I've been off SSRIs for like, a month now. I took them partly to contain anxiety and roll it off; but I also found that they helped me keep focus on work and, apparently, contain my emotional volatility. I had a perpetual calm. I last went off of them in early 2023, for a few months; when something scary finally happened, I was just overcome. I was catatonic for weeks; my blood pressure was through the roof; I could not calm myself down. The only thing that helped centre me, for whatever reason, were sermons. The content was almost immaterial, so long as it was about Christ. If I played some James Burke, some BBC Connections, that didn't seem to do anything. Pure noise. I hadn't been to church for a year or so beforehand; this got me going back.
That said.
I've recently gone off again — I realised, coming back from Japan, that a persistent problem I had was a disconnection from what my body was telling me. Even hunger was hard to detect, let alone fear or happiness. What did I want? What did I aspire to? When did I know I was at peace? I decided to pursue psychadelics, which required me going off.
Some of you know about the results of this excursion. I feel like I really did establish a connection to myself once again, and I resolved to continue staying off SSRIs. But now I feel like I have to develop the skills to work with myself. I feel like I always have all this energy that needs to be thrown somewhere. I feel like I'm doing anxiety judo. Sometimes I just feel exhausted after being at 125% levels of anxiety for a week, for no discernable reason. At the same time, I'm actually able to recognise what I'm processing emotionally as a result of this? For example, in the past week I feel like I finally accepted a possibility for my life in the next few months; I feel like I was able to notice and pinpoint resulting anxieties that made this possibility hard to accept or conceive of. I feel like I'm able to look within myself and solve things instead of wondering for months.
I just need to develop new tools. Thus I ask: do you have rituals to maintain mental hygiene? I've heard that grounding rituals are normal. I've heard meditation in the morning is normal. I've heard taking a morning walk is normal. I've heard that just carrying something familiar with you can help in unfamiliar places. I've heard that having a better sense of what you need to perform well — to establish baseline comfort — is also ground floor stuff.
I know it's abstract, but I feel like when it comes to my psychology, I don't brush my teeth. I just knocked out my teeth and wore dentures instead, or something. There's gotta be analogues here.
Mental hygiene
Mental hygiene
We don't care what you say but we care what you do.
We’re the invisible entity that looks out for you.
Re: Mental hygiene
For a couple years my emotional state seems to be mostly affected by the world I'm surrounded by, there's an ebb and flow in my mental state, and the effects I do have on those inputs aren't immediate (making choices to spend time on different things and places, which takes time, like searching for a job...). This means I do spend a lot of effort on what I would consider mental hygiene practice.
First category of practice for me is my attempt to have a better baseline. Sleep is an obvious one...finally get enough sleep almost every night now. I try to exercise as often as possible (currently once a week only, I need to purge some excuses) because it inexplicably increases my overall stability. I have also written in a journal (digital, in my PKM) every single day for over a year now about a day's happenings, my own actions, how I felt about these things, and any extraneous thoughts I'd been mulling over on that day. I usually jot things down as I'm being productive throughout the day or when I have something I want to work out. I also always write about my general view of the day's feelings as my last thing before bed. I have found that my memory, and I think similarly the coherence of my thoughts over months is a lot better with this practice. Having a digital journal that I can search and read through a lot quicker than a paper journal is also very useful to me, e.g. before a therapy session I review my journal entries between now and the previous session to find topics of discussion, or I can find details about when something of note was said.
Second category of practice is managing more acute-but-ignorable bad states. Like I'm uneasy or can't keep my thoughts super coherent but can choose to just keep going, so it's hard to notice these states sometimes. Once I notice I check in on my physical needs (have I been eating, sleeping, ignoring treatable physical pain?) and try to resolve any problems. I journal about the progression of my thoughts, emotions and physical state/sensations. I try to go outside, the space away from where I was stewing is helpful, and outdoor exercise is often an even better distraction (or I guess formerly going to the gym with a friend served this same purpose, wouldn't think about anything other than rock climbing whilst we were there).
Third category of practice is managing very-bad-spiraling states. Problem with managing these is sometimes I'm so deep in the hole I don't remember that there's things I can do to try to escape, so step one is acknowledging that I'm safe and able to control myself and my surroundings. Try grounding to my physical presence: box breathing, 5-4-3-2-1 senses exercise, stretching or even just holding onto myself and focusing on the sensation. Do all of the above in the second category of practice. Talk to someone who I can trust won't judge me for even my craziest-feeling thoughts, preferably in person.
Despite all these strategies making a noticeable difference in my life, I do wish there was some way I could accelerate the process of healing from trauma and reduced occurrence of my worst states. Things have slowly but steadily improved a lot in the last 5 years, and reading my old journals is actually a helpful reminder of progress being made, but it is all so tiring...
First category of practice for me is my attempt to have a better baseline. Sleep is an obvious one...finally get enough sleep almost every night now. I try to exercise as often as possible (currently once a week only, I need to purge some excuses) because it inexplicably increases my overall stability. I have also written in a journal (digital, in my PKM) every single day for over a year now about a day's happenings, my own actions, how I felt about these things, and any extraneous thoughts I'd been mulling over on that day. I usually jot things down as I'm being productive throughout the day or when I have something I want to work out. I also always write about my general view of the day's feelings as my last thing before bed. I have found that my memory, and I think similarly the coherence of my thoughts over months is a lot better with this practice. Having a digital journal that I can search and read through a lot quicker than a paper journal is also very useful to me, e.g. before a therapy session I review my journal entries between now and the previous session to find topics of discussion, or I can find details about when something of note was said.
Second category of practice is managing more acute-but-ignorable bad states. Like I'm uneasy or can't keep my thoughts super coherent but can choose to just keep going, so it's hard to notice these states sometimes. Once I notice I check in on my physical needs (have I been eating, sleeping, ignoring treatable physical pain?) and try to resolve any problems. I journal about the progression of my thoughts, emotions and physical state/sensations. I try to go outside, the space away from where I was stewing is helpful, and outdoor exercise is often an even better distraction (or I guess formerly going to the gym with a friend served this same purpose, wouldn't think about anything other than rock climbing whilst we were there).
Third category of practice is managing very-bad-spiraling states. Problem with managing these is sometimes I'm so deep in the hole I don't remember that there's things I can do to try to escape, so step one is acknowledging that I'm safe and able to control myself and my surroundings. Try grounding to my physical presence: box breathing, 5-4-3-2-1 senses exercise, stretching or even just holding onto myself and focusing on the sensation. Do all of the above in the second category of practice. Talk to someone who I can trust won't judge me for even my craziest-feeling thoughts, preferably in person.
Despite all these strategies making a noticeable difference in my life, I do wish there was some way I could accelerate the process of healing from trauma and reduced occurrence of my worst states. Things have slowly but steadily improved a lot in the last 5 years, and reading my old journals is actually a helpful reminder of progress being made, but it is all so tiring...