Mental Health: Movies & TV Shows

There was a time when I was so eager to fit in and would watch the movies that I thought ensured this, whether I truly enjoyed them or not. I think I deluded myself at the time into thinking I was a fan of the gross-out, nailbiter, horror movies my friends and family touted as great entertainment. I sat through the black and white suspense filled thrillers and 90’s slashers alike. A small part of me was disturbed, but I shrugged it off. I assumed that being terrified of the storage area our washer and dryer were housed in in the basement because I thought the villain from Scream was lurking in there was par for the course.

I am not sure when the switch flipped because I still remember being fourteen and rewinding a particularly gruesome scene from Final Destination so the guests at my Halloween party could watch it a few times over; laughing. We laughed! Yet, in short order I became increasingly more squeamish and unsettled by death scenes. Horror movies were out, but I could still watch crime procedurals like CSI:Miami without much issue.

At nineteen I was a newlywed, spending my Saturday afternoons watching back-to-back episodes of CSI:Miami with my husband and then suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. It was making me paranoid. A supernatural being, some monster fabricated in someone’s imagination, that’s something entirely different than everyday people being murders, rapists, and kidnappers. Most of the episodes have faded from my memory but the two that remain involved the murder of children and I think that may just be what broke me.

A decade later and the list of things I can watch without triggering serious anxiety and spiraling depression is growing smaller and smaller. It is no longer just blood and gore, which I would imagine is a trigger for many people. If there is vomiting I cannot watch it. Even hearing it has become too much to bear. I don’t know why people think it is hilarious but it is a massive trigger for my anxiety because it plays on a phobia. My brain can no longer fathom most action movies because all of those unnamed people that are not even extras, they’re probably just CGI cars on a bridge going down, destroy my heart. The part of my brain that could detach and suspend reality for awhile to be entertained is broken.

I look at all those implied deaths and instead of seeing it as a necessary peripheral to the storyline, my brain puts me in that situation and I think, “I would die. I would die right there with my children, because there is no way I could get them out of their car seats quickly enough.” How could I run with children? They wouldn’t be quiet and they’d give us away. I wouldn’t be savvy enough to survive. A million ways I could die and be unable to save my children in all of these outlandish situations runs through my head as if I am in a life and death situation, sending adrenaline surging through my body and creating an ache in my heart at the mere suggestion that hundreds of people like me and my kids just perished while the ones who were written to live carry on.

For the second night in a row I am sitting here on the couch by my husband, headphones on, blasting Z88.3 while he watches an action movie that I want to see too but cannot. I tried to sit here without the headphones last night while Independence Day:Resurgence played out on my television but after the first wave of deaths occurred I checked out. It was hard not to look up when I could hear, so I drowned it all out. I walked in on Logan tonight and all I saw was a young child in someone’s arms, crying, while they tried to escape a facility that was under attack and that small snippet, that tiny glimpse, twisted my heart. A lump caught in my throat, tears welled up and I hurriedly grabbed my daughter’s emoji headphones and plugged them into my computer in another attempt to drown out a movie my husband lovingly warned, “Is not your kind of movie.”

Not my kind of movie...The list grows. Sometimes I feel as if my ability to cope is getting worse, but maybe I am just so inundated with negativity in the real world that being bombarded with it in something I am using for entertainment and escapism is too much. I am not sure what the reason is, only the reality. It really limits what I am able to watch, but knowing my limits is a good thing. While I am a Marvel fan and am disappointed in all of the MA ratings on the series that are on Netflix, I try to remind myself that there are worse things my inability to cope causes and if I have to avoid pretty much every medical drama, crime procedural and nearly every R-rated movie, then so be it.

However, finding it harder to watch any action movie for the reasons I stated about seeing myself in the fleeing civilians, is frustrating. When Little House on the Prairie becomes such a trigger for my depression that I have to write it off, then I have reached a new low in my coping. Then again, if you have ever seen the two-part episode entitled “May We Make Them Proud” then perhaps you may understand why I was destroyed. The worst part of that one is my Mom tried to warn me but I let curiosity win and regretted it ever since. I was so emotionally distraught after that episode that I took a sleeping aid that night to help me sleep and instead lay in a drugged stupor, in and out of consciousness, immediately remembering the upset as soon as I realized I was conscious. It was a rough night and to this day I want to re-write that episode because it was unbearably heart-wrenching.

