Today my serotonin must be off-kilter in my brain.  I woke at 4 AM and knew I was angry before I opened my eyes.  I knew because I had psychotically jumbled dreams that left me restless and angry.

I’ve spoken about days like this before.  For those of you who do not have this struggle, the best way I can explain this is there is a tick hooked onto my brain, clawing at my emotions and ripping my focus apart.  I feel like I’m mentally and emotionally grappling with this monster, trying my best to untangle its claws from my emotions.  I feel I get one hook out, only to have another appear and grab one and work on sucking my emotional life force out of me.

I had a continuing education class that a professional friend had generously invited me to, and yesterday I was looking forward to attending.  At 5 AM today, I hated her for inviting me.  This makes no sense, and what I’ve also learned is that it is not reality. It’s the chemical windstorm in my head, tossing reality about and trying to convince me that it’s version of life is right, and that life sucks.

I wanted to hide at home today.  I know by tomorrow I would feel better.  I knew it was going to take every ounce of mental energy and discipline to put on my ‘game face’ and smile and socially lie — you know, say “I’m fine” when asked.

What sustains me on days like today is the knowledge that tomorrow will be better.  I also know these days will come again.  I accept that I have a managed condition that I treat with prescription medication, that there is no ‘cure’.  I have also learned that my condition is not who I am, not a reflection of me as a person, my values, beliefs, personality.  It’s just something I need to be aware of, acknowledge, and work with.

I knew I was out of kilter when my beloved dog Maggie sensed my emotional turmoil, and tried to snuggle me (she is not a snuggler dog) — what what did I do? I yelled at her.  This is why I didn’t have children.  I knew only too well the damage I could inflict upon them.  Luckily dogs are God’s gift to us, and they give us instant forgiveness and don’t take away love.  It doesn’t make yelling at her right.  But it does help to know she still loves me.

Here’s some pictures of my beloved Maggie.

I snapped at my husband for no reason — even though he had gotten up early to get ready to go to the office, much earlier than normal.  I now I am going to be apologizing to him all day. Luckily he understands these chemical storms, and has a generous spirit and big heart.  I probably wouldn’t be here typing if he hadn’t come into my life when he did.

I call today a day I am not fit for human consumption.

I know today will not be a personally or professionally productive day. But, like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, I know that “Tomorrow IS another day!:

Healing is a process not unlike winning at business, educational, family, or other goals.

It required Focus, Discipline, and Practice.

Healing does not happen by accident.  Healing from abuse, shame, tragedy, divorce—whatever is eating you from the inside—is a process of winning.

Once you make the decision to start the healing process, you have started on a path to growth.  Like any growth path, it starts with focus.

According to www.dictionary.com, focus can be defined as: To concentrate: to focus one’s thoughts.

Focus is the flashlight that guides your path.  It is the skill —- yes, SKILL, not talent — that helps you keep taking small steps forward, no matter how hard. Focus is desire.  It is a picture of what you want to be, have, do, become.  Focus is not easy to keep.

We are all pulled in so many directions every day.  The kids are sick, the boss has a project, you have a fight with your spouse, you need to pick up your dry cleaning, the laundry needs to be done…you get the picture.  Its all too easy to lose focus.

Focus requires clarity.

Imagine looking through an unfocused microscope..  You can ‘see’ but without focusing the lens, it’s a muddy blob.  But if you shift the lens just a tad, all of a sudden you can see sharp edges and microbes that were always there, but you couldn’t see.

Focus is the difference between “I want to lose weight” and “I weigh XXX.” “I want to be successful” and “I earn XXX a year. “I want to get past this pain” and “I am on a healing path.”

Sometimes you’re not sure what clarity looks like.  That’s okay.  Start with what you think you want.  It’s okay for your focus to change, and trust me, it will! As you walk forward and start your healing process, you will learn about what you want, and things you thought you wanted will go away, and you may be surprised at unexpected desires.  Your desires and clarity will change as you change.

It’s kind of like looking through binoculars.  At first you just see a beautiful forest with the naked eye.  But you put the binoculars on, and all of a sudden you can see a bald eagle, and it looks like it may be on a nest.  So, you have a picture.  But, as you walk closer to the trees (along your healing path) you use the binoculars, and now you can see the huge nest.  Keep walking closer and now you can see the baby eaglets.  See how much more focused and specific the picture is getting? Healing is like that.  As you walk along and heal, your vision will clarity and your picture will continually refocus.

