(760) 350-3131

Author: Ashley Amundson, DBH MS LPCC

Categories
Co-Occurring Disorders

“Addiction and”: 5 Common Co-Occurring Disorders

When you’re struggling, it can be difficult to determine what to ask for help with first- or even how to ask for help at all. Substance use disorders are one of the most commonly co-diagnosed disorders, meaning they’re often diagnosed with one or more other conditions that work alongside addiction to create the symptoms you experience. This makes it difficult to identify where to begin or what you’re feeling. 

As a holistic recovery facility, Villa Kali Ma specializes in identifying and responding to each aspect of your treatment as it impacts you now and into the future. Below is a list of the struggles we most often see as co-occurring disorders and how they impact your relationship with addiction. 

Eating Disorders

So much is out of your control when you’re struggling with addiction that it’s no wonder some people find solace in creating that control elsewhere—like food. Eating disorders impact the lives of nearly 10% of all Americans at some point, and they’re the second highest cause of mental illness-related death (second only to opioid overdose). Even in the statistics, a relationship seems plausible. 

Eating disorders include anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, avoidant food intake, body dysmorphia, and pica. When you’re struggling to control the urges and intake of substances at the height of addiction, it can feel almost gratifying to instead begin to control your food. Some people may suffer from more than one eating disorder, just as others suffer from multiple substance use difficulties.

Mood disorders

The most well-known mood disorder is bipolar disorder, which is characterized by prolonged periods of mania and depression- vastly differing mood spaces where your responses may be unpredictable, and your inhibitions may be directly responsive to those moods. Other mood disorders like major depression are also common, and the correlation between the two is so high that there’s a mood disorder distinctly related to addiction called substance-induced mood disorder.

co-occurring disordersOften, people begin using substances to alter their perception of an experience. As it tumbles out of control, many people are simply chasing the effect they initially found in their substance use. Mood regulation may become more difficult as bodies become used to the substances put into them and eventually both unresponsive to and reliant on them. 

Anxiety Disorder 

Anxiety may sound like it belongs in a category with mood disorders, but anxiety is a state of being, not a mood. Rooted in feelings of powerlessness and overwhelming fear of a particular trigger, anxiety disorders come in a few forms. The most common are generalized anxiety, panic disorder, and phobias (a debilitating fear of a particular thing). 

When anxiety presents alongside substance use, it’s often a tactic to divert the feelings anxiety brings on into something else. Anxiety is uncomfortable, and worry can be consuming. The physical impact is tiring and overwhelming. For those who also use substances, an anxiety attack may be self-medicated with their substance of choice. This often makes the two feel not only co-occurring but so intricately linked that they can’t fathom how to handle the anxiety without the substance. 

Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)

For brains that move so quickly, you often feel like thoughts are shooting stars instead of ideas, substance use can be a respite of calm. ADHD creates a struggle of executive dysfunction and energy in a race to participate in your life at a stable speed. When combined with the use of substances, they may feel like a way to sit down, slow down, and actually get something done. 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

PTSD makes you 14 times more likely to experience substance abuse disorder—and it’s really no wonder that these things are co-diagnosed. After experiencing trauma, life can feel like a battlefield. Finding any and everything you can to cope with the intrusion of trauma responses that occur in daily situations may feel like the only way to get through it. 

Using substances as a coping mechanism may feel like the only option, but they are tools that can be weaponized against you as they contribute to heightened responses that may worsen your PTSD. 

Getting the holistic help you’re hoping for is possible

Tangled symptoms and fear of failure may be holding you back, but it doesn’t have to. There are options to support all of your needs, and there is no need for you to choose just one. When you’re ready, Villa Kali Ma will be here with options for the recovery you need, no matter what’s co-occurring in your world.

Categories
Mental Health

Sleep Deprivation and Mental Health: How to heal the relationship between them

Sleep is closely connected to mental health in every way. Being deprived of rest can amplify your mental health struggles. Anxiety, addiction, depression, PTSD, and bipolar disorder are all exacerbated by lack of sleep. 

From the way it makes you feel to the physiological processes that happen on a holistic scale, your sleep is a critical part of you.  Without adequate rest, you may struggle to hold on to new information or recall familiar information. When we feel out of touch with the memories and moments that connect us to our sense of identity, it can perpetuate feelings of frustration and anxiety that may have been present prior to the sleeplessness.  

Before you can act on improving your sleep, let’s take a look at how sleep deprivation may be showing up in our mental (and physical) health. 

