Guest Post - Feeling Like a Fraud - By Personally Borderline (@personallyborderline)

I’ve never been bullied. Sure, I’ve encountered people who haven’t particularly liked me but I haven’t experienced my peers having decided at an elementary student conference during recess that they would no longer speak to me unless it was to poke fun at any and everything I did. I wasn’t popular either, but I was cool with 95% the people I was stuck with for six and a half hours a day.

I’ve had my share of childhood trauma and mishaps, but who hasn’t? I have a house as well as access to food, education, and healthcare. I have a family and a group of really supportive friends. I do well for myself, I can hold a job and go to school 85% of the time. Objectively, you could argue that my life is fine. Yet I’m still mentally ill and I feel like a fraud.

My name is Pers and I’ve been diagnosed with major depression, generalized anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. There are times when the symptoms hit me like a ton of bricks and I know that I’m going to have a moody, tiring day walking a tight-rope in order to be productive without acting out on others. Those days are always exhausting and I’m never as productive as I had hoped, but I’m also higher functioning and there are days when my illnesses are more like background noise instead of principle actors. It is on these days that I sometimes question my diagnoses and wonder if my issues stem from me just not trying hard enough.

The two illnesses that I carry with my all the time are the depression and anxiety, I find the BPD to be most manageable when I step back from close relationships and focus my time on education and work as a distraction. When I’m having a BPD episode, it’s deafening and debilitating enough to have me vomiting and facing waves of panic attacks. I experience irrational thoughts about friends and family plotting against me, I’m constantly overanalyzing myself and poking at all of the attributes I possess that could possibly have driven someone else away (spoiler: the answer is always that every attribute that makes up who I am is what drives people away), and I become defensive whenever anyone disagrees with me about anything because that somehow translates into them hating me as a person rather than them disliking my viewpoint. When it’s under control, however, it turns into my most mild illness.

The depression ebbs and flows with its influence. There are days when I feel heavy, like my entire body is a weighted blanket, and I can’t muster up the energy to go to the bathroom or to eat, never mind go to class or finish assignments. When it’s at its worst I’m researching ways to end my life and staring at blank white walls. When it’s at its best, I just feel empty. A persistent feeling of numbness. I’m not in a negative place but I’m not feeling positive either, I’m just neutral. Nothing is particularly exciting, and life is just a procession of an overfamiliar daily routine, but I’m not angry about that as it just is what it is. I’ve learned to live in this state of apathy for years. At first it was a coping mechanism, getting too excited or invested in things causes me to spiral into extreme moods (looking at you BPD), but now I think it’s my default. So much so that I can’t remember what it feels like not to live like this, and I wonder if everyone else feels the same and I’m just being oversensitive.

Finally, I live with anxiety. These symptoms are not only persistent but they are quite noticeable as well. I feel the faint urge to throwing up almost constantly, I never actually do but I’m stuck with this unsettling feeling that it could happen anywhere at anytime. Additionally, I have a pit of acid that lives in my abdomen and remains there, the more stressed I am the more my stomach-area feels like it’s on fire. When the acid is calm, it’s just a pit but a pit with matter. Almost as if my abdomen is filled with stones and they are dragging me away from friends, responsibilities, leisure, or anything worthwhile. Instead it’s replaced with this sense, this fear, that things are going to go wrong and everything is going to fall apart. This abdominal sensation is so heavy that it keeps me from eating, since it causes me to feel full even when I haven’t eaten anything of substance in day or two. Much like the depression, I’ve lived with these feelings for so long that I can’t tell whether this is unique to the illness or if I’m just over exaggerating sensations that everyone feels for years on end.

I don’t only feel like a fraudulent survivor of mental illness. I feel like a fraud in many other places in my life as well. I sit in class and halfway through answering a question or making a comment I get an overwhelming urge to shut up, pack my things, and run out of the lecture. I feel like I hadn’t truly earned my opportunity to achieve a degree and that my professor as well as my peers will see right through me in any second, ripping my arguments and thoughts to shreds before laughing me out of the class. Then I get back an assignment and I’m validated, one good mark might be a fluke but multiple obviously means I was accepted to my program for a reason.

