I think a lot of us feel like we have to take what we can get in terms of human connection because we’re so fundamentally unlovable, but we don’t. Even if, say, that friend was there for you during a really dark period in your life — you realize that was their choice, and of course they got something out of it too. Ignore their calls. Refuse to read the Twilight fan fiction they keep pushing on you. When they reach out to say “What happened? Are you dead?” Refrain from saying, “Bitch, you know I’ve been posting on Insta.” Say you just don’t feel like chatting right now. Because you don’t. To them. Revel in the fact that you just did something kinda bad. It feels good.

    2. Disagree with an overly confident person

    I cannot recommend this enough. Especially people who can’t handle being disagreed with. Los Angeles is lousy with them. And I hate to state the obvious, but they are usually straight white men. Easy to find. You don’t have to lie; I guarantee you hear things you don’t agree with every day. And just like that: Hey. I don’t agree. Smile. The smiling is the best part. If you want to present your opposing view, have at it, but often the look on their face and their sheer inability to deal with being disagreed with is enough.

    3. Get a tattoo 

    I went from having zero tattoos because commitment issues to having six in eighteen months because addiction issues. I regret nothing. That’s actually the first tattoo I got: je ne regrette rien. I am not French, but I do identify as a snob. There’s a great story behind it, which I will happily tell anyone hitting on me and also you. It was posted by a friend of mine who was dear to me in only the way someone you’ve followed on Tumblr for many years and only met twice in person can be. She wrote that she spoke French and nobody knew that about her and also that it’s the title of a gorgeous song, so she wanted to get it as a tattoo.

    It was one of her last posts. She died suddenly in her bed at the age of 32. So I got the tattoo to honor her, and because all the bullshit got me here. Also, it’s a chance to stick a needle in your arm, but in a good way. I love my tattoos. They make me feel like a badass. Some people say oh no, they are forever, but guess what? The body is so temporary. Also: lasers.

    4. Play uncool music with your windows down

    I’m partial to Miley Cyrus’s Party in the U.S.A. right now, but you do you, boo. Don’t play it so loud that you scare dogs and upset children, but, you know, a little loud. Just loud enough that you feel like you shouldn’t. And dance. Dance and don’t let anyone looking at you stop you. And don’t stop at a red light next to a Tesla containing an outwardly perfect person. Party. In the U.S.A.

    5. Travel somewhere you’ve always wanted to. Alone. Even if you don’t have “enough money.”

    Traveling alone is my jam. I always wanted to go to Italy, and in rehab I moaned over the fact that it wasn’t fair that I couldn’t drink wine in Italy. Guess what? Nobody was taking drunk me to Italy. Traveling alone is the best because you don’t ever have to compromise on what to do or where to go or what to eat – every rebel’s dream.

    In the past two years I’ve been to Costa Rica, Thailand, and Bali alone as well as a dozen states in the continental U.S. I frequently bring my dog, who flies and stays everywhere free because I have a letter from my therapist, another fantastic act of alternate rebellion. I love whenever someone tries to tell me I can’t have my pet somewhere. I quietly offer to show them paperwork, while in my head I’m screaming “EXCUSE ME HE’S AN EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL HE KEEPS ME CALM.” I’ve been nervous about how I’m going to pay for my upcoming Italy/Greece trip, but writing this helped me remember that I had no idea how I was going to pull off any of the other international trips either. Financial insecurity is lame, so I cured it with another act of alternate rebellion. 

    6. Take a bath in the middle of the day

    I actually did this in the middle of writing this article and it felt fantastic. I was sitting here feeling resistant about doing one of my favorite things on earth, writing, and contemplating shutting the computer down and taking a nap, eating even though I’m not hungry, turning on the TV, or a host of other things that are mildly self-destructive and won’t help me feel good about myself in the long run. So I lit my best candles, threw some crystals in there, added a few handfuls of epsom salts and a liberal amount of lavender bubbles, and in went my Juul and I. Right before I did it, I thought: I’m totally not supposed to do this, but it isn’t hurting me or anyone, so YAY. That is pretty much the definition of an act of alternate rebellion. 

    7. Wear your jammies out in public

    A lot of people have strong opinions about people wearing sweatpants in public and I think it’s so outdated. It’s nice to be comfy, especially when you’re in distress. When I was drinking and using, sure, I’d look a mess and probably have unbrushed teeth and hair as I went in search of an open liquor store on any morning of the week, but it’s so lovely to put a little makeup on, brush my hair and teeth, and put on my most stylish and comfortable loungewear, and go out…anywhere. The grocery store? Oh yeah. The movies? Even better. Something about wearing sweatpants in public tickles me. Always has, ever since my college roommate said when we were hungover one Sunday, “You’re going to wear THAT to the dining hall?” Yes, bitch, I certainly am.

    My intention with this piece is not to convince others to do exactly what I have done, but to inspire your wheels to turn toward what feels good to you. Alternate rebellion can help shake up ennui and distress, otherwise known as life. It feels like a secret even though it’s often the opposite. It’s the individuation so many of us missed out on in our lost adolescences. More than anything, it’s saying yes to yourself, to your inner child, to exactly who you are exactly at this moment. It’s a great act of self-acceptance in a world that wants you to follow their dumb unwritten rules. Guess what, world? I do what I want. 

    A list of tiny alternate rebellions can be found here: https://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/alternate_rebellion.html

    And more information on DBT here: https://behavioraltech.org/resources/faqs/dialectical-behavior-therapy-dbt/

    How do you rebel in recovery? Tell us in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How I Learned to Show Up for Life Without Alcohol

    How I Learned to Show Up for Life Without Alcohol

    Sobriety means—or will come to mean—different things for different people. But I can attest to one thing: The path is beautiful, and the difficulties you may encounter along the way are worth it.

    You would think that being smart enough to get into an elite university would mean I’d be “smart enough” about recognizing the signs of my disease. It took me a nearly fifteen-year drinking career, a six-year engagement, at least five psychiatric hospital visits, and maybe fifty face-to-face run-ins with actual, imminent death before I knew something had to change. 

    Forced to Change

    This time, the change would have nothing to do with my intellectual rigor, the dynamic quality of my ideas, or really anything in terms of my personal pursuits. Neither was this about a spiritual makeover of sorts, or a renewed commitment to my health. I was forced to change or face the end. I hadn’t even turned 30 yet.

    My engagement—a union with an emotionally absent partner, the result of my desperate need to not be alone with my demons—was becoming more and more codependent, unhealthy, and financially dominating, and less and less loving, protecting, viable. Still, we smiled in all of our pics. 