Feeling the Fog & Other Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation

During the waking hours when you’ve gotten less than ideal sleep, you may feel fuzzy or a step behind the rest of the world. You’ll be wasting precious energy reserves wading through the roadblocks of exhaustion when you’re not getting enough rest and it may lead to feelings of frustration, irritability, or broken concentration. Those foggy frustrations are just the beginning of the relationship sleep has with mental and physical health symptoms. 

If you’re experiencing sleep deprivation, you may be impacted by 
  • Exacerbated depression
  • Increased Anxiety
  • Irritability
  • Inhibited cognitive function 
  • Elevated blood pressure
  • Depressed immune system
  • Muscle fatigue 
  • Feelings of lethargy 

Sound familiar? It doesn’t have to be. 

Sleep deprivation impacts the lives and minds of each of us in different but indelible ways. We want to help you understand what’s happening in your mind when the sandman won’t bestow you with quality sleep, and how you can be your own bedtime hero. 

Let’s take a look together at how sleep deprivation and mental health are related so you can improve both. 

Factors Related to Sleep Deprivation & Mental Health

Quality and quantity

It’s not just the amount of sleep you get that’s tied to your mental health. The quality matters too. When you sleep poorly, you’ll feel every struggle more deeply, amplifying anxiety and deepening depression on the days those snoozing minutes just don’t add up. 

Less sleep means more mental health distress, and more mental health distress is likely to keep you awake at night. The compounding nature of the relationship between sleep and mental health is an ouroboros that’s consuming your energy in so many ways. 

Environment 

Consider the way you’re sleeping and how much you’re allowing yourself the space to get quality rest. Turn down the tone of the world in the hours before you go to sleep. Give yourself a barrier of relaxation and choose an activity that promotes feelings of calm for you. Reduce your exposure to noise and lower the lights but don’t move toward the bedroom until you’re ready to commit to sleep. 

If you can’t sleep, it’s important to get out of bed and choose another activity until you feel tired again before returning to bed. Laying in bed awake restarts your circadian rhythm and you may struggle to fully relax, creating a playground for awake thoughts during sleeping hours. 

Routine 

When it comes to healthy sleep, routine reigns supreme. Develop a plan and schedule you can commit to then stick to it. Think about what makes you feel sleepy, or prepared for sleep. Maybe it’s yoga or a breathing routine to calm your body, or a playlist that soothes the busy thoughts in your mind. From there, consider how you can incorporate the self-care and daily preparation you need to do. Think of it as a route that you take to sleep- your calm commute if you will. This routine will signal your body that it’s time for sleep, and as time goes on, it will be easier to shift into rest once it begins. 

Napping for better sleep 

Limiting naps or long lie-ins can be helpful in filling your sleep deficit. That doesn’t mean Naps of 15-20 minutes are great for a refresh that doesn’t leave you feeling tired after, and naps of around 90 minutes give you enough time to complete an entire sleep cycle. The struggle comes when you nap in that interim period- naps of 30-80 minutes can be disruptive to your sleep patterns and establish broken cycles that you struggle to regulate in nightly sleep. Those kinds of naps should be avoided for a more blissful bedtime. 

Categories
Trauma

Symptoms of Trauma in Adults

When you’ve been through something (or are going through something), it may be difficult to know if what you’re feeling is related to the trauma you’ve experienced or if it’s just part of the experience of being you. 

Understanding the root of the symptoms you want to change or heal can offer you a lot of leverage in overcoming the ways that trauma impacts you as an adult no matter when it happened. So let’s talk about it. 

What exactly is trauma? 

Though the official definition of trauma implies that it must be something massive and terrible, there are levels of trauma just like anything else we experience in life. Trauma may be a life-defining terrible event you can’t shake like destruction or disaster. Alternatively, trauma may be a series of small things that changed the way you perceive your own safety. 

Holistically, trauma is any event (or series of events) that compromise your ability to differentiate between risk and security. It can occur at any time in your life and persist for any amount of time beyond the event itself. Trauma is an insidious emotional reaction to an experience. 

Trauma is the great pretender 

One of the most difficult things about trauma, and the symptoms of having experienced it, is how variable the way it shows up may be. For some, they may push their trauma so far away that they experience amnesia around the event. They can’t even recall what happened, nor correlate their responses to it. 

Symptoms of trauma in adults span every system of the body as wholly as they stretch across lived experiences. Below, we’ve covered some of the primary symptom groups that adults who have experienced trauma may continue to face. 

