Strength

I can't really stress how important it is for me, as a woman, to feel that it's important that I exist, to feel that my place in the world is necessary. I used to rise up constantly and beat back against a world that so vehemently seemed against me. (Dramatic much? Well, I was a teenager.)

Then I got sick. I feel like I say this a lot as an explanation for my behavior, but it really isn't my sickness that put a stop to my strength. My strength had suffered blows before. My sickness was the final straw.

I built my strength up again; finally, four years after near death, I began taking zoloft and going to therapy regularly. I was working and I finally could afford it. I realize that my own power to earn a living wage, in addition to my power to admit that I needed help, led me to facilitate this. (My parents don't believe in therapy or SSRIs, though my Dad does regularly crush up SSRIs in my mom's drinks...or he did when I was a kid, but that's a story for a whole 'nother time, though I suppose it did teach me that women weren't to be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies or feelings.)

Then I lost my strength again. I thought I was strong. I felt strong. I was strong. I was meditating every day and I found joy in my job and my place in the world. I was smiling! I stopped taking zoloft. Slowly I began to fade, began to have nightmares again, began to be fearful of living, while simultaneously fearful of dying. It was confusing to say the least, and all I had done was stop taking this tiny pill.

I have been back on the pill for 8 months now, and I am starting to feel like I did when I decided to go off of it. I feel strong, capable and aware of my own strength, my own abilities, no matter how big or small they may be. I have goals and dreams. It's a beautiful thing.

A Sunday Saved

I had a really, really good acupuncture session today. I went in feeling pretty awful. It was rainy out, and I had been pretty cooped up inside all day. Now, I had gotten stuff done (load of laundry, cleaning, you know, Sunday stuff), but I was just feeling so blah. And Liz can't hang out. She's in med school. It's like they have a no hanging out rule. So I'm very, very glad I had this acupuncture appointment.

I got out of the house and did something constructive and felt oh so better afterward. Really, the best I've felt after acupuncture in a long while. And I still feel pretty, darn good! After acupuncture I decided I should stay out since it was working so well for me. I did a little xmas shopping and then went to the gym. When I got to the gym I realized that I didn't have my iPod since it was an unplanned visit so I decided to just do a mindfulness & movement session on the elliptical. It was really nice. I just focused on my breath. In fact, I feel like I'll probably do it pretty often. A lot of times listening to "work-out" music just makes my mind churn at super fast speeds. This is way odd, but I wouldn't mind downloading some jazz for the gym! haha

I think that in going off Zoloft and leaning more heavily on acupuncture & meditation, I'm learning to embrace and work with the aspects of my personality that tend to most annoy me. For instance, my anxiety--instead of seeing it as an enemy, I'm learning to view it as a part of me that I can befriend and work with. I now I understand that being naturally a more anxious person is something that can benefit me. It doesn't necessarily have to hold me back. For me my anxiety also goes hand-in-hand with being a very efficient, fast pace, no procrastination worker. I like all these things about myself. I think my anxiety becomes negative when I view it as such, when I get upset when I become overly anxious rather than take a deep breath and a good look at the situation.

Another Zoloft Update

I've been having a rough time of it. Well, actually, I've been having a rough time of it starting yesterday at 11:48 am. Oh, office politics. I know it will be funny one day that you sometimes/most of the time make me cry.

So, at 8:40 am, while I was walking to work, I decided to set an intention for today: I will try my hardest to see and speak to each person I come in contact with not as I preconceive them to be, but as they actually are in that moment. Updates to follow throughout the day.

11:30 am--so far so good. I find that this intention allows me to be much more mindful during my interactions with others. This has led to more mindfulness overall, and is positively effecting my work.

1:00 pm--had a nice, thoughtful interchange with the cashier at Barnes and Noble.

1:10 pm--another thoughtful interchange with the receptionist downstairs.

2:00 pm--was able to joke successfully(!) with my boss

3:00 pm--am losing motivation. all my tasks are done (and i mean ALL my tasks). would like to please go home now.

3:30 pm--it's only been 30 minutes?

And my motivation pretty much stayed at this point until I got home and proceeded to meditate and then sob. I went through lots of "I'm not sure if I can stay off Zoloft moments," I talked it out with Liz, and then I felt so much better. SO much better. It was ridiculous. Like I just needed a friend to talk to...not a co-worker. I think that was what was so great about being a VISTA--my co-workers were truly my friends, too. We were comrades, a team.