The same thing happens at work. I come in feeling a little spacey since my brain refuses to process any information and would rather have me feel like I’m floating instead (thank you depression and dissociation) or I walk in ready to fight any and every customer because I am right and they are obviously wrong (BPD I see you perched on my shoulder) and I know that literally anyone could do my job better than I ever could. But then there’s a crises or a conflict and I’m a key part in helping to resolve it. I’ve had an opportunity to call the shots and my workplace didn’t spontaneously combust as a result. That is extremely validating, that and the fact that it’s been over a year and I haven’t been fired so, again, I must be doing something right.

Then there’s mental illness, my second shadow following behind me. It causes me to forget things, namely my sense of purpose and will to live, and minimizes the importance of my responsibilities. I have no concrete way of validating that what I have is affecting my life in the way that I think it is. Sure, my diagnoses have been confirmed by a psychiatrist and I am reassured each week during therapy. But how do I know the reason I’ve stayed in bed and missed all of my classes for three consecutive days is not simply laziness but truly because of an irrational fear of leaving my room (anxiety)? Where’s the proof that the spreading numbness that leads me to believe that nothing is worth doing (depression) isn’t me making excuses for not getting started on projects? How do I know that eclipsing a public space and taking extreme measures to make the area inaccessible to one individual who I feel has wronged me is because of my impulsivity due to BPD and not because I’m just generally a selfish person who won’t accept when I can’t get my way?

Yes I have mental illnesses and the symptoms show, but I’m also high functioning and sometimes the symptoms subside. It’s due to this that at times I can’t tell if my actions are a result of an illness or just me not being the best me that I can be and, until there’s a machine that can look inside my soul and tell me whether I’m an unfortunate product of multiple disorders or just a genuinely bad person, I will never know. It is because of this that I’ll never know if I’m truly the fraud that I think I am…

Guest Post - My First Break by Vukasin Milenkovic

At the time of my first break I was 19 years old. I was worked nights as a bartender at an upscale hotel lounge bar. I would do last call at 11:30 pm and be home by 1:00 am. I’d eat, unwind and get as much sleep as possible before I’d have to drive my mom to work in the morning. That was my routine. One night, I decided to go a friend’s house warming party. I ended up seeing some old friends, before I knew it, it was almost 5:00 am. Being that I had to drive my mom to work in a few hours, I figured I might as well stay awake until then and go to sleep after I dropped her off.

I dropped my mom off at work as usual and I was feeling pretty good considering I pulled an all-nighter.  I didn’t feel like going to sleep so I thought I’d go visit a friend who let me borrow some money the week before who lived a half hour away. I got on the highway and started my drive, a drive that I would never forget.

About 5 minutes into the drive I began to feel extremely happy. I’m going to use textbook psychological terms, that I learned later in life, to better describe the way I began to feel. I started to experience an overwhelming joy. I was so happy that a few minutes into feeling this way I began to cry. I was crying tears of joy. I could not understand why I was feeling so happy. It sure as hell wasn’t the weed I had smoked earlier, I knew that much for sure. 

I had never cried tears of joy. As the tears of joy were streaming down my face, I began to think of all the different things in my life that brought me happiness. My thoughts were revved up, I could barely keep up with my own train of thought. I began to pose questions in my mind, why am I so happy? Why is this happening to me? I immediately began to think of other questions like why don’t I feel like this more often? Do other people feel this way? Is that why they cry tears of joy? 

As I thought of more questions, it was as if the answers started being given to me, and like a chain reaction of questions, answers, questions, answers, my thoughts took off faster and faster. Every question I thought of I was given the answer too. I knew that this must have been what people describe as enlightenment. I began to think to myself, why me, a random nobody, why was I chosen, why was I being given the answers to every question I posed in my mind’s eye?? Why was I being enlightened?! I began to imagine what would come of this experience, the endless opportunity, the pressure to fix what’s wrong in the world, the impact I’d have on humanity and that is when I began to panic. Why me? Why am I being enlightened, I thought. This feeling of panic was familiar. I had panic attacks before, they were the reason I dropped out of high school and again college. 

Although I didn’t know that’s what they were at the time, I learned that later in life. As the panic attack set in, I tried to focus on the road because I was still driving on the highway and the exit must have been coming up soon. Then the feeling of panic slowly faded and was replaced with Euphoria. I began to feel better than high, that was the only way I could think of it at the time, I started feeling great again.