Dysregulated moods 

When something has happened to you that makes it difficult to feel safe in your emotions or physical environment, your moods may suffer. From depression to anxiety or even bouts of manic productivity, mood dysregulation is a trauma symptom that can have a major impact on your daily life. 

Substance use disorders 

Drowning reality in drink or drugs may seem like the best or only option when you’ve been through something you can’t confront. Whether the trauma you’ve experienced was ongoing or a one-time thing, and no matter when it occurred, it can be difficult to get through it when you don’t feel you have the tools to get through it. For some, substance use is a way of coping and for others, it simply represents escape. 

Trouble with sleep 

Insomnia, nightmares, and broken sleep are all common symptoms of trauma in adults after a traumatic experience. If you’re reliving terror and powerlessness every time you close your eyes, falling asleep can feel like walking into battle every night. 

Hypo- or Hyper-arousal

Whether the trauma you’ve experienced makes you feel constantly on edge or frozen in time, trauma may cause trouble regulating your existential equilibrium. You may feel the need to overcompensate, overproduce and over plan in an attempt to control the risk in your life. Alternatively, you may experience no motivation for anything and find the idea of even trying to be utterly overwhelming. 

Relationship complexity 

Having healthy relationships can be especially difficult for those who have been a victim of harm as a part of their trauma. Whether it was childhood trauma, sexual violence or other physical or emotional violations, trauma complicates things. You may struggle to let people in, feeling lonely as a result. In contrast, some people cling to their relationships at the expense of their own security.

Physical illness 

Trauma takes up physical space in the body. The toll of trauma may lower your immune system, cause stagnant pain in joints and body systems or cause chronic pain. Trauma has been linked to GI manifestations of anxiety as well as stress. 

Flashbacks 

Perhaps the most well-known symptoms of trauma in adults is flashbacks. Revisiting the things that haunt you lead to feelings of helplessness as you relive a waking nightmare with little control over when it comes on or when it will end. Flashbacks are often a cause of retraumatization and occur in many types of trauma. 

How can we help? 

You may not know where to begin in unraveling the tangled mass of shadows trauma casts over the light in your world, especially when it has led you to addiction’s doorstep. But that’s okay, you don’t have to know. At Villa Kali Ma, we have a broad range of therapies and tools we can use to help you create a precision map out of the darkness of trauma and the ways it’s driven you to cope. Together, we’ll navigate your pull towards substances day by day to create a customized recovery plan focused on the holistic experience of being you, through trauma and beyond. Call us today. 

Categories
Addiction Treatment

Addiction and Mental Health

Addiction and mental health are intertwined phenomena. In some ways you could say they grow together, like plants that tend to be found together in the wild.

Addiction and mental health problems grow together because they come from the same root conditions. Wherever there is a lack of wholeness and safety inside the self, you are likely to see either or both crop up.

Mental health and addiction are fostered in that profound suffering – the state of inner fracture – and both can be understood as attempts by the human psyche to find a way to cope with that state. The psyche tries to keep itself together, by coming up with ways to rebalance itself. Mental health problems and addiction can both be understood in that sense, as adaptations to a core imbalance.

Addiction is what happens when dependence on an externally-sourced substance develops. That externally-sourced substance is addictive because it helps modulate (temporarily) the experience of having a broken self. Addiction can develop also to behaviors which induce a state change inside us, but the purpose is the same – to help make living with a broken self more tolerable.

Whether to substances or behaviors, addiction is characterized by a gradual loss of freedom while life becomes more and more devoted to maintaining the chemically altered state of being, as well as avoiding the state of withdrawal.

What’s tragic about addiction is the extent to which a person’s life energy can be consumed into the needs of the addiction, and the way that feeding the addiction eclipses all other life activities and purposes. Relationships, career ambitions, experiences of human aliveness – all can become less important than the requirements of the addict within. The spirit of addiction consumes a person from the inside out, much like a parasite, eating its way through its host, eventually killing it unless treated.

Mental health roughly refers to the state of mind and state of psyche which we would call whole, intact, or even just functional enough to get by. When we have good-enough mental health, we are considered sane. When there is a severe imbalance, a distortion favoring a problematic, counterproductive way of coping, it can come to be considered a mental illness.

Mental illnesses can be considered as maladaptive coping mechanisms, or ways of adjusting to life that create serious problems for us.

What is helpful to understand about the two is that they interact with each other – people with addiction almost always can be said to have had an underlying mental health condition which sets them up to need extra help finding peace and safety internally. Likewise, if you didn’t have any before, addiction gives you mental health problems. During withdrawal we suffer terribly, but also long afterwards, when the ravages visited upon a human soul through addiction can take on the characteristics of mental illness – depression, anxiety, obsessions, even psychosis.

