Tag: therapy

TMS Update

Well, as I type this I am 10 sessions into the 30 session Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation sessions. 1/3 of the way there. Woohoo!

How’s it going so far? Well…maybe better? Honestly, yeah, starting at the beginning of the 2nd week, it did start to feel like I was feeling a bit better, but let me define what I mean. Birds did not start singing. The sky is not the bluest it has ever been. Depression is still there. Life is not perfect.

But, to some extent, I have to say, it does feel like things have gotten a bit better. My life hasn’t dramatically improved, but there does seem to be a bit less…pressure. Like, the ceiling of depression which pressured down on me seems a bit lighter. That’s the best way I think I can put it.

To be clear, this may be placebo. The readings that the Doctor gave me showed that depression probably wouldn’t start to improve until week four. When I mentioned this to him, he said some people did feel better in week two, but for many it was longer, and it is certainly possible that this is just placebo. So I guess we will see!

Some other notes:

  • For me, there are no side effects. Even the slight headaches that during the treatment have become more tolerable. I haven’t taken a Tylenol before a treatment since it started, and my head has not hurt a soon as the treatment has ended.
  • You really do build a resistance to the minor pain caused by the treatment. Of the ten times I’ve had it, I’ve fallen asleep three of them, which is kind of funny.
  • I went through the math in my head the other day. As I said in the last entry on this subject, the magnet taps your head for four seconds, then rests for twelve. During the four seconds in which you get tapped with the magnet, it makes contact 40 times. A session is twenty minutes, so you get tapped 3,200 times a session. Multiply that by the 30 sessions, and congratulations, you’re getting smacked by a magnet 96,000 time over six weeks!

Only 64,000 taps to go!

The futility of gratitude – and why it’s so important

I had an interesting realization in therapy the other day, and it led to this blog entry. Stay with me for a second.

My therapist and I were talking about trying to change my mindset from both a depression and anxiety perspective. I think a great deal of anxiety comes from a fear of “not being able to handle” any given situation – be that going to school, work, travel, whatever. I’m not quite sure what “not being able to handle” means, save for turning into a blubbering ball of sad and fear, but whatever. Now, by and large, that’s a silly fear. There’s no such thing – not really – as “not being able to handle” something. Sure, there are some life events and experiences that go better than others, but short of dying, you get through life.

This sort of fear in stressful situations can manifest itself in many ways. One of them is that it causes a shift in mindset. You no longer engage in new experiences to enjoy them or learn from them – instead, you do so in order to say “I survived” them. This mindset can be damning for so many reasons. You start an experience not looking to enjoy it, but to get through it. This kind of bunker-mentality can absolutely destroy your ability to get any joy. To try new things. To adventure or gain new experience. Indeed, it makes you afraid, and it makes you far less willing to be adventurous. You live in a constant state of looking over your shoulder, wondering when the anxiety attack will hit. Wondering when you will get cripplingly sad. Wondering what goes wrong next.

This way of thinking, of living – survival versus gratitude – can be absolutely crippling. And it leads me to the point of today’s entry: I don’t want to just survive. I want to thrive. I want to learn and to live. Don’t you?

How do you do that? Hahaha, yeah come on, you know I don’t have an answer. I only have a piece of one. That’s this: Try to change the way you approach new situations. Approach them from a perspective of gratitude and gaining new experience. Instead of entering an anxiety-provoking situation from the perspective of, “Oh, God, how am I gonna get through this?” ask yourself, “Okay, what can I learn from this?” or better yet, “How can I be grateful for this experience?”

Now, I titled this entry, “The futility of gratitude” because I am not an idiot. When you are depressed or anxious and someone tells you to “Be grateful,” you probably want to punch that person in the face. Grateful? For the crippling fear and sadness? That’s madness.

But, that’s exactly why it’s so important.

The only way to break anxiety and depression is to change the way you think. The way you process thoughts and emotions. And the only way to do that is to shift your mindset. So, just try this. Try, every now and then, asking yourself this question: “How am I learning from this new and difficult situation?” or “What can whatever I am experiencing right now teach me so I don’t encounter these problems in the future?” Fear is only crippling is it denies you the chance to grow, to learn. And there’s no such thing as an experience you can’t handle.

So, try to ask yourself that. Try to ask yourself what you can be grateful for. What you can learn. Shift your mind, and maybe you can shift your emotions too.

