The struggle with my mental game and how I beat it's @$$ 3-5 times a week...or
- Marijayne Renny
- Oct 15, 2014
- 7 min read
Mental Illness and Physical Activity
I’m just going to start this blog entry by using the Mayo Clinic definition of mental illness…
“Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors.
Many people have mental health concerns from time to time. But a mental health concern becomes a mental illness when ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function.
A mental illness can make you miserable and can cause problems in your daily life, such as at work or in relationships. In most cases, symptoms can be managed with a combination of medications and counseling (psychotherapy).”
This particular piece of information is extremely prevalent in society today when we see so many of our family and friends suffer from depression, anxiety and other ongoing life stressors. There is so much discussion about mental illness and yet so many of us are ignorant to how it can affect us, it may not even be our own mental illness, so we don’t think it’s our problem, but even somebody else’s mental health can quickly become dangerous to our own mental health. Taking into consideration the amount of suicides or even mass shootings that we hear about regularly, it forces one think of how another’s mental health can directly affect yours.
We even have some of our own battles from time to time. Everybody feels discouraged or sad or even just plain unmotivated sometimes and those feelings can have a great effect in our lives and how we live them. It doesn’t mean that everyone has mental illness, but your ability to cope, or bounce back from such things can determine the status of your mental health. The biggest issue that plagues people who suffer from mental illness is that all the symptoms of mental illness (depression, anxiety, hopelessness) start trickling in and before you know it the snowball effect has made your life a giant shit storm and it doesn’t ever seem possible that you will recover, but recovery IS possible. Maintaining your mental health is so essential even for someone who doesn’t suffer from a mental illness. Believe it or not mental health has A LOT to do with exercise and nutrition.
My Own Struggles
I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD as well as Bi-polar disorder and chronic depression (which really probably stem from the ADHD considering I havent needed medications for depression and bi-polar disorder in a long time), I have been medicated on and off for years. Sometimes the medicine helps but most times it just doesn’t work. when it doesn't work life then becomes a cycle of crap. When my meds don’t work, I feel anxiety about the things I screw up or forget about, that then leads to depression and a feeling of failure and disgust toward myself when I look at all the half-finished projects and other failed attempts at regular life, I may act out and say something off color that I don't mean to saybecause im frustrated and in a panic, which leads to lack of confidence in my ability to be a nice human being and leaves me NO motivation for anything!, which decreases my physical activity (because why bother I’ll just fuck that up too and honestly I don't fucking want to!..is how it usually sounds in my head) and finally... I become the rut, yeah that’s right,.. I’m not IN the rut, I AM the rut!
For those that think ADHD is not a condition or is easily laughed about, I challenge you to feel the intensity of my frustration, anxiety, depression, blurred thoughts, and yes even obsessive/over analytical thoughts that induce insomnia and panic along with fatigue and yet the need to spaz out like a dog that’s been kept in a small cage for too long. I challenge you to feel the embarrassment my daughter feels when I can’t seem to control my behavior or keep to my obligations/responsibilities. But…
I digress; do you wanna know what keeps my life somewhat functional? Wait for it…. It’s… exercise! (I bet you thought I was going to say it was the drugs huh?) My meds do help sometimes but the one thing that keeps me level is just plain ol’ exercise. I’ve tried coming off my medications several times and sometimes I’m okay without it, but that only happens because I stay physically active. I used to say that Roller Derby saved my soul, but when I look back it wasn’t derby itself that saved me from me, it was that my physical activity increased and I finally had something bigger then myself to work toward physically. I felt a sense of community and self-importance for a little while there and it felt good! When people in derby came by to knock me off my high horse and find ways to drag me down with them, I finally realized that it wasn’t derby at all that saved my soul. Derby like anything else, work, kids, traffic, weather (you know general middle-class problems that seem a lot more important than they really are) can all turn on you in a second and bring you back to that depressed state of mind in an instant. My problems seemed so big at the time but the only thing that was a real problem was my ability to cope or react properly to situations and people. Keeping physically active during my hardships helped me cope better with those negative things that I may allow to affect me.
Really? Exercise is going to make my problems just go away?
No! exercise can't make your pet stop pissing on your rug, it doesn't pay your bills on time, it can't bring your loved one back from the dead, it can't get you out of going to the secretary of state or any of the hardships, daily reminders of sadness or just plain annoying tasks that pile up on you. BUT.... it CAN help you cope with those things much more elequently then how you may have dealt with them in the past. Everyone has their breaking points but we can prevent those or prolong them more efficiantly when we exercise.
Every person that suffers through mental illness must find their own balance between medication, physical activity, nutrition and support systems. I am NOT the only person in the world to realize this correlation of mental well-being and physical activity. Here are some websites for reference if you still don’t believe me.
How I break the cycle…
I start by telling myself…You have to just move, with whatever self-concern you may have left and concern for others around you; you just have to start wherever you can. Be it a walk in your neighborhood or just moving your legs when you are on the couch as you lay there drowning your thoughts out with television. Start anywhere and always strive for a little more. You can find some control in your life and I promise you will notice a difference. Your efforts will not go unseen by your body, your body will eventually respond to the activity you are giving it and it will love your brain for thinking about it and they will be united in their endeavors as all beings should. NOW MOVE! And then… I do…and it gets better one bit at a time. I feel calm and in control, I feel confident and responsible, I have energy and desire and hope. Now who doesn’t want all that?
So what Kraken, I don’t have mental health issues, why should I consider increasing my physical activity? you may be saying to yourself. The reason you should consider starting or maintaining a fitness lifestyle is, because you want to prevent the destruction of your mental health and your physical well-being…dummy! You may not be prone to mental illness now but if you choose not to be physically active at all, then eventually it will have an effect on your body, leading to “metabolic syndrome” which will more than likely eventually lead to mental health issues.
Everybody has problems, some more than others and there is definitely classifications of what constitutes a real problem. See, in my line of work I can't just be knowledgeable about how your body works and call it a day by making you lift things and set them down. What I do is a little more in depth then I myself had anticipated. Being a good and effective personal trainer takes a lot more understanding of where my client is mentally before we can begin physically. The whole work out has to be planned accordingly to how that person is feeling on that day. There is no way in hell I am going to get a client to properly lift weights if they are not calm and in control, they will just hurt themselves further and most likely won't continue working out. People who come to see me with self defeating body image issues never have attainable goals and always want to discuss their shortcomings with diet and exercise in the past rather than get down to business and work out. We all have our hang ups with our own mental stability but it is my job as your personal trainer to help you work through your stuff by just listening, and then eventually by pushing you to expect more from yourself physically. I have a pretty good sense of how someone is feeling right when the walk in and that's when I figure out what I can do for them, because nobody feels like doing jumping jacks if they just had their dog put down, for real.
It is only in perception, our own and of others that we can learn to cope with our problems and avoid letting those problems affect us. Physical activity can change your perception very quickly. Be it your perception of difficulty, or your perception of your body, or even of someone else’s body. Keeping your perspective clear and positive can help you maintain yo brain .....and it will make your exercises more efficiant and effective.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on this subject in the comments section or email me directly if you have questions or comments you'd rather not share, I'm down for whatever ;)
Thanks again for reading and I hope my blogs are bringing something good to someone somewhere :)
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