Healing While Healing

I'm sitting here today writing as I vacillate in and out of anxiety mode. This isn't about forcing myself to be productive through an unstable mood. I want to share what this is like because:

1. It helps me to move it out of my body.
2. We don't talk about it enough in the Filipinx community.

I've had anxiety and depression most of my life with roots in trauma. Anxiety and depression are threads woven into the fabric of how I practice medicine.
There are times in my life when depression and anxiety immobilize me. As I write this, I am trying to record audio for my podcast. I keep hitting “pause” so I can hyperventilate and cry. My body is shaking. My heart races. My perception of time is weird. I'll blink and all of a sudden an hour is gone – I call this time travelling. Primm, my ESA dog, pokes me with her nose to take me for walks and remind me of our routines (including her feeding schedule). She slowly paws my hand if I'm stuck doom scrolling.
When I am in this emotional place, I can't take care of anyone, let alone myself. How can one work as a healer then? Doing healing work is so intimate, vulnerable, and sacred. Acting without being present and grounded could hurt someone (even natural medicine can have side effects). So, if I am off my game, what can I do? I can be human. I can give myself all the care I might give a patient. I can regularly reflect on what my capacity and boundaries are so that I can be competent in my work.
I need ongoing work on self awareness so that I am not frequently surprised by a “sudden” dip in mood. It took me a while to realize that I often experience emotions somatically. For example, I may not think I feel anxiuos, but my digestion may have been off for a week or I won't have slept in days. I have learned to be expansive about how I anxiety and depression feel. It allows me more agency in my response. It's time for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure:

1. Interrupt. This is where I might start doing qi gong or needle myself to catch something in the moment if I am able to.
2. Push through. This is not my preferred approach, but sometimes I am in a situation where it is unsafe to have have an anxiety attack or other mental health crisis, i.e. I'm driving on the freeway. It's more like pushing through until I can get somewhere safer to opening and sit with what is happening to me.
3. Ride it out. This is when I just have to give myself a lot of space and let my mood run its course. Sometimes this has to happen when I am not able to do my usual interruptions. So I cancel my schedule for the day, lay on the couch, Netflix, order delivery, and REST. (This is the where I am at today. I peel myself away from the computer and lay on the couch with the cat and a book to distract me. This blog will be edited tomorrow.)
4. Prevention. This is where therapy, art, tai ji, diet, and overall wellness habits fit in. This is avoiding burn out. This is also boundaries – saying “no” when I don't have capacity and BEFORE I reach capacity.

There are more choices than this and sometimes the responses overlap, i.e. therapy can be prevention or an immediate interruption depending on the timing. Sometimes other people are involved in my care. My partner always takes care of dinner and cleaning up on my therapy days. Trusty former roommates have walked my trusty dog on down days.
What has been humbling during the pandemic is re-learning my relationship to mental health and my role as a healing practitioner. The collective emotional strain is real. The primary, secondary, tertiary trauma and grief is real. My threshold for feeling “okay” are not the same. My recovery times are not the same. My prevention is not the same. What I have access to is not the same.
What I am continuing to learn is that my relationship to my wellness is dynamic and it always has been. My body, mind, heart, and spirit fluctuate, respond, expand, and contract. Medicine cannot be effectively practiced in a static, non-adaptive way. In order to show up for others, I need to be engaged in my own healing actively and consistently. It is not about being perfectly well, but being informed and held. Being in relationship with my limits means I can practice medicine more safely and compassionately within an ever-changing context.
[This is written from personal experience and is not medical advice or therapy. I am not a mental health therapist. Please seek the support you need if you are struggling <3]