    The hardest thing to admit was that I could no longer pursue “the life of the mind” when my own mind was lost—null—from an almost continuous state of being under the influence.

    The process of recovery has not been easy, even three years down this road. While I have since become comfortable not drinking, and with telling people that I don’t drink, it wasn’t always that way. There were times I felt not only uncomfortable but sad, and at times jealous or angry, wishing I could have a drink. There were times of full-body anxiety that made the sober life seem like another kind of death sentence. 

    But I am fiercer now. I defend my right to be well. 

    Recovery as Self-Love and Self-Preservation

    When Audre Lorde said that self-love is an act of political warfare, I think part of what she meant is that if I care about myself, then I have to defend my sole, autonomous house—my body. I take Lorde’s words to heart when I think about my own recovery—that I indeed have had to become defensive about my health. Being in active recovery is a lifelong process of sticking up for yourself—your best self and your worst self. It is also a way of being that demands you treat your body as a temple, rather than an outhouse. 

    Now that I haven’t touched a drink in three years, not only have the clouds lifted, but I know what to do when life gives me rain. 

    Today, I have to be diligent about my health and about the truth of my alcoholism. It is a disease with branches in the family tree(s). It is also a disease that can go from dormant to full-fledged before you’ve had time to give it a name.

    The myth of drinking as self-care (at least for some of us) was apparent in the ways I had been taught to “decompress” from the stressors of graduate studies, a place made all the more difficult to navigate as a black, mixed-race woman (who has struggled with anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and of course drinking—my favorite form of self-love and self-abuse). 

    The truth is that I loved drinking enough to have developed a habit of it. At the time, I loved what drinking did for me (despite the pain of what it was doing to me). It brought me a social life, it furnished me with (false) self-confidence. 

    It also stole time from me. So many years spent in various states of relative alarm—how to get my drinks for the day and morning after, if I had enough money (somehow I always did), would I be able to last through that 12-step meeting without a drink?

    Clearly, I wasn’t ready to heal yet. 

    I can’t tell you when I became ready, or precisely what day it was; I had been on and off the wagon so many times that I’d stopped believing in myself. 

    What I did want to believe in was the line of thinking that told me I could control my disease and drink like normal people. If I could control it, maybe I would be “cured.”

    Seizures, Psych Wards, and Liver Failure

    My thinking changed when I had my first withdrawal-induced seizure. 

    Or was it after my second major stint in a psych ward? When did I become ready to change? Was it when I resorted to hiding liquor in shampoo bottles? Oh, I know—it must have been when my eyes started to turn yellow (though I remember still drinking—at that point, having to drink—in the face of these obvious symptoms of liver failure).

    Eventually, the dreadful condition of being caught in the throes of all kinds of dependency caught up to me, as they do for the luckier alcoholics among us. 

    When you’re in the midst of active addiction, it’s the drug that keeps you “alive” and “well.” But when you’re in recovery, you see the drug for what it is—the thing that is killing you and keeping you unwell. To complicate matters, your drug was your best friend—the friend who was there when you were stressed, sad, or having suicidal thoughts… never mind that it was the same friend who implanted these thoughts in your mind to begin with. 

    Not everyone thinks of alcohol abuse as an illness or disease, and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is the promotion of cute slogans like “wine not?”—in a world where more women are abusing alcohol than ever before. 

    Getting sober from alcohol coincided with my decision to withdraw from my studies abroad. Becoming dependent on alcohol had largely destroyed my independent spirit—the same one that had guided me to want to study abroad in the first place. 

    For years I had chosen alcohol as my drug of choice—what I “used” when things were going well, not well, and also when I was well, or unwell. My kind of drinking was pure self-destruction—mind you, I had continued to tell myself it was a feasible form of self-care. Plus, I deserved it. At the end of the day, if you worked hard, you deserved some kind of reward, didn’t you? That’s why they invented martinis, wasn’t it?

    I’ll spare you the details of my last hospital stint, but it was arduous, and at times left me hopeless, wanting to burn the wagon if possible. Now I had to learn to live and cope with life without that substance, and accept that in the end, the drug chose me.

    I Made It Out Alive… And I’m Thriving

    Fast forward three years, and what I really want to talk about is all the amazing things that can happen when you’re not drinking—being willing and able to forge authentic relationships with people, for example, and learning what it means to heal emotions through the body. Oh, and meeting people, whether romantically or as friends, does get weird, though in some ways more exciting. 

    The list is long, and I am learning new things about myself, but I think it imperative we put a new spin on recovery rhetoric—not all of it is a struggle, there is so much to take delight in. There are things that will pleasantly surprise you (like getting a real good night’s sleep). 

    I eventually accepted that my kind of sobriety from alcohol would have to be a total one.

    Because the severity of alcoholism lies on a spectrum, there are people who can drink alcohol and not become addicted (must be aliens), there are folks (total weirdos) who can just stick to one drink. But I know after many years of trying and lying to myself, that I am not one of them… and never will be. 

    Likewise, there are many ways to get sober and no one right path. Sobriety means—or will come to mean—different things for different people. But I can attest to one thing: The path is beautiful, and the difficulties you may encounter along the way are worth it.

    This summer I am celebrating three years (okurrrrrrr?!) of sobriety from alcohol. I do not define myself any longer by my disease. Of course, I work to ensure I never lose sight of the fact that my disease isn’t ever “going away,” but recovery sure beats bodily warfare, chronic sickness, and a fear of the future. 

    Today, I identify as an artist, a writer; and more specifically as a Catholic witch, poet, and intuitive. If you told me during my drinking years that I would one day not only make it out alive but drink-free for over 1,000 days, I’d say you were lying. But here I am, not just surviving but thriving. I have my sad days, but I let them be what they are. It’s good to cry sometimes. It’s good to feel your feelings. Now, I have an array of tools and ways for navigating those feelings, especially when I think of the darknesses of my past. But mostly, and most importantly, I feel excited for the future. Now, I show up to life. And as long as I can show up to life (and for life), my intuition tells me it is bound to be an amazing ride.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Taking Care of Your Mental Health in Sobriety

    Taking Care of Your Mental Health in Sobriety

    Pre-sobriety, alcohol and drugs often serve as coping mechanisms. When you quit, you’ll need different kinds of mental and emotional support. Make sure you have tools and solutions in place.

    PSA: there’s some text missing from the headlines popping up lately that show quitting drinking improves women’s mental health. 

    Essentially, the findings of the Canadian Medical Association Journal are that not drinking at all is actually better for your health than drinking when you’re stressed, no matter how much you want to lean into the whole a-glass-of-red-wine-a-day-is-good-for-you thing.