A friend may be walking with you on the same path, but she’s focused on the butterflies, or deer, or flowers. It’s the same picture, but the focus for each of you is different.

Discipline sometimes conjures up discomfort.  Again, www.dictionary.com has several definitions of discipline  1. bring to a state of order and obedience by training and control. OR 2. to punish or penalize in order to train and control; correct; chastise.

We’re not interested in emotional boot camp or punishment if we ‘fail’.  So let me give you my definition of discipline.

I define discipline as a promise to myself, with the gift of love and forgiveness a vital part of it.  Discipline is again, a habit and a skill, not a talent.  If you have never been self-disciplined (I’m not talking corporal punishment, but mental discipline)—be kind to yourself.  If you’ve never had to use mental discipline, start small.  You wouldn’t run a marathon without a few sprints or long walks first, right?  If you start with the marathon, you can hurt yourself, and never try again.  Discipline works the same way.  Start small.  You’ll get better at it, I promise.

Practice is the last part. One definition is “repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency” This entire blog, in essence, has been about practice.  Life is practice.  Let’s just be up-front here.  You’re going to ‘suck’ at your new healing journey skills at first.  Don’t give up.  Learn to laugh at and love yourself along the way.

You didn’t go from diapers to potty training immediately.  It was a process involving anxieties.  But, the more you practiced (and were cheered on, along the way) the more you trusted yourself and the faster you learned.  This goes for any new skill.  Again, SKILL, not talent.

Those of you with kids—how paranoid and clumsy were you with your first child?  By the second child you were probably more relaxed.

Give yourself time to practice.  As John Maxwell says ‘Fail Forward.”  Plan your failures.  Plan reward for giving yourself the gift of failure.

For those of us who have been abused, failure was not an option.  So…learn to give yourself the gift of failure. And you will learn that ‘failure’ is just another word for growth.

So—Focus.  Discipline. Practice.  New skills you will learn in your healing journey.

There’s an article that’s gone viral and had over 250,000 hits on The Huffington Post this week….”30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the time she’s 30.“  It’s an interesting article on what ‘should’ be important for a woman…especially viewed from a rear-view  perspective as it was written in 1997.

I’m hoping that as women we’ve ‘come a long way baby’ since 1997.

Yes, you should have a good black lace bra, and you should have a set of screwdrivers and a cordless drill.  Absolutely.  But…I’d like to add a few nuggets of my own if you’ll indulge me.

1.  Any man who truly loves you, loves you exactly the way you are.  Not after you lose 20 pounds.

2.  On that set of screwdrivers and cordless drill? Make sure you have eye protection on when you use them.

3.  Find a mechanic that you trust, not just one who advertises a cheap oil change or smog check.

4.  Surround yourself only with positive people.  If someone gossips about someone else in front of you, she’s doing the same thing to you the moment you turn your back on her.

5.  On that note, don’t gossip about other people.  Don Miguel Ruiz in his landmark book The Four Agreements talks about being impeccable with your word.  And when you gossip about others, you are pointing poison arrows right back into your own soul.

6.  Every year, travel somewhere new.

7.  Learn to be alone with yourself.  Go to movies, museums, restaurants by yourself.  Learn to enjoy your own company.

8.  Get your teeth cleaned every year.  It’s been medically proven that oral health is the gateway to your overall physical health.

9.  You are perfect, just the way you are.

10. Don’t believe everything that is on the Internet, TV, or newspapers is true.

11.  You will never change him.  Period.  Go into any relationship accepting the other person….and if it’s not what you want, get out quickly.

12.  Volunteer.  It will change your entire life perspective.

13.  Try something new every year.  Take a tap dance, pottery, painting class. Who cares if you’re not “good”? You’ll have fewer regrets later in life.

14.  It’s okay to say no.  In fact, learn to say it sooner and more often.

15.  Ask for more money when applying for a job.  Be prepared to show specifically why you deserve a raise, and then expect it.

16.  If you don’t want to have children…..don’t.

17.  Buy the best quality shoes you can.  Your feet and back will thank you.

18.  Recognize the difference between “Need” and “Want”.  As in “I Need that pair of shoes, that dress, that…” Especially if you are putting it on a credit card that can take over 30 years to pay off.

