What does it mean to Thrive?

Most of us can do Survival Mode like mofos. Which is excellent and useful. It’s wonderful to have a workable Survival Mode. It can get you through some very dark, tough times. 

But what about when times are good? Are you able to turn off Survival Mode? I’ll even do you one better – do you have a Thrive Mode? 

Many of us only have the two options – Survival Mode and Not-Survival Mode. Many of us haven’t even stopped to consider what a Thrive Mode might look like. 

I’ll demonstrate for you…

My Survival Mode List:

• Triage – what is/are the MOST important pieces to get done this minute? Hour? Today? Tomorrow? This week?

• Adequate nutrition – protein, green things, cashews/nuts, easy-prep meals, snacks that don’t need to be refrigerated, green juices, but also stress-relief/comfort foods – take-out, pizza, cheesecake etc.

• Time to hide from the world – yoga, meditation, soothing music

• Exercise is added during day to day things like parking farther away from stuff so I have to walk, doing squats while I brush my teeth, etc., rather than specific exercise time. 

• My day is scheduled into repeatable chunks – ie. 8-10am business phone calls, 10-11am get ready for work, 12-8 treating, 8-9pm get home, eat dinner, 9-10pm receipts, scheduling etc., 10pm-1am school, 2-7am sleep, repeat

• Social media use is restricted to motivational things, cute puppy videos, etc

• Writing as stress relief – journaling, etc.

• Pampering activities that focus on establishing a sense of ‘safe’

My Not-Survival Mode List:

•  Lots of social media – catching up on the lives of friends and family that I missed while in survival mode, news of the world, etc.

• Apology friend and family visits

• Lots of rest, little exercise except restorative yoga and walks on the beach

• Generally recovery mode – tv, meditation, lots of activating parasympathetics, etc. 

• Writing for work – blog posts, journaling, plans for creative projects 

• Self-care that focuses on planning and preparing for Thriving

My Thrive Mode List: 

• Make healthy meals – includes time to go grocery shopping, music, kitchen dancing, much more elaborate meals, etc.

• Read books

• Spend quality time with friends and family

• Lots of time spent outdoors and exercising – actual exercise program with specific goals

• Time spent on ‘whimsies’ – things that interest me, hobbies, creative projects, etc.

• House cleaning and decluttering, re-decorating

• Quality time spent with hubby

• Schedule has lots of flexibility

• More time for creative projects – writing for fun as opposed to as a stress relief

• Trips for fun as opposed to business only

• Lots of music and dancing

• Social media use for humour and creativity 

Generally, to me, Thrive Mode means that I have time and space and energy to be creative and passionate about life. Survival Mode gets me through a rough time or busy project until I can get back to my usual Thrive Mode state. Survival Mode is the bare-bones of self-care meant to get what needs to get done done so that I have the time and space and energy again to do all of the things that I love. 

I have a dedication to my Thrive Mode that few understand. There is very little that I won’t sacrifice for my own mental and physical health. Yes, there are times when other stuff just has to get done (usually in the pursuit of an overall goal of Helping Humankind), but it’s always for short-term bursts. Non-survival Mode is for clean-up, repair and recovery, and then right back into my Thrive Mode activities. 

About a decade ago, my goal was to change my life to something that I didn’t feel I needed to take a vacation from. Everything I do is something that I love intensely. If there’s something that I’m doing that I dislike, it’s usually a short-term thing for a larger over-arching passion project, and if it isn’t, you best believe I’ll be changing that thing shortly.

Everything I do is something that sets my soul on fire. If it doesn’t, it gets pitched pretty quickly. I mean, I’ll suffer through something for a year if I have to in the pursuit of an ultimate goal, but I won’t make my life there. 

Thrive Mode is as much a dedication to yourself as it is to anything else. And I’m not talking about just self-pampering. Usually, when we talk about self-care people go to self-pampering activities. That’s not what I typically mean when I talk about self-care. You can read my post here, but generally, self-care has 3 layers; self-pampering, strength-building, creating lasting change. You use the self-pampering activities to make life gentler and kinder while you undergo the upheaval of creating lasting life changes that benefit you in the long-term. 

To be able to create that kind of lasting change in your life, you need to be able to get yourself out of Survival Mode, recovered enough that you’ve got some oomph back, and into Thrive Mode. It’s not easy, and again, it takes a steadfast dedication to making your life the way you want it to be. But it’s doable. 

People change their lives every day. They go out there and they live life on their terms. Why not you? What would thriving in life look like to you? Where are you in your career? Your relationships? Where are you living? What activities are part of your daily life? 

Now, lets break that up into manageable chunks and make a plan for how to get there. You can read about how to do that in my next post. 

Till next time, Folks!

Self-Care Tips To Get Through The Holidays

This time of year can be stressful for many folks. Even at the best of times, the holidays can still mean long lines, travel, big personalities all under one roof, and having to deal with lots of stressed out and overwhelmed people. At the worst, you have to deal with the loss of a loved one, an illness or injury, job loss, any number of horrible things on top of the pressure of the holidays and still trying to ensure a happy memory for kids and family. It can be a lot. 

Making sure you take care of your own physical and mental health through the holidays can sometimes seem impossible. I find self-care works best when you have a plan, so making sure you have thought about ways to navigate stressful situations and overwhelm in advance can be the difference between enjoying the holidays and wishing for them to be over. You can read my post on creating self-care plans here to give you a bit of background. 