    But it’s not that simple. There’s no foolproof formula like: “If I stop drinking, then my mental health will improve” (as nice as that would be).

    For many of us, there’s legwork necessary for improving our mental health when we stop drinking and using drugs, in addition to simply stopping. When you stop drinking for an extended period of time (for some of us that may mean 24 hours, others, 4 weeks or 3 months), you may realize that you have symptoms of alcoholism or drug addiction, and the work you need to do to live a healthier life without substances will be outlined for you at a rehab facility, in a 12-step program, or via another form of recovery. 

    Or you may realize you are more of a problem drinker, who feels uncomfortable without a drink at meals, social gatherings, or after a long day, but you want to give it up for lifestyle or health reasons. You also likely have work to do for your mental health. 

    Why? Well, it was making you happy. It relaxed you. It calmed your anxiety. It signified fun, the loss of some inhibition, made things just a bit warmer and brighter and easier. It was a reward, it was something to do, and it was a way to cope with stress; not just day-to-day stress, but the stress of memories and past events that you carry around without even knowing and need to let go of. 

    If you respond internally with “Oh, darn, oh well” to the idea of a lifetime without Rosé all day, this may not pertain to you. But no matter why you drink or how often, alcohol is doing something for you. If you give it up, you may need to find another way of getting that need met. We all have (or had) our reasons, whether we’re aware of them or not, for drinking. And if it’s not just something we can just choose to leave in the interest of a more mindful yogi life or healthier gut, then it’s something we probably need to look at. 

    I spent a few years in my late teens and early twenties trying to stop drinking on my own. I was already in very strong recovery from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—but I had no idea what I was in for when I took alcohol and weed out of the equation. If I wasn’t already in therapy, forget it—I don’t think I could have done it. 

    But what helped me the most back then were the steps, the social supports, reaching out for help, having places to go and people to see where alcohol was not present, and the continued ability to work on myself—and some other issues I didn’t know I had until I’d stopped drowning them in “social” drinks. 

    In your first few months to a year of stopping drinking, you’re going to need more than just a positive attitude to stay mentally healthy—especially because life will come slap it right out of you one day without warning, as life tends to do. 

    Here’s how you can make sure you’re prepared for anything. 

    Professional Help

    While not all therapists are amazing, the right therapist can pretty much be a hero in your life—someone who listens to you, makes you feel heard, and makes themselves available to you via text and email when you’re in crisis. These therapists guide you, challenge you, and help you grow. 

    A good therapist will see issues that drinking masked. 

    My roster included PTSD, Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), and I fit the bill for a few symptoms of other overlapping issues. Specific therapy, targeted therapy, is crucial for a strong recovery. For me, that meant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), but a therapist who specializes in addiction can also be a valuable asset. 

    We have to learn new ways of being in the world from people who understand what we’re going through and who can be objective, reliable, and helpful supports, and while seeking comfort and wisdom from our friends and family is invaluable, nothing can take the place of professional help. 

    Social Support and Community

    It’s important to lean not just on the friends you have already, but please, find a meet up, a meeting, even a local non-drinkers’ gathering where you can slowly start to form a group of contacts you can call, text, or hang out with who know how to deal with some of the issues you may experience.

    At a 12-step meeting, you can word-vom literally everything going on to a stranger, but it’s a good idea to take more care and go slower when establishing lighthearted dishing with other folks who don’t drink but who don’t identify as “addicts or alcoholics.” 

    As for your “drinking” and “using” and “partying” friends—just start to bring some awareness into the picture when you’re around them. Do they still want to hang out and do something if you’re not drinking, or going to a club or a bar? When we change, the people in our lives either change with us, or we realize we’re heading in a different direction. 

    Self-Care

    Self-care has become such a buzzword that we kind of just make it fit anywhere:

    Bath time! Self-care.

    Massage! Self-care. 

    Five gluten-free, vegan cupcakes! Self-care.

    All of these things (except maybe keep an eye on the cupcake count because sugar) qualify, and they’re wonderful. Start to figure out what makes you feel good—as you’re doing it, and not just as a means to an end. 

    Note: if you hate massages, that is not self-care. 

    But if you like to read, setting aside time from your busy schedule to spend a couple hours with a good book is a great example of self-care.

    Saying no to events you don’t want to go to when you’re exhausted—unless it’s for a good friend, or you might lose your job if you refuse—is self-care. 

    Meditation: This is terrifying at first, but it’s really not so bad if you ease into it, like sticking your toe in the temperature-regulated hotel pool. You can start with two minutes a day, and you can use an app to help you along, offering everything from vocal guidance to a gentle gong to signify the end of a timed silent session. As far as guided meditations go, they’re now specific to everything from commuting to being sick and there’s even one that addresses nervousness about meditating. And there are devices available to help, like a headband that can track your level of calm and bring your awareness back to your breath with nature sounds.

    Exercise and diet: You’ve got to keep moving. You may already be in shape, or you may be “out of shape,” but in addition to giving yourself permission to replace the sugar in alcohol with the sugar in doughnuts, it’s time to start treating your body better, since there is such a strong connection between your microbiome (gut), your brain (the prefrontal cortex reacts to processed sugar the same way it reacts to opioids—by triggering dopamine) and your overall feeling of being healthy, especially mentally healthy. You don’t need to become someone who runs a 5K or hits the gym every day and pretends to like it. But keeping your body in motion and eating healthier will yield many benefits, some immediate and some that you’ll see over time, including better sleep, improved mood, stress relief, and more. 

    Upgrade Your PPTs (people, places, things) 

    New life, new people, new things, new places, new activities. It doesn’t make sense to keep hanging out at bars anymore, and there’s a difference between showing up to a bridal shower where other women may be drinking and heading to your old haunt where the only thing to do is drink, especially after a stressful day.

    Start to discover the world around you. Try taking some classes, visit new neighborhoods and cultural institutions. See if you can pick up new hobbies or dig deeper into old ones. Use social media and the Internet to track down other people doing the same.

    It can be hard, as an adult, to make new friends, but it’s not impossible. Go somewhere people chat. A dog run or park (if you have a dog or even if you’re just “considering” getting one and gathering information), a meet up for people who love anime, a writer’s collective. Join Facebook groups or browse Meetup and see what’s out there! Taking a class by yourself is also a great way to double down: not only will you learn something new, but you’ll find others who share your interest, maybe even someone else who was also badass enough to show up solo. 

    Logistical Stability

    It’s important to have a healthy eat, sleep, work, play routine, and if you don’t have one, it’s time to make one. 