Sometimes I feel like I am on the outside looking in on life, watching everyone else enjoying it without a second thought. They watch whatever they want, while I can’t even watch the things I want. They can feel the sadness from a story and leave it at that. They can witness the carnage and see it for what it is, a movie. I hope I can strike a balance one day, instead of continuing down this path. It will start with learning to cope with my reality, though. That is why I am sharing this as another facet that my mental health struggles impacts. I cannot process movie scenarios because I cannot even process my own heartache, fear, stress, anger, etc. If I am unable to be present in the here and now because facing it is too much for me to handle, then it makes sense that the entertainment I crave is benign. It needs to be light-hearted, fun, and harmless. For now. Again, I am sharing my struggles not to say, “This is who I am,” rather, “This who I am, but this is not who I want to remain.”

It feels like a one-step-forward, two-steps-back battle some days, but I keep moving forward anyway. That is the point I always try to drive home: press on. You know your own triggers, and you know your own victories. Every day I get up and choose to fight is a victory. This is my current reality, but with a whole lot of prayer, support and strength from God, I am striving toward a future where if I cannot be entirely free, I can be victorious; a future where I can come alongside someone who is the trenches and lift them up, cheer them on and say, “You’ve got this!”

Mental Health: Dental Hygeine

It seems as if the world is trying to make room for an intelligent discussion of mental health. I do not possess a degree of any relevance to the topic, nor do I claim to speak on behalf of all those who struggle with anxiety and depression, and whatever other labels you can slap on my unhealthy mental state. I can only speak of my experience. If said experience resonates with anyone else, then I am glad to share. I, too, share in the fear of being shamed for divulging my battles, or even ostracized, but someone needs to say something so we have more people speaking up. All too often I have found that simply knowing I am not alone in my struggle is of great comfort. Since my anxiety and depression have far-reaching effects, too numerous to share in one succinct post, I will start with just one area anxiety and depression impact my life.

Oral hygiene is a topic most of us are well-versed in at a young age. One of my first college assignments in my Elementary Education course was to create a lesson plan revolving around teaching young children how to brush their teeth. My children's cartoons are full of songs about how to keep your teeth happy and clean. My point is: my teeth are not in bad shape for lack of know-how. Proper mouth care is pounded into our heads early on.

However, I was a lazy child. I took the path of least resistance and brushing my teeth was boring. This neglect resulted in cavities, but my tiny mouth initiated the need for several teeth being pulled. I had overcrowding and soon very crooked teeth. I remember being horrified as the adults around me discussed the potential for braces that wrap around your head. As if my self-esteem was not already microscopic! Thankfully, they offered me spacers first and the nightmare that those were yielded the necessary results. I still needed braces but they were not going to be the massive focal point that I had been warned of. I actually did not mind my metal mouth so much. Choosing new colour elastics to coordinate with the holidays was fun. At least, I assume that is why I documented my choices in my journal. Hey, I was thirteen!

The natural progression went to a retainer, which I was supposed to wear for quite awhile. However, I had developed a bad habit of chewing gum with them in. Chewing gum was one of the few ways I could even remotely cope with the anxiety surging through me. When I could not chew gum it was mints, a habit started in seventh grade when my state of mental health took a distinct nose dive.

Naturally, the plastic of my retainer was not meant to withstand such punishment and I wore holes in the thing. We were no longer living in Canada, so replacing it was not an easy task. I never did get a new one and my teeth very slowing began to migrate back into the snaggletooth smile I have today.

All through high school I did my best to maintain my teeth. It was a chore still but I realized more and more that I could work through the laziness, it was the mental block I could not so easily power through.

My parents both taught at a private Christian school, the same one I attended tenth through twelfth grade. It was a K-12 school, so my younger brother also attended. My Dad is an early riser; and I mean he is often up before the sun. He insisted on being to the school early, and with a thirty minute commute this meant we were out the door at about 6:30am. I can recall many a morning trying to choke down breakfast (eating is a whole different ballgame) before rushing to the bathroom to brush my teeth. While everyone was being ushered out the door I would be standing over the sink, brushing and gagging. The anxiety of trying to move through the motions in a hurry made me gag, and so brushing my teeth was not an enjoyable task to say the least.

I associated brushing my teeth with being in a hurry for years and would rush through the process. Trying to do anything more was tedious. Just last year, I was able to go to the dentist for the first time in eleven years. Part of me was holding out hope that I was not so full of holes I could sink but the truth was not surprising either. I had cavities in the double digits. Ugh!

Over those eleven years my germ phobia had dissipated and then reared its ugly head many times. Shoving a brush in my mouth that just sat in the bathroom with all of the other fun stuff that goes on around it made me shudder. I would stop brushing my teeth and just use mouth wash if I feared my brush was too germy that even dousing it with boiling water was not going to be enough until I could get a new one.

