Psychology: Exercise

Since as long as I can remember, hubby has been craving a treadmill.  But not just any treadmill.  Nay verily, the treadmill that he coveted is the biggest, baddest, and most feature-laden treadmill on the market.  Oh, excuse me --it's not a treadmill; it's an incline trainer.  At first I laughed at him for it - who in the world would want to treadmill-ize uphill and downhill?  But then he explained the features to me and its benefits, and so guess what?

We got one.

And I gotta admit, it is one sexy piece of exercise machinery.  It has Google Maps built into its built-in Wifi connection so you can literally "hike" anywhere in the world.  I could jog in Paris if I wanted to.  All on a treadmill.  It has trainers built into it.  It will automatically incline and decline according to the "terrain" you've selected.  It has regimens built in for weight loss, competition, marathon training, and probably a whole heck of a lot of other things I can't even begin to fathom.

I'm addicted.  No, seriously.  I actually have used the thing, of my own free will and voluntarily and all that stuff.  Twice in one day, in fact (yesterday).  I am becoming an exercise addict, despite my processed-couch-potato nature.  Determination has set in to get rid of my belly (it's significant) and get some definition to my cankles.

Yesterday I got one-third of the way through one of the trainer workouts, and then just alternated between jogging and walking at 3 mph until I had burned 350 calories.  I was proud.  Today, I got to 126 calories and had to stop.  But I did go for 3 of the 4 miles of the dog-walk today (each lap around our dwelling area is a mile).

And my legs?  Oh, they hurt.  They gloriously ache, burn, throb, and protest against this amazing activity.  But I discovered something that I never really believed existed until I experienced it for myself:

endorphins.

Psychology: What Depression Feels Like to Me

Every year I get pretty depressed once the holidays are over, especially when Christmas is over.  I look forward to Christmas every year like a little kid, and every year I am thrilled beyond measure at the fun of spending it with family and enjoying the fun of giving and receiving.  And I'm not going to lie, I like both rather equally.

So I feel the Depression Monster coming on today.  It's a new year, and tomorrow I'm back to the grind of waiting for the phone to ring for substitute teaching (my profession until I can find a full-time teaching position) and living day by day in a whirlwind of what seem like obligations: students who are determined to test every limit I have, keeping a house clean and orderly, dogs, husband, groceries, and the usual pile of psychological therapy.  While this is a small pile compared to most people, and while I get amazing help from the husband in most of these, I still feel as though the tasks are insurmountable and completely insane.  When the DM comes back, nothing brings me any enjoyment, not even cooking or music.  All I want to do is go to bed and pull the covers over my head for an indeterminate amount of time.  I don't want to see anyone, I don't want to take my stupid meds, and I certainly don't want to go sit on the couch in my therapist's office and talk about the new journey I'm supposed to be embarking upon as an empowered, healthy individual.  I just want to sleep.

Right now, at this precise moment, I don't really want to go into complete sensory-deprivation mode yet.  I'm simply irritable and filled with dread.  Everything is annoying or inconvenient or insurmountable.  Little quirks about people that I interact with are suddenly impossible to tolerate, even though they never bothered me before.  My poor husband can't do anything right - it seems as if he's either trying to push me through this and keep me cheerful when I don't want to be (dammit) or he's withholding affection and treating me as a pariah.  (Note: this is coming from depressed-mind.  My husband is wonderful, caring, and deserves a medal for putting up with this.)

I am trying to figure out how to fight this.  I don't want it to develop into a full-fledged depressive episode where I do take to the bed and get disgusting and don't do anything except the bare minimum.  Instead I'd rather just have an irritable day or two and come out of this funk.  I should probably look over my DBT skills handouts from the last round I attended.  (DBT = Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.)  I should probably go through some self-soothing routines.  I should probably journal.  No matter what I do, I will be forcing it.  But that's a DBT skill: Opposite Action.  You act opposite of what you're feeling and try to force yourself into it.

Anyway - that's how it feels and what I should do and what's going through my mind at the moment.  In writing this, I have a secret hope that someday someone might stumble upon this who is suffering from something similar and know this: if you are that someone, you are not alone.

