A Look at Depression

I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of depression. The thing that got me really started was an excellent post from the blog The Belle Jar dated April 8, 2013, titled “How to be Loved.” In this post she gives the best description of the internal workings of depression that I have ever seen. I highly recommend her blog. She has a lot of good things to say about a lot of topics that I care about, and she writes about them much better than I do.

The entirety of last week very hard for me to get through.  It was my first week back to work after having broken my arm. Between dealing with the pain, catching up at work, getting written up at work, and having a hearing with Minnesota Care, I just was not able to maintain very well. All my coping mechanisms went out the door. If it wasn’t for my sister, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I’ve taken a good hard look at what I need to do to improve how I work with in my depression. Here is what I’ve discovered so far.

I struggle constantly with the voice in my head telling me that I’m stupid, that I’m worthless, that I’m a waste of space, and that I’m not worth the effort. Usually this is the voice of either my dad or my ex-husband, both of whom were very abusive and really did say such things to me. Because this comes from people who were supposed to care about me, I take it personally and I believe it. After thinking about it for a while, I changed that voice. That voice is now Niedermeyer, the nasty frat boy bully from the movie "Animal House." It’s a caricature and somebody that I don’t need to take personally. So now, anytime I start hearing that horrible, mean, abusive voice telling me how horrible I am, I can either ignore it for being silly or I can tell it to fuck off. So far that seems to be working. I also created a nifty little picture of Niedermeyer yelling at Flounder with a “no" symbol on it, which I printed out and taped in places that I can see them easily, especially in places where I know my negative thinking gets triggered, such as my bathroom mirror and that my computer.

I need to replace all that negativity with positive things, so I also do affirmations. I have a wonderful little app on my iPod called Affirmation Works. When I’m awake and not using my iPod for something else this app displays affirmations. They change every 10 seconds. That way, whenever I look at my iPod there’s a positive thought sitting waiting for me to read it and absorb it. Affirmation Works!

I’ve also been working very hard at my WRAP. This is short for Wellness Recovery Action Plan, which is a system for looking at how to recover from various things by defining wellness and coming up with strategies for when things are not going very well. It’s a program worth looking into, not just for mental illness, but other issues of wellness requiring foresight and planning. Wellness Recovery Action Plan

Another thing I’ve been concentrating on again is DDP Yoga, not just for the workouts, which are fantastic, but for the whole mindset change that DDP talks about and help to work through. Seriously, this guy is an amazing motivation. I highly recommend checking out the whole system, and even if you’re not in the space right now you want to actually work out with DDP Yoga, at least look into his audio book “Own Your Life", and over at Team DDP Yoga look for his lecture “Living Life at 90%", which lately I have been listening to over and over again. Basically, he boils it down to 10% is what life throws at you, and 90% is how you react to it; he goes over what to do with that 90%. What can I say, I like his style. DDP Yoga    Team DDP Yoga

Affirmations of the moment: "You Can Do It!" . Think it in DDP's voice.  It's way cool that way.

Being a Catholic Geek

I've realized this week just how big of a geek I really am as far as being Catholic is concerned.

First of all there are several apps that I use on my iPod. First of all I have Laudate, which has everything imaginable in it, including daily readings, the liturgy of the hours, rosaries, chaplet, and a ton of different prayers. I also have Catholicpedia, put out by divineoffice.org, which also is a good general reference. I also have by them a Prayers app. I have the Roman Catholic calendar put out by Universalis. I have several rosary apps. These include iRosary, The Rosary app by the Daughters of St. Paul, and the Divine Mercy App by the Congregation of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I also have a couple of apps which help to do and examine of consciousness before confession. And my favorite, a simple little Pocket Angelus app from Objective Products, LLC. All of these can be found in iTunes. I'll give the links down at the bottom later for some of the app info sites.

Here's the big geeky thing, and it involves that Angelus app. It's a very simple thing. You can set up alarms so that it rings up to three times per day at the hours of the Angelus. You can pick a couple different kinds of bells to ring. My favorite is the Angelus bells. I usually have my iPod with me, and sometimes the Angelus bells go off while I'm in public. This week, I had two very interesting conversations when my Angelus alarm went off. It went off while I was checking out at Leaflet Missal, and I ended up showing the cashier all my apps. The second one was yesterday during Easter dinner at my sister's. So I ended up showing all my little Catholic apps to some of the people there, including my sister's dad, his wife, and Father Fitzpatrick and his mom. The good father is a mega-geek himself (he played Angry Birds with my son earlier), but he didn't know there is all that out there. So it was cool that I could show him all that stuff.