A calm came over me, I had never imagined feeling this good. I was no longer concerned with how or why I was feeling the way I did. I was simply just feeling, I began to feel better and better. A feeling so raw, so pure, it was far better than euphoria, it was blissful. I had begun to feel so amazing that I began to cry again. Tears of joy were again streaming down my face.

I was feeling heavenly. I began to experience what I can’t even describe adequately with words. It was not as much of a feeling as it was something that I had sensed. I began to feel and sense as if I knew everything. Everything that there was to know, I knew.                                                                                                                                                                                                  I sensed I was all-knowing. This is when I had begun to feel Godlike. Again, these are terms I learned later in life, long after this episode, long after struggling with acceptance and bouts of suicidal depression, of which my first episode was soon to follow. In all the textbooks I would come to read to try to learn about what happened to me in that car ride, the only term left in language to describe how I was feeling in that moment is Godlike. I had just been enlightened and I was feeling godlike. I was also approaching my exit and I had to navigate my way through the tollbooth. Wiping back tears of joy with a smile beaming from ear to ear, I pulled up to the tollbooth, I fumbled for the ticket and handed it to the toll person. “60 cents” he replied. I could only imagine what I looked like fumbling for the changed, crying and smiling. I gave him the money and as soon as he said thank you, I pulled off.

I made it, I was feeling A-MAZING.  I began to drive towards my friend’s house.  I glanced in the rear-view mirror and noticed a car with two girls in it pulling out of the tollbooth. I looked again to see if I could get a glimpse of the girls, as most teenage boys do, and I saw that we were close in age and then…CRAAASSSHHHH. I rear-ended a pick-up truck that was at a red light while I was going 30mph.

I got out and stepped away from the car. It was totaled. Jay Z’s song Song Cry was blaring. I walked up to the car behind me and the driver rolled down the window. I said, “I crashed because I was checking you out, can you help me get out of here?” she replied “no” I took out the money I had and started throwing $20 bills in her window. After about $300 she said, “get in”. That is where part one ends.

I can’t even begin to tell of the next 7 years of chaos and dysfunction spent trying to live in a perpetual state of hypomania, until I chose to engage in recovery in hopes of securing a better quality of life.

After a dozen involuntary hospitalizations, 20-30 arrests for symptomatic behavior (I lost count) and forced treatment under Kendra’s Law by the state of New York, I was able to recover. I still have my moments, fewer and farther in between. I have been fortunate enough to have been able to start a family with my significant other and we have 3 daughters, my 20-year-old step daughter that I adopted and 2 girls of my very own, 2 ½ and 1 year old.

At my worst, I never imagined that I would make it to where I am now, nor did most people that met me throughout those times. Although I can’t remember what it’s like to live free of mental illness, I can honestly say, I no longer “suffer” from mental illness. I co-founded a not-for-profit and am the sole proprietor of PM&BHC a behavioral health consulting agency at www.pmabhc.com. I go by the Twitter handle Mindful Of Illness @SoulfulOfWealth where I release daily quotes from my upcoming book and I offer free peer support to anyone in need that wants to DM me.

Guest Post - How Can Mindfulness Help With Anxiety - By Jacqueline Gammon

HOW CAN MINDFULNESS HELP WITH ANXIETY?

I’m delighted to be a guest blogger today on It’s Not Your Journey. A blog like Rebecca’s is essential, as it provides a place where people can go to find an honest voice. She tackles an issue that many are afraid to talk about – depression, and openly describes her own experience of it. I believe that it is only by being open about our feelings that we can truly help one another, instead of trying to hide behind superficial images of happiness and staged perfection. The internet is full of those! What we really want to know is that there is someone out there who feels the same as we do, and who can understand what we are going through. Also, when people share their own coping strategies, we gain a sense of community which is often lacking today. How many of us get the chance to soothe our worries over a cup of coffee with a friend or neighbour? How many of us would even admit to our deepest emotions? Fortunately, Rebecca does.

My own blog is Go-To Mindfulness. I became a mindfulness teacher after experiencing the benefits of mindfulness in my own life and then set up the blog to share my knowledge with others. I wanted to provide a place for people to find information, resources and help.

