Tag: Anxiety

My Own Worst Enemy

Amanda Malamut3 Comments

I have been subjected to many bullies in my life. I got made fun of in middle school for wanting to wear shorts instead of a skirt, for having a mustache (and for shaving it), and for not kissing boys. Getting teased for having short hair and looking like a boy. For being too weird. For being the wrong kind of weird. While completely awful, these bullies didn’t have anything on my worst bully.

When I was in school my parents used to tell people that they didn’t need to push or prompt me to study or do my homework because I pushed myself harder than my parents ever would. Initially this created a strong work ethic within me; I had goals that I wanted to achieve, and I better reach them and succeed with flying colors.

The problem occurred when this ethic turned into the ugly, toxic bully that still lingers today. My value and worth were graded on an impossible scale; the more I set myself up for failure, the more excuses I had to internally beat myself up. I got a 90 on a math test, but I could have gotten more questions right. That social interaction you had a couple of days ago? Those people are definitely making fun of everything you said. I became awkward because I told myself I was awkward. I told myself I was never smart enough, so I never felt like any of my accomplishments meant anything. I was insatiable.

Bullying myself became a way of life. From grade school to my Masters program nothing was good enough for myself. Write a really great essay? You’re not actually a good writer. Get into college? Yeah, but not the one you really wanted. Graduate with a Masters from a great school? That’s great, but you’re the fourth one in your family to get one, that isn’t that special you know.

My internal bully questioned and berated everything I did and said. That voice was strengthened by my decade-long unchecked depression. You should feel like dirt, because you aren’t good enough for any of what you have. Don’t count on things staying good for long, you know that other shoe is going to drop, and all of this is going to go away. You have a girlfriend that seems to love and care for you- good luck with that. Once she finds out what you’re really like, how you’re a giant loser, she’ll leave; it’s not like you’re worth someone that awesome.

Like any disease my depression took it’s toll and in the spring of 2013 I had myself a mental breakdown. Three years later, I still say it’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I was finally able to look at what I was doing to myself. No one was saying these awful things about me, I internalized the hatred so deeply that it felt natural. Piece by piece I had to pull away the bully that had lived in me for so long. There are still elements left of that bully still inside of me, but I’m much more equipped to stand up for myself and take it down. I was lucky to have a support network that helped pick away those parts, and call me out on my bullying ways. My then girlfriend (now fiance) has been the most important advocate. She sees when I’m about to bully myself and shuts it down.

I’m my own worst enemy but now, I know what I’m up against- and I know I can win.

Depression Doesn’t Make You an Artist

Amanda Malamut1 Comment

I read an article a week or so ago about mental health, creativity, and treatment. I’m not going to mention where the article was posted or anything about the article specifically because it is without a doubt one of the worst, disgusting, and harmful pieces of writing I’ve ever seen on the internet. Now you might say Amanda, there is a lot of terrible things on the internet, why is this one more horrible than the rest of it?

The intention of this article is the reason I would put it up there with the worst of the worst. In it the writer claims that it was better for her friend to have committed suicide than be on medication, because she wasn’t able to be her true creative self. I’m going to write that again. Someone thought, wrote down, and posted on the internet that someone killing themselves was better than their friend living a ‘lesser’ medicated life.

I don’t know what’s scarier, the fact that she thought she was being insightful or innovating, or a person struggling might use this as justification to not try therapy or medication. I can only speak for myself and my mental health journey, but I can say with 100% certainty that my writing was absolutely awful before I started a therapy regime supplemented with medication. Insanely terrible. I could barely write in coherent sentences, and if I did manage to write something not awful I had no confidence to let anyone read it. I wasn’t living up to my true self. I wasn’t living up to my creative potential. Honestly, I wasn’t really living.

After I started managing my depression and anxiety I’ve had people tell me that I had changed and my different self was not as good as the ‘old me.’ Apparently I was a better friend and a better person when I constantly grappled with chronic loneliness, anxiety, and depression. My medication and therapy has helped me find who I really was, not a depressed version of myself. And for some reason people have a hard time when people they know with mental health issues struggle toward being their better selves. It probably does look like we’ve changed, but really it’s just a matter of rediscovering who we are without depression or anxiety completely controlling our lives.

Romanticizing mental health problems as a way to being a great artist is dangerous, unhealthy, and extremely untrue. I was an unproductive writer who occasionally wrote sad, terrible poems in a journal I was never going to share. Now I’m writing a book, writing on this blog, and writing for Geeks Out. I’m a much happier and content person, and my writing benefits from that. A person who is struggling to be happy or stay alive isn’t automatically better at their craft. And even if they were for some reason? A person’s life is far more important than their art. A person shouldn’t feel like they need to sacrifice themselves to create something for the world.