When it comes to planning self-care for the holidays, it can be useful to remember that as stressful as the holidays are, they are short-term, repeating events. Meaning, no matter how great or badly this one goes you’ll have another one in a year so whatever doesn’t go great this time around you can try changing up next year. 

If you can reframe the holidays as a repeating pattern, something that happens once a year for multiple years, you can see how you can tweek the experience from year to year into something that works best for you. This can take the pressure off each individual holiday having to be perfect and instead aims for an overall theme that highlights the aspects of the holidays that are most important to you. For example, if you enjoy the togetherness of family and friends but you have a perfectionism around decorating that creates more stress than joy, then maybe you can let the pressure of having to decorate slide and instead do get-togethers at someone else’s house. Or maybe the decorating, music and overall mood of the season brings you great joy, but you find get-togethers stressful, then make sure to plan lots of time at home enjoying the efforts of your hard work and schedule fewer events with others. When you know what you’re aiming to create, it makes it easier to create the experience that will bring you the most joy year-to-year. 

Coming up with a plan ahead of time for self-care through the holidays really is about helping to free yourself from the burden of worrying about how things are going to go so that you’ll be able to enjoy the experience. Stress tends to come from trying to make reality match your expectations. The more you can practice accepting what is instead of trying to make it be what you want it to be, the more enjoyment you tend to get from the experience. That said, the human brain doesn’t like not being able to predict outcomes so having a plan in place can help that part of your brain chill out so you can focus on having fun. And sometimes, just having built in things to look forward to can do wonders for helping you cope with the awkward or stressful parts. Have to do an office party you’d rather not? Make sure to book yourself some friend time afterwards so that you can relay the ridiculousness to them. Have a Trump-loving aunt coming to family dinner and you are a die-hard socialist vegan? Prepare a couple of friends ahead of time so you can live-text the stuff she says rather than feel compelled to engage in a political argument at the dinner table (don’t text at the table, take frequent bathroom breaks instead). When you know ahead of time that no matter what happens, you’ll get to tell the stories to your friends afterwards, it reframes the experience. Now it’s no longer something you have to endure, it’s something you are actively engaged in because the more ridiculous the story the better! You get friend bonding social time and it takes the sting out of whatever awkward, intolerant, or awful thing that might come up. 

So, what are some ways you can include self-care during the holidays?

Know your weaknesses. Be honest about what stresses you out and how you tend to respond. This way, you can guide your natural tendencies towards behaviours that are helpful and easier on yourself and those around you. For example, do you tend to be a control freak or perfectionist when stressed? That’s cool. Sometimes we cope with situations we feel like we can’t control by controlling as many details as we can. If that’s you, you might find it helpful to try to decide beforehand on the things you can give yourself as helpful ‘these things I can control as much as I want/need to as stress relief and they won’t drive everyone else nuts’ things as part of your planning. I find things like wrapping presents or writing pretty cards to be therapeutic that way – they give you something easy that you can put your stress into, scratch that ‘control’ itch in your brain because you have complete control over how that turns out, and they don’t involve accidentally negatively impacting those around you because it’s a solo activity. Plus, it can give you some much needed ‘alone’ time because you can sequester yourself in a room guilt-free being productive and everyone understands the secrecy involved around present wrapping so they tend to honour it. 

Stay engaged. Doing your best to stay present and engaged is really all anyone needs from you. People will forgive imperfect decorating, unwrapped presents, even lackluster holiday treats as long as you are genuinely engaging with them rather than being a stress-bucket about all of those things. I read a meme the other day about how the first Christmas was pretty simple so don’t feel bad if yours is too. After all, the holidays are really just an excuse to spend time with the people you love. Anything extra is bonus. I find it easiest to do this when you remember to: 

Be grateful. Research shows that taking the time to write down at least 3 things you are grateful for daily for as little as one week can have a lasting impact on improving your overall mood, outlook, connection to others, even immunity and physical well-being. Try starting a Holiday Gratitude Journal to write down the things that you are grateful for between now and the New Year. Remembering to practice gratitude can really make all the difference between wanting to punch Trump-loving aunt in the face and remembering all of the awesome times you had with her when you were growing up. People are people. They will all have things that drive us nuts. That doesn’t mean we stop loving them. When people don’t match our expectations for what we want them to be, it’s easy to blame them, leading to anger and resentment. But they don’t owe us anything. And you know how awful it feels to have someone you love judge you for your beliefs or personality quirks? Maybe don’t do that to them. This leads me to:

Practice unconditional love. That IS the spirit of this particular holiday, after all. You don’t have to agree with people to accept them. And sometimes asking non-judgmental questions about why they believe what they believe from a place of wanting to understand can really help you to stay engaged and learn a lot about how that person became who they are. Everyone’s got stories we don’t know. Before you judge someone, find out what options they have to chose from for deciding what to believe. You can’t know what you don’t know until you know it, after all. And most people generally operate from a place of wanting to make the best choice for themselves and the people they love. The more opposition they face for their beliefs, the harder they’ll hold on to them. Now, that said:

Pick your battles. Family dinner may not be the best time to address old wounds, political beliefs, pretty much anything, really. You have all year to argue. Sometimes just appreciating people for who they are instead of making it your personal mission to convert them to whatever it is you believe is the way to ensure a harmonious few hours. 