    You may already have a job that you need to turn your attention to even more deeply, and you may have a passion project you want to add into the mix. Most importantly, you should get involved with volunteer work—you don’t have to serve food at a soup kitchen; maybe you can offer your writing skills to a nonprofit, or if you know graphic design you can help them build their new website. 

    If you don’t have a steady job, look for one—a sober job is often referred to as one that isn’t our dream career, but is a place that we have to show up to regularly, keeps us accountable, provides an environment to socialize with others, and is a way for us to earn honest money. 

    If your current job makes you so unhappy it contributed to your drinking, maybe look around for something better and if you feel you’re ready, go for that dream job.

    Also, make sure your housing situation is safe and affordable, and conducive to your new way of life (i.e., if you chose your roommates because they party 24/7, it might be time to look for a new place).

    Bottom line: It’s dangerous for people who might be using alcohol or drugs to self-medicate depression or other underlying conditions to give up that medication without other supports, tools, and solutions in place. Your life is going to get bigger and better, and you’re going to get healthier—but as with all good things that don’t create a false feeling of safety and happiness, you have to do a little work to get there.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • 10 Steps to Leaving Your Joyless Job and Finding Your True Purpose

    10 Steps to Leaving Your Joyless Job and Finding Your True Purpose

    I used to pray for a small enough car accident in which no one got hurt, but my car would need work and I’d get out of the office for a day.

    No Addiction Is Ever as It Seems 

    I’ve heard people say “the problem is never the problem.” No addiction is ever as it seems. In terms of my drug and alcohol addictions, the problem was an inability to cope with the realities of life: The smell of springtime, the first fireflies of summer, all of Earth’s elements struck me with the desire to drink and use. If avoiding “people, places, and things” was going to work for me, I’d have had to relocate to a new, less intense planet.

    Instead of avoiding life, I had to learn new skills to deal with it. I had to have new thoughts. I had to create new neural pathways that made my hand reach for my phone instead of a bottle. I learned to share openly and honestly about the way I felt instead of shoving my feelings down. The root of my drug and alcohol addictions was a fear of being open and vulnerable. By facing that fear, my need to drink and use dissipated. The problem was never the substances themselves.

    Through this process, I learned that I had other problems, with their own underlying problems! I learned that I am also a sex and love addict. Orgasms were never the problem. Sleeping with a married man is ethically unsound, but really wasn’t it more on him than on me? He’s the one who’s married! Morally wrong or not, the weight of the disgust I had for my actions brought me to my knees once again, wherein I learned the real problem: intimacy.

    After working on my intimacy issues, I uncovered another problem:

    I was staying in a job that I hated, and it was making me miserable both in and out of the workplace.

    When Your Job Negatively Affects Your Health

    Most of us have seen Office Space. The truth in life is that most people have to work, except for a few kids with trust funds who never seem all the better for it. But what happens when our work is affecting us negatively? How do we confront this beast while keeping a roof over our heads?

    Working itself is obviously not the problem. Working provides us with money for our homes, our families, our needs and hopefully some wants. Having a strong work ethic is a good thing. The name of the game at this level of recovery is self-worth, and not even so much in terms of money. Money comes and money goes, but how you value yourself, your time, your health, your emotions, and your priorities should remain constant.

    Pay close attention to the way you feel when you wake up in the morning on a workday. Are you looking forward to it? I used to pray for a small enough car accident in which no one got hurt, but my car would need work and I’d get out of the office for a day. It’s so obvious to me now that that was another subtle form of insanity. I thought everyone felt that way. I thought the daily grind was supposed to make you miserable, because if it wasn’t miserable, how would you be able to commiserate with people, and if you couldn’t commiserate with people, what would you even talk about?

    I had no idea that personal development, self-care, growth, fulfillment, and joy could be a part of a career path, or anything my friends would want to talk about. I realize now that constant complaints about hating work are boring, and banter about projects that light us up are a welcomed breath of fresh air.

    If you are stuck in the wrong job, your inner dialogue probably sounds something like the following:

    “I need this job. I’m not really good at anything. I’ve been here a while. I’m not qualified to do anything. I hate my boss, but where else am I going to go? Ugh, today sucks. I’m so over today. I bleeping hate this place.”

    How to Change Your Life

    If you want to make a change, you can, but it will require work, introspection, courage, faith, and, initially, some pain. The following steps got me out of a job I hated and onto a career path meant for me:

    1. Meditate every morning. Listen to your inner monologue from the witness seat. Hear the sounds around you and feel your full feelings as they bubble up in your body.
    1. Set an intention to check back into this quiet part of you three times during the workday. Set alarms on your phone to do it. Ask yourself, “Do I feel healthy? Does my body need anything? Am I happy?”
    1. Write a letter to your boss. Don’t give it to them, but write it. Write all the things you’ve never said but always wanted to, and read it every night for one week.
    1. Decide how you want to feel. For example, I wanted to feel respected, confident, creatively free, relaxed, and motivated. Decide how you want to feel and assess if your needs are met in your current workplace. (For help figuring out how you want to feel, I recommend The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte)
    1. Journal. After you’ve gotten used to morning meditation, add journaling afterward as part of your morning ritual.
    1. Set a date—one that intuitively speaks to you, and on that day, write down what you really want. No limits, no judgment, no fear. Maybe you want to be able to work from home and raise a family. Maybe you want to be able to travel the world while you work. Maybe you want better health benefits and more beneficial perks. Whatever it is, get it down on paper.
    1. Let go. Affirm that the Universe has heard you, that it is an active forcefield of energy and working on your behalf. Create a ritual to do this. If you pray, say it in prayer. Write it down and burn it. Write it down and stick it under your pillow. Speak it out loud to an understanding friend. Whatever resonates with you, do it.
    1. Follow the clues. Signs will appear. You will be inspired to take actions that may seem crazy, weird, or out of your natural rhythm— you should probably take them anyway. I know you’ve heard that the magic happens outside of your comfort zone, and now is the time to get uncomfortable. For support in taking scary leaps of faith, I recommend reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson.
    1. Listen to “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton. Sing it in your car at the top of your lungs. Actually, forget that—sing it at karaoke. This one’s not just for fun—singing and dancing release your heart vibes into the world and create feel-good chemicals in your brain. Plus, at karaoke, you’ll be uncomfortable, confirming your commitment to 8. Go. Sing.
    1. Continue following the clues and report back. Keep us posted. This process may take days, weeks, months, or years, but set it in motion now and see where you’re at in one year, five years, and ten years. Remember—the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How to Manage Depression: 6 Simple Reminders

    How to Manage Depression: 6 Simple Reminders

    Treat yourself with gentleness and forgiveness. With every negative thought about yourself, throw in a dose of self-love. Self-compassion can reduce the severity of depression and anxiety.

