Saturday 26 May 2018

Depression, a heavy burden. A bit about depression and weight gain

both!
This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately.  I feel very strongly that psychiatric medications are necessary and life-saving for certain people and there is far too much stigma surrounding taking them.  That being said, there's no denying that they have undesirable side effects for many, weight gain being one of them.  This has definitely been the case for me and this reason I would like to be on the lowest dose that is sufficient to stabilise me. I've been fairly stable for a good few months now and recently went to my GP for a review to discuss reducing my dose.  I mentioned my weight gain and so the doctor asked me to get on the scales.  I happened to sneak a glance at their screen and saw that I've put on 11kg since being on the medication.  It's no real shock, I had definitely noticed it in myself and in the way my clothes fit (or don't fit!) me.  I can't completely shirk responsibility. I'm not sure how much of that 11kg is down to the medication and how much is just me eating too much but there has been research that has demonstrated a link between antidepressant use and weight gain.  With depression usually adversely affecting people's self-esteem, you can imagine that putting on weight isn't exactly helpful in most cases.

So what's the answer?
all too familiar!
I don't know. I wish I did. I have been going to the gym and eating healthily (without being overtly strict).  When you have recovered from a depressive episode and are just starting to enjoy life again you don't want to deprive yourself of one its main pleasures! (Food glorious food!) I do like healthy and nutritious food but I also like indulgent treats and alcohol! I've been incorporating exercise into my lifestyle also but I know that if I put myself under immense pressure to lose the weight, that will not be helpful for my mental health.  There have been times where I've really put myself down about the weight gain and binge eating. I've felt like I 'should' know better, having a degree in nutrition and I 'should' be using a dietary approach to help alleviate my depression.  There are some people who have managed to see significant improvements in depressive symptoms through changing their diet but each person is an individual and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another.   A severe depressive episode can feel a bit like a tornado and all you can do is seek shelter and refuge and wait for it to pass.  If your home town was hit by a natural disaster and your life was turned upside down, eating a healthy diet would probably not be your highest priority and you would seek solace in any way possible.  I'm not trying to deny that binge eating is unhealthy but when depression is severe, that momentary calm that overeating brings can help people get through the toughest of times.

Obviously not all people with depression binge eat and/or gain weight.  Some lose their appetite, hardly eat at all and end up losing weight.  Others have different coping mechanisms that affect them in different ways.  However, with so much focus on obesity in the media and in NHS campaigns, people who are classified as overweight or obese can feel a great deal of shame and I think it's something that needs to be talked about.

What's the lesser of 2 evils?

The decision of whether to take medication for depression or not can be very difficult and should not be taken lightly (and I don't think most people do!)  I get quite irritated when I hear people say things like 'antidepressants are way over-prescribed' and 'Doctors hand out antidepressants like candy'.  I have yet to see any evidence of this and I think it's just the case that depression is very common and there are a lot of people who do genuinely need it. I personally suffered (on and off) from depressive episodes for well over a decade before plucking up the courage to go to a GP about it and I think there are a lot of people out there suffering in silence. There are often undesirable side effects so it's just about weighing up whether the benefits of medication outweigh the disadvantages.  I have struggled with my weight a lot and so I don't exactly welcome the medication with open arms. But after trying therapy several times, exercise, reading goodness knows how many self-help/positive thinking books, eating a nutritious diet and ensuring I'm not deficient in anything with no lasting effect on suppressing depression, it's something I definitely felt was necessary for my well-being even if it does mean a bit of weight gain.  I'm not saying that therapy, exercise and a healthy lifestyle aren't important or helpful, of course they are, but in some cases it's insufficient to alleviate depression.

So what to do if medication makes you gain weight?

I can attempt to lose weight through diet and exercise but I think what's most important as I've said in my post about body image: http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-girl-in-mirror-2-all-about-that.html is to focus on building self-esteem.  Our society puts a lot of pressure on people to look a certain way or to weigh a certain amount in order to be considered healthy but there is so much more to a person than the number on the scales.  It's really not in my nature to say positive things about myself, it feels very unnatural to me but what I've done sometimes is ask people close to me what they think are my strengths or what they admire about me. There are so many people who might not fit society's typical health or beauty ideals but who are extremely talented or kind.  A person's weight does not and should not define their worth! 
Aretha's voice is a lot more important
than what she weighs! 


