Gum on My Shoe

All dogs are therapy dogs. Most are just freelancing. — Unknown I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t keen on the idea of Fran house and dog sitting. She’d been depressed for a while and from my perspective additional responsibility was the last thing she needed. I knew she’d done it in the past but that was a long time ago. Fran heard me out. She took my concerns on board. She spent the best part of a day thinking it over carefully. And decided to accept her friend’s invitation. This wasn’t a problem for me. It’s how we work. Each of us feels safe enough to be honest about what we think and feel. We ask each other’s advice and offer suggestions when invited, but we make up our own minds about things. I was totally behind her decision, once it had been made. There were only a couple of days to get ready but she’d only be away for a weekend so there wasn’t a lot to prepare. The big day arrived and Fran moved into her friend’s house. When I joined her on our evening video call she w...

TW: Mention of suicide and suicidality

... at the beginning where I was doing it every day like clockwork, it entirely carried me out of that low spot, and I believe that it saved my life. — Ellis Ducharme Fran and I recently shared our experiences visiting the Portland Museum of Art and the Laing Art Gallery here in Newcastle upon Tyne. Continuing the Art of Friendship theme, we’re delighted to showcase photographer and videographer Ellis Ducharme, whose exhibition Six Feet Above showed through June at the Peaks Island library in Maine. The website described Six Feet Above as “a collection of thirty-six photos from a personal project to fight depression and raise awareness of mental health. Ocean themes and many cityscapes focus on finding beauty in places most deem undesirable and ugly.” Fran lived on Peaks Island for many years. Although I’ve never visited in person, I feel a great affection for the island as Fran’s shared so much of it with me. She still visits regularly and attended several of this year’...

“The further in you go, the bigger it gets.” — John Crowley, Little, Big Have you ever felt your life getting smaller and smaller, as though it was closing in on you? Maybe a relationship has come to an end. Maybe you’ve lost a friend, or the opportunity to make a new one. Maybe it’s not about people, but your career, education, finances, health, or some other aspect of your life that’s limiting what you can do. Maybe it feels like you’ll never achieve all you hoped to, or live the life you dreamed. It’s important to note there’s nothing wrong with “life lived small” as such. Everyone has their ideas of what constitutes a meaningful life and if yours satisfies you there’s no issue, no matter how others might view it. I’m talking here about feeling life is or has become too small for comfort. That might be because we’ve outgrown our current situation, or because life has closed in around us. Fran and I have discussed this many times in the course of our friendship, mostly in...

“We rise by lifting others” — Robert Ingersoll I’ve written quite a bit over the past year or so about how low I get at times, including how my baseline mood has dropped significantly from where it used to be. There are periods when I doubt the value of what I do, both in the workplace and in other aspects of my life. That includes my connections, friendships, and relationships; my writing; and other work in the mental health arena. When I’m in this kind of “what’s the point?” slump, as I have been recently, nothing seems worth the effort because it feels like nothing is going to make a difference. It’s tempting to just give up on things, or at least contemplate doing so. The scary thing is how easily slumps like this can creep up on you, and how tough it can be to shake those self-defeating thoughts and feelings. The good news is, they can and do shift, and sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference . I was reminded of this last week. I’d like to share a few of...

I’ve felt below par mentally for a while now. It’s possible I’ve been depressed, although I’m wary of self-diagnosis and haven’t sought a clinical opinion. I can trace some of it back several years but I’ve only lately felt up to talking about it publically. It’s not that I’ve ignored my mental health altogether. I’m aware of many of my triggers; the situations and events that tend to pull the rug out from under me. I captured the main ones in my Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) back in 2019, and review it periodically. My triggers include: Changes in relationships (which I tend to perceive as lessening, loss, or abandonment) Uncertainty or lack of clarity in communications Getting overwhelmed by competing demands for my time and attention My triggered responses include feeling anxious and panicky, a strong sense of loss or abandonment, and becoming either pushy or clingy. My WRAP includes recovery strategies which help me return to my baseline, such as talking things ov...

