10 years ago...

This time 10 years ago, I wanted to die. Then, I started to talk about it.

I didn’t mean to. I certainly didn’t want to. It all kind of just spilled out to a friend in desperation. But that “mistake” saved my life, as I ended up going inpatient the next day, and that has led to quite the healing journey! 

It also forced me to tell my family and friends how I was really doing, something I’d long avoided.

I’d had suicidal thoughts on and off since high school, but I thought they were something that had to be kept secret, so that I wouldn’t be judged or create a panic. I also never wanted anyone, especially my parents, to worry about me. I wanted to be “a pleasure to have in class” in all areas of my life, so no one could know how much I sometimes struggled emotionally. 

But it was only in being honest with the people in my life that I started to heal. And though there have certainly been ups and downs over the past 10 years, I am really glad I’m still here. 💖

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A post shared by Dr. Leah Katz | Psychologist | Speaker I Media Contributor (@dr.leahkatz)

Now… here’s the part I’ve been struggling to put into words. I really wish I could say, “It’s okay to have suicidal thoughts,” because acceptance and compassion feel better to me (and probably everyone??) than denial, panic, and shame. It really helps when my therapist tells me things like, “It’s okay to be scared,” and I have kind of adapted that to telling myself, “It’s okay to feel [fill-in-the-blank emotion]” when I’m not in the therapy room.

But “being scared” is one thing. Suicidal thoughts are life and death. Not to mention that no one should have to go through life wanting to die. And even with the normalization of mental health, this particular topic still feels taboo, in a way that talking about anxiety and depression don’t.

But suicide is the 12th-leading cause of death in the US. NOT talking about it, or reacting to it from a place of judgment, clearly isn’t helping. Will we ever get to a place where people can share their suicidal thoughts and feel genuinely heard, supported, and helped in the process? I was so incredibly lucky to have that experience with the friend I “mistakenly” opened up to. I have not always been able to give that gift to others (when I was in denial about my own issues), and I really regret it.

If talking about my experience does anything to lessen the stigma, well, maybe that’s why I’m still here. 🫶

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts:

You are loved. 

You deserve to be heard. 

You deserve to heal.

In the US, there is the new 988 hotline for mental health crises. This page also lists a number of other resources. (I am also so intrigued by the last option on that page, Warmlines, for when you are “not in crisis, but still need support.” How did I not know things like that existed?!)

And if you’ve been there for me over the past 10 years:

Natalie Merchant was hitting me in all the feels as I was driving around on Saturday 💖🥹

Small things that have been helping my mental health

The past few weeks have been a doozy. You never realize how good you’re doing until things go off the rails, ha! Here are a few small things that have been helping me cope with big feelings lately:

Purely practical

I feel like I’m 100 years old, but I have two weekly pill organizers, and I set them up with meds and supplements every Sunday night. Love a good “set it and forget it.” Then, no matter how derailed the week might get, I don’t have to think about my meds—they’re already portioned out and waiting. 👍

Similarly, I fill out my planner on Sundays. If I don’t map everything out for the week in advance, I tend to feel scattered and overwhelmed. Incidentally, these were both good ways to harness my wild anxious energy this past Sunday! 😅

Immersive distraction

This could be whatever strikes your fancy—watching a show or movie, working out, taking a class. (In Normal Times, I would probably go to whatever in-person gentle yoga class was being offered!) These past few weeks, though, my immersive distraction has been playing video games on the TV (because I usually play on the handheld Switch). I’ll often set an alarm too. Yes, it is weird to tell myself, “You need to sit and do something fun for 30 minutes!” but a short time limit gets me to actually do it, and I usually feel at least a little better by the time the alarm goes off. It’s hard to anxiety spiral about your own life when you’re trying not to get Link killed in Breath of the Wild! 

More meditative

(This is hilarious coming from me, because I have resisted anything resembling meditation for so long. I think it helps that this doesn’t feel like ~meditation~.)

The thought of meditating, of slowing down and going inward, terrifies me, I think because it allows the scared inner children inside to finally be like “HEY! LISTEN!” Annnd Adult me would traditionally pull a Moira Rose on them:

But engaging those scared inner parts in the process of meditating, rather than running from them, has been a game-changer.