Mindfulness has its origins in Eastern meditation practices, dating back to the earliest teachings of Buddha. In the 1970’s, while meditating, Jon Kabat-Zinn had the idea of adapting meditation techniques to the needs of patients suffering from stress. In 1979 he set up a stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and so the MBSR (Mind Based Stress Reduction) programme was created. Today his programme is used all over the world for the reduction of stress, anxiety, depression and to cultivate a general sense of well-being.

My focus today will be anxiety.

Anxiety

We’ve all been anxious at some point in our lives. Some people become anxious about exams, others worry about getting on a plane. I become anxious when driving, even though I’ve been driving for thirty years. There is no logic behind it, but every time I get behind the wheel I feel tense. Anxiety can also be caused by caffeine. People who suffer from depression can become anxious as soon as they have a bad day, worrying that it will be the trigger for more severe feelings.

Anxiety is a natural response to feeling threatened, whether that threat is real, or imagined, our brains cannot tell the difference: our breathing becomes more rapid and our heart rate increases. We can find ourselves stuck in a cycle of negative thinking, unable to see our situation objectively. To us, the threat is real, and our body reacts accordingly, in extreme cases it can provoke a panic attack.

  

So, how can mindfulness help?

Mindfulness helps us focus on the present moment by using the breath as a calming and anchoring tool. If we can become calm, then we can often see our situation with more clarity and act accordingly. Even by inhaling slowly through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, for a few minutes, we can regain a sense of control. I recommend downloading an app like Insight Timer, retreating to a quiet place and listening to a guided 3-minute meditation such as the one by Peter Russell https://insighttimer.com/peterrussell/guided-meditations/three-minute-meditation

However, some people say that when they are extremely anxious, placing their complete attention on the breath makes them feel worse. So, another strategy is to combine touch and breathing: The Finger Breathing Exercise is a simple technique for reducing stress and anxiety or to regain clarity of mind. You might like to try the exercise as you are reading it for the first time:

FINGER BREATHING EXERCISE

1.     Hold out one hand in front of you with your palm facing towards you.

2.     Use the index finger of your other hand to trace up the outside length of your thumb while you breathe in, pause at the top of your thumb and then trace it down the other side while you breathe out. That’s one breath.

3.     Trace up the side of the next finger while you breathe in, pause at the top, and then trace down the other side of that finger while you breathe out. That’s two breaths.

4.     Keep going, tracing along each finger as you count each breath. When you get the end of the last finger, come back up that finger and do it in reverse.

5.     Repeat this sequence until you feel your anxiety fade.

Thoughts are just thoughts

For general levels of anxiety, another useful approach is to remind yourself that thoughts are just thoughts. They are not real. Thoughts are transient and will pass. As will stressful events.

When my brother-in-law was critically ill in hospital, my sister and I caught sight of the words that were above the reception desk in the hospital, “This too shall pass.” It was a reminder that what we were feeling at that moment was not permanent, although it certainly seemed that way at the time. We tried to remember those words each day as we went in and out of the hospital, to put things in perspective. Those words did take the edge off my anxiety, and I still use them today.

A mindful approach also came in useful when our mother was diagnosed with cancer. My sister and I made a conscious effort to try to stop worrying and predicting the future and to take things day by day. That way our energy wasn’t used on worrying about the things that we could not control, but on the things that we could; like being there for our mother and keeping her calm. When she began to panic at the prospect of chemotherapy, we would gently remind her, and ourselves, that we needed to focus on today. Fortunately, the operation was a success, but I often think how much energy we could have wasted and how anxious we would have become if we had sat there predicting every possible outcome.

It’s incredible how powerful our mind is and the effect it can have on our body! The more we practice simple strategies like the Finger Breathing Exercise, the easier it will become to use them during difficult moments. So, next time you’re anxious, have a go at the finger breathing exercise, or just take a few minutes out of your day to inhale and exhale - feel the difference and remind yourself: This too shall pass!

For further information about mindfulness you can visit my website at:

https://gotomindfulness.wordpress.com/

or find me on Twitter and Facebook:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gotomindfulness

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gotomindfulness/

Thanks for being mindful with me today!

Jacqueline Gammon

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