Our lives are more important than our art. Our better lives help us create better art. This is what we need to be telling our friends and family. Struggling doesn’t make you a better artist, writer, composer, or anything else.

Our friends’ lives have no less value when they are trying to get better.

Dear 17 Year Old Self: Take Care of Yourself

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Dear 17 Year Old Self,

Please take care of yourself. And please give yourself a break. You work too hard, and you put the weight of the world on your shoulders. Life is starting to suck a little less for you, but you’re still not convinced that everything will be okay. Home will get better, I promise. I know you don’t want to believe me, and really why should you? The past couple of years have been horrific, and nothing gold can stay, right? Whenever something good has happened to you, it’s like you get smacked down twice as hard.

This probably isn’t comforting, but life sucks sometimes. Then it doesn’t suck as much, and if you’re lucky good things stick around for more than a fleeting moment. These moments should be savored, not diluted by the challenges, struggles, and disappointments. There are going to be plenty of those over the next 10 years, but remember that no one is out to get you. Everyone goes through rough and smooth patches alike – it’s all about your attitude.

Having a positive attitude isn’t for everyone else, it’s for you. You don’t want to experience years of self-degrading and negative thoughts. It literally changes your brain. I’ve spent the last two and a half years trying to undo years of damage. While I’ve made amazing progress I still have far to go.

Speaking of recovery, go to therapy and get on some medication. Now. I know how adamantly resistant you are to this idea. You think you don’t need you any help and that your issues aren’t as bad as other people. You don’t want anyone to have to worry about you and be a burden to your family.

You aren’t broken. I know it feels like you are. That you’re brain and your emotions are completely unpredictable. You think that keeping it all inside your head will make it less real, and that you have control over everything.

I’m going to save you years of trouble, so hopefully you can avoid some of my mistakes. You have severe anxiety and you’re depressed. The sooner you admit that to yourself and to other people you can start on the road to recovery, and you can take care of yourself.

It’s not weakness if you fight the battle with armor fully equipped. It’s brave and it’s strong. Sometimes it’s easy, other times… not so much. But you have to keep fighting.

It doesn’t go all away at once, but I promise you will be start to see the forest through the trees.

You’re worth it.

My Dad’s Boxes

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As I have gotten older I realized how much my dad and I are alike. And how painfully different we are. Through these similarities and differences we have grown and evolved our relationship into something I feel very lucky to have. Not all people have great relationships with their dad, and for LGBT people the tension and strain on the relationship with their fathers can be a lot worse.

It wasn’t always like that for us. My dad converted to from Judaism to Catholicism when I was 8. As time went on his faith grew, and mine began to wither. When I was a teenager he became a deacon. I had pretty much given up on my Catholic roots, but we were able to agree to disagree on topics concerning the church. We knew we weren’t going to change each other’s minds so having debates and discussions stayed interesting and respectful.

When I finally fully came out to myself in the winter of 2009 I was absolutely terrified to tell my parents, especially my dad. He’s an active member of the Church and I didn’t know how he would react to me being a lesbian.

In reality I had nothing to worry about, but when it was time to tell him I had to do it through a full blown panic attack. How could someone so deeply cemented in his faith, a faith that actively preaches against my existence, accept his daughter for who she was?

As a child one of the things that has constantly annoyed me about my dad was that he is able to achieve almost perfect cognitive dissonance. He’s able to hold onto two completely opposing beliefs without having one contradict the other. I couldn’t believe at the time that he would be able to do the same again, putting his daughter in a separate box away from his beliefs?

I realized that the part of my dad that had annoyed me for most of my childhood was one of his most endearing qualities. It’s admirable that he has the ability to love his children the way that they are without it challenging or shaking his faith. In a world where everything feels like an inseparable tangled web he has been able to divide perfectly into his boxes – making sense and order out of chaos.

In his world his faith compliments and strengthens his love for his children, and vice versa. I may never understand how he does it, but I’m lucky to have him.

Moving Forward, Moving On

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This past weekend my girlfriend and I moved into a larger, much better place.

All of this moving has got me thinking about all of the movement in my life. Physically, psychologically, emotionally. It’s funny how the word ‘moving’ can have different connotations. Moving forward, backward, or in one place. I’ve need to move forward and move past people and decisions and disappointments.
I’m almost a professional at physically moving. This is the fourth time I’ve moved in about 4 years. Moving past disappointment has been the hardest for me. Getting close to getting a job, and then having to move past the rejection, frustration, and sadness of not getting an offer.
It’s strange feeling like parts of your life are moving in the correct direction while other parts are stuck in place. My organization is going steady. Moving to a nicer place with my girlfriend of 2+ years is definitely forward progression. Having a steady job for almost a year and contributing to bills and paying off loans is positive. Being two years into my recovery and working towards bettering myself is forward momentum.
But for some reason I’m feeling stuck in place. Big parts of me are moving forward but I can’t get unstuck from the disappointment of not getting a position in the non-profit world.
I guess I didn’t realize just how terrible I was at focusing on the many positive parts of my life. I didn’t want to become a person whose job defined who they are, but here I am being all mopey about a job that in reality isn’t all that bad.
It’s time for an attitude adjustment. I need to train myself to not dwell on the negatives and to solely focus on the plethora of good that it’s in my life.
I’m doing well. And that is good.