Tuesday 8 May 2018

Tearing down (negative) labels

On my way to the seaside yesterday I was reading something in Psychologies magazines about removing labels that you or other people might have about yourself and that have negative connotations for you. This is definitely something that affects me and that I think about a lot. In my previous blog: https://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/what-is-sane-or-normal.html I've talked about whether those who are highly sensitive and therefore experience stronger highs and lows emotionally should be labelled as 'insane' because statistically we are in the minority. (If you don't get a chance to read it, my answer was, of course, no!) I proudly wear the highly sensitive person label and I'm not ashamed to say I have a mental illness.  There's a few personality traits or characteristics that I or other people associate with me and that do nothing for my sense of self-worth.  So I decided to do the exercise about removing negative labels whilst on the beach (whilst listening to Bob Marley!)
So what are the labels that I don't like being associated with myself?

'Too quiet, Introverted, Shy'

My unhelpful labels.
I should've put 'too quiet'!
I don't think any of these are necessarily negative qualities but I don't like it when people associate them with me.  I think this is because it was always what people said about me in school growing up (it was definitely true at the time!). So when people still continue to say this about me I feel that they are disregarding all the great progress I have made since then with regard to confidence. 
It depends on where I am mentally (whether I'm in a depressive episode or not) but I can be quite outgoing and sociable.  I like going to meet-ups to meet more like-minded people and try new experiences and it doesn't really phase me if there won't be anyone I know there (the younger me wouldn't dream of doing this!).  I have a hedonistic side and I like socialising and dancing.  What is definitely true of me, however, is that I find endless conversation (especially small talk!) exhausting and I DEFINITELY need a lot of 'me' time and headspace otherwise I go crazy.  None of the words 'quiet, shy or introvert' are insults but I think I have negative connotations with them ('social recluse' 'antisocial' 'hermit') because of what people said about me at school.  Despite those things not being insults, if a label is unhelpful to me, I will disassociate it from myself!

 

'Fat, Overweight'

I put on quite a lot of weight last year, partly due to the binge eating that accompanies my depression and partly the medication I take and so now I'm the heaviest I've ever been and my BMI is almost in the obese category.  I often find myself calling myself fat in a jokey/self-deprecating way, to distract myself from how upset I really am, which I really don't think is helpful.  I do struggle a lot because I love indulgent food and alcohol but I do also like healthy food, I exercise as much as I can and I put a lot of consideration into what I eat. 

I don't know why I am letting the fact that my weight in kg divided by my height squared is higher than 25 have so much power over me when really I know there are much more important things in life! This is definitely a label that serves no positive purpose and that I want to rid myself any association with. 


'Boring', 'Geek'
From my proudly intellectual
Psychologies magazine!
These are also words that people associated with me in school because I wasn't loud and boisterous and got (mostly!) good grades (I was in a school where that wasn't considered a good thing at the time but something that got you bullied or made fun of!).  I feel like people really got me all wrong.  I don't think there is anything wrong with the kind of person that people would consider a 'geek', somebody intellectual who is a real bookworm and doesn't enjoy parties or sports.  It just wasn't really me! In school there were a couple of subjects I had a bit of a head-start on because my mum was a teacher (Maths and French) but I was no genius and I wasn't particularly studious either! I can't remember what I used to do in my spare time as a teenager but I seem to remember spending a lot of time sleeping and resting and constantly leaving my homework until the last minute! In school I was used to not doing a lot of work and still getting relatively good grades so university came as a total shock to me! I wasn't brilliant at sport but not awful either and I have enjoyed dancing and enjoying upbeat music from as long as I can remember. I haven't been to school for about 16 years so I don't know why people's incorrect perception should still bother me. 
I won a potato race aged 10,
wasn't that bad at sports!

 
When I have the mental energy, I now love to learn new things as an adult.  I had to work extremely hard to do that nutrition diploma, with science never having been one of my strong points and it's one of my proudest achievements.  It's so wrong that in certain academic institutions those who do well are ridiculed and people use derogatory words like 'geek' to describe them.  It's also a word that serves no positive purpose.

my new labels! 