    Depression is not easy.

    If depression is new to you, or coming back after a long absence, you need to give yourself time and patience to adjust to new ways of being. I’ve had depression most of my life, but I am learning to live differently than I once expected myself to. Even though it may feel strange and uncomfortable, try to be kind to yourself and give yourself space to take things slowly.

    1. Dealing with Fatigue

    I can see it begin to creep up on me. Depression, self-consciousness, low self-esteem, loneliness, tiptoeing towards me. I’m cornered and I don’t see an exit plan. At the moment, I’m still using fancy footwork to confuse and tire out those demons. Behind me, on the other side of the wall, is joy. I want to turn to that entirely, but a wall separates us. It’s exhausting.

    A feeling of deep tiring sorrow is just one possible symptom you may experience with depression. For me, fatigue is a debilitating part of my daily life. It’s constant and powerful. Even when everything else is good on a particular day and my symptoms are minimal and I feel joyful, I will still be tired. My heavy fatigue makes everything more difficult to do.

    Part of practicing self-care is that I don’t fight the fatigue; I accept it and adapt. Instead of trying to force myself to do what my body cannot, I adjust my tasks and expectations of myself to better suit my abilities.

    2. Occupy Your Time

    And now I’m stuck here, me and depression. I can’t look directly at it. But it senses my weakness and fear. My defenses are down. I want to go on the attack and Charlie’s Angels my way out of here. But fear keeps that thought bubbling just below the surface, it remains ideation and not action. I turn every which way, eyes darting here and there. Nothing stays in focus longer than a few seconds.

    To deal with the short attention span, I find it helpful to occupy myself with a variety of distractions. Find things to do that can take up your time, whether that’s sleeping a bit more or watching television or playing a game on your phone. Maybe pick up a book, or work on something with your hands. Music can be very soothing. There are times when I’m experiencing sensory overload and have to stop completely, but usually even then if it has the right tempo and volume and no words, music can help.

    3. Breathe

    Depression is growing bigger, having eaten Alice’s fantasies. It’s the demon in Spirited Away, gluttonous for pain. Now my head hurts and I can’t remember what I did in the past to get out of this corner. I sink to the floor, close my eyes and take several deliberate breaths. In and out, focusing only on that breath. When I open my eyes, I can see a sinister troll cackling behind Depression.

    Depression’s troll tells me that I don’t know who the girl smiling in my photos is. That the joyful image I sometimes portray isn’t me. Depression tells me, “You don’t know where that joy is, what a facade. What a phony getup.”

    When the anxiety that often accompanies depression rushes in, what helps me (even when it helps only a little) is to take a few seconds to just remember how to breathe. In and out, deep and slow. If I can close my eyes for those few seconds, even better; thinking just about the breath. Sometimes it helps a lot, sometimes it provides only those few seconds of relief; either way, it presses pause on everything else and lets my body relax for a moment.

    4. Accept Yourself

    When I get closer, not to examine but because I am no longer running away from it, I can see my depression for what it really is. It looks ridiculous, rubbing its hands together like a cartoon villain. I push myself up off the ground and walk up to Depression. I want to make it cower in terror, but when I stand up it shrinks down and the costume falls to the floor in a heap. I can see the air pump in the back that was blowing it up to such a size. Then I notice the heart of the facade is not a demon or a monster. It’s a sad little girl who looks just like me, maybe she is me. Her armor has been taken away and she is vulnerable. She looks at me with fear.

    I swear one of the most common inspirational phrases in a Pinterest black hole is “Let it go.” When it comes to depression, I don’t know if letting go is as useful of a strategy as acceptance. They’re distinct routes to finding contentment. Moving on from a painful feeling or experience requires the ability to process memories and have healthy emotional control. Letting go implies that you can “get over it” and move forward. Someone who has depression cannot just “let it go.” Depression is a diagnosable medical condition. It affects many more aspects of life than just emotional. Some symptoms can severely impact quality of life.

    Acceptance, on the other hand, is a powerful tool that people with depression can actually use. My negative feelings are recognized and the sad thoughts that come in are not to be trusted as the whole truth, they’re just there because I have this condition. Acceptance takes away some of depression’s power. Resisting depression is exhausting and doesn’t make it disappear. But practicing acceptance changes the lens through which we see our depression, making it more manageable.

    5. Practice Self-Compassion

    Should I destroy her, now that I’ve emerged the victor? No, I won’t do that. She needs love. I don’t embrace her in a hug, not yet, but I do walk up to her and bend down to her height. I want to tell her something, but no words come, so I just give her a small kind smile. We will get to know each other. She will see that everything will be okay, and I will see pain at its correct size, not in its monstrous manifestations.

    Be compassionate with yourself. Without self-compassion we can spiral so quickly and we only prolong our own suffering. Self-compassion is a continual process that can be started over at any moment. It simply means being nice to yourself. Treat yourself with gentleness and forgiveness. With every negative thought about yourself, throw in a dose of self-love (even when you don’t believe it). Dis-identify from your thoughts.

    Self-compassion can reduce the severity of anxiety disorders, depression, and improve success rates of sobriety. Researchers have found that self-compassion lowers how harshly we judge and criticize ourselves. Mindfulness inspired the notion that self-compassion may be an effective therapeutic tool and self-compassion is like a stepping stone for practicing mindfulness. This is critical for people who blame themselves for their own suffering, since a lack of self-compassion perpetuates an unhealthy cycle of self-hate and aversion to treatment (i.e.; why get treatment when you don’t think you deserve it?).

    6. Love Yourself and Your Depression

    This isn’t some emo quote on MySpace, it’s a simple piece of advice that can bring around positive results. Loving your depression doesn’t mean you love feeling this way, but it means you accept your current reality and are willing to feel it. Feel what you feel. Accept what you feel. Love yourself and your feelings. I know firsthand the changes that can come when you stop fighting yourself and start loving yourself, in all your manifestations.

    Please share your tips for dealing with depression in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Stopping Psych Meds as a Form of Self-Sabotage

    Stopping Psych Meds as a Form of Self-Sabotage

    It’s impossible to explain to someone who’s never had suicidal thoughts what it feels like to be in a space where the only option you think you have to end your suffering is death.

