Tag Archives: depression

Writers Block and Stress

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I have officially had writers block twice now.

I don’t mean the days when you don’t feel like writing, or when the words are a struggle. I mean days when I look at the screen and the words seem to swim away from me. Weeks where stringing two sentences together is such a struggle that I actively avoid even going to the computer, or finding a notepad.

Both instances of writers block were caused by the same thing: stress in my the real world.

Usually writing is a way to get away from the real world for a little while, to create new worlds, and explore them. But every once in a while the stress from the real world compounds and writing seems almost impossible.

The first time it lasted ten years as I struggled to pull myself back after a long, bad marriage. It took a while to find myself again, and once I did it took some more time to remember that passion I once had for writing. This time it’s been the last two years of… everything.

I am starting to pull myself out, and write again. I am finding that taking long walks, limiting the news, and spending time with my mom are helping.

All this to say… it’s okay if you can’t write sometimes. Sometimes things are difficult and you have to take care of yourself first. It’s okay to take your mental health seriously. In fact, you should.

This month was NaNoWriMo, in fact, and I didn’t even try this year. Too much was going on outside of writing for me to even look at NaNoWriMo.

And now it’s almost the end of November. I’m flying back out to Seattle (oh, did I tell you I’m currently in North Carolina?) I am spending thanksgiving with my children, then I am getting in my car and driving all the way to North Carolina.

This is going to be the first time I’ve driven this far on my own. I have no plans other then enjoying the drive, listening to some good books, and taking the time I need to grieve the loses I’ve had this last month.

I hope when I get back to North Carolina in a few weeks that I will be able to move on with my life and find a new start. And get back to the writing.

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Feelings are sometimes wrong

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Tonight I’m feeling useless. It’s a feeling I have all too often, and one that I know is wrong. I’m not useless. I’m actually quite helpful. But all those days of productivity and help don’t always matter. Sometimes you feel useless even when you’re not.

I was talking to someone the other day about feelings, and they said feelings don’t lie. I disagree, I find my feelings lying to me all the time. It’s like the dog that was trained to expect food any time he heard a bell. His mouth would water even if there was no food. My brain does that to me. Sometimes everything will be going perfectly fine but inside I feel like something bad is about to happen. My anxiety gets the better of me, tells me to run, hide, escape. But I’m just sitting in a theater watching a movie and nothings wrong.

I’ve had people tell me that those feelings are valid. That doesn’t help me. In fact that makes the problem worse.

If I validate that feeling of anxiety and say it is normal and natural I am less likely to confront it and try to move past it. I want to be able to go into theaters, concerts, conventions and other places crowded with people without having an anxiety attack. I will never be able to do that if I say my feelings are valid.

Instead I tell myself the truth. My feelings are lying to me. What they are saying has nothing to do with reality. I am safe. I am confident. I am going to be okay. And I’ve even begun to accept this truth.

It’s taken years but just this February I was able to speak on panels at a convention, and I only wanted to run away once. That was an accomplishment. I never would have gotten this far if I had been telling myself my feelings were valid.

When I went to the doctors office the other day they drew my blood, and I have a huge phobia of needles. There is nothing logical about my phobia but I found myself shrinking away, and on the edge of tears because of a normal thing many people do every day. The nurse started telling me my feelings were valid and it started making the fear worse.

I wanted to tell her she was wrong. My fear wasn’t valid. A phobia isn’t usually based on something that can hurt you. The needle doesn’t hurt that much, and because I tense up so much because of the fear it even makes it hurt worse. My fear is causing more problems than it helps.

But I guess this is the new psychology today? Everyone’s feelings are valid? What if I feel deep hatred for a person just because of x, y or z? Is that valid? What if I’m afraid of a big burly man just because he’s a man?

Maybe our feelings should be examined. Maybe we should find out what is causing the feeling, like that bell making the dogs mouth water, instead of just giving into the feelings. Maybe sometimes they are wrong.

I know years ago I use to feel so lost and alone that I wanted to die. I would sit in the bathtub praying that I could just die because living hurt so much. Was that valid? I don’t think so. I think depression is a lying bastard and if someone had said to me “your feelings are valid” I might have done something worse.

Your feelings are how you feel, but that doesn’t mean they are the truth. Your feelings are based on partial information, part experiences, hormones, memories, and so many other things. And sometimes your feelings get muddled up in all the hurts and abuses you’ve had that they can’t see the truth; you are loved, you are wanted, you are helpful, and you will be missed.

