stress

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“Trying isn’t good enough. Try harder!”

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Going forward I will keep in mind what working in retail has taught me about my own body. My limits are often defined by what it is expected that I do at my job. Yes, this is where I work, and yes I will do what is asked of me. But it might be time to take a closer look at what all of this work is really doing to my body. Continue reading →

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Long Way to Happy

Long way to Happy

I know this is the title to one of my favorite sings from Pink!’s album “I’m Not Dead”  but it poses the question; just how long really? Until happiness?

I have been on antidepressants and anxiety medication for the past six years, after off and on therapy for 3 years before. Now I am not trying to write a sob story here. I am a strong and independent women. I am outgoing and have a bubbly personality, which is what confuses people I think- about these illnesses. Depression does not mean you are always in a bad mood

As the years have gone on, I began to wonder how long I will have to be on prescription medication. How long until my brain and body is able to sustain control on its own? How long until happy?

This is my disability, for I can adamantly see a difference in my mood from when I skip or miss a dosage. The difference is a very uncomfortable feeling that just reminds me that I am strong enough to cope without them…Yet!

Are these medications helping me or disabling me more?

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Schools are not for the disabled

Our last class discussion really had me thinking about how un-accessible schools really are. Not only in physical lay out but also in policies and attitudes and I wanted to talk about it a little more. For students with mental disabilities there’s the issue of “proving” that you have an issue that could affect you in class, going to the doctor’s, reporting it with the school where it is then on file, then outing yourself to your professors which can be very stressful for someone. Also once you talk with a professor it is a guessing game on whether they will be accommodating or act like you are taking away from others. For those with physical disabilities our campus is not designed for easy access while getting around, our desks are small and uncomfortable and overall there is just so many obstacles to overcome.

Class also made me think about things we don’t often attribute to this issue. Bigger individuals, whether it be height or weight, have a hard time fitting into the desks and yet it is not thought of as an issue. The same goes for pregnant women who are not given appropriate accommodations, they face a variety of issues such as discomfort/ pain, fatigue, doctor’s appointments, sickness etc. and teachers often don’t think of them as needing any help.

The school as a whole is often set up to work best for someone who can afford tuition, is young, able bodied, can live on campus, doesn’t have to work, and takes the classes their adviser tells them to. But what about the people who don’t fit into this. I’m young and luckily I’ve gotten through college without much trouble but thinking about it critically I can find times where I was seen as a nuisance because I didn’t fit into the appropriate mode. I am on scholarship so I have to take a certain amount of credits and get a certain GPA, also I take more than the needed amount of credits because my scholarship only lasts until the end of this year. I also have to work in order to get through college and I’ve been told many times I should quit my job, or I need to just stay in school longer and take more classes even though that’s not a possibility for me. Commuting also opens up problems that students face. There’s only a small number of students who fit into the accepted form and yet nothing is being done to change how we deal with all of the others.

I don’t know if we have one already but if not I think we should have a group or panel that discusses these topics and try to make change.

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Do you really want it or… Do you just say you do?

I’ve recently came to the realization that people will complain about something but do nothing to change it. I do this all the time! Let’s begin with my weight. There’s not a month that goes by that I don’t hear something about my appearance. I always think to myself…. how lucky those skinny girls are because they can eat whatever they want and not gain weight. Yep, I’m sure you know at least one person like this. What gets me the most… is when I hear skinny people say they need to go on a diet. My face automatically drops… Like really?

Skinny Continue reading →

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Stress Kills, or “I don’t have time for a body”

At some point this semester I began screaming at my boyfriend, “I don’t have time for a body!” I was having a pulsating migraine, my skin was breaking out, I had had no sex drive for weeks, and had an endocrinologist appointment and blood test the next morning prior to three classes that day. I was having an anxiety attack at 1a.m.

Everyone says college is stressful. I have found that no longer having the body of a twenty year old makes it exhausting. Running around a hilly campus, trying to get to class on time, parking about a mile from any buildings. All of this physical activity is also time consuming, adding stress to days packed with classes, work, homework, making dinner, buying cat food, paying bills, keeping in touch with friends and family, attempting to relax, and trying even harder to sleep. I often find my inner dialogue about stress going something like: “It’s because I’m a woman” or “It’s because I’m not upper middle class.” I have many found my stress triggers to generally be gender or class oriented.

I found the following documentary on stress very interesting. The director, John Heminway posits stress as not only as detrimental to mental health, but as someting that can kill the body over time  through exposure to dangerous levels of stress hormones. It also argues that stress levels are relational to class structure, with lower rung workers experiencing higher, and more deadly, levels of stress hormones. The documentary follows Stanford University Neurobiologist Robert Supalski in his studies of stress hormone levels of baboons in Kenya. He measured both adrenaline and glucocorticoids in these baboons and found differing levels according to the gender and social class of the baboons. The non-alpha males have higher stress hormones than the alpha males. When most of the alpha males died off due to tuberculosis infection, the stress levels of all the other baboons in the group went down. This documentary is very much worth watching, I believe all parts of it are on youtube and hope you can check it out.