The best approach for healing mental illness and addiction is to treat both at once, while understanding that more important than the names and classifications, which particular diagnostic code you may be given, is to understand that suffering can be healed.

Whether that suffering looks most like addiction, mental health imbalance, or most likely, a combination, the cure is the same for both. The cure, in essence, is to develop a path back to wholeness that is just right for you.

Via this personalized path back to wholeness, you come to experience a kind, loving presence at the center of your experience. This kind loving presence inside can bear witness and teach you to tolerate and withstand the many shifting states of being which come to arise in you in the course of your life.

12 step programs help you anchor that presence in by calling upon a “higher power” who comes to help you with your daily life, all your activities, to help you tolerate your feelings, make decisions, know what to say and do. Mental health programs and therapists help you to activate the aspect of your own self who is like that higher power, the wise one. Both usually work best when there is an element of community as well, so that people outside of your own psyche can help you recall your value, your tools, and your belonging to the family of life.

Ultimately it does not matter what you call it or how you think of it, as long as you develop a personal relationship of trust and relying upon this centered, loving best wisdom to help you get through life with a sense of coherence, purpose, and safety.

Categories
Addiction Treatment

How Addiction Affects Family and Friends

The addict within lies to us about many things, but most of all it lies to us about what we are doing to other people. That is why when we get sober we may find ourselves surrounded by people who are not quite ready to forgive us.

Some of us are lucky enough to have a wise friend or family member who can give us the understanding and support we need. More often we will find our close loved ones blaming us for being addicts, cutting us out of their lives, or withdrawing sympathy.

If we want to recover, we will have to understand that while we should not victimize ourselves further by blaming ourselves for having an addiction, we have to accept that this is what addiction creates. It devastates bonds of love and relationship.

It is also wise to be aware that people who love us are entangled with our illness in a way that can result in some very dysfunctional behavior. When there is an addiction present in a family or other kind of love relationship, the loved ones are sick too, with a co-occurring condition called codependency.

Codependency is what happens when a family or partnership becomes fused and mixed up psychologically so that no one is sure whose feelings are whose. Controlling, scapegoating, denial, and enabling are typical dysfunctional behaviors where codependency is present.

Addicts tend to exist in families and relationships that are enmeshed psychologically. When enmeshed, people are not fully free to be healthy and whole, nor do they get to experience a balance of individuality with belonging, but rather share a mashed-up group psyche.

Such a condition of fusion tends to co-exist with the presence of unhealed traumas and their corresponding trauma-bonds. Trauma bonds are fused, unhealthy interpersonal attachments formed during overwhelming experiences.

Just like people with addiction, people with codependency can come back to wholeness, but it takes time and work for them too. The upshot of recovery for loved ones is that everyone must learn to care for themselves, which takes self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, and a willingness to experience feelings and vulnerability in the light of conscious awareness.

Each person will have to learn to take responsibility for their own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. All must end the cycle of perceiving one’s inner experience to be caused by, therefore only be cured by, what other people do. (The victimized state has to be healed). This means trauma work, which helps develop an understanding that the fused state was an adaptation to unhealed trauma.

Family and/or couples therapy can be extremely helpful and supportive for a family who is sincere about helping the addict to recover. That means the family is ready to look at the ways they have benefited, not only suffered, from having one member be addicted. This means honestly investigating if they have in any way supported or cooperated to keep their family member sick. Education about what does and does not heal a person from addiction is helpful too.

Funnily enough, the addict who gets into recovery often finds herself in an unexpected position. As the person who has committed to healing, she is now a family leader, someone who will gently pull the family forward to evolve out of the state of pain they have been in this whole time.

Through developing more self-awareness (a requirement for sobriety), she becomes someone who can help the family recover from its deep state of trauma-caused enmeshment, and the corresponding avoidance of feelings and truth.

However, it’s also important to grasp the paradox that even though this is her role now, the addicted person can’t actually do recovery for anyone but herself. Rather, to understand that by devoting herself to healing, she is palpably helping the whole family to do the same someday.

In other words, once you free yourself to a good-enough degree, you may be able to assist others. Not by pulling them out, but rather by coaching them through the process of self-disentanglement.

Once disentangled, the individual members of a family can now love each other in a new and healthy way, which will support sobriety and happiness all around.

