Mental Health

I wasn’t sure about making the title of this post “mental health”. In my experience, people are scared of these 2 words. Both those who have mental health issues and those that know nothing about it. There are even people who are so scared of these words that they refuse to acknowledge them.

I’m ashamed to admit that I was one of those people who refused to acknowledge some mental health issues as a genuine illness. Don’t get me wrong, I understood that people had conditions such as split personalities but I always thought that conditions like stress, anxiety, depression were all states of the mind that the sufferer could do something about. If you’re depressed, do something that makes you happy! If you’re anxious about something, don’t do it! Why do you get stressed out at work? It’s just work!

How naive. How inconsiderate and downright ignorant.

I am an anxious person. I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep all of the people happy all of the time often at the expense of my own happiness. And I’ve always viewed this as a weakness. I’m not a “lovely person”, I’m a push over. I was bullied at school for being “too nice”! Can you believe that?! I never considered my anxiety as a mental health issue though. Even when my entire body succumbed to a harsh onset of eczema where blisters formed all over my skin. I had to go on a course of steroids but my thoughts were not “I need help to handle my stress and anxiety”. Rather they were “how stupid of you to get into this mes. Get a grip!”

I still struggle to understand. I’m not going to sit here and say I’ve found out all the answers because that would be lying. but something happened recently to make me think twice. I suffered postnatal anxiety. Yes, the woman who does Aikido. Knows how to breathe properly. Can lower her heart rate so that she can think straight. The woman who thought “I will never have postnatal depression because I’m happy and grateful for what I have.
The very same woman suddenly found herself burning up into a rage at the drop of a hat. No warning, no trigger. It got more and more frequent. I would blow up at my children for absolutely no reason at all. It got so bad that one of my outbursts caused me to accidentally hurt my son (not badly - I was carrying him in an awkward position because I also had to a steer the baby pram and didn’t realise at the time that my finger nails were digging into his tummy). I felt so guilty I hurt myself (again, not badly) as punishment.

That was me.

After that incident I became absolutely terrified that I’d do it again. I went to the GP who told me, in so many words, it’s just a phase, do yoga.
Yoga?! To fix the fact I can fly into a rage with no warning and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it? To fix the fact I can’t handle my 3 year old who’s doing nothing except being 3! I can’t handle the extra responsibility of keeping a second child alive!
I felt so isolated and I constantly worried about when the next “attack” would surface which was basically causing me to go round in circles.

However when I thought about it, my attention turned to the many times I have considered the similarities between yoga and ki exercises. Maybe the GP wasn’t entirely wide of the mark? So I went back to the basics. Ki breathing as often as I can, a bit of meditation here and there and some stretches (which the boy tries to copy and actually turns into a bit of a laugh). I have stopped pressuring myself to have a clean and tidy home all the time - as a result my house is an absolute midden and I’m not yet at the stage where I can happily invite people over but I’m learning to live with it!

As usual I’ve veered off the point :) This post isn’t supposed to be about my treatment. This is about acknowledging, to myself and you, that I have no idea what’s going on in my own head most of the time. How dare I judge others for not knowing the same. How can I dismiss someone’s mental health when I wouldn’t ever dismiss my own feelings? The uncontrollable rage and foreboding sense of misdirection. There were things happening to me and I didn’t know what they were or how to stop them and it was bloody scary. My children were witnessing one very shouty and tearful mummy. A loose cannon. And the guilt that came with that was incredibly overwhelming. I had to do something about it for the sake of my family.

I reached out. I reset myself. I’m not saying it “fixed” me. I’m no longer saying it’s simple to treat stress and anxiety or any other mental health issue. I wanted to write this post, not only to acknowledge my lack of knowledge and to apologise to all those suffering mental health disorders for my flippancy, but also so that others who are suffering can read this and not feel so alone. Nobody talks about this stuff. Particularly mothers who don’t want the outside world to think they’re not coping. If you feel negativity, Frightened, Angry... Like you can’t be bothered... Please talk to someone. Thankfully I quickly found my own answer to help me cope but I now know that’s not the same for everyone. Maybe you will continue to struggle for a bit before you find something that works for you.