Take lots of breaks. This is really the key. Everyone gets on each other’s nerves, given enough time in close proximity. Give yourself permission to plan lots of errands, bathroom breaks, present wrapping time, whatever you can come up with. An easy out is to take a 10 or 20 minute walk. The exercise will help boost your mood and it’s a healthy way of giving yourself a time-out from all the chaos. 

Know your limits. Be they food choices, how much money you spend on presents, or the amount of alcohol you consume, know where your line is and stay far from it. Everyone has that uncle or cousin who gets hammered and says inappropriate things at dinner – if that person is you, maybe don’t do that this year?

Reach out. This time of year is tough for a lot of folks. If you need support, ask. 

Be kind. There will likely be people who reach their limit and blow up or melt down. The thing that makes that worse is unkind people. Some folks are dealing with illnesses or death of loved ones, looming financial disasters, failing out of school, any number of awful things. Defensiveness and irritability are to be expected. A little bit of kindness can go a long way. 

Now, that said, if you are dealing with a loss, horrible event, or have a loved one who may not be around in a year and you’re feeling intense pressure to make this holiday season memorable for all involved, well, that’s definitely a hard one. You just get through that one the best you can. Thinking about the Holidays from a repeating pattern perspective can take some of the pressure off that as well. Regardless of how this one goes, you get another one next year. And if you’re dealing with it being a loved one’s last, this one will be memorable just for the simple fact that it’s your loved one’s last, so don’t forget to enjoy the time you have and don’t get lost in the details of the preparations (unless you need the details as a coping mechanism, then fill yer boots. You do you and cope the best you can). You can worry about making a plan for next year. After all, the holidays happen every year. No matter what happens, you’ll get another shot at it. 

The Types of Self-Care

Self-care often elicits thoughts of soft instrumental music, the scents of essential oils, and pampering spa treatments. There can be a disconnect when talking about self-care because, often, self-care actually involves activities you would really rather not be doing – preparing healthy meals, doing your taxes, having awkward conversations with your significant other about support, setting boundaries, going to the gym – but these things are equally if not more important for a true self-care plan.

Self-care is really an investment in your future. It’s about putting in the work now that means Future You will benefit. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t be kind to yourself while you’re figuring out life’s big lessons, but it also means that you shouldn’t avoid the hard stuff out of a desire for ‘more self-care’. You can do both, which is really the goal of any good self-care plan.

Any plan, be it self-care, rehabilitation, financial health, self-improvement, etc., should involve both short-term and long-term goals and activities. When it comes to self-care, the pampering, indulgent activities provide short-term relief to acute stressful life moments, but long-term they don’t help you to navigate out of financial trouble or relationship struggles. In fact, sometimes you can get ‘stuck’ because you’re unwilling to view other activities as self-care, or use these things as a way of avoiding your problems rather than dealing with them. However, when dealing with the stress and overwhelm of navigating life’s hurdles, getting to the end of them better off than you started can be near impossible without being willing to pamper yourself along the way.

Personally, I’m a big fan of indulgence, but in the healthiest ways possible. So, if I’m going to eat cheesecake, I try to chose plant-based, gluten and dairy-free. If I’m going to have a glass of wine, I try to make it preservative free. If I’m going to spend money on a new item, I’m going to make it my reward for bringing in extra clients, etc. And by God, if I just need a slice of pizza, well, I try to make it a cauliflower crust pizza with dairy-free cheese and plenty of veggies. That way there’s no feeling of restriction or loss associated with making healthy shifts. I get my indulgence in a way that meets my short-term needs while also investing in my long-term health.

Self-care doesn’t have to be an expensive indulgence either. Walks in nature, a warm foot bath with calming essential oils at the end of a rough day, getting together with friends to play a board game rather than going out for dinner and drinks, etc., are all excellent ways to get a little extra self-pampering in in low-cost ways. Generally speaking, a good self-care plan should have 3 layers to it: self-pampering activities, strength-building activities, and long-term life changes activities. It’s kind of incredibly super geeky, but in my brain it looks like a big ol’ Gant chart.

Let’s face it, there’s usually a reason you need self-care activities in your life – your job is sucking the life from you, you’re supporting a friend or family member through something horrible, or you yourself are going through something horrible, financial worries, etc., etc. To tackle these problems from a place of rock bottom energy and mood levels means that you exist in a perpetual state of too exhausted to make the long-term changes necessary to get yourself out of that place.

This is where self-pampering is useful. You need to be as kind and gentle on yourself as possible while in the trenches. It’s the best way to survive horrible life events. However, to really be able to make the big changes often required to really get yourself clear of those life events, you need a long term plan: tackling debt, taking night classes to up your education to be able to apply for a dream job or promotion, doing home renovations so you can sell your house for the best price so you can move to a better neighborhood, etc. All of these things seem impossible to do if you’re at rock bottom.

Where self-care plans shine is when they aren’t just short-term self-pampering activities but instead use those things as acute care treatment while you make the long-term changes required to level-up your life to a place where you don’t need to take a vacation from it. That’s the ultimate goal – to make the changes required that get you to a place where you’re just loving life all the time instead of merely surviving it. And taking the time to really map out and plan for what needs to change, what skills you need to develop, what activities need to take place, and what self-pampering and support you will likely need along the way so that you have the energy and motivation to accomplish it makes it that much more likely that you will be able to achieve the long-term changes required to improve life’s circumstances. It’s not about living life completely moment to moment with no thought of the future, and it’s not forgetting to live now so that the future might be better, it’s a good mix of both things. It’s taking care of yourself now while also working to improve your future. That, at the end of the day, is the ultimate form of self care.