Most of all, I want you to hear that families and loved ones that want to can heal, with work, patience, and surrender. It is not rocket science, but it does take time and courage, and the reward is limitless. I send you and your loved ones every encouragement to find out for yourselves, how different life can be with loving relationships at its core.

Categories
Addiction Treatment

How to Get Sober and Stay Sober

If you’re thinking about getting sober, yes, do it! You’re worth it and life is a million times better sober, it just is. Addiction is a false friend and you’ll be happily surprised how much better your life is when you end this relationship.

There is a huge community of very loving, funny, interesting, kind people who live beautiful lives in recovery without needing to use any kind of substance. You will be warmly welcome among these people, if you can get yourself here.

These people, the recovering, will understand you and accept you in ways that you have not felt in the isolation of addiction nor among those who are not addicts.

If you’re ready, here’s an overview of the basic path to sobriety.

1. Sober Up Safely

Getting sober is relatively straightforward, as you probably already know: stop ingesting the substance that is chemically altering your body, and you will eventually return to a state of sobriety.

You probably already know what it’s like to detox, as most of us experimented with quitting a few times before we were finally demoralized enough to get help.

The process is essentially this: remove the substance completely, set yourself up somewhere where you will not have access, and allow your body to go through the complete process of adjusting to the lack of this substance.

Please note that many should consider a medical detox because depending on what you are withdrawing from, the withdrawal process itself can kill you. Medical detox is a place where you check in to go through the withdrawal process. You may be given medications to ease or counteract the immediate pain and danger of the withdrawal process.

Whatever approach you take, it’s important to understand that you will be sick during this time. You can’t expect yourself to function normally, and you will be at high risk of relapse if you ask anything of yourself. Protect your detox by making sure you are not interacting with friends or trying to live some kind of a normal life during this time.

2. Enter Treatment and/or Join 12 Step

Once you have the substance out of you, you are in a very vulnerable stage in which the risk of returning to your substance is very high.

For that reason, it is very supportive if it is available to you to enter a good residential treatment program, in which you are removed from your normal environment completely for a short term respite during which you have a chance to undergo a lot of work on your inner being in a neutral, safe environment.

Residential treatment will typically involve aspects of education about recovery & help you plan for what you will need to do upon returning to your past life. You will be expected to participate in individual therapy and groups, whether you’re feeling great that day or not, but you will not be judged and your experiences will be understood through the lens of addiction recovery.

You will be allowed and encouraged to let it all hang out, though there will be rules you are required to follow and you will need to surrender to the structure there. You will not have a lot of choice, especially about the schedule–there will be a lot of planned hours for your own good, and it is best to just go with it.

Typically the first days in treatment are the roughest, and by the time you’re ready to leave, you feel excited about the changes you are now making in your life to live a sober, happy life.

If you are not able to go into residential treatment, don’t worry, you can still recover, through 12 Step (which is completely free) and/or intensive outpatient treatment (IOP), where you stay in your home environment and attend treatment intensively.

If residential treatment is like boarding school, outpatient is like regular day school. This has advantages and disadvantages, but it will work as long you are able to put serious, sincere effort and intentions into recovering. A sincere wish to recover is good enough, you don’t have to know how.

Whether you join 12 Step or treatment, or best of all, both (it has been proven most effective to follow treatment up with joining a 12 step community, so you can have the support of some wise, recovering friends long term), know that by undergoing this stage of deep, hard work changing habits now, you are saving your own life and setting yourself on a path that will lead you to joy, purpose, and meaning. You are worth it, my friend!

Categories
Addiction Treatment

How to Break an Addiction

Are you chemically dependent on a substance or behavior?

If you are chemically dependent on drugs or alcohol, it means that when the substance or behavior isn’t available to you, you go into a state of pretty strong discomfort. You might have physical symptoms (tremors, headaches, cravings, etc) as well as unpleasant emotional states (grumpiness, depression, aggravation, panic).

Two other hallmarks of addiction are obsession and compulsion. If you are obsessed, your thinking centers mostly around your drug: getting it, recovering from it, craving for more, the how and the when of it.

If you are compulsive, that means your behavior happens almost on its own, without your full consent or control. Even when you have good reasons not to, you find it hard to override your urges to use.

If you think you may have an addiction, and you would like to break it, congratulations, you’re in good company. There are many, many benefits to living free from the enslavement to substance or behavior, and there are many wonderful, interesting, and smart people who have done the same. These people will be your friends and community once you do the work to get yourself there.

Here is how to break an addiction once and for all.