Either way, please remember you’re not alone and you shouldn’t stay silent.

xxx

Ki and pregnancy

My ramblings about Ki must sound very naive and raw.  I'm not too worried about that though because I'm still at the very start of the Ki learning curve and I know I have a long way to go.

I'm beginning to focus on the upcoming event in my life that is going to change everything.  There is a certain amount of fear associated with childbirth and, from my own experience and from speaking to other pregnant women, the fear stems from images in films or TV programmes where the woman is typically lying on her back screaming blue murder, surrounded by machines and medical staff, pushing for all she's worth.  The other strange phenomena I've noticed is that other women play a big part in the fear.  With the exception of a few women, those who find out I'm pregnant immediately clamber over themselves to tell me how bad it is and that their experience was one of pain and complication.  Why do women do that to each other? Where's the support and encouragement? Where's the joy and excitement at the wonderful thing that's happening?

And how can every birth be that bad?  How has the human race survived if childbirth is so horrific?  No man has ever told me a bad story about the birth of their child.  I hear you ask yourself "what would a man know anyway?" but I personally think he'd know quite a lot.  Yes it's from a different perspective but if he was present at the birth then surely he'll have gone through some amount of stress and mental torture as he watched his partner screaming through the most pain she's ever experienced?  Men's stories of childbirth are ones of awe and pride.  No it didn't look like a walk in the park for his partner but look at what all that resulted in... He's holding a beautiful baby in his arms because of her!  

I've always kept the premise at the back of my mind that childbirth is natural and the survival of the species is dependent on it.  The female body is built to bring life into the world - that's what it does!  Therefore I strongly believe that childbirth can't be that bad!  I have to admit though that my resolve does waver regularly!  Is my belief about childbirth so wrong when everytime I turn round someone has a negative anecdote to tell?  A natural part of existence versus the stories that other women (and films) tell me... The two just don't add up!  

As well as the worry that my childbirth beliefs don't match reality, Michael's fear of blood was also causing us both to be anxious about how we were going to get this baby into the world.  Whenever I mention his haemophobia to other women, the typical sarcastic response is "oh yeh well he's going to be really useful isn't he?" coupled with a sharp intake of breath and shake of the head.  Over the last few months, this had me in a bit of a state.  In all honesty, I don't have any doubt about my own abilities to give birth but that doesn't stop the worry that I'm totally inexperienced and my husband will be a crumpled wreck in the corner!  We made this baby, we will be responsible for it, we are partners in this and it's the most natural thing in the world - it doesn't make sense to me that I should be scared of it and that Michael shouldn't be a fundamental part of bringing his child into the world.

So what is the solution to worry and fear?  You may not be surprised to read that I have turned to Ki.

When I was 20 weeks pregnant I started a yoga class on a Saturday morning to help make up for the stretching that I was missing from the Friday aikido class.  It was here that I learned the importance of breathing to help relaxation during labour.  Yoga breathing and Ki breathing are actually very similar with slight differences where the Yoga class I attend has developed the breathing specifically for pregnancy and birth.  

There's something to be said about the simplicity of relaxation through breathing.  It's difficult at first because your mind is constantly turning and, in this world where everything moves so quickly at the touch of a button, it's not automatic for us to empty our minds.  This takes practice (as with everything else in aikido!) and will become natural eventually so that if you feel yourself getting tense and stressed you can check your breathing to bring your emotions back to normal levels.

Relaxation through deep and regular breathing prevents the body from producing the hormone that causes a flight, fight or freeze response.  A birthing woman can't run away from giving birth or fight with it and so the body freezes which causes all the pain and complication.  It's a similar situation when being faced with an attack.  If you've got a big masked man running at you with a knife, your body will revert to the fight/flight/freeze reaction.  Keeping one-point, relaxing completely, keeping weight underside and extending Ki (the Ki principles) allows you to deal with the attack calmly, safely and positively.  The flight/fight/freeze response shouldn't even come into it. I have been practising relaxation through ki breathing at home using the Ki Principles which, combined with the yoga adaptations, seems to be helping to lessen my anxieties.  The more I practise the easier (I hope) it will be to relax when I'm in labour.  We'll see!

You can learn about ki breathing on the web page below but the best way to learn is to attend a class:
http://ki-aikido.net/KASHIWAYA/Excerpts.html