Depression is a lying bastard. Yes, your feelings are there, but they aren’t always right. Try to find out why you feel that way. That might be the start of healing. It was for me.

5min- Failure

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How do you judge failure?

I’ve tried so many things in my life. I went to college, but I have no degree. I started painting pictures that are half finished. I have book upon book that is only a fragment of a finished novel or short story.

But is it failure?

Sometimes I feel like I’ve failed, and Gregg has to give me a pep talk and remind me of how far I’ve come, and how much I have accomplished.

You see, there was a time when I did give up. I stopped writing, stopped painting, stopped doing almost anything creative because just existing took so much effort that I couldn’t do much of anything else. That’s the lie of depression. That’s the trap of living in an abusive relationship. You feel so worthless, and useless, that just getting out of bed and putting on clothes is difficult.

And here I am, years later, with finished books and a shelf with my name all over it…. And still I feel like a failure. That thing causing my depression may be gone, but the depression isn’t. It’s a life long companion.

What is failure? Failure is giving into that depression and letting it lie to me. But even if I fail for a day there is still tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, to try again. To get it right.

And that’s my five.

Rising from the darkness

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Today has been a day to recenter myself. I needed to.

And here is where I get a little personal today, and talk about some of the personal things that effect me.

I haven’t had issues with depression in years. Maybe a day here and there where I feel down, need to lay in bed and cry then get up and get back to the grind stone. Not like before. Not like the days when I use to sit in my bathtub praying to a god that wasn’t there that he would just let me die. That sort of desperation, that utter lost feeling that the world was closing in on me and I could not escape it, that I haven’t had in almost a decade. Thankfully.

But I do occasionally have those days where I wake up and it’s just so hard to get out of bed. So hard to turn a light on, or find my clothes. So hard to find that desire to just…move. It would be easy to never leave the house, just be a hermit and never speak to another person outside my home. But I know I’d eventually spiral down into that pit of despair, and drown again.

So when I do have those days now I force myself to get up. Force myself to tell Gregg that I’m having a problem. And like today, I take a mental health break and surround myself with people I love, who love me, and who support me in my dreams. I also missed my girls and spent some time just walking around the mall with them. By the time I got home I was exhausted, but so happy.

This wasn’t an option all those years ago in the bathtub. It wasn’t possible to draw my family to me and focus on their love. I am so, SO, grateful that it is possible to do so today. My daughters are grown, and they understand the darkness that lurks inside of me. My boyfriend has had to deal with it himself, and also understands. I have friends that also have had to deal with it on occasion, and friends who love me regardless.

So if you’re in a dark place, and life is starting to weigh a bit heavy on your shoulders…reach out to someone. Talk to them. Tell them what’s going on inside you. You might not know what to say, the words might be hard to come out, but please…try. It does get better. And depression is a lying bastard.

5 Min – Day 8 – The way we think

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Good morning.

I’m going to warn you before you read this; It isn’t going to be a cheerful post. When I started doing this I realized I might have days like this. Days in which the world sits squarely on my shoulders and I just have to get it out. So here is the first of those days. Hopefully there won’t be very many.

I have struggled with depression most of my life. My depression has roots in things I’m experiencing. I start to feel out of control, like I have no place in the world, or that everything I am working toward is so far out of reach that it would just be better to curl up in a ball and forget I ever tried to do it.

Yesterday was such a day. I started looking at the numbers, and the stats and realizing I’ve put all this money toward something that just isn’t working. What is that? My writing.

Oh, it’s good. I am sure that the stories, the characters, the situations are good. I’m really proud of some of those scenes, and how they came out. I am absolutely in love with the third book. But writing something good, and writing something that people will read is a different matter. And I haven’t figured out that part. How to get people to read it.

But I don’t want you to think the depression part is just about the writing. No, this is a constant battle I have had with myself over everything I have tried. Is it worth it? Do people like it? Do people like me? I have found simple things like making friends, and keeping friends, so difficult that….well, life is a struggle sometimes.