Redemption – my book – is now available

Today’s the day. A really, really big day, for me. Today, my book, Redemption, is available for order.

First, the logistics: If you pre-ordered it on your Kindle, it should be there! If you want to order it for Kindle or order a print copy on Amazon, go right to the website. To order it in other formats, or to order a printed copy directly from me (which I will sign and ship!), visit my website. Also, if you use Goodreads, you can check out the book’s page here.

Again, here’s what the book is about:

Twenty young people wake aboard the spaceship Redemption with no memory how they got there.

Asher Maddox went to sleep a college dropout with clinical depression and anxiety. He wakes one hundred sixty years in the future to assume the role as captain aboard a spaceship he knows nothing about, with a crew as in the dark as he is.

Yanked from their everyday lives, the crew learns that Earth has been ravaged by the Spades virus – a deadly disease planted by aliens. They are tasked with obtaining the vaccine that will save humanity, while forced to hide from an unidentified, but highly advanced enemy.

Half a galaxy away from Earth, the crew sets out to complete the quest against impossible odds. As the enemy draws closer, they learn to run the ship despite their own flaws and rivalries. But they have another enemy . . . time. And it’s running out.

Okay. Now for the personal stuff.

This book was written during one of the ugliest, most depressed periods of my adult life. I was in a bad funk, my wife was having a hard time at work, and we were both just struggling. I had started seeing my therapist again, I had increased my medication, but I was still in a really bad way. And I made a decision that I needed to do more, and remembered how writing had saved me when I was a teenager. I’d already written a non-fiction book – Tweets and Consequences – and while I’d enjoyed that process, I wanted to do more. I wanted to write something that was truly meaningful to me on a personal level.

Twenty years ago – probably more – I had this idea as a young teenage writer about kids winding up on a spaceship with no idea why. While I was thinking about writing, I remembered this kernel of a plot. I wanted to write about mental illness as well, since that cause has become such a part of my life.

And thus, Redemption.

As for why this is so important to me. Please understand that this isn’t just a book. It’s difficult to explain how meaningful writing this was on a personal level. The best way I can put it is this: When you write, if it is about an issue that you really care about, you’re not just creating words. You’re putting a piece of your heart out for the world to see. This book is a huge piece of who I am and my personal mission of helping people who suffer from mental illness find hope and recovery. I hope this book can do for others what it did for me – help pull me from the darkness. I hope it can help people realize that they can live good lives, even with depression, anxiety and mental illness. And I hope it’s a good read.

Anyway, world, meet Redemption. I hope you enjoy it!

Finding light in the darkness

I’m going to write about two things that personally motivated me to deal with my own demons in a very public way. The short-term inspiration for this is me rereading the acknowledgements section of Redemption. The longer-term inspiration for this is a public tragedy and a low period in my life.

Okay, first, here’s a small section of the acknowledgements in Redemption:

To Robin Williams. Yours was a life well lived, and I hope to be part of a positive story of those influenced by how it ended.

Let me go backwards. Robin Williams completed suicide on August 11, 2014. He had long suffered from a slew of mental health challenges, including depression and substance abuse. However, Williams was suffering from “diffuse Lewy body dementia,” which ultimately contributed heavily to his suicide.

William’s suicide ultimately inspired me to go public with my story. That started when some idiot on Facebook decided to spout off shortly after Williams’ death by saying something along the lines of, “So sad Robin Williams committed suicide. He just needed to pray to Jesus more!”

No, you schmuck, that’s not how it works, and that ignorant comment got me so damn fired up that I wrote an op-ed in my local paper, detailing my own struggles with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. That, in turn, set my career in motion in a very different way, making me become much louder about mental health issues. I’ve spoken at events detailing my own struggles, cofounded a mental health caucus, appeared in PSAs and introduced legislation designed to help those who are suffering from mental health challenges. I know that the work I’ve done in this realm has helped people – and I know I have a lot more to do to help more.

It also inspired this speech, the most difficult one I have ever made:

Fast forward about seven or eight months, and I’m struggling, in the midst of one of the most depressed periods of my life. I’m struggling at work, my wife is struggling at work, and life just generally sucks at the moment. I go back to see my therapist. I increase my medication. And then I realize something else: I desperately need an outlet. Something to help get me through everything I am suffering from. I decide to start writing again – I wrote fiction as a kid and had published the non-fiction book I wrote, Tweets and Consequences.

