The KiloPatches Advice Column and Q&A Thread!

Beary said:
How do I get myself motivated enough to even get out of bed?
Click to expand...

This is a common symptom or depression or dysthymia (minor, but still debilitating depression).
Try to go to bed each night wit something to look forward to the next day. Something that excites you, even just a little. I know its hard, when you feel so sad all the time, believe me, I face the same problem sometimes. But sometimes forcing structure on yourself is important.
Studies have shown that sleeping too much can lead to more depression. So you want to avoid sleeping more than 8-10 hours a night MAX.
Try to have an attitude of gratitude. At the end of each night, keep a log of 3 good things that happened that day - even small things - this was a strategy proposed by Positive Psychologist, Martin Seligman. And it has really worked for me. It kind of breaks the cycle of depression because if you keep thinking to yourself "Nothing EVER goes right in my life" over and over, and you keep this log for weeks on end you can change and challenge that negative belief and say, "my life isn't SO bad 100% of the time - I still experience joy even in the darkest of times."
But yeah.... plan a week of structure. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) stresses this. And you don't need to see and expensive therapist to try this yourself. Sometimes its hard to change how you feel. You can't just "switch off" your emotions. So if you can't change how you FEEL, you can change how you THINK, by challenging negative thought patterns, called "Cognitive Distortions": Here is a good resource: http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/counseling/COGNITIVE_0.pdf Try to identify the cognitive traps you fall into and ways in which you can challenge those traps and change your negative thinking.
If THAT is too difficult at this stage, you must force yourself to change your BEHAVIOUR. Go out and PLAN AHEAD. Become self aware of things you enjoy, even if the things you enjoy don't seem as enjoyable as they used to be. Force yourself to do them anyway as your self-care plan and structure your day (and week) accordingly. Meet up with friends to see a movie. Go to the mall to Window Shop (if you like that). Play Animal Crossing). Visit a coffee shop with a friend a socialize. Take up a hobby - go to the Public Library and pick up a book you might enjoy reading, either a work of fiction, or even a self help book (there are some really good ones out there on depression) or on hobbies (like making duct tape wallets for instance. Try to incorporate these activities into your daily life and muster as much excitement as you can about them (I know its hard at first) but as you begin to change your behaviours you will find it easier to change the way you THINK with the list of Cognitive Distortions I provided you.

I hope you find them helpful. Other posters on this thread have found them helpful too - so follow up with me and let me know how it goes. *hugs* You can get through it. As always, if you ever need to talk, I am always here. PM me anytime. :)

- - - Post Merge - - -

Myst said:
Are you having a good day today? ^^"
Click to expand...

Not in the least :( but thank you for asking, Myst. Its always nice to know you care.

I slept in till 5pm because my medications make me SO drowsy so I lost time working on my Personality Self-Analysis Assignment that was DUE TODAY. Ugh.... I realized at around 8:00pm that there was no way I could complete it on time. I was 3 pages in, and it has to be 6-9 pages. It is a Psychoanalysis of myself, using 2 personality theorists from the text, and as you know, I am VERY open about my past, but ANALYZING my past from a Psychoanalytic and Humanistic perspective is a WHOLE different story because it requires me to DIG DEEP and although it was enlightening and interesting to work on tis assignment, at times it was emotionally distressing, and I had to take breaks from it to return to it later....

So I emailed the prof at 8:00pm EST saying, look, I know it was due today, but I have been on these new meds which I have been having trouble getting adjusted to (all throughout the semester I have been keeping him updated on my health and everything so he knows what has been going on). I don't mind if you penalize me for a late submission, but please give me till Friday to finish it if you can sympathize with my circumstances.

I have to be up REALLY early tomorrow, so I have to go to bed soon anyway, and its just not worth staying up late to work on this assignment. I have to take care of me. Its already 9:00pm. I gotta sleep. And force myself to sleep. Even though I have only been awake for 4 hours or so.

I haven't eaten today either. Just totally forgot it was a priority. Not even hungry. My appetite has been suffering lately, which isn't good. Motivation to cook? Gone. Thinking that spending money on food is a worthwhile expense? Gone. I don't suffer from an eating disorder, I have just been so busy I forget to eat, and I think one of my medications has a side effect of appetite disturbance......

Tanks again for asking so I can vent!
 
Ohh I need advice.. Again...