I grew up alone most of the time. I had my sisters, but we didn’t really get along much. I was the constant book worm. They were the ones that would sneak off to do whatever on their own time. They had lots of friends, I sat in the library. That’s just how I was. I didn’t understand basic interactions, but I watched and I listened, and I took psychology classes. So I have a much more logical viewpoint of the world than most people. Most people deal with the world in emotions, and likes and dislikes. Clichés. I come at it with “are you a good person, are you hurting anyone, other than that I don’t care, I’ll accept you.” And I accept that I will disagree with people and have discussions about those disagreements logically. But that isn’t how it works. Most people are not very logical in their take on things, and get emotional and very passionate about certain subjects.

And because I was sheltered growing up i don’t have the same ideas about a lot of things. I got ideas from books, and observation, not from listening to friends and family members and their opinions. So when I finally started getting friends and they started saying “this is how some things are” I disagreed. Because it didn’t make sense. When you see a thing in the world and it is a certain way and everyone wants to say it is a different way it is really hard to tell ourselves that  what your actually observations is wrong.

At least…for me it’s that way.

There was a study a while ago about herd mentality, and it showed that the majority of people will actually change their view point based on peer pressure. If one person says “the color on that banner is red” but the entire class tells him it’s green, he will often cave to the pressure and agree that it’s green. Something switches inside his head that lets him see it the way that the rest of the group sees it.

This herd mentality is there to keep us safe, and comfortable in our groups. If the herd works together they are more likely to survive. Those who disagree with the group, those who form their own opinions, or strike out on their own, are not as acceptable in the herd.

And yet those who strike out on their own often become the best among us. Galileo, Einstein, Carl Sagan, and every other scientist that stepped away from the group think, and struck out on their own. I wish we prized that kind of thinking, more people would do it.

So what does all of this have to do with my writing, and why I’m depressed?

Because I was listening to “Write to Market” from Chris Fox and realized that yet again I have struck out on my own, away from the herd, and made life difficult for myself. Here I am writing fantasy, but it’s my own brand of epic/dark/lovecraftian fantasy. I wrote it because I am interested in the interaction between people, and the dynamics of one group against another, and how that can cause rifts in a society. I wrote it because I believe with every bit of my body that just because a government, or most people, or even an individual says that something is wrong that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. I believe that individuality is important, and that no group should be able to rule over another with absolute authority. And I put all of that, and more, into that book. And that’s not what people are looking for.

Yes, those who read it tend to like it. But it isn’t something like Dresden with mass market appeal. It’s a work for love.

Do I want to be a full time writer, to stop working for big companies and making someone else money? Yes. But can I take my books and make them more marketable? I’m not sure. I have many ideas, and a lot of them are really good. But I don’t know if any of them would have a mass appeal. I just know I have to keep writing, keep trying, because my thoughts and feelings about the world are just as valid as everyone else’s.

And this has been much, much, longer than 5 minutes, but I couldn’t really cut this one short today. I hope you’ll forgive me.

Creativity and Depression

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I was listening to the recent Author Strong Podcast where Nancy talks about her battle with getting the words out now that she quit her day job. She took a leap of faith, and now she has to deal with her depression trying to assert itself.

I listened as she stumbled, trying to explain to Matt (a very cheerful and go for it type of person) why it was easier to say “do this to work around it” then it was to actually do it. And I saw myself reflecting back at me.

I’ve dealt with depression for as long as I can remember. As a teen I had school, and sisters to help pull me from it. When I got married I had the children to help. In the last six years I’ve been happier then I’ve ever been with a new life, a great boyfriend, a supportive family, and an outlet for my creativity. And yet for the last month I’ve had that old beast, depression, rearing it’s ugly head.

I know what’s causing it. I know what I need to do to make it shut up and stop all the self doubt and whispers in my head that I’m not worthwhile. But that doesn’t make it easy.

For creativity, this is horrible. Every time I sit down to write I have to talk myself into it. Not just the act of writing, but the act of sitting at the computer for anything other than playing a game or checking email. Just opening the files so that I can read through them is a huge stress when depression starts whispering to me, and it’s not always easy. When I do start to clunk away at the keys sometimes I can write, other times I will put down a few words before the whispers in my head telling me I’m not good enough, I’ll never get anywhere with this, I’ll never finish, get too loud for me to write anymore. I’ll get up, do something else, change perspective, but I simply can’t continue on with that work…yet.

I sent a tweet out yesterday that said “Depression is a lying bastard.” It’s a common refrain now, a reminder that all the whispers in my head are wrong. I am worth it, I will finish, I am stronger than I seem. All those things and more.