27 and Counting

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My cake looked a lot better

I’m a little behind, but I figured I would dedicate a post to my 27th birthday.

I really haven’t cared too much about my birthdays. I’ve gotten slightly more excited about them over the last couple of years since my girlfriend’s birthday is the day after. But, I still really have a hard time enjoying birthday celebrations geared towards me.
There was a lot of stuff that happened when I was a kid, especially around my birthday that did not make me exactly feel excited for the day. I’ve been using that excuse, but in reality, I’ve had very good birthdays for probably the past 10 years.
It’s not just indifference, I could understand indifference. Once you turn 25 and rent a car without extra fees, there really isn’t a monumental birthday.
I can’t think of the right word, but the closet word that I come to describing how I feel on my birthday is ‘uncomfortable’. Not uncomfortable because I’m getting older, but I think due to the unknown.
I know no one knows their future, but they usually have a good idea of wear they want to generally be at a certain age. And they’ve had these plans for quite some time. I feel like I’m making up my life plans as I go along. I honestly didn’t think I would make it this far, so my childhood and young adult wonderings really never made it this far.
Does this give me some weird advantage, that I can’t be disappointed because I didn’t have any goals? Maybe if I had some longer term goals, I would have a better idea of how to move forward in my goal to work in non-profits?
Does it matter?
I think the real reason I become so uncomfortable and anxious on my birthday is that I become way to retrospective and caught up within myself. Instead of focusing on surviving and thriving for another year, I find myself stuck in the murky past or the hazy future.
I probably will never be very excited about my birthdays, but the goal for my 27-year-old self needs to be focusing on the present, and celebrating the victories. So when my 28-year-old self comes around, I might just look forward to April 22.

Going Back to High School Scares the Sh*t Out of Me

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Not an accurate picture of my high school

This past week I was invited back to my high school to speak at their Career Fair. Getting the chance to talk about my organization is a great opportunity and hopefully it will be a great chance to build a long-lasting and sustainable partnership.

I should be excited but instead I’m filled with dread and experiencing flashbacks from my adolescence. Most of my stress dreams from the past several years involve me having to go back to high school to take classes and being completely lost.

Like a lot of people, high school was a difficult time for me. I wasn’t out to myself yet but I knew that there was something ‘different’ about me. This made me a target for teasing and general meanness. For an all-girls Catholic school there were some progressive teachers, but we still had groups come in to say that Gay people didn’t exist because God didn’t make mistakes. And I won’t even get into the terrible abstinence only sex education I got. There was a lot of stress at school and at home – ten years ago I was dealing with self-harm, ignoring my depression for several years, and living with a recovering addict in the family.

Going back in its self is scary. Going back and being out is terrifying. I’m not going to be waving rainbow flags as I go through the school, but I can’t honestly go back and talk about my non-profit experiences without putting it in a queer context.

How I operate in the United States and abroad is greatly influenced by my sexuality, but honestly just the thought of being completely open around a bunch of nuns is giving me massive anxiety.

However, I know how oppressive that school can be if you think you are the only strange or different person pressured to follow a set of rules that just doesn’t fit who you are. It’ll be worth it if there is just one queer girl who knows that someone before her survived, and then thrived after leaving high school behind.

There are so many queer narratives that are blatantly ignored in Catholic high schools (and schools in general). Hopefully my presence and my stories can at least spark the smallest of positive conversations.

All By Myself

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In April, my best friend and I going to go see a concert in Toronto. We’re both traveling from different countries to Canada, so this will be the first time I’m traveling to another country completely on my own.

Now, I would like to think of myself as an independent traveler, but I always have gone abroad with at least one person with me. From people I’ve barely know through People to People and with friends and colleagues, I’ve never left the country completely by myself.
Look, I know that taking a bus to Toronto by myself isn’t the most daring trip I could make on my own. And yet, it still makes me feel a little anxious.
I really don’t know why the thought of my first solo international trip makes me so nervous. It’s not like I’m just going to be chilling out in Toronto all by myself once I get there. The only alone time I’m going to have is on the bus.
The closest thing to an answer I can find is that I won’t have anyone to share the travel experience with. Which I feel like is very ridiculous, because a 15 hour bus ride to and from Toronto isn’t going to be earth shattering. I’m going to guess that there really won’t be an opportunity to do anything besides sleep, read, eat, and play games on my phone.
I think that it’s the idea of not having a person to share with, even though there probably won’t be anything to share. The only reason why I survived my return from studying abroad in college was I had someone to recall stories and memories with. Who got what I was going through and could laugh and cry at the same things when everyone else thought we were crazy.
I know I’ll survive my trip back and forth alone, and I know that not having someone on a ridiculous long bus trip is probably a good thing.
It will be a new travel experience.It’s always good to push myself out of my comfort zone everyone once in a while, but I’m glad that I have many people who want to journey with me to new adventures.