Here though are a couple of my complaints. First of all I was kind of shocked that a tech savvy priest and a store with an online presence had no idea about these apps. There's got to be a better way of getting the word out that there are really awesome apps out there to enhance a Catholic's spiritual life. Second, the reason I was at Leaflet Missal in the first place was to try to find a CD of a beautiful chanted version of the Angelus that I found on YouTube. When I'd originally gone to the site for the nuns who had recorded this Angelus, they had no way to order the CD from iTunes, which would've been my preference, so I ran over to Leaflet to see if they had it.

Please, please, please, if you have gorgeous music you want to sell to support your congregation or your cause put it on iTunes or Google play so people can buy it more easily.

Fortunately, at least there are some websites that either have discussions about Catholic apps or are dedicated to listing Catholic apps. I'll get the links for those as well. Since I'm the one sitting here complaining about lack of general knowledge regarding Catholic apps, I should at least do my little bit by adding those links.

13 essential Catholic Apps
http://catholicapps.com/
Pocket Angelus
http://daughtersofmary.net/music.php
Universalis web store
DivineOffice app store
Leaflet Missal
iRosary
Laudate at iTunes
Daughters of St. Paul, Pauline Books and Media App Store
DvineMercy.org App Store

Health Insurance Cha-Cha-Cha

I received a phone call today from a gentleman from the Minnesota Care state appeals office. He is the one who will be representing Minnesota Care in my appeal against their rejection of my reapplication. He said the whole basis of their argument is Minnesota state statute number 256L.07, subdivision 2, paragraphs A and C. He said they are very black-and-white, stating that if an employer pays at least 50% of the cost of coverage for employee they are ineligible for Minnesota Care.

Here's the problem I'm running into, and this is why I'm appealing it. Under normal circumstances, my average semimonthly net pay is $998. My share of the premium to cover both me and my son is $177.12 semimonthly. Both of us have chronic medical conditions that require maintenance medications, therapy, and regular office visits. The cost out of pocket for my and my son's medications runs about $1200 a month. The deductible for the insurance plan that my employer provides is $1500 per person. This means that before my insurance kicks in I will have put out $3000 in deductibles.

There's no way under normal circumstances that I could put that kind of money out. That would leave me about $600 per month to cover everything that isn't insurance payments and medications until that deductible is met. As an added bonus I'm on workers comp.

The gentleman from the appeals office did give me some helpful information. I will be getting this in a letter as well but it's nice to have it in front of me now. My appeals hearing is on April 11. It will be a phone hearing apparently. He also gave me the name of the judge will be hearing this case.

I do have some small shreds of hope that maybe I can succeed in this appeal. This judge was a cosigner in a letter that was written to Speaker of the House Boehner regarding his record of cutting the budget for vulnerable and poor people. Reading the entirety of the letter gave me hope that perhaps this judge will look at the spirit of the law rather than the wording of the law. Also, I sent an email to my state representative touching on the same things I mentioned above and asking for any help that she could provide. After I sent this email I took a closer look at her biography. She's on the state house committee for health and human services finance, and she's a practicing psychologist. I don't know if there is anything that she can do to help me in my current matter; however, she is one of the people who is fighting to get increase in wages for human services workers like me. I feel I at least have a couple of sympathetic ears in this matter.

This, incidentally, is why I was so freaked out at first when I broke my wrist on March 14. If this had happened outside of work and it wasn't covered by workers comp, I have no insurance to cover that injury, the surgery I had, any upcoming therapy I may have to have, and I would have had no income coming in because I don't have enough sick time nor do I have long-term disability. I would have had to just try to pop it back into place, strap it up, suck it up and go back to work. That would've been ugly. If I had been turned down for workers comp I don't know what I would've done. In that respect I consider myself very blessed.

Also, as a member of the working poor, currently unable to work not only my primary job but also unable to even think about getting a second job right now, I've had to think about other ways of may be bringing in a little bit of money because any little bit helps. This is why I added Google AdSense to my blog pages. I know I just started this blog and I have no regular readers, but who knows, maybe I'll luck out and get some pin money out of it.

Here is the link to the letter that I was talking about above: Catholic Academics Challenge Boehner

Affirmation of the day: I strive to make the world a better place to live.

It's All About Adapting

I think thinking about adapting a lot. Of course, there's the physical adaptations I may have to make due to the injuries to my wrists. There is also the possible job changes I may have to make, and I also have to keep adapting my attitude and my thoughts and my research as I find out more about what I'm capable of doing.

I'm waiting for my additional memory for my computer so that Dragon will run more efficiently. Won't that be fun to install? Having that additional memory will make this process using voice recognition much easier. Also, while I was out picking up a few things at the store, I picked up a wrist brace for my left wrist that matches the one I use on my right. I'll be bringing it to my postop visit on Thursday to show it to the doctor to get it okay for use.