When I’m really upset in the present, I often feel hijacked by my inner children and lose sense of my adult self. So envisioning the scared inner child(ren) getting support and comfort in the “inner therapy room” has been really helpful. I mean, Adult me finds therapy to be a source a great comfort, so why not give that to my inner children? What would they want to talk to my therapist about? How do they feel? What do they need? And is it something that I can give to them now? 💖

Self-care

I know “self-care” is a term that’s basically devoid of meaning at this point, but I have found small acts of kindness toward myself to be really nice when I’m upset. They remind me that I’m worthy of care and that I can treat myself with care. Honestly, this post from Jess Rachel Sharp has really shifted how I think about worth, feelings, too-much-ness, etc.!

These self-care gestures don’t have to be anything big or elaborate. If I’m doing it with a loving intention, just washing my face or putting on hand lotion or fancy lip balm can feel very kind. ☺️

Cry-vomiting™️

You know how you usually feel better after the brief unpleasantness of throwing up? That’s how I feel these days about crying—I don’t enjoy it, but it’s become a necessary release so I can get the feelings out of my system and move on. And I do usually feel somewhat better afterwards, so 👍.

If the thought of crying and listening to your inner child is a big NO THANKS right now, I get it. Some days, it is still a big NO THANKS from me! This shift happened organically, almost 10 years into my therapy journey, and only once these things started feeling safe enough to try. It’s all a process. 💖

What do you find helpful on a not-great mental health day?

Linking up with Andrea and Erika over at Friday Favorites!

Rebirthday #9

Or: Not letting certain parts of me flatten my sparkle! 😁

In case you don’t know, I look at 3/20/13, the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts, as my Rebirthday, because it’s the day this healing journey began!

Wow wee, as the years go on, some things get easier, some things get harder, and more and more comes up to be healed. I so often feel stuck and ashamed of where I am (or am not) in life… COUGH…

But milestones like the Rebirthday are great because they force me to slow down and acknowledge the significant-but-hard-to-quantify shifts that have happened over the years.

When I started therapy in 2013, I approached it as I had school. If I did all the things and worked really hard, I would “get better,” right? So I journaled all the time, I read all the books, I was completely in my head and out of my body, and it was great. I was working really hard, and so I was deserving of my therapist’s time and attention, right? I was getting all whole and healed, right?

…Right?

In 2013, I had zero awareness that this pull to do all the “right” things and stay out of my body was not the entirety of me, but rather the effect of the different inner parts of me that sometimes took hold.

I have a Good Girl part who feels like she has to calibrate to what other people need or expect in order to be lovable. The Good Girl seems to be entwined with a High Schooler who (as I did in actual high school) throws herself into academic pursuits to achieve her way to worth and avoid feeling.

The attentive Good Girl and drill sergeant High Schooler make a great team. They work so hard to protect me from a third part: a young inner child who is really really scared.

The problem is that they can’t actually work or ignore away her pain, and so it crashes down on Adult Me when I least expect it.

Last summer, I started having anxiety attacks as I tried to “reenter” the world, post-2020. The young inner child really enjoys having control over her environment, so not being able to leave the house during Covid was actually perfect for her. She was so terrified to have to give all of that up that she would suddenly become the dominant inner part, screaming out for attention.

This meant that I would agree to do things in 2021, and then childhood fear and panic would blindside me, and leave 2021 me a confused, crying mess.

My therapist and I began talking about how I could take therapy with me into these difficult moments, which led to the practice I mentioned here: channeling my therapist’s calm acceptance of and curiosity about my emotions. I don’t meditate, per se, but I suppose this has become a sort of meditation, a going-inward to find peace.

It was not therapy homework. It was not something with big “should” energy behind it. It just grew organically out of our therapy conversations.

When I’m blindsided by strong emotions now, it has been really helpful to consider who (what inner part) is crying out for attention and what she needs. Or, what she needed back then and did not get. (I don’t journal a ton these days, but this also makes a 10/10 journal prompt.) Then, I can go into this sort of inner therapy room for comfort and understanding.

It has taken years of therapy and healing work for Adult Me to have some capacity to empathize with and attempt to “parent” these inner children, rather than run from them or scream at them in frustration. I have no clue what I’m doing a lot of the time, but, thankfully, I am learning from my therapist. Offering my inner children the same calm acceptance and curiosity that Adult Me gets in therapy has been a great start.

If any of this resonates with you, please know that you are inherently worthy, and that healing is possible—even if you are resistant to meditating, feeling/being in your body, loving “difficult” parts of yourself, etc. I struggle mightily with all of those things but am slowly embracing them in my own way and in my own time. 💜

Rebirthday #8

This girl had just done inpatient, started therapy, started IOP, and moved into the city. She’s the patron saint of sparkle punching.

(In case you don’t know, I think of the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts [3/20/13] as my Rebirthday!)