Psychology: New Years Resolutions

I only have about 2 more days to think of New Years Resolutions that I might actually stick to.  Last year's were a dismal failure to the point that I can't even remember if I made any or not.  Most likely, my traditional resolution list was hit with:

• lose weight (ha!)
• keep my car cleaner

Both of which I failed at. Miserably.  (Though I have lost approximately 10-15 pounds, depending on the holiday weight that I refuse to face.  My size-down jeans still fit comfortably, but is that stretching or actual weight loss?)

Things I really SHOULD resolve to do:

• be better to my husband.  You know, make a concerted effort to pay attention to him in the evenings instead of burying my head in a nice warm laptop and staring at facebook as if it's better than crack (which it sometimes is).  But I chose to spend the rest of my life with him, not facebook.  So I should definitely fix that.
• Lose weight to the point that my size 10 clothes fit again.  By Christmas next year, I should resolve to fit into my (amazing, awesome, and perfect) cashmere-wool-blend coat that is entirely too tight right now.  If a coat happens to be my motivation, I think it's fine, as long as I actually lose the weight and get healthy.
• Find some form of exercise that I stick to.  I was doing well with walking for a while, but now that the weather is actually cool and it, um, precipitates rather often, I've been bad about going.  The guilty looks from my husband and the sweet stares of the dogs saying, "oh, Mummy, please come with us," are still not enough to motivate me to actually put on my hiking shoes, earband, and coat to go.  I need to fix this about myself.  (Note: Zumba, Wii Fit, and other aerobic routines along with yoga have all failed me.  Or, rather, I failed them.)
• Keep the house and car cleaner.  Let's face it.  I'm a clutterbug.  I'm terrible at putting things away until it gets to a certain point, and then I go on a cleaning rampage.  I'm getting better, but I'd like to avoid those cleaning rampages and keep a more consistent clean would be good.
• Run out of wine once in a while.  Let's face this fact, too: I'm a complete and ridiculous wino.  My husband (bless the man) pointed out once that the only thing we don't run out of in this house is wine.  We have run out of milk, bread, eggs, dog food, and many other essentials including prescriptions.  Not running out of wine but running out of these things is appalling, and I need to fix that.

So that's what I'm pondering.  They're boring, but they work.  They involved a process of self-examination, which is what I think the purpose of resolutions is anyway.

Psychology: Sleep Study

Anyone who knows me well knows that I sleep in excessive, long, extreme marathon sessions, and that I am an opportunistic napper.  As in any afternoon that I can have a nap, I take one.  After years of complaining about this sleep habit to my doctor (because I really do feel I absolutely need this absurd amount of sleep because darn it I'm tired!) and multiple blood tests later, she sent me on a lovely sleep study, which happens tonight.

What's a sleep study?  Well, I go to the hospital, have my own private room and bathroom (much like a hotel room, they said), and my job is to sleep.  Now, granted, I'm going to have all kinds of stuff strapped all over me including nodes on my chest, head, and things in front of my mouth and nose to gauge my breathing, and wires poking out of all these things.  But I'm still required to sleep.  Then all those things strapped and stuck to me generate a report, and from there they figure out if I have some kind of sleep disorder.

The general suspicion is sleep apnea, because I snore like a freight train, even when I'm on my side.  We shall see.

My fear is that it's all psychological and tied to the depression from which I suffer, and that this sleep study and suffering today and tomorrow will be all for naught.  It is completely true that I do cope with depressive episodes by sleeping even more excessively than when I'm not having an episode.

Suffering? you ask.  Yes, suffering.  Today, for example, I must abide by the following absurd and evil conditions:

• no caffeine after noon.  (WHAT?)
• no naps (this, to me, is pure torture)
• only normal exercise amounts (not a problem, though I am moving a lot more to keep myself from falling asleep)
• no alcohol, sedatives, or tranquilizers (this I can handle)
• avoid unusual physical exercise or meals (does eating mashed potatoes for lunch count as unusual?)

So actually, not too bad except for the nap thing.  I'm told I'll be awakened between 6:30 and 7 tomorrow morning to be kicked out, and that I may want to shower after the study, because they put goo in your hair to hold down the nodes.  I do have to shampoo my hair and use no conditioner on it tonight.  (Which is not a problem because I use no conditioner anyway.)

But that's only today!  Tomorrow I fear I will be napping most of the day to make up from my sleep study the night before.  Except for my narcoleptic friends (I have 3 friends with narcolepsy), I'm told it's not a great night's sleep.  But I'm willing to give it the old college try and see if I can give them a good reading.

Here's hoping.  Sweet dreams, y'all.