    “See…it’s not that bad.” My friend was responding to a text with an image of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. It was the first road trip my husband and I took after moving to Houston. My friend was right, the Alamo wasn’t bad; but having to move back to the States after living in the UK for three years sucked. In all fairness, we were given a choice, and I was the one who pushed for Houston over New York. I wasn’t ready to return to the crowds and chaos of Manhattan, and due to the nature of my husband’s work, Houston made logistical sense.

    “We’ll only be there for a year,” my husband assured me on our last night in London. “It’ll go by so fast.” I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t ready to.

    Taking a “Break” from Psychiatric Medication

    There’s much planning and reflecting involved in making a big move and my biggest concern was managing my anxiety and depression medication. Not only did I need to make sure I had enough to last me a few months once I got back to the States, but I also needed to sort out insurance and find a new doctor.

    But I kept avoiding these tasks.

    Once we were settled in Houston, every time I thought about the process of meeting a new doctor and running down the lengthy list of addicts and alcoholics in my family, describing my abusive childhood and my almost successful suicide attempt while remembering all of the medications I’d tried in vain, my brain flatlined. What I needed to do to ensure my mental health suddenly felt impossible. Instead of asking for help, which felt like a herculean task, I assuaged my anxiety by deciding to let my prescriptions run out. Besides, after five years on medication, my body could use a break, and despite clear evidence to the contrary, I felt stable enough to handle any anxiety or depression that could pop up in the future. However, at the time I neglected to give any credit to the role my medication played in supporting my relative calm and stability.

    As the months passed in Houston, I started to notice subtle dips in my mood, but each time I’d dismiss it as being part of my monthly PMS package or something that could easily be fixed with a long walk or a quick afternoon nap. But about six months in, I found it exhausting to even think about putting on my sneakers. My occasional mood swings turned into full on sobbing sessions and instead of experiencing PMS one or two weeks every month, it slowly became four and then five until I lost track of when my last cycle ended and the new one began.

    Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidal Ideation

    My deepening depression wasn’t the only issue. One sunny Saturday afternoon, my husband and I took a road trip to Austin. As I was driving us home, I became increasingly anxious. The roads were dark, I couldn’t see beyond the headlights, and my mind began to spin. Mid-panic attack, my husband convinced me to pull over so he could take the wheel. I was so angry at myself for not being able to handle something as simple and routine as driving.

    The more I struggled, the more I believed there was just something wrong with me and as a result, my medication or lack thereof never came to mind. I’d spiraled so quickly down a black hole that it didn’t even occur to me to ask for help, although it was becoming undeniably clear that I desperately needed it.

    It’s impossible to explain to someone who’s never had suicidal thoughts what it feels like to be in a space where the only option you think you have to end your suffering is death. There’s no way to put into words the void that enters your mind when you no longer feel the pain, but it continues to seep into every second of your life. And there’s no making sense of the relief you quietly experience when death, something you may have once feared, suddenly becomes your very own golden ticket. Sadly, during the year I lived in Houston, off medication, I reached this low.

    Finally, my husband sat me down and gently asked if I’d stopped taking my meds. At that moment I surrendered. In a freak moment of clarity, I knew what I had to do – I needed to find a doctor. We were getting ready to move back to New York in a few weeks, but before I left Houston, I got on the phone and scheduled an appointment.

    Why Did I Stop Taking My Meds?

    At our first meeting, I jumped through all of the usual hoops, getting my new doctor up to speed on my background and mental health history. I dove into the details about my alcoholic mother and father, the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse I sustained as a kid and was completely honest about the suicidal thoughts that had been roaring inside my head. And of course, I told her I’d stopped taking my medication.

    “When did you decide to stop taking your meds?” the doctor asked.

    I answered hesitantly, “um…about a year ago.” I was embarrassed by the choice I’d made, and I kept my fingers crossed that she wouldn’t ask me why.

    “Why?” she asked.

    “Honestly I don’t really know,” I told her. “I had insurance…I had everything I needed to find a doctor here in the States. I just didn’t do it.”

    “So, when you needed your medication the most, you stopped taking it?” she gently asked.

    “I don’t understand.”

    “You sabotaged yourself, Dawn,” she explained, leaning back in her chair. “As I understand it, living in Houston was rough for you, and you stopped using the one tool you had to help yourself get through it,” she said. “It’s self-sabotage.”

    Self-Care

    I’ve been back on my meds for two years now, and while I still occasionally get snagged with depression or get overly anxious about a work deadline, for the most part my life has become manageable again. I added therapy back into my mental health regimen about a year ago, and that too has helped tremendously.

    Now, without hesitation, I give my meds the credit they deserve. As it turns out, they’ve done more than balance out the chemicals swirling around in my head; in their absence I eventually discovered one of the many tricks I use to get in my own way, especially when I appear to be making progress. Today, taking medication isn’t something I have to do, it’s something I choose to do because I know it’s right for me. Instead of self-sabotage, I choose self-care, health, and stability.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How To Love Yourself the Way You Love Your Addicted Child

    How To Love Yourself the Way You Love Your Addicted Child

    Our mission in life became to fix our son, get his life on track, keep him safe, and stop the madness. We became addicted to fixing our addict. In the meantime, my life was circling the proverbial drain and it was all my son’s fault… or was it?

    Stories are the cornerstone of living and loving—from oral traditions to New York Times best sellers, tales written by others and those we make up inside our minds. They help us make sense of our existence like nothing else can. Good stories tether us to life and help us transcend into new ways of being.

    There is a story rattling around in my head—a story for myself and perhaps for you. It whispers to me with prompts and questions like: What would I say to you? But then I wonder who you even are. Are you my beloved or a friend I’ve yet to meet? Someone I embrace or a ghost from whom I run? Would we pass each other on the street without a second glance or might we sit and chat over coffee for hours on end? What would I tell you if we were one and the same? No separation, no delineation. Not the stranger or the ally. Not the sober one or the drunk, but rather you, me, we. What would I tell us?

    We’re All Addicted to Something

    Those of us who’ve lived with people who have addictions—oh wait … who am I kidding? We’re all addicted to something. No one is immune. We each have the places we run when we’re feeling vulnerable, scared, or confused. We create our lives so we have our fix of choice within reach at all times. When life feels excessive or news in the broader world is crazed, we grasp at something to ease our rage, sooth our aloneness, and calm the overwhelm. We eat, we shop, we drink, we gamble or easier yet, we try to fix someone else.

    We point a finger away from ourselves and toward them. They are the one with the problem. If only he or she would stop drinking, agree with “the right” viewpoint, pay more attention to me then surely I’d feel better.

