BEYOND THE SMILE: A JOURNEY....Guest Blogger

Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation

Today, if you saw me at Trader Joe’s you may think I have it all together. I generally smile in public, sometimes I have a bow in my hair. I speak eloquently and I have a Master’s degree from a prestigious university. However, if you knew what it took to get here, or you knew what was going on inside, you may be surprised. 

I have lived with mental illness for most of my life but I was not diagnosed nor did I start therapy until I reached a breaking point in college. At first it was a relief, wow, I now had a “reason” or some context as to why I was feeling constantly anxious, unsettled and sad. While suicidal thoughts were not completely new to me in college, it was during my sophomore year when things became unbearable and I came close to ending my life one day in January 2012. 

I took a medical leave shortly after that day, I needed a shift and that landed me in intensive treatment. I remember when I first left school, I sat in a new psychiatrist’s office where I was told I would start to feel better and that was unimaginable. However, my extremely hard work in treatment and therapy not only made life “bearable” it also made life worth living. 

What has arguably helped me the most though, a close second to therapy with my life-changing therapist, has been my journey in advocacy. Since I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression and an eating disorder, I felt a responsibility and a desire to share my story, to use my struggles as a way for others to see themselves represented and to deconstruct some of the shame living with mental illness brings for so many. Many of those with mental illness feel like they have to hide, where I have realized “I see you” like I really see you—beyond the smile at Trader Joe’s has been one of the most healing phrases, moments and feelings for me along my journey. 

Over the course of the last nine years, I have embarked on multiple projects, organizations and initiatives to share my story. I have started three social action organizations, created a documentary film and I proudly speak publicly at high schools and colleges/universities. With all that being said,I believe my greatest project so far is “Bake it Till You Make it Org” (soon you be Bake it Till You Make it LLC). This is an organization based in three prongs: creativity, connection and community. 

Creativity: I have published two (almost two) books which combine mental health storytelling and baking. As comfortable as I am sharing my story, mental health continues to be a difficult topic for many. However, I have found connecting baking and sharing recipes with mental health discussion helps make these conversations feel more “palatable”. 

Connection: In addition to the books, I have had the opportunity to create a means for connection for those in my community by hosting events that combine the same elements as the books. Ever watch “Nailed it!” on Netflix? How about enjoying the in person baking and decorating competition paired with a mental health presentation, highlighting the work being done in the community. Or an “Evening of Empowerment”: a night where strangers share stories only to be connected by (I) common experiences and (II) the ”dessert bar” at the end. 

Lastly and maybe most importantly, this organization brings community by forging connections, sharing stories and building bridges between discomfort and understanding. 

I believe one of the greatest gifts to the world I bring is my story, so I often ask others: what is yours?

Dayna Altman's upcoming memoir is titled Mix, Melt, Mend: Owning My Story & Finding my Freedom. You can learn more about Dayna and her many projects at  bakeittillyoumakeit.co or http://tiny.cc/nzqmsz.

REPLAY

Replay

As soon as I get in my bright red car, one of my first steps is to turn off the music.

Instead of the radio, I turn on my phone and go to my Pandora station of choice. I’ve got three set up for the specific purpose of writing, and as I pull out of the driveway, I sink into one of my favorite stories no matter which song comes on.

My playlists are carefully curated to match different story snippets and scenes I enjoy replaying in my head. Even in just the span of a single song, I can sink wholly into a story, on autopilot as I picture what happens to each character in the scene with every beat of the song. Even though I almost completely lack any sense of rhythm, I’ve got songs choreographed to the point that I know what action happens on what beat.

I can see a character dramatically drawing a sword, twirling on a dance floor, fighting a dragon, dealing with an assassination attempt, and taking an important exam - and that’s just the first five songs that came to my head. There are so many more that I’ve been creating for years, honing and refining my ideas until they meet my exacting standards.