1. Give up mood-altering substances, forever.

Addiction creates a change in the body, brain chemistry, and the spirit, and it is very, very unlikely that you will be able to recover the ability to use your substance casually.

Most people with an addicted profile also find that they cannot engage in another substance as a substitute. For example, if cocaine is your main drug, you can’t switch to only beer or marijuana, and make it very long. This is because the core mechanism of dampening your experience chemically rather than through healing it from within will sooner or later lead you down the same path.

This is more true the longer you have been doing it, and the more severely you have become chemically dependent, but either way it is almost always best to accept that there is no going back to casual use.

This might be hard to fathom just now, but rest assured there are millions of people around the world who are completely clean and sober, all the time, every day, living normal lives, attending weddings, parties and concerts, having sex, experiencing the full rainbow spectrum of human experience, all completely sober.

2. Change yourself from the inside

Understand that you must replace the drug with something else –a natural, organic way of transmuting your suffering into a life you can tolerate. That means you need to heal your thoughts, your emotions, your spirit, and your body, so that you are an intact, fit human being who is up for the task of life.

This can be done, but it takes work and it takes time. The good news is, it is accomplished in a very small, piece by piece way, breath by breath, day by day. You don’t need to know how you will get through tomorrow, but only get through right now without reverting to using your substance.

Typically, a full on, head to toe, thorough personality renovation is required to be able to stay sober longer term. That’s because the reason we turned to addiction in the first place is because of what we’re like on the inside – what our thoughts are like, what feelings those thoughts create in us, how we experience our lives.

We would not become addicts in the first place if we were having a good old time being us. No, usually it’s no fun to be us, sober. That can be changed, but it is a slow process, like restoring topsoil. It is not done overnight.

There are 2 main paths to this self-restoration: treatment and 12 Step. 12 Step has the advantage of being free of cost and mostly likely available in your local area without you having to go too far.

All in all the best approach would be treatment in combination with a 12 step program like AA or NA, for ensuring the long term follow through and daily habit changes which are typically required to turn into someone who doesn’t find life unbearable without substances.

All in all, it’s good to know this: People all over the world recover from addiction and live sober every single day. They live lives of joy, deep meaning, fulfillment and purpose. They have lives far beyond what they ever imagined for themselves. You can have this too!

Categories
Wellness

Exercise And Mental Health

Exercise can change more than your physical body. Did you know you can move your way to more bountiful mental health? We don’t just mean yoga either (though we love it- and believe that it’s an important part of healing)! Many kinds of exercise can be a powerful benefit to shaping your mental health to reflect a more holistic relationship with the body you nourish with movement. 

Create movement your way

There is a nearly limitless way to engage in exercise routines that fuels your fulfillment. From dancing in the kitchen while you cook or trail running to yoga or high-intensity workout routines, there are options to make it what you need. You can move your body in the manner of your choosing. Your exercise can take place at the discretion of your schedule and through the everchanging scope of your personal needs without ever being questioned about its validity. 

Exercise can reduce your risk factors for co-occurring disorders 

Two of the key ways that exercise supports a healthier relationship with your mind and mood are by helping to improve your sleep and focusing the mind on reducing the power of intrusive thoughts. Better sleep sets you up for a healthier frame of mind, and the feel-good hormone boost exercise provides can reduce lingering anxiety and help you rewrite your response to your mental wellness. 

Imagine a day spent in nature, hiking a mountain with stunning views and rugged terrain. When you fall into bed that night, you won’t have so much energy to focus on the niggling anxieties that linger in the quiet. By exhausting the energy reserves in your body, there is a decreased risk of insomnia as you fall into bed for sleep at night. 

Similarly, is it possible to dwell on the lingering fog of burnout when you’re trying to remember a complicated series of asana in your yoga class? Breaking the hold of those thoughts on your focus reduces the risk of anxiety playing havoc with other mental health symptoms. 

Additionally, exercise can reduce blood pressure and resting heart rate while increasing your body confidence. These things can align to minimize stress on the body and body image, both of which can improve your physical and mental health. 

Exercise is not a mental health solution; it’s a holistic tool 

Any age. Any movement. Any body. No matter the exercise you choose, it won’t solve your mental health concerns. It won’t cure your depression or alleviate your compulsions. It’s not meant to fix anything, but it can help. Moving your body productively in a manner that feels good to you is a way to reconnect with yourself so that you can rewrite the relationship of wholeness that feeds your future. There is no single way to do this, and there’s certainly no easy one. But a beautiful place to begin is one focused on using the tools that support you now and can grow with you into the future. 