I finished filling out the application to become a Certified Peer Counselor, and faxed that to the proper person. The certification process involves being accepted into the program, doing 80 hours of classroom time, and taking a final exam. Part of being accepted into the program also involves a letter of recommendation from a supervisor who is familiar with my work. Before my injury I had asked my program director (my direct supervisor) if he would fill out this letter of recommendation for me, which he said he would. I don't know how the 80 hours of classroom time is run or when the next classes start. However, I'm hoping that because my injury is under workers comp, work will allow me the time off to take these classes even if I am back to work by then. I was going to go for this certification anyway, but it feels more imperative that I do so now.

I also am planning to go back to school to finish up my Associates degree in technical communications. I'll have to clean up the mess that I made when I had to drop out suddenly due to the final abuse and divorce from my ex-husband. Once that's taken care of, I'll be working with North Hennepin Community College and the University of Minnesota to get that degree.

I've had to make some adaptations to my exercise routine. Prior to my injury back in July I had been doing DDP Yoga. Afterwards I got kind of disheartened because I couldn't do it the normal way. I tried doing it with modifications, but pretty much gave up on it because I couldn't do it the way I wanted to do it. Stupid I know, but shit I am human. Cracking up my left wrist, with the injury being so recent, has made doing DDP Yoga virtually impossible. Right now I just do the walking tapes that I have so at least I'm doing something. However, I must say I have never met a nicer, more supportive group of people in my life. The folks on the DDP Yoga website are very encouraging, and I highly recommend visiting the Team DDP Yoga website to see how fantastic these people are. I'll put the link to Team DDP Yoga in my links list so it can be found.

Speaking of DDP, Diamond Dallas Page is a phenomenal motivator. His yoga tapes are absolutely incredible. DDP Yoga is a system combining yoga, Pilates, isometrics, and rehabilitation exercises that he developed with the help of experts after he himself was limited by his own injuries from wrestling. They are probably the most enjoyable tapes I've ever seen as far as exercise tapes go. He has a philosophy of "living life at 90%" that goes a long way for positive attitude adjustment. On the Team DDP Yoga website there is a link to a video of his where he explains this whole philosophy of living life at 90%. I have it on my iPod and listen to it quite often. There are several other people and videos on the website that are great for motivation and also for modification if that's something you need. In fact, a video done by Arthur Boorman showing his transformation is why I ended up there in the first place. Arthur is around the website a lot and also appears in some of the videos. His transformation is stunning. There is no other word to describe it.

Also added into my mix of adapting is using affirmations. This has become critical because at this point I have no insurance and cannot afford the medications I should be on for my depression. That whole business is a topic for another time and I won't go into it here.

Anyway, that kind of a brief overview of some of the adaptations I've been working on lately. Stay tuned for more.

Edit:
For some reason the links editor in here for my lists isn't working properly, so here's the links for DDP Yoga and Team DDP Yoga. Arthur's video is on the front page of the DDP Yoga website.

DDP Yoga
TEAM DDP Yoga

Affirmation of the day: Change may be inevitable, but how I deal with it is my choice.

More Whining About Dragon

The headset microphone that came with the Dragon package was really irritating me, so I went and got a cheapy over the ear microphone from Walmart today.The one that came with the Dragon package was your standard headset with a microphone, and I just couldn't get it to fit comfortably. This one from Walmart actually is working quite well so far.

This is rather silly, but when I told my son I was training my Dragon he thought I was talking about the video game or something. As a joke, I said we should name it. So now, my Dragon software is known as "Billy."

Next thing I'm trying to do is figure out how to add links over to the side where it says "Nifty Links." I still have a lot to learn about running both the Dragon and the blog, but I'll get there.

Affirmation: As I challenge my fears, I am strengthened and empowered.

All right. This is my first post and I'm trying to use a speech recognition program. I have no idea where this is going to take me, but I'm at least going to give this a shot. The reason I'm currently using a speech recognition program is that I broke my left wrist the other day and my right wrist about eight months ago. Of course, this limits some of what I can do with my hands, but I am trying to do something with my life right now. I'm finding it very frustrating to not be able to do crafts that I normally do, and I really want to get back into DDP Yoga.

Before I had my first accident in July I was able to do a three second push-up. Now I can't use either of my arms to support my weight. So annoying. I'm assuming at some point going to have to start physical therapy for my left hand, which I'm expecting to heal up a lot better than my right.

Well that's it for now. I think what I'm going to do because I have such a hard time maintaining a positive attitude, I am going to add an affirmation to the bottom of each of my posts to remind me to keep my head up.

Affirmation of the day: We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.