19.  Speaking of that credit card, if you buy something on sale 50% off but charge it on a credit card at 18%, you’re probably still paying for it 30 years later and it’s cost you more than the original price.

20.  You are perfect, just the way you are.

21.  Send yourself flowers.

22. Make sure you start saving for your future earlier than you think.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a small amount, just start saving.

23. Balance your checkbook and review your credit card statements for purchases that aren’t yours.  Keep track of your budget.

24.  If you are depressed/angry/anxious, see a professional.  And if they prescribe meds to help you, take them.  There’s no shame in it.

25.  Smile before you say a word.  It works magic.

26. A hug is nourishment for the soul

27. Tell someone you love them, every day. Tell yourself you love you, every day.

28. Don’t wait until you’re 50 to wear a red hat and dress in purple.

29.  Take personal time for yourself every day.

30.  Did I mention that you are perfect, just the way you are?

For another, excellent and well written article on this that I just found check out Michelle Haimoff’s article http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/30-other-things-every-woman-should-know-by-30/

Okay, my disclaimer….I’m not a doctor, nurse, therapist, nor do I play one on TV.  This is just one woman’s opinion based on her own experiences.

Today the subject that kept coming up in my conversations with friends was depression.  And we all talked about how we have ‘good’ lives, and we have ‘nothing’ to be sad about…..you know, ‘shoulding’ all over ourselves.  What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we ‘just be happy?’

Well, when you struggle with depression, the answer isn’t that easy.  The bottom line is that depression is a condition, not a situation.  Depression has no relevance to how great your life is, how successful you are.  Look at Kurt Cobain, and more recently, Owen Wilson.  Both of these men seemed to have it ‘all’. Fame. Fortune. Success. Anything that money could buy.  But both of them tried to commit suicide, although only Cobain succeeded.  So in reality depression has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening in your life.  It’s a condition.  It’s chemical.

If you do a google search for “San Diego Depression” you will get 24,500,000 matches, ranging from articles, clinics, support groups, blogs like mine, etc. You’ll see on the first page “Study links depression and chocolate”, “San Diego anxiety and suicide”….lots of different things.  So depression, even though we think we alone suffer from it and are ashamed of it, is pretty rampant as far as I can see.

I remember when my doctor first approached me about taking anti=depressants.  Nope, no way, no how.  My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who used to do the ‘Mellaril shuffle” along our house walls when I was a girl…so I didn’t want any part of it.  Luckily for me I had a compassionate and smart doctor.  Her response was “If you were a diabetic, would you take your insulin?” Well, of course, duh!  “Well, your depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain, and it’s no different.”

Wow.  For the first time I could look at my depression not as a shameful weakness on my part, but a disease, no different than other diseases.  What a freeing thing!

So why are we sad, and why do we keep blaming ourselves for being sad? Well, as far as I can see, we have been trained in America that you have to be a go-getter, that you have to succeed, that you have to show the world that you are SuperMom or SuperDad or SuperBusinessPerson! Nothing gets you down.  Put on your happy face and suck it up! Nobody wants to hear your whining.  Nobody cares about your sad childhood.  Get over it.  Move on.  Be a man. We’ve all heard all of these things.

But the reality is that depression can stop a freight train cold.  You can be clicking along, happy and moving forward, and BAM! depression kicks in and lays you flat.  And no matter how much psychic energy you expend to pick yourself back up, you can’t do it.  Or, you manage a happy game face and smile at everyone and pretend you’re happy when you are dying inside.  And it doesn’t matter when your life is like.  You can be rich, successful, famous, happily married, have great kids or a great job….and it just….doesn’t….matter.  Nothing matters when you are in the throes of depression.  No matter how hard you try to ‘be happy’ it just keeps dragging you down.

Luckily for me these days are not as frequent as they once were.  And even when I’m wrestling with a depression day I do know that there can be sunshine ahead.  That helps me to get through the hard days.  But make no mistake.  When the depression hits, it grabs hold and doesn’t want to let go.  And no matter how ‘successful’ I am, it just….doesn’t….matter.

Let’s start a dialog on this.  What is your experience? The more we discuss, the easier it will be for all of us, and the new insights we will all receive will be tremendous.