Your holistic being is incredibly responsive to the things you use to fuel it. When you change your diet, your body notices in systematic response to the way you’ve chosen to engage with it. It’s like a conversation: your taste buds signal the stomach, which employs the digestive process, and your body begins the myriad of processes that break down your food into usable nutrients and energy. 

It does much the same for your mind when you exercise. The uptick in heart rate and engagement of your vascular system signals a waterfall response that triggers different hormones to prepare and engage with the way you’re using your body and its energy to move through your exercise. 

You can’t get it wrong

Exercise has something to offer everyone for body, mind, and spirit because no one can get it wrong. There is infinite value in entering a space of healing with the knowledge that this is your choice, and you can create the way that looks and feels for you. From scheduling to activity, your relationship with exercise as a tool for your mental health is yours to cultivate in the ways that feel best for you. 

You are choosing to move your body to support your mind, and that choice puts the power of change back into your hands- exactly where it belongs. You are capable of changing your life, one step at a time. With the boost in brain power and sleep that moving your body can provide, you will have more space in your life to focus your energy on changing the things that do not serve you so you can celebrate the things that do. 

Categories
Mental Health

5 Myths About Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that alters your brain chemistry, resulting in extreme and unstable moods. These extreme fluctuations, and the slow cycling between them are that set bipolar disorder apart from mood swings make it difficult for the body to adjust to what you’re feeling, resulting in an inability to live holistically with unmanaged bipolar disorder. Taking charge of your health and cultivating a healing relationship with your mind is empowering, but it may feel scary or confusing to do so with so much misinformation littering the helpful finds. 

Whether you are looking to destigmatize your own experience with bipolar, understand a loved one’s diagnosis or make sense of the impact bipolar disorder has had on your life, let’s begin by separating the fact from the myth with us below. 

1.) Myth: There’s one kind of bipolar disorder.

Fact: There are currently four specific types of bipolar disorder. 

According to the DSM-5, the symptoms of bipolar most commonly occur in four ways. 

Bipolar I is a manic-dominant episodic mood disorder, while bipolar II is marked by experiences of both hypomanic and depressive episodes. Cyclothymia is characterized by symptoms similar to bipolar disorder and is classified as a milder subtype of erratic cyclical periods of mania and depression. Lastly, bipolar not otherwise specified (NOS) has the hallmark bipolar symptoms of unpredictable and extreme mood shifts but doesn’t quite fit any typing. 

2.) Myth: Bipolar is just a fancy term for mood swings. 

Fact: Bipolar Disorder is a chronic disorder of mood episodes. 

Mood swings are a cycle of human experience. People move through the world responding to the things they see and feel. Those responses create moods, and those moods may change quickly but typically last minutes or hours. When you live with bipolar disorder, mood episodes that last for days or more often weeks are a draining part of your lived experience. It is not something that happens to you occasionally or cycles past quickly, but something that you live alongside constantly. 

3.) Myth: Treating your bipolar disorder will kill your creativity. 

Fact: Your art is not a product of your struggle. 

While mania may make you feel like you’ve had a stroke of genius, there is no sustainability to manic episodes. Receiving treatment that makes you feel empowered can hone your artistic instincts, but it doesn’t change who you are or what you’re capable of. You can strip back the unparalleled ferocity of disordered moods to cultivate controlled chaos that allows you to use your creativity in ways that feel best for you.

4.) Myth: Bipolar disorder is curable. 

Fact: Bipolar disorder is treatable. 

There is no cure for a disordered brain response to the hormones that influence your mood. Diagnosis is a phenomenal first step to controlling the power your mood episodes have over your daily life, however. Alongside possible treatments from a physician for symptoms of bipolar affecting your health, treatments for mind, body and spirit can help to align and balance your response to mood episodes. Even still, you may still experience symptoms of bipolar and there is nothing wrong with you if that’s the case. 

5.) Myth: Bipolar disorder is rare. 

Fact: Bipolar affects millions of people. 

Over 2.5% of the world’s population are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and there are undoubtedly many who remain undiagnosed. There are a number of factors that increase the likelihood of developing it, notably having a family history of mood disorders. You are not alone in experiencing the difficult and often confusing symptoms of bipolar disorder, and connecting with others who can relate to your experiences may be a cathartic part of your healing.  

Living with any mood disorder can be fraught with confusion and frustration. Particularly when you are living (or learning to live) with bipolar disorder, fighting the uphill battle against myths and misunderstanding feels like a lot. It is a lot, but you don’t have to do it alone. 