    I can’t begin to tell you the number of hours and ways I’ve spent over the last 30 years trying to improve my husband. Lucky guy, the pressure eased for him when our 13-year-old son turned to drugs and alcohol. Together, our mission in life became to fix our son, get his life on track, keep him safe, and stop the madness. We became addicted to fixing our addict.

    We tried inpatient and outpatient treatment, therapeutic boarding school, and a wilderness program. We were all in except, of course, our son, who did his best to skirt the therapy sessions, game the system, and do the bare minimum to figure out how he could get out of our fix and carry on with his agenda. In the meantime, my life was circling the proverbial drain and it was all my son’s fault… or was it?

    Hitting Rock Bottom as a Parent

    They say that true addicts must hit rock bottom before they’ll change, but what’s the rule of thumb for concerned family members? Do we have to hit rock bottom too? It doesn’t really seem fair.

    I recently met a woman who was ensnared in her 40-something-year-old daughter’s cycle. (My son is almost 30 now.) I watched this woman wring her hands and spend precious time trying to figure out how to wire money to her daughter on the other side of the world. I wondered about the difference I felt between us until I realized that that mother hasn’t hit her bottom. Some people never do. They value their child’s life more than their own. That’s what society has told us we should do. Sacrifice for others. Family first. Give to the death.

    When I hit my bottom, I began to wonder if there was another way. What if sacrificing for my son wasn’t the solution? Please don’t get me wrong, I adore my son. In fact, he has been my greatest teacher and I am deeply indebted to his role in my personal journey. I would indeed give my life for him, but I was giving him my living. I was disintegrating into my own form of insanity and it was helping no one. Not him, not my husband, not me. We were each in our own way following addiction into the darkness.

    What if love others as you love yourself looked different than I’d been taught? What if that’s exactly what I was doing? Loving him as I loved myself which turned out to be not very well at the time.

    How to Love Yourself

    I don’t recall if it was the third or fifth or nth incident with the police or treatment when I realized I had a choice. I could go into that dark hole of despair and stay there, or I could find a way to bring myself back into the light. If I could continue to love my son without joining him in the madness, then maybe I could shine a beacon for him when or if he chose to return to a healthier way of living. So in service of myself and family, I chose to light my own candle while continuing to literally light candles and offer prayers of love for all of us.

    I began to develop a journaling practice. I poured my thoughts, fears, worries, and internal and external stories onto the page every day. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I exhausted the dialogue, covered all of the what ifs, and landed at a moment of rest. Then I got up and did it again and again and again. As my practice deepened, so did my sense of peace and ability to be present to others and the world around me. I started to heal. I learned how to draw appropriate boundaries and managed to send love and light to my son even when we were estranged for months at a time. I developed empathy and compassion, regardless of whether I understood or condoned my son’s choices. And somewhere along the way, the chaos quieted. Our legacy gave way to the promise of a brighter ending.

    I remembered that authentic stories untangle us from lies, tether us to truth, and help us transcend into new ways of being.

    May it be so for you and yours.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Can A Facebook Break Help Mental Health?

    Can A Facebook Break Help Mental Health?

    A new study examined whether deactivating Facebook could have a positive effect on mental health.

    The connection between social media and mental health is nothing new, as more research implies that regular use of platforms such as Facebook can take a negative toll on users. 

    In fact, a new “Gold Standard” study from Stanford University and New York University researchers indicates that deactivating Facebook can have positive effects on one’s mental health. 

    According to Fast Company, researchers in the study sought out 2,844 Facebook users via Facebook ads. They asked the users to take part in an in-depth questionnaire about “overall well-being, political views, and daily routine.”

    Of those, half were randomly chosen to be paid in order to deactivate their Facebook accounts for a full month. The accounts were monitored to make sure they remained deactivated. Over the four weeks, researchers studied the moods of the participants. 

    “Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular on self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety,” researchers wrote. “Effects on subjective well-being as measured by responses to brief daily text messages are positive but not significant.”

    Despite the increase in well-being, researchers made sure to note that Facebook is beneficial for users in some cases. 

    “Our participants’ answers in free response questions and follow-up interviews make clear the diverse ways in which Facebook can improve people’s lives, whether as a source of entertainment, a means to organize a charity or an activist group, or a vital social lifeline for those who are otherwise isolated,” they wrote. “Any discussion of social media’s downsides should not obscure the basic fact that it fulfills deep and widespread needs.”

    In conclusion, researchers noted that by not using Facebook, overall online activity was reduced and replaced by real-life activities such as spending time with friends and family and watching Netflix. They also added that participants who deactivated their accounts were found to have “lower levels of political polarization and news knowledge, and an increase in subjective well-being.”

    “We find that while deactivation makes people less informed, it also makes them less polarized by at least some measures, consistent with the concern that social media have played some role in the recent rise of polarization in the U.S.,” researchers wrote. 

    Additionally, researchers found that participants who had deactivated their accounts continued to spend less time on Facebook even in the weeks after the study had ended. 

    “The trajectory of views on social media—with early optimism about great benefits giving way to alarm about possible harms—is a familiar one,” researchers concluded. “Innovations from novels to TV to nuclear energy have had similar trajectories. Along with the excellent existing work by other researchers, we hope that our analysis can help move the discussion from simplistic caricatures to hard evidence, and to provide a sober assessment of the way a new technology affects both individual people and larger social institutions.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Post-Kavanaugh, Women’s Self-Care Needs to Lose the Alcohol

    Post-Kavanaugh, Women’s Self-Care Needs to Lose the Alcohol

    Alcohol, when construed as the first or best line of self-care, actually renders us less effective in resisting an exploitive system that makes legal space for our bodies to be legislated, controlled, and raped.

    “Should we get some wine?” I asked him, pushing a bit of sweet potato around on my plate. I felt my cheeks flush and a weird half smile launch across my lips, the way it always does when I feel embarrassed or awkward or sad or anything really. Whenever I’m feeling anything too much. My partner looked startled.

    “What? Why?” he set his own fork and knife down, leaned back in his chair. “I mean, an IPA sounds really good right now. But I guess, just, what’s the motivation behind it?”

    It had been 62 days since either of us had had anything to drink, thanks to a self-imposed sobriety challenge after I’d watched my already heavy alcohol consumption creep up and up and eventually become overwhelming in the years since Trump’s election, post-Access Hollywood tape, post-everything. Two months was a long time, I reasoned now. A quality effort. And in all likelihood, an accused sexual predator would sit on the Supreme Court when we woke up the next morning. If there was ever a good reason to nurse a nice bottle of beer to ease some of the anxiety, fear, anger and hopelessness I was feeling, both as a woman and a victim of past sexual abuse, now was it.