Til next time, Folks!

I am thankful for gratitude practices! Expressing gratitude is good for your health.

Life can be hard. The fact of the matter is that none of us are getting out of here alive. Simple fact of a life on earth. What we choose to do with the time we have is what defines us and our experience here. We can choose to let the crushing weight of that inevitable decline defeat us, or we can choose to find hope and happiness in the experiences that we get to have while here. 

Sounds easy enough, right? 

If that were true, then we’d all just be happy little cherubs bouncing around being kind to one another. Truth is, staying positive in the face of overwhelming obstacles is exhausting. Another truth is that time passes regardless of what we do with it. Bones heal, circumstances change, oftentimes with little or no input or effort on our part. We tend to get through life regardless of whether or not we’re happy or sad, injured or at the peak of health, devastated or thrilled. Time does what it does regardless of how we feel about it. 

Honestly, think about it – aside from some horrible exceptions (like an illness, injury, assault, etc., that yeah, totally, you get to be upset about that. Be as upset as you need to be. I get it. Those things are horrendous and awful and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone. Not your fault. You just get through that as best you can, however you need to. Zero judgements.) for the tamer, more annoying or aggrevating life events, we often blame our circumstances for our behaviours, actions and feelings. But the circumstances are a benign thing. It’s what we choose to do in the face of those circumstances that determines who we are. Are we the person who gets mad at traffic or the person who decides to turn up the radio and take the opportunity to rock out? Same circumstance, two different ways of dealing with it. Neither is good or bad. It’s just how you decide you want to react in that moment, based on what you feel like you need. 

My point is, how you choose to respond to life events is very personal and entirely up to you. But you wouldn’t be reading this post if you were enjoying the way you’re choosing to respond to said life events. And really, your enjoyment of your experiences here is the whole point. 

This is where things like mindfulness, positive affirmations, gratitude practices, and all the ‘woo’ comes in. They are basically neurorehabilitation practices for your resting state thought processes. Meaning – they are great ways to change your base reaction response to life events. 

In non-geek speak, these types of practices help you to change the way you react to stuff that happens. I read a great quote once about how if consciousness is the piano player, the brain is the piano. Sometimes that piano gets out of tune. Neurorehabilitation and neurofeedback training is how you go about tuning that piano. So these practices basically train your brain to automatically respond with gratitude or a positive affirmation rather than anger or a feeling of defeat to something that is actually a rather innocuous or vaguely annoying event. They change the way you view that event so that you get more enjoyment out of your life. So the annoying traffic becomes an opportunity to have some ‘me time’ instead of, well, being annoying. You’re going to be stuck there regardless, so you might as well enjoy it. 

The great thing about this is that it means that your happiness or level of enjoyment is actually completely separate from the circumstances that are occurring. And it is completely within your control. 

This is, of course, easier said than done. But that’s true of learning anything new. Nothing is easy in the beginning, but you stick with it and those brain pathways are just going to carve themselves out over time because that’s what our brains do. You can choose to strengthen the pathway that reacts to everything with a sense of hope, wellbeing and gratitude, or you can choose to strengthen the pathway that responds to everything with negativity, pessimism and hostility. Totally up to you. Both are perfectly fine. Whatever fills yer boots!

But should you be interested in the happy one, I’m just gonna leave this here… ;)

Why you should have a gratitude practice:

Gratitude practices, something as simple as taking time every day to write down 3-5 things that you were grateful for that day, have been found to benefit mental health, physical health, well-being, even your sleep. A clinical trial by Cunha, Pellanda & Reppold (2019) found that a daily gratitude practice lasting 14 days managed to increase positive affect, subjective happiness and life satisfaction, and reduced negative affect and depression symptoms in adults. And it can have long-lasting effects. One study from the University of Pennsylvania found that writing down three positive events each day for a week kept happiness levels high for up to six months.

So how can you get the most from your gratitude practice? 

1.    Gratitude doesn’t have to be a big thing. It can be something as simple as appreciating the nice weather, a song you like on the radio, a short line at your favourite coffee shop. As I said earlier, writing down just 3-5 things a day is enough to reap the positive benefits of gratitude. 

2.    Consistency is key. The more you do it, the more you’ll find things to be grateful for, the easier it will be for your brain to just naturally look for things to be grateful for in any situation. 

3.    Don’t just like the good stuff. Find ways to be grateful for the challenges as well. The more that you can look for the silver lining in all events, especially in your challenging ones, the more you’ll realize that good things can be found even in the worst circumstances. 

4.    Express your gratitude to/for others. Everyone likes a compliment, but a truly genuine expression of gratitude can leave a lasting impression and turn someone else’s day around. Spread that sh*t everywhere. 

5.    Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re struggling to come up with something to write down. I like to use those moments as a useful barometer that I haven’t been giving myself enough things to be grateful for and then spend the next few hours practicing self-care. Remember, you don’t have to just wait for life to hand you reasons to be grateful. Make it happen for yourself. Give yourself some things to be grateful for and you’ll realize that no one else is in charge of your happiness. You have the power and the control over whether or not your day is filled with things to be grateful for or not. The more you begin to realize that you have complete control over whether or not you have 5 things to be grateful for that day or 20, you’ll start to really understand the true meaning of self-care. Other people can do whatever. Doesn’t matter. You can still have 20 things to be grateful for that day instead of 5. Totally within your power to do for yourself.