Someone replied “I don’t believe in depression.” I don’t know if he meant it as a joke, or he honestly doesn’t believe in it. It really didn’t matter why he said it. I looked at the tweet and all I could think was: “Man, I’d love to have the luxury of being able to dismiss depression as nonexistent.”

In some ways knowing what’s wrong, and why my creativity is floundering, helps me get through it. I can write a blog post, or tell Gregg about the things going through my head, and things tend to die down for a little bit. Sometimes. Other times I can’t seem to break free from the cycle. Even while writing this blog post I had a moment where I could not pull myself from the destructive thoughts.

If you think of the brain like millions of chemical reactions going off all over the curves of your cerebellum then it is easier to see how one miss fire could trigger a cascade effect that can run out of control sometimes. Thoughts that keep repeating themselves, destructive thoughts that keep cycling over and over, a lack of will because it is simply easier to avoid new things than deal with that destructiveness.

We do have some control over the chemical processes in our minds. There are techniques and medications we can use to lower certain hormones which cause the more harmful problems. But not all of us have access to medications, and the techniques aren’t effective 100% of the time.

How do you explain depression to someone who doesn’t have it, or someone who thinks it’s “all in your head”? I don’t know. I have trouble describing it to myself some days.

But I will continue to sit down at the keyboard and try to write, even when the chemicals in my brain don’t want me to, because this is important to me.

Some days you’re the bug

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LiesThere’s a song I use to listen to when I was younger… Some day’s your the windshield, someday’s your the bug. That’s how I’m feeling tonight.

Depression is this weird thing that we all know about. We just don’t talk about it. It’s anathema. Are we afraid we’ll catch it if we acnoledge it? It’s like we’re afraid that if we are broken then we can never be fixed again and no one will ever love us. But it’s mostly that way for mental illness. If you break a bone, or cut your arm, no one bats an eye. You get a cast, and people sign it. You tell awesome stories about how you rolled  your bike down a hill and had this awesome, amazing adventure.

But depression doesn’t have amazing stories. It has heart wrenching hurt filled stories. Sometimes it has no stories at all, it’s just there. Then it whispers in your ear and tells you how worthless and useless you are. It circles around your, slowly squeezing out all rays of light and leaving you in a dark passage trying to find your way.

I’ve struggled with depression for most of my life. It started when I was a teenager unable to find that basic thing we are all looking for: love. I wasn’t battered or beaten. I wasn’t called horrible names very often. Mostly our parents just left us alone to fend for ourselves. No matter how good I was I could never get their attention. Not even after I moved away and got married. They just weren’t that interested in me.

That crushing burden of being alone, it eats into you. Add to it the lack of friends, the complete awkwardness of a general teenage girl, the fact that I always wore hand me downs and no one ever noticed me except when they teased me. You’re set adrift in the world, lost, and no one to catch you.

Just before my divorce I hit rock bottom. I lost everything, including my children, and I almost jumped off a building. Oh I thought about suicide lots of times. The earliest I can remember was 14 drawing pictures of myself falling off a cliff onto rocky outcroppings. Then during my marriage to a husband who treated me as an inconvenience most of the time and liked to remind me constantly of how useless and worthless I was it just got worse.

Getting divorced saved me. I was able to get out of the depression, and the suicidal thoughts left. I had hope. Hope was all I ever needed. Being alone was a blessing after that marriage.

But now and then the depression creeps back in, whispers in my ear, and reminds me how worthless and useless I am. It’s been whispering for a few weeks now. That I never finish anything, that I never get anywhere. That I’ll never be good enough or concomitant enough. That no matter how hard I try no one will ever respect me or care about me.

I hate those whispers. I usually curl up in Gregg’s lap and he reminds me how much I am loved and wanted, but he isn’t home right now so I am writing a blog post and I am reminding myself. Depression is a lying bastard! I am worthwhile. I am creative. I am a wonderful person. And it might take a while, but by damn someone is going to love my books.

If you’re in that spot now I hope you know… Depression lies. Whatever it’s whispering to you in the dark, it isn’t true. Tell someone, let them know what it’s saying and they will tell you the truth.

It’s hard to feel worth while when everything is falling down around you. It’s hard to believe in yourself when life has been so hard. I know. I’ve been there. Life has kicked me and punched me and left me lying on the ground bleeding. All we can do is get back up, and say Depression Lies.