I have also just been very, very weepy lately. When I first stopped taking Zoloft I wasn't weepy at all, but I was dealing with anxiety. My anxiety is very much under control through meditation right now. I just get weepy. I cannot watch the Today show without crying. Don't even get me started on Law and Order!...or Hallmark commercials. I pretty much have to leave the room for those.

Speaking of office politics (which I did in my intro), they are tough here. A huge silver lining is that the people I work closest with are very, very nice and helpful. I still miss being an Americorps* VISTA. Best job ever, hands down.


I have to say, setting my intention for the day and really focusing on it was awesome! I really felt it helped me to connect with other people, which I see as one of the main points of life.

Zoloft Update

So, I've been on 0 milligrams of Zoloft for 1.5 weeks now! I'm feeling pretty good. I think the biggest change I've seen is the level of patience I have. When I was taking Zoloft I pretty much had infinite patience. It was probably kind of ridiculous, actually. I am less patient now, but I feel like I'm working with that, and finding ways to get back to that ridiculous point of patience that I had before. What can I say, I enjoyed it.
Without the Zoloft I occasionally feel like I'm back to where I was before I took the Meditation Course. However, since I have meditation as a support system, I'm able to quickly come back to a point of patience and mindfulness through using my meditation practice. All in all, everything is going pretty well.

Of course, there were also times when I was taking Zoloft that I found my patience was pretty low. My wedding day comes to mind...Liz's mom's anxiety just about made me a nervous wreck (to be completely honest). Her anxiety also made me pretty anxious over Thanksgiving, which is fine. I understand that she can't help it, but it is triggering for me to be around someone who gets so anxious. I guess previously I just have assumed that the next time I see her she won't be anxious, but I think it's important for me to realize that there's a good probability that she will be, and I need to work with that. Half-way through spending Thanksgiving at their house I realized this and came up with a few things I could do to work with the situation, and it really did make the rest of the stay much better. I know that there's nothing I can do to change her anxiety, but I can change my reaction to it.

I have acupuncture tonight and I think that will be great, too. It was really fabulous last week. I talked with my acupuncturist, and we agreed it would be good for me to go back to two times a week while I'm getting used to no Zoloft. I'm still wanting to meditate twice a day, but so far it's just been happening once daily. I think I would probably see major improvements if I switched to twice a day.

In other news, my boss isn't here today, and it's pretty boring. I had a mandatory financial systems training this morning, which was actually really fun and informative. But there's only so much I can do when he's not here, and I have done it (and checked over it a few times!). Part of working that I may never get used to is just needing to be at work in case something comes up. Right now I'm here until 5 in case someone needs something, but I have gotten everything done and really can't do anything else without someone giving me another assignment. It's odd, but I am much more used to it now than I was when I first started working.

Mmm what [I] say? Mmm that [I] only meant well? Well of course [I] did.

I've had a pretty bad day today. I was completely exhausted this morning when I woke up, and just couldn't seem to wake up at work either. The afternoon was a little better than the morning, but not much. I had a pretty okay night after work. I came home and made dinner and went to acupuncture. Liz even drove me, and acupuncture was great. It felt so good. I left feeling very focused on the present moment. Then a little bit after getting home from acupuncture I decided to try to hem some new jeans I got. It was a mistake. I should not have tried to hem them. It was just the final straw on a bad day.

After a few stitches, I said something about how it was a mess. Now, I meant it was a figurative mess, but I guess Liz took it to be a literal mess because she said something about how if it was a mess then I shouldn't do it. It upset me so much! It was an hour ago that she said that and I'm still really upset, and obviously it wasn't just the jeans/hemming that got me upset. It was just the sum of the entire day. I don't think I would have felt this way while taking Zoloft. I am just so weepy right now. I swear I've cried more in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years.

I hate to say it, but it's getting really hard. I'm pretty sure Liz hates me now, and I don't know what to do. I'm very, very upset and exhausted. I keep getting upset at little things lately, but this is the biggest little thing I've gotten upset about since beginning to taper off Zoloft. I just don't know. I feel like it's really messing everything up.