So, with that said – thank you so so much to everyone taking the time to read this post. I truly and genuinely appreciate each and every one of you and that you think that there’s something here worth reading. That’s a rather awe-inspiring and humbling thing, if you think about it. Which I do. Often. 

Til next time, Folks! 

Reference:

Cunha, L. F., Pellanda, L. C., & Reppold, C. T. (2019). Positive Psychology and Gratitude Interventions: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 584. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00584

When Killing Yourself Becomes Your Happy Thought of the Day

I want to start this with a disclaimer that it might be triggering for some folks, so use your own discretion if you want to/should continue reading. 

There have been times in my life when I have contemplated suicide as a viable option. And not all of those times I would have considered myself depressed in the usual, societal view of depression. I think this is often why suicide can be a confusing thing for people. It doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with what society at large considers ‘typical depression symptoms’, as highlighted by a number of suicides by seemingly highly functioning, happy people. Not all depression looks the same. And depression and suicide aren’t always linked. 

Honestly, at many of those times in my life, I wouldn’t have considered myself depressed at all. Overwhelmed for sure, but not depressed. For example, the first time I seriously contemplated suicide, I was under incredible pressure at work, but I was also knocking it out of the park. I was in a very healthy relationship (I wound up marrying the guy, and we’re still together 12 years later). We had just moved in together and it was actually going really well. I was in pain all the time from the car accident injuries, but that was nothing new. By that point I was pretty used to it and had made a lot of progress. 

There were other things happening in the background, however. The things I didn’t talk about easily around the water cooler – the Nortel crash had just happened, for instance, and that whole sector had been a major customer of the family business, so the company my siblings and I had counted on as a constant in our lives was suddenly disappearing before our eyes and there was very little we could do to stop it. My parents had separated a few years before and they were not at all getting along. My youngest brother was in the hospital in another city and I was driving my mom and sister back and forth to visit him as often as I could. My other brother was in University in Sudbury and had started a painting business and we were driving back and forth many weekends to help him with that. 

I had no idea how to cope with all of it. I think that was the biggest underlying factor. I was constantly being batted back and forth from one extreme, pressure cooker situation to the next and felt intense pressure to try to hold everyone else together during some pretty huge life-transition events. For all intents and purposes, looking at me from the outside, you’d have told me I was doing remarkably well. But inside, I was a constant swirling mess of emotions I had no experience or capacity dealing with. 

The thing that got me through that time was telling myself that, at the end of the day, if it got bad enough, I could always hang myself. That was my ‘happy thought’ at the end of the day. And it genuinely was a happy thought. Considering that I had an ‘out’ from all of the intensity actually filled me with a kind of calm, detached peace that allowed me to tough it out for another day. It was the first time in my life that the thought of suicide didn’t feel like the ‘wrong’ choice. It felt like a genuine alternative to having to endure all of the awfulness happening in my life. 

Now, in hindsight, this was actually an incredibly dangerous and unhealthy place to be, mentally. And at some point I realized it and brought it up with my then-boyfriend-now-husband as we were driving home one night. 

“Something has really got to change, because my happy thought at the end of the day has been that at least I can always kill myself if this gets much worse,” I told him, rather matter-of-fact. 

To his credit, and one of the reasons that I love that man, my words didn’t phase him. “Okay,” he said, “then lets make some changes.” 

That was when we started our plan to move to Nova Scotia. 

This article in Psychology Today talks about suicide as a breakdown in the meaning system of the suicidal person that narrows their perspective and focus, so that the only way they know to solve their problems is through taking their lives. It can also be one way to reassert a sense of freedom over the limitations that people feel in the choices they have left available to them in life. Whatever is happening that has shut down their ability to see other possibilities, suicidal people are essentially saying, "Choosing when I die is the one possibility that is still within my control." 

This is why I have some issues with the general take on Suicide Prevention – it can be very ‘victim blaming’. If suicide is a breakdown in that person’s ability to see another way out of whatever circumstances that they are in, then rather than approaching these conversations from a place of ‘you, as the suicidal person, are depressed and unable to cope with these circumstances’ – why aren’t we looking at the, often times horrendous, life circumstances that that person is in and putting that blame back where it belongs – on the awful life circumstances? We put the onus on the person dealing with some generally pretty awful and difficult life sh*t to not only have to navigate that life sh*t by themselves, but also the medical system and the mental health systems – which, lets face it, are also kind of hard-up right now themselves. Why can’t the conversation be, ‘wow, that is a lot to be dealing with right now. So how can we as a healthcare system and a society better support you while you go through the turmoils of life, and/or change as a system and society so that you don’t have to go through these kinds of circumstances at all?’ 

Now, don’t get me wrong – depression is a real and genuine medical condition that often leads to suicide. In no way am I trying to say that that’s not a genuine factor in suicide and something that absolutely needs to be addressed in suicide prevention. But with the current epidemic of suicide, I think it’s irresponsible to assume that that’s the only factor at play here, otherwise we’d be better at treating it. And if a large part of suicide stems from a feeling of loss of control or options, then having depression be the main go to answer – I feel like this might be limiting to some people experiencing suicidal thoughts who might not otherwise think of themselves as having depression and therefore might not seek help. 