Sometimes I’m drawn to a song by the lyrics, and other times, a beat reminds me of my story beats. No matter the song. just about any song-story combo can bolster my mood even in the toughest times. Earlier this week, as I contemplated leaving the safety of my parents’ home to return to Chicago, I started to feel nervous, and even felt tears coming on. I almost turned off one of my newest favorites as it came on. “I’m not in a good enough mood for this,” I thought, only to prove myself wrong as I was smiling by the end of the song. It pulled me out of my negativity and put the idea in my head that just like the character in my scene, I could overcome the fear facing me in that moment.

Of course, coming up with an idea for a new song-story combo is exhilarating, but I find it just as thrilling to relive the songs I’ve come up with for the fifth or even fiftieth time. If I’m in the right mood, I can go through a whole commute replaying one song the whole time, something that I’m aware would seem irrational to many people. After all, I know how the song is going to go, and how the story in my head will progress. It’s the same every time, but just like rewatching the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy, it’s comforting, safe, and guarantees a happy ending.

This pastime is my favorite solution for long commutes, traffic, and nearly any situation that requires waiting. I look forward to the time I can spend with my ears plugged, lost in the stories I’ve lived so many times. And even after my interest inevitably fades from a scene, I can still feel the rush of its associated song, and it still makes me smile. I rotate between my three playlists - modern, medieval, and retro - as my interests change, but I can always find solace in an old song.

I’m anticipating the need to use this technique more often in the upcoming weeks. I’m going to be returning to Chicago soon, trading out the safe, easy bubble of my parents’ home for my own apartment where I’ll have to venture out into the pandemic-ridden world a lot more than I have been. I’m working on exposure therapy to help defuse the tension of my fears, but I’m still worried about the time I’ll have to myself. I don’t have a routine for times like these, without going to work, and I know that boredom is one of my biggest triggers for negative thoughts and moods.

Although I’m going to need to turn in my two current fanfiction stories to their collection before I return, I am going to work on some of my favorite stories that always cheer me up. Maybe I’ll even write some of them down and see what people think of them; maybe I’ll expand on them in preparation for this year’s National Novel Writing Month in November.

My creativity has always been one of my favorite parts of my mental health journey. When I was younger, I saw it as a trade-off - that I could do things like sink into stories so easily because my mind gravitated to the “what if.” At various times when the world scared me, I could always find a home in my own head, even when my head was also a place of pain. I could choose to obsess about my stories, listen to a song on repeat until I know every word, and feel good.

When I come back to Chicago, my car will be in my parents’ garage, and I won’t trust public transportation, at least in the beginning. But when my mandated quarantine runs out and I can take walks, I’m sure I’ll take my headphones, and no matter what I see that scares me, I can make something beautiful.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

MUSIC IS THE OPPOSITE OF NIHILISM........Guest Blogger

Music is the opposite of nihilism.

This is a sentiment I discovered when working through my PTSD. In order to explain it, I have to first characterize trauma. To be clear, the exact nature of trauma is entirely unlike other emotional states—it operates on a plane of the emotional spectrum all its own. It is not the lethargy and disengagement of depression, or the persistent itch of anxiety, although it might contain those things; it is something altogether other. So describing what it feels like is something like describing color or sound. There is a strong sensory and experiential nature to trauma that can only be pointed at, not captured by, language. But it isn’t true that trying to translate it is futile, since it’s based on (or, rather, attacks) something fundamental to the human condition. In fact, it might be the thing that comprises the human condition itself.

That thing is storytelling. People do not respond well to meaninglessness and chaos. The human mind craves order, sequence, sense—and we do this against our will. The part of the brain that recognizes faces (it is a miracle of evolution we see anything other than assorted body parts, much less that we can ascribe consciousness and emotion to people around us based on expressions) works overtime, and we see them in clouds or paintings. We view objects in the world in terms of how they might serve or impede us. We have a conception of our own selves, a reflexive narrative of how we got here and why, and this unexamined set of beliefs guides our actions. Storytelling is the essential function of language—beginning, middle, end, a plot arc, more than just the transfer of raw information—and it might well be one of the oldest traditions we still do as human beings.