Can't See the Forrest for the Trees

I just had lunch after getting back from Sunday morning yoga. I tried a new kind of class at a Studio I don't usually go to. See, I'm pretty strictly into Vinyassa (type of yoga) practice, and today I tried Forrest and I did not love it. I thought it might be okay becasue one website said it incorporates Vinyassa, but I didn't feel like it did at all really. From the class I took today, Forrest seems to really focus on form. Not my thing. I mean form is definitely important, and some focus should be given to it, but to me yoga should be more about what you feel your body can do in a particular moment, not what your teacher thinks it can do. For instance, in today's class the teacher even corrected someone's pose when we were laying down flat on our backs in savasana (total relaxation)...how can you need to correct the total relaxation pose?!? I probably will not go back to Forrest again, but perhaps it's just the teacher I had because I just went to the Forrest Yoga website, and it seems like something I'd be into.

I've noticed that I've been feeling pretty emotional lately. I haven't even been completely off Zoloft for even a week yet, but I will monitor this and keep writing about it. I also think I've been harder on myself and less patient lately than I was when taking Zoloft. I've been focusing on doing the same level meditation to keep up my level of mindfulness, but I might try to meditate twice a day instead of once a day this week. I'm also going to acupuncture tomorrow so that should be very helpful.

Watching the marathon fell through because I couldn't get out of my neighborhood...all the roads were closed because of the race! Bummer.

Written at Work

I just found out I'm not going to be able to take Christmas Eve off in order to travel home. I do get the 25th through 3rd off, though. I think that more than makes up for it! And I do not care one tiny bit that I don't get the 24th off. My mom and dad, on the other hand, may be a different story. I think, logically, this should not be the case. I mean we already get special holiday time at work. Who else gets the 25th through the 3rd off?!? That means I can actually visit with them longer than I normally would be able to. Hopefully they will see this as a win-win. They're very unpredictable though so we shall see.

I had another series of bad dreams last night, which makes complete sense because I just decreased my dose of Zoloft to 0mg on Wednesday. The last time I cut my dose in half I had bad dreams 36 hours later. It's crazy, huh? I think it's crazy, but Liz just said, "Well, it's medicine that's designed to work with your brain chemistry so it makes sense." I think it's more fun to think of things as awe-inspiring, but it's good that Liz can bring me back down to earth from time to time.

I've started doing some podcast meditations. It's nice to expand the scope of my practice. For so long I've just stuck to the recorded meditations from the class I took. Granted, it's 8 different meditations I've been cycling through, but none of them deal with compassion for oneself, etc. It's more just meditation basics, which are oh-so-important, but I think I'm ready for something more now.

Haiku Tuesday

Tuesday Morning Haiku

Inside sad hardwood
Outside fresh air crisps my skin
I smile to myself

I miss my VISTAs. Don't get me wrong, I love my new job. But I really miss working with friends. Because we weren't paid by the organization we worked at, the VISTAs and I became actual friends, not work-friends. It was so awesome, and probably a completely unique experience. I should hopefully be getting to see some of them this weekend because another VISTA is running a marathon(!!!) and some of us are going to go to cheer him on. I'm psyched about that. You know you like people when you'll do something at 9AM on Sunday for them.

But back to my new job. I like it a lot. It's pretty amazing, and there are really nice people here. I just miss the VISTAs. I also realize that the VISTA work-environment is not a normal work environment. I mean, we watched The Office and Lost and gossiped and went on afternoon excursions to Goodwill. We also got a lot of work done, but, still...

It's now Tuesday afternoon. The sadness I felt this morning is far away.

I took my last Zoloft this morning. I'm kinda shocked. I could never have gotten to this point without meditation, Liz, acupuncture and Buddhism. My rocks? I think I also need to credit myself. I found things that worked for me and I stuck with them. Sometimes it was really hard to stick with meditation. I remember the first week of my Mindfulness Meditation class. I cried a lot. Before the meditation could work and begin calming me it made me very emotional. Keep in mind I was taking Zoloft that whole time, which brings up the point that I need to remember that when I was taking Zoloft I did not feel happy, happy, happy all of the time. There were peaks and valleys as wells as plains.

Tuesday Afternoon Haiku

Dripping through the day

Sun coffee, smiles, words, work, paper

They fade? Breathe to sunset.

Zoloft Withdrawal

I had a fairly good weekend. This is a good thing since as of last Thursday I began to take half of half of my original dose of Zoloft. That's 25 grams. I guess it would have been easier for me to say 1/4 of my original dose, eh? :)

However, last night I fell asleep on the couch and then eventually made my way to bed (with Liz's help, I'm sure). I can't remember anything about sleeping on the couch so it must have been all right. Now, when I tried to fall asleep in bed I kept falling asleep and having horrible, horrible, horrible dreams that were not actually dreams, per se. It was more like I could see myself sleeping and I knew I was asleep and I was having these vivid visions, but I could not make myself wake up. Liz said I kept gasping and I do recall feeling like I couldn't breath 100%. But I could breath. I guess there are just no words to accurately describe my crazy sleep scenario last night.

