Swimming and kayaking

Two great exercises - swimming and kayaking have made for a fun weekend. Exercise is the best mental health treatment in the world I often think. Do I Need mental health treatment? I think we all need to guard our mental health. 

I was reminded of my psychiatric care when my eldest was small. The people around me thought it was postpartum depression but the psychiatrist did get it right - not postpartum but what is now termed PTSD. He guaged that I was suffering from a depressed incident in my past which had created anxiety on my part from going back to work but I had lost touch with the memory of why. A traumatic episode had reinforced the memory and caused my nervous breakdown. So there I was at a crossroads so I took the psychiatrists advice and rebuilt my mental health while staying home and raising our child. He said it would be hard and it was. Flashback after flashback finally revealed the hidden memory and gradually the new surroundings gave me the ability to refind myself. The new family physician was very helpful guiding me and I was sorry to have to find a new family doctor when we moved. He would be surprised to hear me say that because I only saw him a couple of times but he answered my few questions as I moved along that path of recovery which the psychiatrist had pointed out to me in our sessions when I was hospitalized with the nervous and mental breakdown. I was never embarassed about my breakdown but did find it to be weird that people in my new area over 700 km from where I had lived knew details of my health. I was definitely stronger by then (four years later) and simply built a coccoon around myself and ignored their comments. After all God said revenge is mine. So many years have passed now that I seldom think about any of that. I have my work to do and so passes my days. I never did converse with anyone on the subject so other than spotting a few items that were being repeated about my health record I never discussed that with anyone outside of the medical doctor that I was then going to and not actually very much with him as I was moving quickly past the limitations that were created by my breakdown. 

Although he did make a recommendation and I did give it a try (being a welcome person on the street) but quickly moved on from that and was working doing proofreading and copyediting at home (as well as volunteer secretary at Edward's Church which was also something that emerged from the same source) and let someone else do all that welcoming! I wasn't that good at it anyway especially if people asked me personal questions about my earlier health. I have no idea how they gained such knowledge and simply ignored the comment. 

Now all these years later, I still do have some limitations perhaps from the breakdown but they are mostly what I am like anyway. I prefer to keep to myself in as much as possible. Although I have done a lot of volunteering in my children's events when they were young and at Edward's Church although now I no longer do any of that. My volunteerism has been primarily as a patient partner in research projects the last six or seven years. Plus I have my newsletters that I publish for the DNA projects and one-name studies that I am involved in.