Mental Health: The Journey Forward Is Rarely a Straight Line

News Article / January 28, 2021

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By Captain Bettina McCulloch-Drake

If you’ve ever hit rock bottom, you usually know when it happened and where you were when it occurred.

For me, it was on a warm day in late May 2018. The thought to end it all entered my mind, rooting itself firmly in my consciousness. While I had been on a decline for some time, the words tumbling from my lips that day alerted my husband that I was far from being okay, and I needed more help than he could provide.

Although I hated it then, my being admitted to a psychiatric ward in a local Winnipeg hospital was perhaps one of the best things that could have happened to me. After all, it was in that hospital where I was finally able to see the road ahead.

And yet, the journey forward is rarely a straight line.

Some days we feel like we can take on the world. On those days, we feel empowered and can accomplish what we set out to do. Then there are days when we feel as if we cannot do anything right. On these days, we forget any progress we have made. We batter ourselves with blame. We criticize ourselves for failing. And we feel as if we have to start all over again.

But, you know what? That is a normal part of any journey no matter who you are.

We have a tendency to look back and forget what we have learned along the way. Instead we look back and grieve for the person we once were when we felt more confident, more able, more fit, more…everything. Viewing our past with the lens of loss feeds into depression, doing little to help us live in the present.

The trick is not to look too far forward as that can make us lose our way in the fog of uncertainty. Fear of the unknown begins to feed our anxiety and forward momentum seems to stop.

Instead, we need to set our course to the present where we can affect the most change in our lives. Here each mile (or kilometre) we travel gets us that much closer to the place where we are meant to be. The challenge is to stay the course no matter how bumpy it gets. And, it does get bumpy.

While my journey is far from over, I hope that sharing some of what I learned will help you avoid some of the pitfalls on your own journey.

As much as we are individuals, we are far from being unique: someone had to come before us.

The first trap many of us tend to fall into is thinking that we are the only one going through what it is that we are going through. For example, when I experienced my pregnancy loss in October 2014, I did not realize how common miscarriages were even into the second trimester. While foreknowledge likely would not have prepared me for the crushing sorrow and self-blame I felt, perhaps talking to others who had gone through a similar experience would have provided me with additional support. The same goes with my struggle with post-partum depression and anxiety in 2017.

Getting past this pitfall takes an incredible amount of mental energy. How many people do you know are comfortable sharing their pain with others? I know I was not. I did not want to be a burden to anyone, least of all those to whom I was close.

Not sharing how we feel, however, further isolates us and turns that hurt inwards.

Don’t feel you need to wait until January when the Bell Let’s Talk campaign comes to the forefront: go and talk to someone whenever you need help. If you do not feel comfortable talking to a friend, peer or a family member, I highly recommend speaking with someone in the medical profession such as a nurse or a social worker. If you are part of a faith community, a faith leader can also offer a safe space to start those hard conversations. I cannot say enough about the value our military padres bring to our community. There are also various support groups out there that help people deal with everything from addiction to mood disorders.

Have you ever heard of the expression, “Keeping up with the Joneses”?

If you have not, it is an expression stemming from the need to compare our own lives with the lives of others while seeking ways to imitate their successes. While a little bit of competition can be a good thing, we can get caught up in the cycle of comparing ourselves to our past selves or to others with negative results.

Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see?

I see a menopausal woman, a year away from turning 50, with about 30 pounds of unwanted weight on a 5-foot-three, built like a brick house.

Wow. That is a lot of self-judgment. This is what I am fighting. What are you fighting?

Comparing ourselves to others, is a lot easier to do through our consumption of mass media and, more recently over the last few decades, our use of the Internet. It is easy to see how other people are doing a better job at being a parent than I am. Who can keep a clean house, homeschool their children, work a full-time job, and still have time for their partners? Everyone else seems to, so why can’t I seem to get it right? Once again, I put stress upon myself (and those close to me) to keep up with the Joneses.

Digging ourselves out of this pitfall takes some effort on our part, but it is possible. It requires us to challenge our negative thoughts and come up with positive counter arguments. This is one of the cornerstones of cognitive behaviour therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy: we can improve our mental health by changing, a little at a time, how we think.

Remember to be patient and kind to yourself. I confess that this is one of the pitfalls I still struggle to overcome because I am, after all, my worst critic.

While doing something makes sense, it is harder to do when you are suffering from depression or anxiety. Depression strips the joy of living from you, leaving you tired and lacking in motivation. Anxiety paralyzes you and prompts you to shelter yourself against anything that may upset the little comfort that you have managed to find by avoiding anything that may trigger a “flight” reaction.

At the depths of my depression, getting out of bed and taking care of some of the most basic tasks (e.g. eating and washing) was a Herculean feat. Where once I was active in my community (e.g. singing with the Winnipeg Military Family Resource Centre Community Choir and being a leader with a local Girl Guides of Canada unit), I soon withdrew from anything that once brought me joy. The one thing that kept me distracted long enough to keep moving was my work as a public affairs officer and that was taken away from me as well-intentioned people told me to take some time off to get better. It was as if my life came to a standstill.

It was only with the right mix of medication and therapy that I was able to move forward again. And while it took a few weeks to finally get the medication right, I found the second key to my journey towards recovery.

By acting in opposition to the voice telling me, “I have no energy for that”, or “But, I don’t feel like doing that”, I discovered the secret of behaviour activation. After all, an object in motion will stay in motion.

While it may seem that the journey is long and fraught with many pitfalls, you will eventually find and follow your own roadmap towards recovery. Give yourself a chance and don’t forget to stop along the way to refuel and recharge. After all…life is a highway.