How to remove negative or unhelpful labels and create new ones!
I enjoyed doing this exercise  from Psychologies magazine in the picture above. I established what the inaccurate and/or unhelpful labels were and wrote my new ones.  Instead of 'quiet' I put 'selectively talkative!' I talk when I feel like it and I do truly believe not every gap has to be filled with crap! 'Geek' I replaced with 'Intellectual and sporty!', boring I replaced with 'Interesting and fun-loving' and 'Fat' I replaced with 'Voluptuous, muscular and healthy'.  And the unhelpful labels? I stuck them onto stones and threw them into the sea, to symbolise ridding myself of my association with them. It felt good! (other than the slight guilt for polluting the sea with 4 mini post-it notes) It might take a while for me to fully stop linking myself with any of those labels but I am going to try and focus on my new more positive and accurate labels.  Don't let anyone give you a label you don't like or that is not helpful to you!

Wednesday 2 May 2018

What is 'sane' or 'normal'?

if you're struggling mentally,
it's completely understandable
Who gets to decide what is sane or not? I remember once seeing an event advertised on facebook for a talk entitled 'Are normal people sane?' and thinking it sounded really interesting but I didn't get the chance to go.  It is something I do wonder about sometimes though.  My brother came up with the name for this blog 'Samantha, the sane vegan' to differentiate myself from the tiny minority of vegans who are overtly puritanical and judgemental. So it's ironic that a lot of my blogs have ended up being about me not being sane! I suppose I do consider myself classified as having a mental illness because I do experience periods of clinical depression interspersed with periods of temporary sanity and sometimes low-level mania (hypomania).  I have always felt a bit different and never really felt like I was one who fitted in with the crowds in school.  Reading up about the prevalence of HSPs (highly sensitive people) and meeting more in real life and in online forums (finding my tribe!) has helped me to understand myself better but it still doesn't make being in a minority in society easy.

In what ways do I feel different and how does it affect my life?

yep, that's me!
Socially! In school everyone (teachers and classmates!) always commented that I was too quiet and didn't talk much and it's something people continue to say to me as an adult. I never really know how to respond when people say this.  I only tend to talk when I've got something interesting to say and sometimes I don't (that just doesn't seem to stop a lot of people!) I've never felt the need to be continuously talking and I find endless conversation, small talk and people who won't let you get a word in edgeways mentally exhausting and stressful. (Partly why I like blogging, no one can interrupt me haha!).  I also think as a HSP I need more headspace than others and I go a bit crazy if I don't get enough 'me' time to decompress.

some people have likened me
 to Lisa Simpson! lol
Morally! I can remember when asking my siblings to describe me the first things they said were 'moral, caring and ethical'.  I've always thought a lot about how our actions impact on the world around us.  Some people find it odd that I buy most of my clothes from charity shops but I do it because of ethical and environmental concerns about factory-made clothes.  If I have a glass bottle or can on me I'll hang onto it until I can find a recycling bin.  I was always uncomfortable with the idea of eating animals for as long as I can remember and put a lot of thought into what I purchase and everything I do.  There are some people who go much further than me with regard to this and have achieved a lot more than me in terms of making a difference in the world at a younger age than me.  I'm no Martin Luther King or Harriet Tubman. I've just observed that I care about a lot of things more than most people do.  I've read part of a book called 'The Moral Molecule' that suggests that it might be linked with having higher levels of a hormone called oxytocin (it's a lot more complicated than that obviously!).

Emotional sensitivity-wise
ok that sounds ever so slightly arrogant
but I see where he's coming from!
I've always been quite sensitive and get really badly affected by watching violent, bloodthirsty or emotionally difficult films or series.  Horror films, films with torture and series like Game of Thrones with gratuitous violence are extremely popular these days and I've been in situations where I feel like the odd one out with regards to this.  But I think the fact that most people seem to be desensitised to this is very worrying and it should be normal to be horrified by it! I often can't cope with watching the news as it upsets me too much.  I've had people say to me that we need to know about what's happening in the world and I need a reality check.  It's not like I want to just bury my head in the sand or that I go by the motto 'ignorance is bliss' but sometimes I reach a limit and I have to step back from it all in order to protect my mental health.

Does being in the minority make me in the wrong?

Am I 'insane' or weird because I don't fit in with the majority of people? I think in society we tend to get our ideas about what is normal and acceptable from what we see around us.  But I think questioning what we are brought up to believe in and having the confidence to be different  is positive and a sign of intelligence.  Minority influence is often the way a lot of  revolutionary changes start.  Life isn't always easy when you feel different and unusual but I've found that as I get older I learn to embrace who I am more and meet more like-minded people. I'm happy to be different!
they do indeed!