That’s What He Said

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I use to use google reviews as ways to check out new businesses. They aren’t scammy like yelp. But right now my company is trying to get google reviews. And boy are they pushing it.

“Look at this as an opportunity to practice promoting yourself” said my boss. He knows that I’ve published books, and that I’m struggling with getting noticed, reviews, and basically anything that says ‘hey look at me, I wrote this, you should read it’.

And he isn’t wrong.

It’s incredibly difficult to draw attention to myself, or anything I do. It goes against everything I was trained… stay unseen. Stay unheard. Your opinion isn’t valuable. No one cares. You’re not worth it. No one likes you. No one will ever love you.

So I find myself confronting all these things I heard for all of those years. And some days I make little breakthroughs and I can say ‘see, I did this and I think it’s good.’ (Well, mostly I say I think it’s ‘okay’ because I don’t want to disappoint anyone.)

And other days I freeze. The words get stuck on my tongue. I want to run, hide, cry, and just get everyones attention off of me somehow, anyway possible.

I recognize that this was caused by years of abuse. I recognize that the whispering in my head telling me that no one cares, and no one wants to hear what I have to say isn’t right. DEPRESSION IS A LYING BASTARD!

Half the struggle is recognizing this. Before I knew why this was happening I let my fight or flight system kick in and I would retreat. Get quite. Go unnoticed. After 30+ years of practice I’m really good at it.

But I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to write, and I want to share my stories with people. I want to know that my words will live on even when I’m gone. I want to inspire others to follow their passions, and their loves.

And really… I don’t want to be broken anymore. I don’t want what he did to me to be what dictates my life from here on out. This is my life, and I am worthwhile, and I have something amazing to say. People do want to listen to me. They do want to talk to me.

So… I wrote a book. And I’m really proud of it. I hope you read it some day.

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Hypercritical

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I haven’t published ANYTHING in a couple of months. It’s depressing me a little.

Now, I realize I’m being hypercritical of myself. I am watching the word counts go up, the chapters get finished, the edits work… but the bar I placed, publication, isn’t happening. It hasn’t happened in a few months, and it bothers me.

Objectively, this is ridiculous. Other authors spend months writing, editing, and publishing novels. If you go through the gambit of traditional publication you may only see one or two books A YEAR come out. I did eleven, in six months.

I should be proud of myself. I should be happy with my progress. But ultimately, it isn’t enough.

But I think this is a good thing. If it were enough then I wouldn’t be pushing myself so hard to write more. If it were enough then I wouldn’t be striving to up my word count, fix my formating and spelling on older books, or attempting to come up with book covers that don’t suck too much.

I am taking comfort in the fact that this isn’t enough, because it means this is incredibly important to me. To go farther, write more, and tell my damn stories to everyone willing to listen.

My stories should be seen. They are worth it. It’s never going to be “enough”, so I’m just going to have to get better.

Brains are weird

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Imagine a person standing against a board. On the other side of the board is another person. As long as they both push against that board it doesn’t move.

The one on the nearside is just trying to hold the wall up. All they care about is keeping the normality at a steady level. Keep the wall strait. Hold on. Steady.

The guy on the other side of the wall… he’s an asshole. He keeps pushing on that wall. Pressing in, trying to demolish the house the first person made.

Sometime the ass gets tired, and he wanders away. Bored. Other times he pushes harder, or enlists help. Some days…. some days he has a tractor and he manages to knock the wall down.

The girl inside… she just wants to build her house. So she picks up the pieces and puts it back together, and guards the wall. Hoping to keep it up. Hoping to keep it steady the next time he attacks.

After a while she doesn’t leave the wall anymore. And when he stops pounding on the walls she gets nervous. Constantly waiting for the next blow.

The blows become normal. They become natural. They become her world.

So when you take down the wall and set her free… it’s so hard to just be normal.

And then something good happens. Someone actually pays attention, or god forbid, helps her build that wall. It’s shocking, even terrifying, because it isn’t normal. Not to her. Not to the life she’s lived for so many years, trapped inside those walls.

I realize these things. I know my brain is lying to me when a good thing happens and I start waiting for something horrible to happen. Nothing horrible has really happened in the last four years…

Like the Blogess says… Depression is a lying bastard.