Research shows that talking about suicide does not increase the likelihood of a suicidal person actually committing suicide, so having these conversations is incredibly important. Maybe if it was a much more normal thing to gauge where we are and how we’re coping in life by including conversation around thoughts of suicide as an indicator that something in our life could use some tweaking – either physically, situationally, emotionally, in our relationships or career, etc. – then we’d be better able to discuss options of changes we could make to better support ourselves and find the resources to help navigate whatever it is we’re facing early on rather than it becoming something that is so overwhelming and seemingly hopeless that suicide becomes a genuine option. I, for one, have learned that if ever I get to a place where suicide pops up on my list of options for dealing with my current circumstances then it’s time to make some serious changes to my life. But not everyone knows what changes to make or how to make them. This is where we can better support people who are thinking of suicide. But to do that, we as people need to take some responsibility to help them make those changes. 

So, what can you do if someone tells you that they are thinking of suicide or you suspect that they might be suicidal? 

Luckily, there are some great resources. Crisis Services Canada. Canadian Mental Health Association. The Lifeline Canada Foundation. 

Here are some specific steps you can take:

Ask – Ask them about what’s going on in their life. 

Listen – Don’t jump in and try to ‘fix it’, genuinely listen. This can be hard, especially if you’re a helper. I can be terrible at this sometimes. But sometimes people just need to be able to say the things to someone who cares. 

Get Support – Direct them to support resources. But don’t just leave them to do it by themselves. Stay with them or take them to support services. A crisis line is a good place to start. The Canada Suicide Prevention Service is available 24/7 at 1-833-456-4566. For Nova Scotia, the mobile mental health crisis hotline is 902-429-8167 or 1-888-429-8167 (toll free). If the situation is an emergency, call 911. 

If they have a doctor or other mental health service provider, it’s important that they make an appointment and tell their service provider about any thoughts of suicide they may have been having. Depending on your relationship, you can offer to help by scheduling the appointments or by taking them to their appointments. They may also be able to access services through their school, workplace, cultural or faith community.

Also remember that supporting someone through a difficult time can be hard on yourself as well, so it’s important to take care of your own mental health during this time and seek support too. 

We as a society need to rethink how we support each other in life. These conversations are important. And it’s incredibly important to remember that you’re not alone. There are people who want to and can help. We just have to have the courage to start speaking up. 

Till next time, Folks!

A Note on Quitting

Rehabilitation is hard. It just is. There are so many components to it – the physical, the mental, the emotional, the social, etc., etc.. There will be times you want to give up. There will be times that you DO give up. And that’s okay. That’s allowed. Forgive yourself those moments and love them for what they are – stepping stones on your path to recovery. 

Recovery and rehabilitation are not clean, pretty lines from A to B to C. They are jagged spikes of forward and backwards and up and down and sideways. It’s a journey in the direction of the hope of something better than what exists now. That journey is full of set backs and disappointments. But it is also full of successes and moments to celebrate how far you’ve come. 

I love the patients that come in and say that absolutely nothing has changed in the last 3 or 4 weeks – their pain is the same, their decrease in function, everything is exactly as it was the day they came to me. And then they bend over to take off their shoes when the first time I saw them they could barely manage to climb on the table and I had to remove their shoes for them.  When I point this out to them there’s always that moment of recognition on their faces that, ‘huh… wait a second… maybe I’ve been too close to this and I actually AM getting better.’

I love that moment. That moment is something that fills my heart and soul with glee. Because those patients almost always come back the next week bounding in happy as all get out because they’ve realized they’re actually so much better then they were and have learned to be grateful for their recovery process. 

So what are some ways you can snap yourself out of a funk when you inevitably get in one and want to quit? 

1.    Quit – at least for the short term. Maybe your body is telling you that you’ve been pushing it too hard and it needs rest? Or maybe you just need a moment to regroup? Either way, sometimes allowing yourself the space you need to just quit and give up for five minutes and take a look around, take the pressure off yourself and see if you’re actually doing what you want to be doing is miraculous for your determination. I like to think of these moments like taking a breather to see if you’re actually still on course – like climbing a tree to see if you’re still heading in the right direction. Sometimes we get so hyper-focused on just moving forward that we’ve forgotten to make sure we’re still heading in the right direction. Sometimes quitting for a little while allows us the perspective we need to regroup and move forward knowing we’re heading the right way for us.

2.    Embrace the frustration – think of a kid learning to walk and the frustration they go through. They try so hard and fall down so so many times, and sometimes they bound right back up and try again, and sometimes they just sit there and cry for a little while. But inevitably, we all learn to walk. That frustration pushes us to try again, to master this seemingly impossible challenge. It’s in the getting back up that we build the strength required to stay on our feet for longer and longer periods of time. If we judged a kid who’s learning to walk for every time they fall the way we judge ourselves and others who are recovering from a life event, they’d wind up terrified to fall and weaker for it. They’d feel like they were wrong as a person for not being able to walk, when in all truth they’re not supposed to be able to, and they’d grow up not fully embracing the joy of a childhood filled with jumping and playing and, yes, falling repeatedly. So use the frustration. Let it fill you. And then use it to get back up and try again.  

