Mental illnessses are really serious, and out of curiosity, is anybody here going through depression,anxiety etc.?
I also experience and or have experienced anxiety and depression, and it has affected my yoyoing in some way (example, how “good” i think i am, my willingness to yoyo etc.). I would love to hear your stories and be there to talk with you if ever you need somebody to talk to! and addititonally, does it affect your yoyoing and if so, in what way?
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I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life, it just comes and goes. I like to think of it as more of a season than a disorder though [for me personally, Everyone is different]. Kind of like we have the Four Seasons here on Earth: winter spring summer fall. We also go through through seasons of the spirit. It’s okay to be depressed on occasion, but if it ever starts to get to the point to where you are having thoughts of taking your own life, I really encourage everyone reading this to seek help.
I also have ADHD, which is a developmental disorder. It’s intense. People joke about it all the time, but trust me, it is no joke.
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i have an amount of conditions/issues that makes me laugh out loud sometimes.
from most to least debilitating, narcolepsy, depersonalization disorder, depression, social anxiety, OCD, and cataplexy.
and i’m only 16. fml. 
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Wow, that sounds really tough. At the risk of getting too personal, and I do apologize if this is too personal, feel free to ignore me… how does that manifest?
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normally you’re just supposed to feel like you’ve never slept in your entire life 24/7 and fall asleep anytime and anywhere (i’ve fallen asleep crossing the road before… super scary), but it combined with my depersonalization so real life and dream life feel equally real, and each one leaks into the other. so sometimes i hallucinate in real life, making it like im dreaming but im actually awake, and i always have very realistic and rememberable dreams, making it feel like real life is happening, but im actually asleep. it makes caring about anything very difficult, because im so incredibly removed from everything, and i legitimately cant tell if whats happening is real or not most of the time.
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Dude, that sounds really exhausting (no pun intended).
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Also, on the subject of mental illness…
Diet is very very important. We live in a time where most of our food is heavily processed, and most of our food is exposed to toxins, both on the field and in the processing plants [additives and preservatives]. I am convinced that diet plays a major role in not only our physical health, but also our mental health.
To be clear, I’m not minimizing mental health or trying to sound insensitive. We need to be eating more whole foods/ raw foods/ fresh foods and [organic foods].
Little note about organics: not all organic foods are created equally, I’ve been sifting through all the jargon and rhetoric for almost ten years [and I still have a lot to learn…]. Basically, organic food is just plain, normal food. There’s nothing special about it, other than the fact that it wasn’t grown with the use of pesticides or herbicides or chemical fertilizers or antibiotics [all of these aka toxins]. A little bit of exposure to this stuff won’t hurt you too bad, but consuming trace amounts in our food several times a day, day in day out across years accumulates.
Pretty much all food in our country (USA) was grown organically up until the 1950’s when big ag started booming. Now, organic is seen as a luxury, which is totally backwards imo. It couldn’t get more backwards.
Eating a nutrient dense diet can, in some cases, cure mental illness. In most cases, a nutrient rich diet can at the very least alleviate some of the symptoms of mental illness. The hard part is, It’s not a magic pill that can be prescribed. It takes a lot of hard work and effort to eat well. Pills can treat symptoms, but only a lifestyle change can have any real long lasting affect on mental/ physical health.
Okay, I’m done ranting about food lol. I have a child with TONS of food allergies, so it is a subject close to my heart. Gut health is equally as important as mental health. They go hand in hand.
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In college I had a professor, who worked as a psychiatrist, who said he had never treated a physically fit person for mental illness. He made a point of it in his class.
He even had us do an exercise, literally an exercise as part of our class assignments, where we’d rate our state of mind from 1-10 and then exercise, and rate our state of mind afterward. Darned if he wasn’t right. Every time, I felt better after I exercised.
While I don’t think exercise is a magic cure all or anything, not by a long shot, it’s a good starting point to try.
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I hadn’t though of it this way before, but you’re totally right about the concept being bass ackwards. The idea that any food that hasn’t been treated with some sort of chemicals or altered in some way being a rare luxury is definitely a strange one.
I don’t have any wisdom here, just wanted to throw my hat in on the “deals with depression”. I really try to avoid thinking about it that way, though, as that seems to me like I’m almost resigning to the fact that it’s out of my control. I like your seasons analogy, and I tend to want to believe that it’s just a passing season and I’ll get through it.
But again, im a moron, and definitely do not know what the heck I’m talking about, so do not take anything I say as advice lol.