And I might be okay but I’m not fine at all. (Elisabeth Wagner Rose / Taylor Alison Swift. “All Too Well.”) I wrote recently that I’ve never felt part of any group or collective, even those to which I’ve felt the strongest of attractions. As painful as that’s been, does it really matter? So what if I don’t belong to the tribe of writers and poets I’ve met in the past few years? There’s no lasting harm in discovering I’m not a performance artist! Some exclusions, however, are more perilous. Being excluded from my local recovery college for having no lived experience of mental illness was completely justified, but it left me feeling permanently estranged. If I began displaying symptoms of mental ill-health I’d almost certainly play it down. Not from shame, but because I’d be afraid people would think I was faking it, or exaggerating things in order to “join the club.” The irony is, even with a diagnosis I’d probably still feel I had no legitimate right to be there. I feel a fra...

By Aimee Larson Several years ago, I came across a memoir called Let’s Pretend This Never Happened . I have to admit, as I stood at the bookstore, I did not know who Jenny Lawson was. According to her bio, she was a well-known blogger called “The Bloggess” and this was the first book she has ever written. I stared at the front cover, a taxidermied mouse that was holding up a skull in similarity to William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . My random soul appreciated this very book cover, and I knew I had to get this book. I did not know about her writing style, and to be quite honest, this was the first memoir that I even thought about reading. I checked out the book and remember running over to my then-boyfriend (spoiler alert: now husband) and showed him the book as though I found a unicorn. He smiled at me, not at all surprised that I picked a book based on the cover. I can always appreciate randomness, add in animals, and well, you have my heart and soul as a reader, and let’s be ...

By Kate Adermann Depression is a common mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness, loneliness, and a general loss of interest. This mental health condition may affect how a person thinks, feels, and behaves, as well as causing a variety of physical and emotional issues. With that being said, dealing with depression is extremely difficult, especially when you are trying to keep it together for your friends and family. But, what happens when people invalidate your depression? Unfortunately, it’s all too common for outside individuals to be unable to understand the true nature of another person’s depression. You may have been told, “ You’re too sensitive ,” or, “You are just overreacting, get over it!” Hearing statements like these while attempting to cope with the symptoms of your depression only adds to the loneliness and sadness that you already deal with. When people invalidate your depression, it is referred to as psychological invalidation. This behavior is act...

No place for beginners or sensitive hearts When sentiment is left to chance. (Sade Adu and Raymond St. John. “Smooth Operator.”) Have you ever wondered if you’re too sensitive or need to be more thick-skinned? Have others said it to you? The question came up recently in three separate conversations with friends and I’d like to explore it in some detail because it feels important. I’m wary of labels like “too sensitive” or “too thin-skinned” because they imply there’s some universal scale of sensitivity and you’re outside the acceptable range. There may be some truth in that but careless use of such labels fosters stigma, including self-stigma when we use them about ourselves. That said, my friends used words like these to describe what they’re going through. Setting my reservations aside, what did they mean? What Does “Too Sensitive” Look and Feel like? In their different ways my friends were expressing the belief that they respond to things in unhealthy ways, or to an unh...

Following on from my article Three Things I Wish People Knew about Loving Someone with Mental Illness I want to share a few things I’ve learned about mental health medication. First, a disclaimer. I have no first-hand experience of taking mental health medication. What I’ve learned comes from my nine-year friendship with Fran and from other close friends. My loved ones live with a variety of mental health conditions and symptoms including anxiety, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder (BPD), depression, visual and auditory hallucinations, suicidal thinking, and self-harm. Some live with more than one of these. Several also have physical health conditions to deal with, including chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME), type 1 diabetes, fibromyalgia, hearing loss, visual impairment, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite their different conditions and histories, my friends have many experiences and approaches in common when it comes to medication. I’ve cho...