3.    Plan your escape route – in case of emergency, it’s always wise to have an escape route already planned. It doesn’t mean you need to use it. It just means that you are aware beforehand of the steps you’ll need to take to ensure your survival, should the unthinkable happen. So what does quitting look like? Imagine it? What happens in your life if nothing changes from today? What resources will you require? What will your life be like? Plan it out. This is your new baseline. Every step you take forward that builds on that baseline is a success and deserves to be celebrated. 

4.    1% better – you don’t need to be perfect, you just have to try to be 1% better today than you were yesterday. And some days that 1% will even be too much, but generally most people can handle 1%. What can you do right now that improves things by 1%? Can you do a load of laundry? Pick up some dishes? Maybe all you can accomplish today is washing your face, and that’s awesome. I don’t know what your injury is, so come up with some injury or life circumstances-appropriate 1% examples and fall back on that list when you feel overwhelmed. Just do one thing and then celebrate your accomplishment. Which brings me to:

5.    Celebrate your accomplishments – I’m terrible for not doing this, but it’s so important to help keep a positive mindset. You have come so far and been through so much. Celebrate the fact that you’re still here and you’ve made it this far. That alone is an accomplishment and worthy of a celebration. 

Throwing yourself a pity party is totally allowed. Quitting is also totally allowed. But so too is then getting back up and taking another step forward. Eventually those muscles will get stronger and you’ll be walking for longer and longer stretches until some helpful person will remind you of how far you’ve come and all that you’ve accomplished to get here. 

Till next time - be kind to yourself and know that you are doing the best you can in a crappy situation. I’m proud of you for how far you’ve come!

What is the placebo effect and why does it work?

The placebo effect is something of a sticking point with me. It’s used a lot as a ‘dismissive’ statement. But as a biologist and a scientist, the fact that you can give someone a sugar pill and have it work at all let alone as well as the actual treatment is fascinating and deserves further study so we can harness the power of this effect and utilize it in treatments. 

In research, yes, you need to carefully control for the placebo effect so that you can prove that your intervention is actually effective and not just the patient’s inherent ability to heal themselves. But when it comes to actually treating a patient, including ways to ‘turn on’ this effect should, in fact, be encouraged and used as a physiological mechanism to enhance the effectiveness of treatment protocols. Because why wouldn’t you? If drug A works well after controlling for placebo, then why wouldn't it work even better if we then give drug A PLUS train the patient into activating their placebo response to make the treatment that much more effective? 

So what is the placebo effect and why does it work? 

When you believe something is going to work for you, there are areas of your brain that respond. They turn on various neurological and physiological cascades that produce measurable effects in the human body. And here’s the fun thing - you can actually do tests to find out which people are more or less susceptible to the placebo effect. Meaning, some people have a stronger mind-body connection than others. What does this mean? It means that some people have a stronger neuroendocrine response under certain physiological conditions. Think, for example, people with anxiety. The same stimulus will create a larger noradrenaline and corticosteroid release in the person with anxiety than the person without it. Their system is just designed to be more reactive. The same is true for the placebo effect. Some people can produce a larger pain attenuation response, release more ‘parasympathetic state’ hormones and chemicals than others. We already know from this post that tissue healing and repair only happens in your parasympathetic response state. So if your belief that taking this pill is enough to calm you down enough that you can switch into parasympathetic mode, then low and behold tissue healing can naturally occur and those patients feel better. But if you’re the kind of person who is more worried about the side effects of that pill, then you activate your ‘sympathetic response’ and those patients wind up with what’s termed a ‘nocebo effect’, where they actually get worse instead of better. This is because less tissue healing occurs, they start to put more attention onto the symptoms they expect to see, which means that their brains start to pay more attention to any signals from that region more often, so that information is no longer being filtered out from their general awareness state, etc etc., so they get an increase in negative symptoms associated with the placebo. 

There is also lots of research being done around athletes and how to improve their performance utilizing the placebo effect. If you give an athlete a drink and tell them it will enhance their performance, low and behold it does. Which is exactly what you want as an athlete. Doesn’t matter if the drink is just water, if they believe it helps them, they perform better. 

Placebo is useful when we’re talking about peak performance conditions, or increasing/enhancing the effects of other treatments. That’s why there is a push for renaming the effect when referencing utilizing it as a treatment or performance enhancer because referring to it as the placebo effect alone diminishes its effect. 

The example of the placebo effect also helps to highlight why we need to establish criteria and guidelines around whether or not we’re referencing ‘illness and recovery’, general wellness, or peak performance healthcare, because the requirements and meanings of terms when referencing these three very different requirements can lead to a lot an ambiguity that allows a lot of misleading science and a lot of disingenuous people taking advantage which discourages research that is badly needed. 

Embrace your awkward

I am a socially awkward person. And I do and say dumb things. I would like to get that out in the open right away. 

I don’t mean that I do it in like, a mean way. Just in a way that’s just… awkward. You’d have to have a conversation with me to fully understand. But trust me. I am great at stopping a conversation dead in its tracks. 

And this is one of the MANY reasons why I have avoided social media. At least in the confines of my treatment room or in small group settings, my awkwardness can be contained to only a few people. But social media offers a giant forum for everyone to see me in my true, awkward glory. 

