Sure, I’ve Got Baggage, But It’s Really Cute and It Matches!

I’ve come to view life as a series of peaks and valleys. I’ve got a long family history of anxiety and depression. It’s not lost on me that I have it easier than the generations that came before me. I’ve come of age in an era of at least some measure of stigma-shedding, and certainly of hyper-diagnosis and over-prescribing. This is a day and age where we’re less afraid to talk about mental health, and slightly less likely to remain “stoic” and resist seeking help and treatment when appropriate.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to be someone who could manage (or at least believe I am managing) my anxiety without having to rely on drugs. Oh, I’ll take the occasional Xanax when I’ve been soldiering through one of life’s valleys and recognize that I need a good night’s sleep to properly care for myself, just as I’ll take an occasional Tylenol when a sinus headache is getting the best of me. I have seen enough people around me return to wellness through proper medical attention to view mental health issues from much the same prospective as physical health issues.

I know myself and my body and mind well enough to see certain things coming. I’ve had enough sinus infections, for instance, to recognize the symptoms early and visit the doctor before I end up completely miserable and unnecessarily ill. And I am attuned to recognizing when my anxiety level is rising to a point where it’s going to start affecting my daily activities. If I’m not careful, it will manifest itself in ways that impede productivity, which only begets more anxiety. At the high water mark, the symptoms range from extreme fatigue to panic attacks, to an inability to get anything done, despite an overwhelming sense of urgency to do it all at once.

It may sound strange, but I seem to have the hardest time while I’m on semester break – especially over the summer because it’s such a long one. Once things are up and running again and I’ve got 10,000 things I have to deal with, I tend to do much better emotionally. I think it’s because I’m forced to manage my time really efficiently and also because I don’t have time to get all bent out of shape about the things I can’t control. It’s easier to let things just roll off when I’m keeping busy.

People generally think of me as someone who’s laid-back and doesn’t get caught up in petty matters or let things bother me. The truth is, I owe a large part of my eternal optimism and easygoing nature to the fact that I’m always doing too much to take anything else too personally.

My mother, who has had her fair share of personal experience on the subject, and who also got her degree from the WebMD school of medicine, preaches exercise and proper amounts of rest. These things are certainly important, and I try my best to follow this advice. And for me personally, keeping busy is another critical component of mental health.

Please don’t confuse this with running away from problems – when I have too much down time on my hands, I tend to create problems from things that don’t really have a place in a healthy worldview. Keeping busy allows me to focus on the things I do need to concern myself with and the things that have a positive impact on my life, and, at least by extension if not directly, on my son’s life.

So here’s to the peaks – may they be frequent and high – and to what we can take away from having trudged through the valleys. They make the peaks that much more wonderful.