And I remember this goofy plot idea I had as a kid, twenty years ago, about kids getting trapped on a spaceship. And I realize something: That’s not a bad plot. But what if I could make it more? What if I could fold in a mental health message as well?

And thus, Redemption is born.

For what it’s worth: I have a character named Robin in Redemption. In all fairness though, that’s also my daughter’s middle name, so let’s call that character’s naming a 50% tribute to Williams and 50% tribute to my daughter.

The death of Robin Williams helped me and countless others find their voice and seek help. I know that this may be cold comfort to those he loved and those who loved him. But I sincerely hope that they can take some solace in knowing that Williams’ life and death helped so many, including me. His was a life well lived – and, as I said above, I hope to be a small part of that story.

You can always find light in the darkness. Pain makes us great, and with time and therapy, you can turn the most agonizing periods of your own life into something incredible.

As long as you breathe, there is hope. The trick is just finding it sometimes.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation?

You know, you first hear about something like this, and you think it sounds like some sort of witchcraft nonsense. Magnets? To help depression?

Apparently. And it’s scientific based.

I write about this now because I had an appointment last week to explore this as a treatment possibility, and it is likely something I’m going to pursue. Here are the basics, per the Mayo Clinic:

During a TMS session, an electromagnetic coil is placed against your scalp near your forehead. The electromagnet painlessly delivers a magnetic pulse that stimulates nerve cells in the region of your brain involved in mood control and depression. And it may activate regions of the brain that have decreased activity in people with depression.

 Though the biology of why rTMS works isn’t completely understood, the stimulation appears to affect how this part of the brain is working, which in turn seems to ease depression symptoms and improve mood.

The most important question, of course, is this: Does it work? According to the evidence I have seen, yes, and that’s in tests involving a placebo. More research is needed, but this appears to work.

Thankfully, the side effects are very mild, per the Mayo clinic.

Side effects are generally mild to moderate and improve shortly after an individual session and decrease over time with additional sessions. They may include:

  • Headache

  • Scalp discomfort at the site of stimulation

  • Tingling, spasms or twitching of facial muscles

  • Light headedness

The biggest drawback, as best I can tell? The Doctor I spoke with told me its most effective to do it every single day, for 4-6 weeks. Session, I think, are 30-45 minutes. That’s a heck of a time commitment. That being said, sucks for me. It’s not the Doctor’s fault that this is the way the brain works, but it’s certainly a challenge with my schedule – going to Harrisburg and vacation means I won’t have that kind of time until August.

So, let me conclude by asking you for your experiences. Have any of you out there had TMS? Any experiences to share? I’d love to hear them!

Redemption, by Mike Schlossberg, is almost available!

I just had a really nice moment that I wanted to write about – and for once, nothing that has to do (directly!) with mental health.

Late yesterday, I got the Email from my publisher, giving me the final version of my book, Redemption. I opened it up about an hour ago, and to my pleasant surprise, discovered that it wasn’t final edits – there was just some grammatical stuff – it was ready.  I sent it back, giddy. My book is almost ready!

Redemption was my therapy. I started it a little more than three years ago when my life became more overwhelming than I ever thought it could have. The idea picked up on something that I had dreamed up twenty years ago, when I first thought that I may want to write. More information about the book is here and you can read a summary below.

Redemption, unquestionably, helped save me.  It gave one of the roughest periods of my life meaning and gave me an opportunity to share a story with the rest of the world. It is a young adult, sci-fi dystopia, but I tried to make it different by weaving in the very real themes of depression, anxiety and loss, themes that have punctuated my life and likely yours, too.

I have no idea how it is going to sell – well, I hope – but I do know that this book, like the blog, gave me an opportunity to discuss an issue that I care deeply about, and hopefully inspire others to know they aren’t alone and a better life can be there’s.

As time goes on, I’ll have more to say about Redemption, and I really want to share the writing journey I went through, because I think that can be helpful to others. Art can save.

More info on Redemption below.  It should be available in the next couple of months!

—

Asher Maddox fell asleep a twenty year-old, depressed college drop-out.  He woke up sixty years in the future, Captain of a spaceship charged with saving humanity.

It’s 2083.  Ash and nineteen other teenagers find themselves onboard the Redemption.  Attacked by an unseen force from the moment they arrive, the crew must instantly bond, learn how to fly and escape whatever is trying to kill them.

