October is Mental Health Awareness Month
Oct. 18th, 2025 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seeyatThe first time I ever experienced anxiety was after being stuck in a room with no place for exercise.
I was always a pretty active person and I didn’t really think of it as exercise. I just walked, skated, biked or rollerbladed places as a kid. I’d explore forests and climb trees. I’d dig 6’ deep holes with a friend of mine. I’d work on tree forts and MTB tracks in a patch of woods. I was also a Boy Scout; camping every month and actively engaged with our weekly meetings and events.
At around 19, I spent about 2 straight years in a clinical setting on sedative medication with absolutely zero exercise because they discouraged any level of movement. It was pretty much sleep or TV. Here's when the somatic anxiety set in.
I learned to hate this feeling. But my mind also created a sort of learned helplessness that just boiled into frustrated depression. I then sat in cycles of this depression through my 20s. Again, within circumstances beyond my control.
I'm a "legally incapacitated" individual on government aid. I'm not legally permitted to work and I'm only given just enough to stay alive, not afford transportation or socializing without external support systems.
While I was conditioned to love consistent exercise throughout early life, I also need encouragement and supportive community around it. This also means I can't spend too much time indoors without going stir crazy.
I did just that for quite a number of years in my 20s. I lived in my father's basement and actively spiraled through cycles of extreme depression, frustrated confusion and bursts of energy when my body really needed to move and be active but I kept telling myself it's not the "right thing" to do. I'm poor. I can't work and have no prospects. I'm unwanted and unloveable.
...so I attempted suicide more than a dozen times by saving up my monthly prescriptions and downing them all at once.
I failed every time... and I'd wake up in a puddle of piss. I'd be frustrated and further disheartened, then needing to sit and wait for another few months and act 'normal' for the doctors and family so I didn't wind up back in inpatient psych.
Depression is a very real thing. People aren't faking anything but the face of joy at times.
To have a cognitive understanding of needs, desires and strategies like walking, biking, skating, running, rollerblading, photography, sober socializing over board game nights, mall walks, etc... means very little to our nervous system.
I have deeply ingrained needs for exploration, expression, creativity, novelty, communion with nature, social connection, collaboration, achievement and intimacy... we all share these needs. They're universal to human life. I just happened to develop a sort of dependence on these particular ones through lived experience.
Knowing this... is only the beginning.
Our nervous systems stop us and protect us from strategies that lost us love, made us feel ashamed... anything around which we were punished, repremanted, scorned or ignored.
This is part of "learned helplessness" and it causes our bodies to go into a self-protective orientation that average people perceive as "laziness" when it's really just survival.
That so-called survival is often a double-edged sword when we're unable to find alternative ways of meeting needs. It's also especially harmful when they only accepted or celebrated choices and therefore relationally secure and "safe" strategies for us belong to someone else, perhaps a dominant parental figure or an outgoing 'friend.'
When people don't have enough responsibilities or social responsibilities, like myself... face such a situation it can be a heavy burden on our nerves and emotions. It can also very slowly spiral into a total shut down and regress into suicidal depression.
Knowing what works is an important start. Finding ways of feeling secure and 'safe' in what works requires collecting and maintaining related resources, feeling comfortable and confident that nothing bad will happen and a level of hope many people suffering from so-called 'depression' have a hard time summoning.
This can all be perceived as laziness, incapacity and to a sufficiently emotionally immature person it can be viewed as straight up stupidity.
People then struggle within themselves and beat themselves up, throwing self-hate into their own hearts for not living up to other people's standards and 'acceptable' identities and ways of living. This can wind up in depression and suicidal ideations and attempts.
We have a long way to go as a society in finding and nurturing healthy communication skills. We also have a long way to go for projecting common decency and providing a sense of comfortable security for one another.
I was always a pretty active person and I didn’t really think of it as exercise. I just walked, skated, biked or rollerbladed places as a kid. I’d explore forests and climb trees. I’d dig 6’ deep holes with a friend of mine. I’d work on tree forts and MTB tracks in a patch of woods. I was also a Boy Scout; camping every month and actively engaged with our weekly meetings and events.
At around 19, I spent about 2 straight years in a clinical setting on sedative medication with absolutely zero exercise because they discouraged any level of movement. It was pretty much sleep or TV. Here's when the somatic anxiety set in.
I learned to hate this feeling. But my mind also created a sort of learned helplessness that just boiled into frustrated depression. I then sat in cycles of this depression through my 20s. Again, within circumstances beyond my control.
I'm a "legally incapacitated" individual on government aid. I'm not legally permitted to work and I'm only given just enough to stay alive, not afford transportation or socializing without external support systems.
While I was conditioned to love consistent exercise throughout early life, I also need encouragement and supportive community around it. This also means I can't spend too much time indoors without going stir crazy.
I did just that for quite a number of years in my 20s. I lived in my father's basement and actively spiraled through cycles of extreme depression, frustrated confusion and bursts of energy when my body really needed to move and be active but I kept telling myself it's not the "right thing" to do. I'm poor. I can't work and have no prospects. I'm unwanted and unloveable.
...so I attempted suicide more than a dozen times by saving up my monthly prescriptions and downing them all at once.
I failed every time... and I'd wake up in a puddle of piss. I'd be frustrated and further disheartened, then needing to sit and wait for another few months and act 'normal' for the doctors and family so I didn't wind up back in inpatient psych.
Depression is a very real thing. People aren't faking anything but the face of joy at times.
To have a cognitive understanding of needs, desires and strategies like walking, biking, skating, running, rollerblading, photography, sober socializing over board game nights, mall walks, etc... means very little to our nervous system.
I have deeply ingrained needs for exploration, expression, creativity, novelty, communion with nature, social connection, collaboration, achievement and intimacy... we all share these needs. They're universal to human life. I just happened to develop a sort of dependence on these particular ones through lived experience.
Knowing this... is only the beginning.
Our nervous systems stop us and protect us from strategies that lost us love, made us feel ashamed... anything around which we were punished, repremanted, scorned or ignored.
This is part of "learned helplessness" and it causes our bodies to go into a self-protective orientation that average people perceive as "laziness" when it's really just survival.
That so-called survival is often a double-edged sword when we're unable to find alternative ways of meeting needs. It's also especially harmful when they only accepted or celebrated choices and therefore relationally secure and "safe" strategies for us belong to someone else, perhaps a dominant parental figure or an outgoing 'friend.'
When people don't have enough responsibilities or social responsibilities, like myself... face such a situation it can be a heavy burden on our nerves and emotions. It can also very slowly spiral into a total shut down and regress into suicidal depression.
Knowing what works is an important start. Finding ways of feeling secure and 'safe' in what works requires collecting and maintaining related resources, feeling comfortable and confident that nothing bad will happen and a level of hope many people suffering from so-called 'depression' have a hard time summoning.
This can all be perceived as laziness, incapacity and to a sufficiently emotionally immature person it can be viewed as straight up stupidity.
People then struggle within themselves and beat themselves up, throwing self-hate into their own hearts for not living up to other people's standards and 'acceptable' identities and ways of living. This can wind up in depression and suicidal ideations and attempts.
We have a long way to go as a society in finding and nurturing healthy communication skills. We also have a long way to go for projecting common decency and providing a sense of comfortable security for one another.