Basically I never confronted my friend who completely betrayed and used me.
Those feelings have been locked up forever, and that has been hard, but today something happened that
Has caused my mom to realize how I really feel everyday and that I only smile on the outside...
I was just talking to my mom w/ our usual casual convo, when suddenly she brings up ____ (my friend that betrayed me who, until
today, my mom thought was still my close friend) She said "How's _______ doing? I don't see you hang out with her much anymore"
That triggered my bottled up emotions and I just started crying. My mom caught on and demanded answers.. Which I told her because once she suspects something, she has a built in lie detector. Well, long story short, I told her everything and she left me with this piece of advice. "You need to confront _____. It'll make you feel a lot better."
So should I? or should I not? I'm just worried about a lot of thing that could happen if I confront her..
 
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I have just had the worst year and a half of my life and I've been trying so hard to get my life back on track but, every time I feel like I am making progress, something happens to set back any progress I've made.

My life started to fall apart in a huge way a few months into last year and for a while I lost all motivation to do anything except waste my life and make horrible decisions. I remember one day finally pulling myself out of bed and deciding not to skip class that day, even though I felt sick and tired and feeling a lot more energy and excitement than I had in a long time, mostly because I was excited for a date I was going on that night and saw it as a new beginning. We didn't even get to the place we were meant to be going for dinner due to him crashing the car with me in it. I felt fine immediately after the accident but about a week in I noticed pain in my neck and after a month or two I realised that I was not able to focus as well as I used to, I was tired constantly and had lost what little motivation I had left.

This year was meant to be about me picking up the pieces and getting my life on track but, to this day, my neck is still causing me problems and I have been diagnosed with PTSD, which has made this year at university really difficult. I am just upset I guess that it's taking so long for me to get better and I feel that my friends and family are sick of me being sad and having problems all the time. Also, whenever things start to look like they are getting better, they can never be good for long before something bad happens. Like today for example, I got my results back and I was so happy because they have improved again after taking a dive. However, just this evening I find out that my credit card details have been stolen and I need to cancel my card and get a new one on top of a million other things I have to do in the next week and a bit before going away.

This lack of progress is really starting to get to me, especially in the last week. I feel so tired, yet I can barely sleep at night, I feel like all the joy and energy have been drained out of me and I can't even feel excited or happy about anything, even the fact that I am going on the trip of a lifetime next week and it's almost my birthday. I don't know what to do to feel like my old self again and to be able to do all the things I used to.

If you got this far, thanks for reading all this. It actually helped a bit just writing this all out and I hope you can offer some advice on what I should do to feel better and stay positive through all the set backs.
 
InfinityFlames said:
Ohh I need advice.. Again...

Basically I never confronted my friend who completely betrayed and used me.
Those feelings have been locked up forever, and that has been hard, but today something happened that
Has caused my mom to realize how I really feel everyday and that I only smile on the outside...
I was just talking to my mom w/ our usual casual convo, when suddenly she brings up ____ (my friend that betrayed me who, until
today, my mom thought was still my close friend) She said "How's _______ doing? I don't see you hang out with her much anymore"
That triggered my bottled up emotions and I just started crying. My mom caught on and demanded answers.. Which I told her because once she suspects something, she has a built in lie detector. Well, long story short, I told her everything and she left me with this piece of advice. "You need to confront _____. It'll make you feel a lot better."
So should I? or should I not? I'm just worried about a lot of thing that could happen if I confront her..
Click to expand...

Let me share with you a story from my life that may shed some light....
I had a friend, I will call him "Shadow". "Shadow was a close friend of mine for about a year, had many mental health problems, could relate to me really well, we hadn't spoken for a little while, and then I found out he had put himself in a dangerous situation and got himself homeless. Naturally my boyfriend and I went nuts and gave him money for a cab to get his stuff from an abusive girl's place that he met on the street and we offered our spare bedroom to him (at the time we had a 3 bedroom apartment). He moved in in October. In January, he got involved with these really sketchy martial arts people (Shadow has his black belt in almost everything). They took him to a dojo far away and Shadow said he would make it back for his 11pm curfew (since he was living with us rent-free, we didn't give him keys to the apartment so we had to be home and awake wen he came home so we could let him in - that was part of the "house rules" agreement we drew up back in October). Shadow's ride got drunk and booked a motel while Shadow slept on the floor of the Dojo. He stayed there for like a week. I was worried SICK. I had several panic attacks, I cried for hours. He came back on a Thursday and said a couple of the people at the Dojo put money together to get him an apartment in the East End (we lived in the West End). He just made his decision to abandon us. After all we did for him. My boyfriend was furious, after seeing what his week-long absence did to me. Him and my boyfriend never spoke again and I helped Shadow move out the next day, on what I thought was good terms. But HE thought if he was in conflict with my boyfriend, he shouldn't be friends with me anymore. So he cut ties with me completely. And I never heard from him again from January until this past November when I found him on Facebook and sent him a message. He replied and we have spoken over email a bit to kind of get some closure over the whole issue. We want to meet in person. Even my boyfriend and him have emailed each other and started communicating and apologizing for what happened.