Their arrival onboard the Redemption is no accident.  Ash and his crew must stop an alien attack which resulted in the Spades virus wiping out most of humanity.

Each answered question only creates more puzzles.  Why them?  Who are the aliens that keep attacking them?  How did Spades get created in the first place? Can the ship get the various pieces of the vaccine before the aliens attack Earth?  And, most importantly: How can Ash save the planet, when his depression and anxiety won’t even let him save himself?

Coming first half of 2018.

Depressed? Try volunteering

I caught this article on Motherboard and it really, really got me thinking.  The article itself is certainly worth the read, but I’ll try to summarize the points and add my own spin on it.

The article notes that volunteering helps with depression.  This happens a few different ways:

  • First, there are mental and physical benefits to volunteering.  Volunteering can lower blood pressure, reduce the risk of hypertension and make you physically feel better.  This happens, in part, by noting that oxytocin (feel good brain chemical) gets released when you regularly volunteer.
  • Volunteering helps you keep things in perspective.  It gets much harder to be depressed when you are working with someone much less fortunate than you.  I’ve always found this to be a helpful strategy, to be honest: On moments when you are depressed, compare yourself to someone who has it worse than you.
  • Volunteering gives you social connections and social interaction, a challenge for people who are depressed.

It’s actually the second point that I want to talk about more than anything else, because that’s something I’ve always found to be powerful: Volunteering gets you out of your own head.  Let me point back to a blog entry I made some time ago about depression and rumination: Thinking obsessively about yourself, and your own problems, can be tied very strongly to depression.

That’s where volunteering can come in.  Not only are you exposed to people in legitimately worse situations than you, but it can help you out of your own head, as it is much harder to think about yourself when you are trying to help others.  Sometimes, your brain needs that extra kick in the butt to stop the thoughts of yourself.  And that’s where volunteering can come in.  According to the article, there is no volunteering that is better than others – doing good means feeling good.

I do want to add one clarification here, however: I’ve made volunteering sound like a selfish exercise designed to the volunteer feel better. That’s not the attitude that you should have when you go to do good. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with volunteering because you want to feel better and are hoping to build some social connections and make a difference.  But I would remind you that the only way to truly reap the benefits of volunteering is to do so by approaching it from an ultimately selfless perspective.  Go somewhere with the hope of doing good, and the rest of it will fall into place.

As always, I am curious to hear your perspective.  What good experiences have you had with volunteering in the hopes that it will help control depression?  How about negative ones?  I know I’ve felt both ways when volunteering, and I’m curious to hear other perspectives.  Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Why talking about mental illness helps

I’d almost make the argument that the thing that makes the most sense about depression is that it doesn’t make any sense at all.

Like, none.

Understand that this is just my perspective, but hear me out on this one.  Depression, anxiety, mental illness, the works, they make no damn sense.  I mean, isn’t one of the things that makes us human the ability to control our own thoughts and act independently?  “I think, therefore, I am?” and all that?

Which is why having a mind that works against you so darn frustrating.

Call me crazy here…okay, don’t, I do that enough on my own…but I think that one of the reasons that depression is so frustrating, confusing and mystifying is that it goes against the very thing that makes us human: Our ability to think.  Humans are fundamentally logical and emotional creatures, right?  I firmly believe that there is a piece of our own minds will always believe that it is in control.

Of course, that isn’t the case.

Even now, even as someone who has been living with depression for years and doing so in a very public forum – it still makes no sense to me.  How is it that people who are so successful, loved and popular can still suffer so?  And I ask myself this question despite the fact that I am someone who has depression.

So, that brings me back to the crux of this blog entry: Why I think that talking about depression/mental illness in an open, honest and public manner helps, and why I always encourage others to do the same.

I think it helps us make sense.

I firmly believe that the idea that we aren’t in complete control of our emotions and thoughts is a truly alien one, something that most of us struggle with on some base level.  To that extent, I think that talking about mental illness helps.  It helps us process what’s going on in our brain and make sense of the thoughts and feelings that we are experiencing.

I obviously don’t have all the answers to mental illness – if I did, I’d be a lot richer, and at least a little bit happier.  But I would suggest this: If you are one of the people suffering in silence, do what you can to change that perspective.  Talk about it.  You may not have access to a supportive network of family or friends, but I think you’d be surprised at the amount of online support groups that you can participate in – anonymously or not.  Even the act of sitting there, and formulating your feelings, can help process your emotions and make a positive difference in your life.

