Some pics heal, while others can hurt!

This morning, my cousin Katia posted a picture  on FB of exactly a year ago and I must say that it has a healing effect on my soul.  We were enjoying each others company at her place and just having fun taking silly pictures. But... there was one thing out of balance... my mental health. This picture was actually taken in the midst of my depression and if you would have told people, they would never have believed it... But don't judge people by just looking at the outside, try to look into their heart and listen carefully to what they are saying.

I so vividly remember how much I failed just enjoying life in general.  I had lost my inner peace and felt nervous all the time. My body was hurting because of the many panic attacks and anxiety. That day, and many others after that...we had such good talks about life in general, about all the changes that we all go through at a certain age and how to cope with them. They both were good listeners who tried to understand my feelings and why I found myself in a deep hole. The thing is that you realize all those things but you can not change them, you are blocked, paralyzed, … there are so many verbs I want to add but basically, you are unable to change and that is the scary part of it because it feels like you are going to be stuck in there forever...
But... you are not... all you need to heal is time. Time to accept, time to see things differently, time to think, time to digest mentally.

I am  so happy to say that I feel balanced now, I have found myself again and I have accepted the fact that we need to move on with our lives and we can not look back too often. Maybe that is what I was doing too much, not really living in the present, refusing to enjoy the little things in life... 

Thank you both for listening, for trying to understand me, for supporting me, for spending time with me, for your ever lasting healing effect on my soul, for sharing your inner thoughts with me, for so many other things, … 

Pier Park

Na het melden van een lek in onze badkamer deze morgen, en met enige vertraging dan toch vertrokken richting Pier Park. Het was maar een kwartiertje rijden vanuit onze condo, maar we stonden voor het grootste deel in de file.

Pier Park is een groot shopping center in Panama City. In de buurt is er ook een cinema en een reuzerad (bijna operationeel).

Deze namiddag lekker op het strand wat gelezen. Ik ben dan eindelijk aan mijn tweede boek begonnen (Michel Bussi - Sang famille). De zelfgemaakte spaghetti deze avond viel bij ons beiden enorm in de smaak.

Een fietstochtje naar St. Andrews State Park

Vandaag hebben we zo'n 20 km in de blakende zon naar St. Andrews State Park gereden. Je zou denken, wel… en dan? Maar moest je hier ter plaatse zijn, dan zou je anders spreken. De vochtigheidsgraad is heel hoog en de temperature schommelen gemiddeld tss de 30 en de 35 graden. Geef ons maar Michigan summers! Maar het was wel de moeite!

De rest van de dag gingen we zoals gewoonlijk lezen op het strand rond een uur of vier. We hebben twee strandstoelen en een parasol die de huurders van de condo kunnen gebruiken. Heel praktisch!

Belgium vs Panama

Zelfs al zijn we op reis in Florida, voetbal blijft key!

Onze prognostiek was correct: 3-0 en content dat we waren!

Total relaxation at Panama City beach

Arrived safely after a total new rental car (had 18 miles) broke down after 8 miles but that story is too long to share...

Took the Dow shuttle that landed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Then rented a car and after having crossed Alabama, we finally arrived in the Florida Panhandle, an informal, unofficial term for the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida.

We are staying in a condo on the 4th floor right on the beach.  This morning, we rented bikes and went for a 3-mile walk on the beach.

This is our view from the condo:

 

Our program:

• watching a lot of  world cup soccer (especially Serge, I will only watch when Belgium plays);
• biking;
• reading my books: finishing the one of Stéphane Allix (Lorsque j'étais quelqu'un d'autre) and the last one of Michel Bussi, my favorite French author (Sang famille);
• blogging;
• preparing  for my Fall courses;
• just enjoy walking on the beach...

I am truly happy to be able to enjoy everything around me and to sleep through the night.

June 2017, same time of year, we were visiting St. Petersburg and Moscow for one week and I still remember I could not enjoy anything around me. So that's why I am grateful that I can do this again. I feel so relaxed and myself again. Reading helps me a lot and I finally have the time to read what I want.

Here are some pics I took, more of them to follow:

Mindfulness

Mindfulness seems to be the antidote of depression and many unbalanced people try to find relieve by practicing this new science of health and happiness. Its focus is on living in the present moment. There are so many books, magazines, CD's and courses on the market. So of course, people would recommend me this type of meditation when they heard about my mental condition last summer.

Here are some of my suggestions:

• Pick one that is up your alley. Just give it a try and see if it works and makes you move forward;
• If don't feel up to it, think about it for a while and try again. Your state of mind is changing constantly and what did not work yesterday might work today or tomorrow;
• Do not stress about it.
  
  

I'm a book person so anything text related helped and still helps me realize how much we can be/are in control of our own actions, feelings and body. 

Here are some of my personal books and magazines:

If this is not helpful, have you tried yoga? I have tried yoga in the garden at the Saginaw Art museum in May and must say that I totally relaxed just by hearing the sound of birds and touching the grass.

Or just reading a good book where you are totally lost yourself in the story?

Another very effective method is breathing correctly. This breathing exercise can calm you down in a few minutes.

The main thing you need to do is trying to detach yourself or get your mind of the different person you have become or who you don't recognize anymore. I so desperately wanted to shake my other identity off but could not manage to do so for about a year and it feels like you are going to be stuck in there forever but believe me that it is going to get better!!! 

Medication - Xanax

If you are lucky, the first type of anti-depressant is the right one. Then it is up to the right dose and you can breathe again... It might take a while but be patient. But I need to warn you: No pill is going to fix it all! You still need to do the work and try to balance it out... Hard to do when you are down... Words are cheap. Do not try to fix a person who is depressed. Give them time and just listen.

I happened to be lucky. It is wise to talk to as many people about this as possible since you can learn from their stories and experiences. The thing is, when you are dealing with depression, you want to be relieved right away and want to escape from your pain and anxiety, actually from yourself because you are someone else... you don't recognize who you are anymore.

When people made compliments about my looks, I thought to myself, man, if you could only see how ugly I feel inside. This sentence is still very upsetting to me because I constantly remember me thinking this way.

What about Xanax?

This medicine is normally given to patients with high anxiety and believe me when I say that it is very popular among high school students who are usually very stressed during exams or even quizzes. I also know people who take this whenever they feel an attack coming up or only when they are super stressed. Some doctors prescribe this without hesitation and don't really care about the outcome.

So when I asked my doctor to prescribe this for me, she was very hesitant to say the least.  Well, she wouldn't want me to take it because it is very addictive! And after a while you need to take more to get the same effects, so after hearing this I was happy she was concerned about my health (as she's supposed to). 

Now that I totally quit taking anti-depressants, (I phased it out in April), I still have Buspirone in case I get a panic attack. But until now, I have not felt the need to take this. I feel very strong mentally and hope to keep it up for quite a while!