The Other Shoe Isn’t Ever Going to Drop

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It’s hard for to keep a positive mindset.

After a streak of really good things, I have this terrible habit of waiting for something bad to happen. It doesn’t matter what part of my life, whether it’s relationships, work, my organization or anything else, I expect the positive streak to end in a catastrophe.
Ever since I was a kid I learned that the happier you are now the harder the fall is going to be when shit hits the fan. I’m not going to delve into my childhood, but through those events I conditioned myself to feel like happiness leads to inevitable pain. So to avoid feeling pain, and thus anything at all, I can’t let myself feel happiness.
I don’t want you to think that I’ve spent every waking moment of my teenage and adult life making myself sad and crying all of the time. I have experienced many happy moments in my life, but with the full-fledged belief that the other shoe is going to drop and smack me in the face. And when bad things did happen, they were a punishment for my happiness.
Thanks to therapy, medication, and my girlfriend, most of those negative thought processes have been put behind me. But sometimes those little voices come creeping back, preventing me from feeling happy or content. Because, according to them, if I feel happiness that some terrible is lurking behind the corner waiting for me.
One of my goals for this year is to focus on being happy and revel in my successes without expecting the sky to fall on me. Bad things happen. Sometimes in quick succession. But they don’t have anything to do with the positive aspects of my life. They never will. My success isn’t diminished by my hardships.
Most importantly, I deserve true happiness.

Always Room for Improvement, Always Room to Grow

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It’s hard to deal with people who don’t agree with you, who are narrow-minded and are shallow. Who don’t believe in the causes you believe in, and think who you are is a sin. These people are easy to write off as hopeless with no chance of redemption and beyond saving.

Most of the time I would agree with you. I normally don’t have the time nor the energy to spend on ignorant and bigoted people. I can’t shout at the world for not thinking my organization’s mission isn’t important. I don’t have the courage to correct every homophobic comment I hear. It’s not my job to correct people, and most people don’t want to be corrected.

But, there are always those people who can surprise you. People who you never would expect to grow learn expanding their view of the world.

No one was ever outwardly homophobic in my family. It was kind of a “hear no evil, see no evil” mentality growing up and going to Catholic elementary school in the 1990s.

There were, however, those little pieces and tidbits I heard growing up that shaped my idea of how my dad thought of gay people and homosexuality in general. The old family joke was that my dad didn’t want my mom to put a rectal thermometer on my brother, who was an infant at the time, because it would make him gay. As a kid that had much more of an impact on my sexual identity than I was even consciously aware of. Deep down every time I heard that story I felt like my dad was someone who not be supportive.

When he converted to Catholicism I think it made that fear even stronger. I didn’t know I was gay at the time, but when my dad was becoming a deacon I became even more anxious over something I wouldn’t let myself understand. I don’t think religion is naturally oppressive, but the brand of Catholicism that was forced upon me in school was hateful and repressive. I was being told in school that gay people didn’t actually exist because “God didn’t make mistakes”. My dad became more and more associated and intertwined with an institution that was hateful.

I didn’t come out to myself until college, and I really didn’t feel like waiting around before coming out, but I was terrified of coming out to my dad. I was shaking and having a full-blown panic attack while coming out to him, which took about an hour to complete.

His reaction? He was hurt that I thought that he would react badly and reject me. I didn’t have the words to describe to him all of the little things that had paralyzed me with fear. At that point his views on marriage equality and gay rights were far from perfect. He wasn’t against any of it, in reality, he really just didn’t understand. After explaining things to him I could see him starting to change for the better.

It certainly wasn’t an overnight process. It’s been almost 6 years since I’ve come out to him. We still have discussions about Catholicism’s views on anything and everything. I love that I get to explain to him the different parts of the gay movement and why it’s important.

He’s learning from me, and he’s open to new ideas. He understands that there isn’t a conflict with being religious and accepting me for who I am.

I’m not saying that everyone is going to change their mind or that they’ll become magically open-minded. Probably most people aren’t worth your time, but that doesn’t mean that you should write off everyone. There are going to be some people who are actually worth being patient with as they grow.

If you asked me ten years ago if I thought that my dad was capable of that much progress and growth I wouldn’t have believed you. I’m so glad I was wrong.