Hope everyone has a good day
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How exactly was that done? Did you rate your own SOM or did you have to take a little test or fill out a questionnaire or something?
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I think we had a little questionnaire. We did this multiple times per week.
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Every
Single
Day
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You are Totally right!
When I was much younger; I was always getting into fights. They didn’t last long.
Most fights last less than 20 seconds.
But they were always great exercise. And although I didn’t always win; every time I beat the snot outta the other guy; I Always wanted to get Ice cream.
It is a very positive rush to crush a dummy.
And is waaaaay less boring than push ups.
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I definitely have some depression, I was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, this past February, that is basically a neurological disease, my father died in my arms the may before last, so the pasts 20 months or so have been very weird and difficult, my neurologist actually is the one who suggested I started yoyoing. It helps with my hand and eye coordination, the minute I started i fell in love with it!, it’s very stressful but therapeutic in the same way if that makes any sense lol. I could write a book on everything that has happened since my father died. Seems like that was the first of many dominos to still to this day continue to fall. I tend to stay in routine, I work, yoyo, and play guitar. Not a very exciting life but it’s my life and I am doing the best I can to stay on a good path and not fall into drinking or drugs like I’ve seen a lot of ppl do with situations this or any other stress full environment or ptsd type of event. Life is hard, stressful, unfair, but extremely beautiful and everyone should cherish every moment we have here. Thank you for letting me tell my story, I tried to keep it as short as possible, I tend to rant a lot! Yo-yoing allows me to drift off into my own world for a few hours when I am throwing. thank you again!! God bless!
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How the heck did the nuerologist know that yoyos are still a thing? but regarding your situation, it seems tough. I hope that you would never come to the point where you give up on everything. Sorry to hear about your fathers loss, condolence.
I guess yoyos and instruments can be at the very least, items that can help us mentally. Yoyos and the yoyo community are some of those few things that make me want to stay alive. I also tend to rant alot, thats one thing we have in common.
Odd how im 11 and ive been suffering depression and anxiety for a year or more. The “season” thing that Smiley talked about is quite accurate in my case.
There are seasons where i feel alive and everything, and seasons where i feel depressed, become suicidal again etc.
I have not attempted to commit suicide YET and i do not encourage anybody to try and do it. I always daydream in class and always think that: i should appreciate the littlest things that make me happy, while im still alive. We are all gonna die anyway so why rush it?
I tend to live for the little things:
Possibility of a season 2 on my fav anime,
Getting a new yoyo,
Learning a new trick,
Etc.
And thats mostly where yoyoing helps: the fun, little things that i stay alive for
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A sure-fire way, for anyone, to alleviate unhappiness is step outside of our personal domes and do something to make someone else happy. I understand depression is not just unhappiness, but generally speaking, from my own experience, I experience genuine, long-lasting happiness when I get out my head and my own dark, dark thoughts and I conjure a way to make someone else happy. We all have the capacity to make others happy through simple or well thought out means.
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Something interesting that I just thought of after catching up on this article is how depression makes you, well, depressed, and anxiety makes you anxious, and a multitude of other conditions make you feel a multitude of different ways. but I’d say the worst way to feel is actually nothing. Being extremely tired all the time suppresses my ability to care, and before the narcolepsy kicked in fully, I was very depressed, and I have to say that I’d rather be depressed than careless. Because if you can’t care about anything, then nothing matters, and if nothing matters, then you truly have nothing to live for. You don’t just feel like you have nothing to live for. Luckily, I do still have a few things that I care any amount about, and those things are a few select people and yoyos. If I didn’t have those few things, I would have ended my life a long time ago. And not even because I’m sad. Just because, you know, why not? There’d be no upside or downside to anything if you were fully careless, so being alive would be equally as good as being dead.
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Haha lol, I have no idea!! I must say it helps, I have some rough days where my hands constantly shake, almost every night my vision goes blurry as well, according to him, throwing a yo-yo is very good hand eye coordination, he got very technical talking about it,my immune system is eating away at the optic nerve endings in my brain and spine, that is where 90% of our motor function comes from, a trillion nerve endings are firing every second just for us be able to move our hands, walk, talk, breathe. Everything we do to function as a normal person is based around the nerves in our brain and spinal core, it’s pretty intense stuff
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Sometimes I feel both misery and happiness at the same time. It’s like they are two entwined snakes forming a new snake. I guess for me, I have no unique problems. I feel for the people with actual conditions they have to tend to.
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