And, on a personal note: I’ve found that this blog has helped my advocacy tremendously, and not just because it gives someone else a chance to read my thoughts.  By putting “pen to paper,” so to speak, it gives me a chance to organize my thoughts, examine my feelings and reevaluate the way I handle my own recovery.  It’s also helped me to rethink some of my public advocacy, in particular the portions related to stigma – it’s not just stigma that matters, but self-stigma.  

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Am I onto something here?  Let us know in the comments, and have a wonderful day!

What anti-stigma really means

Call this one a brilliant thought that I had in the shower the other day.

There are plenty of anti-stigma campaigns related to mental health.  In many cases, the goal of these campaigns is simple, noble and necessary: to defeat “mental health challenges in the workplace and at home.”  This is vitally important work.

There’s good news related to that though.  In many areas, anti-stigma campaigns have already done their job.  For example, a poll taken in my home state of Pennsylvania (March 2017) shows high levels of comfort in terms of working with someone with a mental illness, a vast improvement over previous levels.  While there is still a long way to go, this poll shows significant movement in the area of mental illness.

I was thinking about this poll the other day, and it had me thinking: What does anti-stigma really mean?  Obviously we need to continue to work on critical areas like discrimination and access to healthcare, but I’d argue there’s more than that.

My argument is this: The most powerful sense of stigma is self-stigma.

Consider this 2012 article, which describes self-stigma as when “patients agree with and internalize social stereotypes,” resulting in:

•Patients often think that their illness is a sign of character weakness or incompetence.
•Patients develop feelings of low self-esteem and become less willing to seek or adhere to treatment.
• Patients anticipate that they will be discriminated against, and to protect themselves they limit their social interactions and fail to pursue work and housing opportunities.

As a result, patients find themselves less willing to seek treatment and social support, leading to lower rates of recovery.

This realization has had me rethinking how I approach the notion of anti-stigma campaigns.  Of course they should be focused on ensuring that all of society views people with mental illness not as sick freaks who are weak, but as real people suffering from real disorders that can be treated like any physical illness.  I want to push society to a place where all of us – those with mental illness and those without – view people who are suffering from a mental illness the same way that someone views a cancer patient.  No one who suffers from a mental illness should do so in fear, shame or silence.  They should talk about their therapy appointments the same way a cancer patient discusses chemo or someone with a broken leg discusses physical therapy.

I suppose, then, that what I am saying is this: Anti-stigma campaigns shouldn’t just address societal stigma.  They should address self-stigma as well.

As always, I welcome your thoughts – am I onto something here?  More importantly, have you found any anti-stigma campaigns that fulfill what I am describing?  Let me know what in the comments!

The importance of telling your story

This is a bit of a different entry: Partially standard, but also partially self-promotional.  Fair warning!

As I’ve discussed before, I made a very conscious decision, about three years ago, to tell my story about my experiences with anxiety and depression.  I made this decision because I thought it was important to put a face to these two largely misunderstood and under-discussed disorders, and because I realized that doing so would help fight the stigma that still surrounds both of these illnesses.  A good friend of mine also told me that going public would change my career in a very dramatic way – he was completely right, in ways that I totally failed to anticipate.

Three years later, this public conversation has evolved into something more.  I’ve always enjoyed writing, but had basically given up the art of writing fiction.  That changed around 2015, when, during one of my down periods, I decided to try it again, remembering the joy and therapeutic value I got from it.  Reading Fan Girl by Rainbow Rowell at around the same time certainly helped remind me!

That, in essence, was the start of Redemption, my fiction book that will be premiering in the first half of 2017.  I’ll have more to say as the book gets closer to release.  The basic plot is this: A group of young adults find themselves transported onto a spaceship, and they have to save the world. What makes this one a bit different is the main character, who suffers from anxiety and depression. Sounds familiar, right?

If you are interested, I discuss the book, my own battles and the importance of telling your story in this podcast with my friend Kim Plyler of Sahl Communications.

Obviously I wrote this book to tell a story, and I think it’s an important one: Depression and anxiety are real, they are treatable, but they don’t have to stop you from doing important things and living/enjoying your life.  I discuss all that and more in the podcast, and I hope it’s something you can listen to!