 Trauma, essentially, is the upending of meaning. It is the enemy of storytelling. When I was having flashbacks, they weren’t just a confusion of senses and a hurricane of feelings; they were the breakdown of the fabric of reality. In this state, words like ‘sad’ and ‘angry’ do not apply; these feelings might come afterward, when you can process the event, when you return to the realm of meaning. It took me months to fully realize I was enraged about what I had witnessed during my bus accident, because I simply hadn’t yet come down to Earth enough to possess the reflective tools to make sense of it. Without sense, there is no rage. Trauma operates in this world of senselessness, or rather in no world at all; it is the utter tearing up of the systems of the soul that relate in any meaningful way to the events around it. I can best describe it as terror, bewilderment, panic, and a feeling of profound vulnerability. It is a storm.

Many people, especially Jews who received a religious education, are taught that the basic dichotomy of the Bible, Judaism’s Yin and Yang, is “something” and “nothing.” But the substance of creation does not, in the text itself, emerge from nothingness. It comes from chaos. The insertion of nothingness into the biblical account is a much later interpretation. The struggle between order and chaos is a much more primal account of the nature of humanity and the history of the human soul, and in this account, trauma is the ultimate assault on the human capacity to construct order and meaning out of the world. That’s why so many war veterans abandon religion—it isn’t because of a methodical, intellectual conclusion that a divine power can’t explain what they’ve seen and done. It’s much deeper, much more intuitive than that. It’s because their encounter with the profound chaos at the heart of reality just doesn’t square with humanity’s attempt to make meaning, to make the world out to be more than it appears. 

But music is something different. Music can’t be ignored. It’s like a face—you have to perceive it in its totality; you’re literally incapable of breaking it down to its constituent parts and disregarding the whole. When it comes to math, you can study the terms of a formula one at a time, but music is about narrative. It’s about relationships—about meaning. Music is a kind of applied math, but it’s also impossibly more complicated. My guitar students frequently make errors in basic arithmetic because of how involved the math becomes when it’s being used to calculate the relationships between notes in a chord. Imagine doing a basic equation, but every number has a color, and its color changes every time you compare it to another term in the equation, and its color changes even more profoundly and evocatively when you compare three terms at a time. It’s easy to see—impossible not to see, in fact—the emergent color created by the blend of all of the terms. But it’s incredibly difficult, not to mention boring and senseless, to isolate each term. That’s what storytelling is all about—emergent experiences, sequences, relationships. Meaning.

Another thing about music is that it hits your body, not your mind. And your body is the locus of trauma. Some people, especially those who experienced abuse during childhood, lose memories of their trauma, but they continue to engage in behaviors, and often exhibit physical symptoms, as if the trauma were present consciously. The body knows when the mind doesn’t. And that’s where music goes. Nothing is uglier than me dancing, but when you put on a Latin groove, I don’t have a choice. Music demands something of you. It demands movement, demands attention. It demands that you make meaning out of it—and if it’s really good, it demands you make meaning out of yourself.

It’s especially this last trait that rendered music an indispensible tool for my trauma processing. It took weeks before I understood what I had been through—precisely because trauma is all about subverting understanding—and the only feelings I was capable of having about the accident were those trauma-sensations, feelings of stormy collapse. It was only in listening to music that I found myself capable of sadness and rage and loss and grief. Trauma had robbed me of my humanity, and music returned it to me. Maybe in a much broader sense, too, music is an antidote to the nihilism of trauma. 

Gavi Kutliroff lives in New York City, where he works as a case manager for child welfare. A recent graduate of Brandeis University, he's also a musician, a poet, a Wikipedia enthusiast, and an avid fan of indie coming-of-age films. He believes in the value of a public, open discourse about mental health and in the power of writing and communication to help people understand each other and themselves.