Moral of the story is, confront your friend, yes, but in time. Allow some breathing space, like I did with Shadow. Who knows, maybe Shadow, my boyfriend and I will be friends again and everything will all work out. Communication is always important. Shadow even said he would never have had the balls to do what I did: Message him on Facebook. For that very reason - fear of confrontation. I feel it would be good for both of you to talk things over, yes. That's good in any healthy friendship. But sometimes you need to give people space for a little while. And when the time is right (your intuition should tell you when) you can confront her about it. And you WILL feel a lot better if she is as receptive and civil about it as you are.
 
Elise said:
I have just had the worst year and a half of my life and I've been trying so hard to get my life back on track but, every time I feel like I am making progress, something happens to set back any progress I've made.

My life started to fall apart in a huge way a few months into last year and for a while I lost all motivation to do anything except waste my life and make horrible decisions. I remember one day finally pulling myself out of bed and deciding not to skip class that day, even though I felt sick and tired and feeling a lot more energy and excitement than I had in a long time, mostly because I was excited for a date I was going on that night and saw it as a new beginning. We didn't even get to the place we were meant to be going for dinner due to him crashing the car with me in it. I felt fine immediately after the accident but about a week in I noticed pain in my neck and after a month or two I realised that I was not able to focus as well as I used to, I was tired constantly and had lost what little motivation I had left.

This year was meant to be about me picking up the pieces and getting my life on track but, to this day, my neck is still causing me problems and I have been diagnosed with PTSD, which has made this year at university really difficult. I am just upset I guess that it's taking so long for me to get better and I feel that my friends and family are sick of me being sad and having problems all the time. Also, whenever things start to look like they are getting better, they can never be good for long before something bad happens. Like today for example, I got my results back and I was so happy because they have improved again after taking a dive. However, just this evening I find out that my credit card details have been stolen and I need to cancel my card and get a new one on top of a million other things I have to do in the next week and a bit before going away.

This lack of progress is really starting to get to me, especially in the last week. I feel so tired, yet I can barely sleep at night, I feel like all the joy and energy have been drained out of me and I can't even feel excited or happy about anything, even the fact that I am going on the trip of a lifetime next week and it's almost my birthday. I don't know what to do to feel like my old self again and to be able to do all the things I used to.

If you got this far, thanks for reading all this. It actually helped a bit just writing this all out and I hope you can offer some advice on what I should do to feel better and stay positive through all the set backs.
Click to expand...

Hi, Elise, thank you for sharing all that. I read through it all.

I am sorry it has been a rough year and a half for you.
I took a course in Positive Psychology and one of the textbooks was Martin Seligman's "Flourish": http://www.amazon.com/Flourish-Visionary-Understanding-Happiness-Well-being/dp/1439190763
Its a great read, and relatively cheap on Amazon.
In referring to my Positive Psychology textbook itself (not Flourish, but another book), I can quote a few passages on Resilience, which is what I think you are a perfect example of: "Human's ability to bounce back and even thrive in the face of serious life challenges" - human resilience being a foundation of well-being and ultimately, happiness.
What you are struggling from is adversity after adversity bogging you down - someone can only handle so much! And I sympathize with that. But you have to really question you limits and say, "am a strong enough to handle this?". Because I believe you are.

It has been a constant struggle all my life, I was sexually assaulted multiple times from a very young age, I suffered from PTSD at the age of 8 after seeing my mother flatline and be resuscitated when she was ill and in a coma for 4 months in the ICU, She died when I was 19 and bled to death right before my eyes, I attempted suicide many times (as is the reality of my disorder (Bipolar Disorder), and on one occasion my mother assisted one of my attempts, my father was an abusive alcoholic who beat me many times, I fled home at the age of 16 to a youth shelter, meanwhile I maintained good grades, was a drill commander, won effective speaking competitions, was an IB student, went to University, was Director of External Affairs in the Residence Council, Sat on the Board of Directors for Food Services and Residence Life Advisory Board, Won Floor Representative of the Year, Won the Presidents' Award, Worked as a Teaching Assistant for 3 years, Worked as a Research Assistant for 4 years, publishing in 3 editions of a course textbook, and lecturing on the chapters I wrote on 5 occasions, in front of 200 students, I was an editor for an undergraduate journal, the Secretary for the History Students Association, the list goes on.... I have not by any means lived an easy life. But I press forward. My successes speaks to my resilience. Persistence through Fire.