Given my job, there’s a lot of expectation to be this ‘professional’ person. We all have a specific idea in mind when we think of ‘professional people’. And I am absolutely not one of those. But here’s the thing - very few of us actually are. We tend to play this ‘professional role’, but how many of us are ACTUALLY this person we try to be when the boss is in the room? It’s like cleaning up your house before your friends come over and then leaving a few ‘staged’ messy bits lying around so they won’t think you tried too hard to impress them. Or working for 3 hours on your hair so that it looks ‘perfectly undone’. 

Let me tell you, when I roll into my office looking like I overslept and just threw on whatever clothes were lying on the arm of my couch, it’s because that’s actually what happened and not what I spent hours on trying to achieve as a ‘look’. Because I am incredibly busy and I promise I had been up the night before until 3am working on my latest endeavour. 

Which leads me to my point - I have spent the last year embracing my awkward. And I have learned a few things from this experience, not the least of which is that if I just calm the hell down about it and let it all be fine, it can, surprise surprise, just be fine. It can actually be one of the things I get the most compliments on. Because it, surprisingly enough, puts people at ease. It gives them permission to calm down about all those little perceived flaws that they’re also desperately trying to hide hoping no one will notice and then we can all get down to the business of getting better. Because that’s what all this ‘self love’ stuff is all about anyway. Not loving that version of you that you haul out and dust off at parties and meetings and special occasions, but loving that awkward, does not have her sh#t together, can barely take care of herself let alone all the plants she keeps killing perceived mess that is actually 99% of us most of the time. It’s about being your awkward self, in the presence of other people, and knowing that that you deserves just as much love and respect as the version who’s all polished and tidy. I am just as good at my job in yesterdays clothes as I am in a perfectly ironed pantsuit. Actually, I’d probably be less effective in the pantsuit because I’d be afraid to ruin it. But that’s neither here nor there…

Point is, I am an awesome, capable human being. And I do a lot of super awesome stuff. And I am awkward as all get out. But the REALLY great thing about that is that no matter what perceived flaw you think you might have that is holding you back from really going for it and doing the things you secretly wish you could ‘if only I was more…’ means that that excuse is no longer valid. Because I guarantee you I have got WAY more of those things, and I go for it every day. And it works out for me. Not all the time. I face plant CONSTANTLY. But I don’t let that stop me. Know why? Because I am super kickass and awesome anyway. And my dreams deserve me to not give up on them just because I say stupid things sometimes in public where other people can hear me. I say stupid things all the time. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am brilliant and I can do my job like a mofo. And it shouldn’t stop me from letting everyone else in the world know about all of the ways they too can follow their dreams and live happy, fulfilling lives and/or heal their pain etc etc. Because the message is the message, regardless of the way it gets out there. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to work. And I’m not letting ‘not being perfect’ stop me anymore from letting you all know that there are ways to feel better. Whatever it is that might be wrong, I can help you find some answers and some solutions and ways to feel better. Because I love my job intensely. And my job is to help you get the most you can out of life. 

So, hello world. Sorry in advance for all the awkward to come… ;)

I believe in miracles

In one of my very first osteopathic classes, one of the instructors said ‘don’t limit your patient’s ability to heal based on your own preconceived notions of what’s possible. I have seen miracles happen.’ And I thought to myself, ‘THIS! This is where I am meant to be.’

I believe that one of the differences between osteopathy and allopathic medicine is that we are always looking for the ‘health’ of the patient. Sure, there might be illness, injury or dysfunction present, but that person is not their illness, injury or dysfunction. That person is a mostly healthy individual who has been limited to and defined by their dis-ease. And that's not saying that allopathic medicine is wrong. We need both. Allopathic medicine knows how to keep us alive. It is an amazing profession and their knowledge and dedication to healing the broken and the sick is incredible and complex. But 'healing' is also not the same as 'healthy'. And sometimes it can confuse 'healed' with 'healthy' and there can be a giant gap between those two states.

Given my propensity for all things 'woo woo' and what I now know about the Law of Attraction and how the Universe works, how can a person ever be expected to recover to a full healthy state if the ONLY thing we’re focusing on is their illness or what's wrong with them? What about ALL of the things that are still going right? Why do we ignore that in favour of the one thing that’s wrong?

Well, because that thing is oftentimes painful, lets be honest. And in no way am I saying that we should ignore that. Pain and dysfunction are the only things our bodies have at their disposal to communicate with us. That’s totally valid. It just shouldn’t be what we focus on. 

Osteopathy is about amplifying the health of the patient while removing the barriers for that health to function properly. It believes in the inherent intelligence of the human body to self regulate. It believes in us to find our way back when we no longer believe in ourselves. 

Any profession that puts its faith in the patient’s ability to auto-regulate is something special, if you ask me. Coming from a purely physiological perspective, this philosophy was refreshing to me in a way that was mind-blowing at the time. I had long been exposed to a branch of science and medicine that had become so focused on the disease state that it could no longer see all of the things that were still functioning properly. And it certainly had no clue how to boost those things. My own journey back from injury had so thoroughly disillusioned me and my faith in the healthcare system’s knowledge of what ‘health’ even was that I had pretty much resigned myself to a life of constant pain. 

And then Osteopathy found me. 

And it nursed me back to health because it, as a profession, believed in my ability to get there. 

It’s why I believe in each and every one of you. I believe in your ability to self-regulate. I believe that, given the right circumstances, anything and everything is possible. 

I believe in miracles. Because I witness them each and every single day. 

What’s your health miracle?