Community is key for feeling supported as you navigate the struggles (and strengths) of your unique bipolar experience. Whether you are struggling with co-occuring conditions like substance use or just looking to be understood, developing supportive relationships is key to flourishing with bipolar. 

Your experience is unique, tailored to who you are and what you need as a holistic person.  The treatment you seek for your bipolar disorder should be too. Being honest about the experiences you have with bipolar, the struggles you face and the healing you’re hoping for are all within reach when you begin to untangle the myth from fact. Your bipolar disorder is not your identity. There is hope, and Villa Kali Ma is here to help you heal. 

 

 

Categories
Mental Health

How to Improve Mental Clarity (5 Tips to a clearer mind)

You’re sitting at your keyboard preparing for that meeting in 10 minutes and you know exactly what you need to accomplish before it starts, but every time you return to your task you find yourself refreshing your email. You don’t need your email. Indeed, you don’t even need your computer for this task but you’re caught in the loop of brain fog and struggling to accomplish anything beyond the immediate. 

Feel familiar? Us too.  

The daily mix of routine and upheaval can be a battle of wills between body and mind. If you’re struggling to find the clarity you need to win that battle today, we’ve got you covered. With five tips to find your way through the fog and a variety of programs to support you, let’s clear the haze together. 

1. Get the rest you need

Everyone has differing opinions on how much sleep we need to be successful and well rested. Both sleep deprivation and sleep cycle disruption can contribute to the feeling of brain fog that invades your waking hours.

If getting 8 hours doesn’t feel attainable or isn’t doing the trick, try focusing on the quality of sleep as well as finding ways to rest your body and reset. By reducing pre-bedtime screen exposure to focus on relaxation and lowering the temperature, you can create a more ambient resting space to make the most of your sleep. 

2. Connect with nature 

That sweet, sweet vitamin D does us all a little good but even if the sun isn’t shining, getting outside can be a powerful way to sweep away the dust in your mind. Increase clarity by going for a walk to get your blood pumping and take in the world around you as you go. 

Plan a hike to that summit you’ve always wanted to see or go explore a forgotten corner of your local beach. Spending time in less structured spaces and engaging with the beauty of the world around you is a powerful way to create a clearer consciousness. 

3. Focus with mindfulness 

Our mindfulness practices give a boost to body, mind and spirit. Both mindfulness and meditation can help you to  increase your focus, productivity and blood oxygenation levels- all a part of a clear mind. 

If you’ve never practiced mindfulness before, it may seem quite simple. Focusing inward on the breath and acceptance of whatever comes can be trickier than meets the eye. If you find yourself struggling, stepping out of your comfort zone and trying a group practice may help hone your mindfulness skills. 

4. Eat more brain fuel 

You already have to eat, so you may as well make that food work for you.  What we eat becomes a part of who we are and how we think. Balancing your diet to include the things that help superpower our brain function will maximize clarity without an active task to add to your schedule. 

Your brain is made primarily of fats, so a healthy dose of omega-3s will replenish and support your busy brain cells every day. Add a bit of caffeine for a supercharged boost to energy – make it green tea to double up on beneficial brain food. Last, focus on antioxidant intake from a variety of foods like blueberries, oranges, turmeric, or even broccoli for a colorful edge. 

5. Anchor yourself with awareness

Whether it’s awareness of the task you’re creating or awareness of your limitations, being aware of what may crowd your mind helps to lessen the burden. Distractions that creep in gives them the element of surprise, which can add to the stress, so give them breathing room for 5 or 10 minutes a day.

“Every day, stand guard at the door of your mind, and you alone decide what thoughts and beliefs you let into your life. For they will shape whether you feel rich or poor, cursed or blessed.”

– John Rhone

 

Stay aware of the shape of your task. Providing some structure to your headspace (and your schedule) by putting a hard limit on how long those distractions can take a front seat can help you to navigate them with more control. 

Clarity is more than concentration 

There are so many facets to the things that go on in our mind. From conscious to unconscious, we move through millions of moments and processes every day. Some linger, creating a condensation of complication that can gather into a haze and keep us from feeling our best. That doesn’t feel great, especially when you’re busier than you want to be and still have so much to do. 

You have the power to lift the fog and clear your mind. With the tools we’ve learned together and the many you arrived here with, clarity is already within your grasp. For more support or individual guidance, reach out to us today. 

Accessibility Toolbar

Exit mobile version