I did a quick Google of "Zoloft withdrawal odd dreams," and found lots of people saying that they had vivid dreams and crazy nightmares. I've also been having blurry vision today, which is another side effect of going off Zoloft. It's unfortunate that the blurry vision had to start today since it's the first day of my new job. Oh life!

I meditated immediately when I got home and it definitely made me feel better. I'm thinking about meditating before work tomorrow, too. It might be a good idea for me to switch to twice a day since I'm dealing with a few, small withdrawal symptoms right now.

I'll leave you with this awesome picture I saw while taking a different route home from acupuncture yesterday.

Dealing with Change

Well, I am now positive that I did get the job I've been excitedly wondering and worrying about for a while now! I gave my two weeks notice on Monday, and it's a little bittersweet. I am torn over being excited about this new job and feeling sad about having to end my VISTA year a few weeks early, something I never anticipated doing. It's funny where life takes us, or where we take ourselves.

I've been utilizing meditation a lot lately to deal with my sad feelings about ending my VISTA year early. I wasn't nervous about telling my supervisors, but then after I did meet with them and I told some of my co-workers I felt pretty sad. Like, tears were welling up in my eyes. I don't know if that's because I'm weaning off Zoloft or what, but tears don't usually come to me at work. So I took deep breaths that morning, lots of deep breaths. And I meditated as soon as I got home and I also took extra care to be mindful of each task as I performed it. It helped. It definitely helped. I did not have a full blow anxiety attack or even a minor one!

Judge or Be Judged? I think not.

For the past two nights I have encountered individuals that have had pretty opinionated or black and white responses to different things. It upsets me. I think part of why it upsets me is because I'm still afraid of people judging me, and, in turn, I'm still judging other people. All day today I was worried what people thought of my shoes. This is something that used to worry me a lot, even after I began taking Zoloft.

I know, I know...shoes! So silly! I just cannot walk in heels, and most flats hurt my feet, too. I've been wearing comfy shoes or whatever is bearable for me, but I know that, really, I just need to own whatever shoes I choose to wear. I want to be able to move around without thinking about how my feet feel. Instead, I want to think about the book I'm reading, how good the crisp, fall air feels. I want to be able to focus on the friends I'm with and their funny stories, not my feet.

I want to be able to realize that it doesn't matter if I'm wearing comfy, supportive, whatever shoes and my friend is wearing a really cute pair of heels. She is choosing to wear heels just like I'm choosing to wear whatever it is I'm wearing, and that's okay. I guess it's like with any choice anyone gets to make--it's their choice. I can comment or choose to react in a negative way, but it's probably not going to make any impact on what they're doing.

On a completely different note, I bought a cute pair of pants at lululemon, and I think I'm going to go to Sunday Yoga there tomorrow morning. I'll leave you with a copy of their amazing manifesto.

Somewhat New Beginnings

Oh the first post...so, I've just started tapering off Zoloft this week. For all of your who may not be aware, Zoloft is an SSRI that helps with anxiety, etc. For me it's helped greatly with anxiety and also obsession. I've been taking it since June/July of 2007. I can't recall the exact date.

Why am I going off of it since it's helped me so much? Good question! I would definitely say that the main answer is that my partner and I want to have kids in the not too terribly distant future and it's not advised that you take Zoloft while pregnant or breastfeeding. Another big reason is that I just am curious to see if I can manage my anxiety on my own.

I currently feel like I'm in a good position to try to stop taking Zoloft for a few reasons:

• I completed the Penn Program for Mindfulness in June, and it basically alleviated any of the anxiety that did not go away through using Zoloft alone.

• Then I began going to Philadelphia Community Acupuncture weekly. It's amazing and has helped with my anxiety also. It also makes me feel like I have an extra layer of support while trying to stop taking Zoloft.

• The Penn Program for Mindfulness also made me more aware of my own spirituality. While I was interested in Buddhism before I took the course, I have really been reading a lot of Buddhist literature since April. This has also helped me incredibly.

Plus I have my wonderful partner who has just started med school. I wasn't sure originally if de would be supportive or not since de's pretty "if Western medicine works, then why not use it," but de is always supportive of me and understanding of what I feel like I need to do. I'll leave you with a picture of us at our wedding this past summer.