STRESS AND SUNSCREEN: WHICH IS EASIER?

Stress and Suncreen: Which Is Easier?

I woke up one morning this week to an email from work that we have a new health plan that can help in various ways. Not only will it offer a credit towards our deductible, but it will also provide helpful tips for living a healthier lifestyle.

The first step to earning the benefits and a place in a potential workshop for improving one’s life is completing a health assessment. I took a while to contemplate the questions, answering them seriously and honestly (yes, I sometimes forget to wear sunscreen; no, I haven’t cut sugary foods from my diet entirely). When the report was compiled, I was surprised to see that my overall score was considered “borderline,” especially since my efforts to curb my emotional eating has led to some weight loss and healthier habits.

I downloaded the report from the website and found the key: an answer highlighted in green was considered correct or good, and an answer highlighted red was incorrect or bad, with some shades of yellow and orange in the middle. Most of the answers for my physical health were closer to the green range, which I was very proud of, but I was shocked to see how many of the answers in the mental health section were red.

The first I noticed is a common question on a depression questionnaire I’ve answered before. Usually, these questionnaires ask questions like “How often have you felt down or hopeless in [time period]?” and there is some sort of scale to indicate the degree of severity. On this survey, it asked me to indicate if I have felt any symptoms of depression “at times,” and there was one that applied to me during the pandemic: I have felt down and hopeless at times. Specifically, I’ve occasionally felt hopeless about life going back to normal as my state spirals out of control, and down about things I’ve missed out on.

This answer merited a pure red highlight even though it’s far from the actual depression symptoms I experienced years ago, and is probably normal for many people right now. My answer was marked wrong, and the correct answer of “none of the above” was written underneath.

The next question covered sources of stress, and asked me to indicate which factors in my life have stressed me out recently. Out of a list of half a dozen, I selected only one, but the system again marked that pure red - incorrect. Once again, I was supposed to pick “none of the above,” indicating that I am not supposed to be stressed by anything at all. I was proud to be able to eliminate all of the factors but one, but apparently, that’s not good enough.

The following questions continued in the same vein: for example, the correct answer for the frequency of stress is supposed to be “rarely, if ever.” And worst of all, I was penalized for indicating that “I find it difficult to stop thinking about my problems.”

The fact that that answer was in red enraged me. I spend so much time and effort fighting back against negative thoughts and ANTs, trying to force myself out of my comfort zone, and moving on from things that have traumatized me in fundamental ways. I know that I’m not “normal” for being affected by obsessive thoughts, but I work with doctors and medication to live the best life I can with my diagnosis.

My life is not “wrong,” even if the survey indicates that I have a lot of room to grow. But this survey can’t see where I’ve come from, and where I might have been if I wasn’t so determined to fight against my head from the time I was little and my young nerdy self saw my OCD as a dragon to slay. I’ve never given up, even through many hardships, and to see the red splashed across the section seemed like a slap in the face of my efforts.

I don’t see why the fact that I sometimes experience stress should be the same as the fact that I sometimes forget sunscreen. One is within my control, and the other is not. I can control how I manage my stress, but living with my thoughts coming into my head is not optional. My medicine helps me, but especially at a time like this - and honestly, even when there’s not a global pandemic - it’s not fair to expect me (or anyone) to be able to live a completely stress-free life.

Although mental health is part of medicine, I can’t help but feel that the objectivity of medicine is misplaced here. The numbers of what blood pressure or cholesterol are “supposed to be” does not equate to mental health. Yes, it would be ideal for someone to have no stress, but that’s a completely unachievable goal, especially now. The assessment reminded me of why some of my friends think health is unachievable - the goals are too unrealistic.