    Wasn’t it?

    “I mean, would this be about escaping things?” he continued, gently, pushing, asking the question I had begged him, at the start of our not-drinking, to raise when I inevitably said I wanted back off the wagon. Because the answer was, is, will always be: Of course.

    Of course. I have made a lifestyle out of escaping things, of turning away from what’s hard and ugly and painful. Either that or confronting darkness only when I was a couple of drinks in or after I’d settled beneath the protective blanket of Klonopin or during the rush of false energy following a purge, all the food I’d consumed vomited up and flushed quietly away. In a very real way, I can trace my life as a ping-pong game of silences and rages, each assisted along by some substance or behavior I’ve begun to describe as “not me,” in that they’ve all been designed to take me out myself and, as a result, out of proper caring—for this world, its injustices, its humanness, its pain.

    There’s a lot of rhetoric around the usefulness of women’s rage right now, but what keeps getting left out is how, so often, we (middle-class, white women) use anger to stand in for or erase action. How, so often, anger becomes the justification for harm. And for me—and the rising number of American women turning to alcohol to deal with stress, trauma, and its aftereffects—that often takes the shape of self-sabotage in a bottle to numb out, ease anxiety, filter boredom, help us slip into apathy dressed up as protection and self-care. Let me be clear, and I speak from experience: Drowning your sorrows is the opposite of self-care.

    Wine will not heal your wounds, will not even tend to them, no matter what the patriarchal messaging around alcohol promises you. And I say patriarchal because it’s true: Our American culture of binge-drinking and heavy alcohol consumption is directly and implicitly tied to the capitalist, racist, structural misogyny upon which our country is founded—and through which marginalized groups are subjugated, oppressed, and continually, insistently Othered. We only have to look to history to see the ways in which alcohol was used to keep said groups under the heel of white men in power: White Europeans, for example, notorious for their “extreme drinking” on the frontier, encouraged both alcohol trade and excessive consumption among Native populations, later weaponizing the stereotype of the “drunk Indian” against them. Years later, slave masters on Southern plantations developed strategies to carefully control slaves’ access to alcohol during the week, only to encourage them to drink heavily on Saturday evenings and special holidays. Frederick Douglass later castigated the so-called controlled promotion of drunkenness as a means of keeping black men and women in “a state of perpetual stupidity” that reduced the risks of rebellion. More recently, increased experiences of racism have been explicitly, causally linked to riskier drinking among black women on college campuses. Meanwhile, growing wealth, educational, employment, housing and health disparities between minorities and white Americans have led to a much greater increase in alcohol consumption among those communities between 2002 and 2013, a study published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests (although it’s not much of a stretch to say that increase is significantly greater in our Post-Trump world of racist nationalism, its cruel policies, and resulting demoralization among the people affected the most).

    Alcohol, too, has become the primary coping mechanism for women in America, regardless of race or ethnicity: Overall, female alcohol use disorder in the United States has increased by 83.7 percent, according to that same study. High risk drinking among women, defined as more than seven drinks in a week or three drinks in a day, has increased by 58 percent. We only have to look at mommy or work wine culture to see the ways in which alcohol is used to keep women quiet, dulled, apathetic and convinced they need booze to survive motherhood or employment or both. So perhaps it is no surprise the contemporary rhetoric of white feminism is rife with messages that draw a supposedly intuitive connection from anger to self-care, which is inevitably linked to drinking. We get tired? We pop open a bottle. We get scared? We fill a glass. We get angry? We rage over shots or cocktails or champagne. None of this helps us. In fact, all of this renders us less effective in resisting an exploitive system that makes legal space for our bodies to be legislated, controlled, and raped.

    “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” Audre Lorde famously said in her 1984 call to and critique of the internalized patriarchy of white Western women. Alcohol, when construed as the first or best line of self-care, I’d argue, is one of the master’s tools. We indulge in the drinks that American culture (and American feminism) says we deserve, and we get raped while the men who were drinking alongside us get off and then get nominated to the Supreme Court. It’s a double bind—one that bears calling attention to, however hard it is to look at. We should be able to say that it’s absolutely, undeniably immoral for a man to abuse a woman’s body while she is drunk (or sober or somewhere in between). That rape or abuse is never a woman’s fault because of what she was drinking (or wearing or saying or where she walking or what time of night it was, etc., etc., forever, etc.). And we should also be able to challenge the messages that encourage a woman to relax or to rage or to start a revolution only after she has a glass of wine in her hand. 

    Alcohol is a depressant. It anesthetizes our pain and our power, our minds and our bodies, and we will need all of ourselves to fight what will come in the next weeks, months and years as those same bodies become the battleground upon which men’s petty force and overwhelming self-hatred wage war. Look, I’m barely nine weeks sober. I never hit the rock bottom people describe in AA or alcohol recovery programs. I don’t know if I plan on a lifetime of sobriety or if I’ll have a celebratory beer after I finish grading all of my students’ papers over fall break. What I do know? I spent years using alcohol to avoid the work I knew I should be doing. The healing I knew should be seeking. I know many women who don’t drink, who don’t turn to alcohol to deal with exhaustion and fear and heartbreak. I know many, many more who do. I’m not advocating for prohibition or teetotalism. But I am asking women—white women in particular—to take a hard look at what they mean when they say self-care, and what they’re hoping to accomplish by drinking their way through.

    We certainly don’t need #BeersforBrett, the hashtag that surfaced among white, wealthy men celebrating Kavanaugh’s confirmation Saturday. But we definitely don’t need feminist cocktails, either, as I saw recently championed on a Facebook group for women scholars and rhetoricians. Jessa Crispin has warned white women against misconstruing the philosophy of self-care that Audre Lorde conceived of as way for activist women of color to ease some of the burden of dismantling racism and misogyny while living at the very intersection of such oppression. “Now it’s applied to, I don’t know, getting a blowout,” Crispin writes. “And pedicures. Even if your pedicurist is basically a slave.” Especially if you’ve got a glass of champagne to assist you along in ignoring that reality. So, no. We don’t need rage if we’re going to use it as an excuse to drink, to sink into dispassion.

    We need real action. We need true healing. I didn’t need wine on Friday night, and the community of women I want to support through this troubling time didn’t need me buzzed or drunk or hollowly chill. We need the opposite of that. In our activism and in our downtime, we need a clear-eyed, hangover-free commitment to dismantling absolutely everything that violates us—whether through false comfort or force, apathy or abuse.

    View the original article at thefix.com