Last weekend, I did a group meditation (who am I??) on the future self and past self. The only thing I could think to say to my 10-years-ago self was, “Stop crying over boys and work on your thesis.” (Books before bros?)

With that out of the way and my Rebirthday fresh on my mind, I then thought back to my eight-years-ago self.

Man, that girl had guts.

She walked up to a nurse in the ER and said out loud the kind of thoughts she was having.

She chose to stay in the hospital with complete strangers (and her depression and anxiety) for five days.

(And she still stayed after immediately panicking about that decision, haha.)

She admitted to her family that things really weren’t okay. So not okay that she had suicidal thoughts, and not just thoughts, a plan.

I am in awe of that girl. I don’t know that I could do any of those things today.

And she was so diligent in tending to her mental health after inpatient too. For months, she went to intensive outpatient four days a week + therapy one day a week and worked a full-time job. She read every book her therapist recommended. She went to retreats and yoga classes specifically for “women with trauma.”

I have no advice for her. I could use some advice from her, actually! I feel like I’ve lost so much of the spark and dedication that she had. (Although, to be fair, nothing will zap it quite like losing a very good friend and experiencing a global pandemic in back to back years….)

But I do get glimpses of her sometimes. Like when I recently got up the nerve to get a second opinion about the horrible physical and mental symptoms I’ve been having along with my period. The second NP I saw really listened to me and actually had me answer the questions that determine if you have PMDD. Sure enough, I met the criteria. (I had already wondered about that here.)

And I think eight-years-ago me is the part of me that makes sure I track my mood, a recent assignment from the psych NP. And what do you know? Consistent mood tracking showed me the cyclical nature of my drastic mood/mental state changes, thus giving me months of evidence to present the GYN NPs. It also showed me how nuanced my feelings truly are. (i.e. I’m not just anxious all the time.)

While I do often think of my various inner children, this was the first time in a long time that I’d thought of 26-year-old me. I need to fix that because she’s pure magic. She didn’t realize it, but she still had so much life in her, even in her darkest moments.

I want to be her when I grow up. 💜

Linking up with Andrea and Erika!

Where I've been...

HELLO! 👋 When I last blogged in June, I did not expect to be gone for so long! I mean, I’ve been religiously doing the High Five for Friday posts since 2015! 😮

I’ve actually been putting off posting… and kind of dreading it. Probably because I’m out of practice with being vulnerable online. And also because I’ve been dealing with things that are still very much in the slippery, undefined phase.

But hey, here we are. And here’s what’s been going on over the past six months. It seems I might have:

• Agitated depression!

• PMDD!

• The worst vitamin D deficiency both my regular doctor and psychiatric nurse practitioner have ever seen!

(No, wait, I do definitely have that last one, HOORAY.)

It’s like the least fun Choose Your Own Adventure!

As I said in my last post, things fell apart in June. I had a pretty bad anxious/despairing episode in which I could barely eat, sleep, or sit still. However… this is at least the fourth such incapacitating episode I’ve had in the past few years, which made my psych NP Liz wonder if I have something called “agitated depression.” It’s on the mood disorder spectrum along with regular depression and sounds like anxiety on steroids—plus a lovely layer of depression.

But the jury is still out on whether or not I actually have agitated depression because Liz had me start tracking my mood. And while the weeks and months that followed weren’t quite as bad, I began to notice that my mood and emotions would go haywire alongside changes in my cycle. Liz says that she often sees people’s mental health issues worsen alongside hormonal fluctuations, so IT maybe ME. But, of course, if you’re having A Really Bad Time when you get your period, you could have also have PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder).

I had begun to think that PMDD was the culprit for me… and then January happened.

January was the first month where my mood/emotions didn’t fall off a cliff. (Like, I continually noted “Shockingly okay!” in my mood tracker.) The only thing that I’d done differently between December and January was introduce vitamin D supplements for my crazy deficiency. I didn’t expect these random gummy vitamins from CVS to actually do much, but maybe they are! I’ve read some articles that suggest a link between vitamin D levels and mood, particularly depression, so maybe we’re on to something here. (I’m going to get bloodwork done soon to find out for sure.) All I know is that I’m feeling better!

So, yeah. A lot of stuff that we’re still trying to sort through!

Not to mention, you know, the whole GLOBAL PANDEMIC thing. 🙃

But I do hope to come back to this space more, as I really miss having this creative outlet and chatting with my dear blog friends!

And…

If you’re reading this and feeling terrible and like you’ll never get a handle on all of your stuff, well, for what it’s worth… now you know one other person who’s going through that too. ❤️