I hope that as organizations like No Shame On U do more to move the country away from mental health stigma, surveys will be more accepting of individuals no matter where they are. I hope that there will be more gray areas in terms of what’s “right,” and for the people who indicate “wrong” answers, I hope for more support than advice to get more sleep and exercise. Especially after the pandemic, when many people I know are confronting thoughts and fears they’ve never experienced before, I hope there will be more room for conversations to expand this gray space and find a better way to assess mental health.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

WHERE DO I BELONG?

Where Do I Belong?

The vast majority of the time, I feel like I know where I need to be. But now, as summer waxes, I feel unsure about what to do about potentially coming back to Chicago.

Even just typing the words makes me anxious, and my natural reaction to things that make me that anxious is to shy away. I’ve shied away for months now - I’ve been living with my family for almost four months - but the more time goes by, the more the idea impresses itself upon me that I need to go back to Chicago.

The feelings of cowardice from the beginning of the pandemic are starting to come back, not to mention I miss my friends, potential love interest, and the few activities that are starting to reappear. People have mentioned that they miss me, and my parents feel that I need to go back to my life even if it’s not the same life it was when I left.

As for me, I remember how lonely it can feel to be by myself, and due to the pandemic, I will need to do a hard quarantine for two weeks when I come back from my current location. I’m in a state that has more of the virus than many others, so staying away from people could protect them - but it would also place me in the precarious position of being both bored and lonely, two major triggers of negative thoughts.

I can’t help but picture disaster scenarios where I wander my small apartment for hours on end, feeling desperate and helpless. I can’t help but think that I’ll feel trapped in my apartment and in my head, and that the transition from having family around me whenever I want them to being completely alone will be extremely difficult to handle.

Most of all, these thoughts scare me because they remind me of other times when I’ve been bored and alone. At those times, I feel particularly precarious, like the smallest thing can send me into a spiral. I think of the time I did a summer program at a faraway college while I was still in high school, and the two weeks felt like a year when I got sick to my stomach a few days in. I think of my junior year of college, when I was so far gone I had no hope I could come back.

These are extreme cases, but the fact that there’s a global pandemic making me overthink simple things even when I’m here at home makes me question going back. It’s not that I don’t miss the friends I’ve made, the activities I’ve started, or the independence of living alone. It’s that I am afraid to let go of my comfort in the storm of the pandemic when things are getting worse rather than better.

 I consulted with my psychiatrist who has known me since childhood, and she offered me advice in her very practical style: make a calendar for the first two weeks and fill the days with activities I enjoy, making sure to keep myself busy and definitely not bored. When she said that, I could already think of how I could paint miniatures for D&D and other tabletop games, play Animal Crossing and a brand-new remake of a game I loved as a kid, and watch shows on Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix.

I also dared to venture into my cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) archives to find some of the techniques that helped me at another time when I was having huge trouble with transitions. I read through my old thought journal and saw how I categorized the different automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) and taught myself to fight back against them. I found a document filled with best- and worst-case scenarios I wrote to try to get the fear of the unknown out of my head. I found a painful document where I wrote in painstaking detail the moment I knew I was in a crisis situation. I found a recording of a therapy session that I haven’t been brave enough to listen to yet, but I must have kept it to inspire myself at another difficult time.

In the next few weeks, I’m going to try my best to use these tools to fight back against my automatic rejection of the idea of going back. I’ll try to talk things out with family and friends, write down my thoughts and feelings, and remember the motto of one of my CBT books - “thoughts are thoughts, not threats.” Just because I am so afraid of going back and spiraling out of control doesn’t mean that will actually happen. I am strong, and I have been through much worse before. It’s just a matter of reminding myself over and over, each time the thought cycles, until it stops appearing in the first place.

It’s been a while since I’ve tried such a regimented approach to CBT, but I feel like it’s my best bet for this. I can’t do exposure therapy since the change will be big and all at once, and I can’t know for sure how things will go, but if I take the time to prepare myself as best as I can ahead of time, I hope I will be able to have a relatively smooth transition when the time comes.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.