Resilience is an interesting topic to study. I won't get into it too much before I offer you my "advice" part. But studies have shown that children are more resilient than teens or adults. A child in a war torn country or a child who has been raped is better-able to cope with the trauma than an adult because of the perspective the child takes. "Its all they know" for one, but also the innocence and ignorance leads them to find happiness in the little things. Take time to smell the roses, so to speak. They have more gratitude, whereas adults tend to dwell on the crisis that is before them.

Some key elements to Resilience in Adulthood Involve:
Self-Acceptance (Rogers would call this, "unconditional positive self-regard" - how do you feel about yourself?)
Personal-Growth (Openness to new experiences and challenges)
Purpose In Life (Goals and beliefs that give you direction and satisfaction)
Environmental Mastery (Give you a feeling of competence in a certain skill or ability or talent)
Autonomy (Do you feel Independent? Capable of taking care of yourself? Or do you feel others control you?)
Positive Relations with Others (Warm, satisfying relationships with others that involve trust, empathy and intimacy)

Look at some of these areas and see what areas you need to work on and address. If you need my help, just ask, I can give you pointers.

Okay, my advice:
1. You're in university, right? I would first go to Student Disability Services (or the equivalent) and get them to give you accommodations for the classroom if you find yourself struggling in school. They can grant you extensions on assignments, more time to write your exams, a note taker, etc.... so look into it.
2. My Dad is hard-pressed to accept my illness(es) too. Don't take it too hard. Focus on taking care of you. You are an independent woman. You can make your own choices, and they don't need to be involved, nor do they need to know the details of your illness if they are going to chastise you for it.
3. It sounds to me - and again, I am no psychiatrist, so I don't have the qualifications to make an accurate diagnosis - but poor sleep, trouble enjoying things you used to enjoy, and an overall feeling of sadness seems to me like symptoms of depression or dysthymia.
I would recommend looking at changing unhealthy thought patterns, called Cognitive Distortions. Here is a list of them: http://www.apsu.edu/sites/apsu.edu/files/counseling/COGNITIVE_0.pdf Its a common practice in a therapy called CBT (Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy). Another step in CBT is to change your Behaviour patterns because its not always easy to change your thoughts and its certainly not easy to change how you FEEL. You can't just "switch off" your emotions. So plan a daily and weekly schedule of events that you enjoy, or used to enjoy. Going to a movie with a friend, coming to a coffee shop with someone you haven't seen in a while, getting out of the house, going to the Public Library and taking out self-help books on depression (there are some really good ones) or a work of fiction or ones on hobbies like jewellery making. Play Animal Crossing. Incorporate that into your schedule too. And then once you have your week planned, follow through as best as you can.
4. This is also mentioned in "Flourish" and a strategy I use, but make a "3 good things log". At the end of every day, write at least 3 good things that happened that day, even small things. I always fall into this trap where I say, "NOTHING EVER goes right in my life!" and if I flip through pages of weeks of my 3 good things log, I can challenge that negative belief, or cognitive distortion, and say, "My life isn't bad 100% of the time. I still experience some joy even in the darkest of times". Try it out.
5. Make a list of things you enjoy doing..... bike riding, swimming, drinking tea, going to the art museum, going to the park, meditating, reading, journalling, yoga, taking bubble baths. I made a deck of flash cards with what I called my "Wellness Toolbox". I Google Image searched images of my favourite things, printed them out, put them on a card, then shuffled the deck. Whenever I feel down, I shuffle the deck and pick a card and strive to do that thing I enjoy, even if I don't feel up to it at the time.
6. Try to make a list of positive affirmations. Exchange with a few friends what you like about each other. Once you have your list, make a poster with each thing. Use big, funky fonts for each attribute. Get crafty! Use coloured paper for the background and decorate it however you like. Hang it on your bedroom door and wen you wake up each morning, read those positive affirmations, knowing people believe these things, sincerely about you. And so you should too.
7. Try meditating. There are some great meditations on Youtube. Just search "Guided Meditations" or "Positive Affirmations" and there are tons of them. See if you like any of them. There is also an App called "Guided Mind" that I LOVE.

Hope I helped a little! Let me know how it goes!
 
Thanks for the advice, KiloPatches :)

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