This past February I got Invisalign in an effort to actually like my smile again. The first day with those plastic pieces in my mouth was brutal. I felt gaggy all day and feared that we had just sunk a lot of money into a failed experiment. I did adjust though and things were going well until I hit a wall. I got a cold that produced a lot of mucous, which made me gag. The gagging made me anxious, which made me gag more and said gagging was a predominant feature once more every time I tried to brush my teeth.

When you take out your braces you need to brush your teeth before you put them back in and that means the need for brushing my teeth was upped to at least three times a day, which does not sound like much since that is the standard but I started to dread it. I began to leave my braces out for longer stretches of time. I realized I was leaving them out for longer and longer periods of time and was in danger of rendering the whole endeavor fruitless. So, that is about where I am now. Breathing through my nose in an effort to stave off the gagging fit, while my daughter dances around my bathroom singing, “I love you, Mommy! I love you, Mommy!,” in an effort to distract me.

Mind over matter. It is easier to flippantly say than to put into practice. I have thrust my toothbrush into the back of my mouth in an effort to hit the spot the hygienist said I was missing at my last cleaning. I apparently put so much effort into at least getting that done in between the singing, hyperventilating, and gagging, that I forgot to floss. I literally forgot in all of those moments, because it was all I could do to get my teeth brushed without it triggering a series of gags that left my stomach unhappy.

That was apparently my downfall. I walked into my cleaning today anxious from a battle of the wills that I lost with my gag reflex this morning and just anxious in general about having to lay still for so long with my mouth wide open. I really hate going to the dentist! But I took deep breaths, I prayed all morning, and was relieved that my teeth are still being nudged back where they belong.

My happiness was short-lived. The kids both walked out of their cleanings with a report of two cavities apiece. My heart sank. The dentist told me that it is likely their diet and I thought, “Of course it is! They eat fruit snacks and drink juice, they love Dum Dum pops and fruit…” My children are also picky. By picky I mean my son will find the tiny strands of cabbage and onion in the noodles from Panda Express and meticulously remove them all. He does not like much and neither does his sister. I have his doctor monitoring his weight because he has not budged in a year so that concerned her, so I just stood there silently mulling over the frustration of how I must have failed to assist them in brushing properly and I have fed them all the wrong things but if I don't they do not eat and I am at a loss. Then it was my turn for the cleaning portion of my visit.

It went fine. The x-rays made me gag but that is par for the course. The rest was typical and the hygienist was very friendly and put me as much at ease as you could expect from me in that situation. Then one of the dentists came in to examine my x-rays and my heart started pounding as he stared at them for a long while, enlarging each one and just staring before he finally began marking little red dots on the printout of teeth in front of him. I knew what that meant… cavities. He asked if I flossed and completely deflated at that point I just softly said, “no.”

He looked in my mouth, stuck a pointy instrument into my tooth and declared that I had another one. He spoke to his hygienist and almost shook his head and and laughed the sort of laugh that indicates something like, “I try to warn them,” and said, “she doesn't floss.”

I was in a bad state at that point. I tried to reason with emotions but depression hits me like a brick around this time every month and it was not doing me any favors as I stood at the counter, waiting for the printouts of how much all of these cavities were going to cost us. I felt so angry, defeated, discouraged and hurt.

I try! I fight every day to overcome the apathy that gives way to laziness, the depression that encourages the apathy and hurt, the anxiety that makes me avoid tasks because facing them is too hard. Taking care of my mouth should not be a battle beyond I get lazy and it is boring but it is so much more than that and I resented being made to feel so small, like a child who had taken a cookie from the jar without asking and spoiled her appetite.

I lost my composure. I stood there too long and the tears started welling up, and when I poked my head into the waiting room to ask my husband what sort of fillings he wanted for the children my voice betrayed me in a quivering mess. The kids looked at me wide-eyed and my daughter exclaimed, “Are you okay?!” No, I was not but I knew if I answered the rest would come out. The tears spilled out, despite my best efforts and as I made my way out to the waiting room I had to sit to tighten my shoelace and finally answered my daughter. I felt like a fool as I said through sobs that I had cavities because I do not floss but I try so hard not to throw up every time I brush my teeth that….” I said something like that anyhow before hurrying out of the office and finishing my thought as we all walked to the van.

I cried all the way home, about a million things really. I felt like a fool. I could hear my Christian peers sighing at how little faith I must have to be plagued by something so ridiculous. I could hear the world rolling their eyes at all the excuses I am making for myself.

The thing is, in choosing to acknowledge these things about myself I find some freedom. This is not how I am meant to be, no, but I do not resign myself to it by admitting to my mental battles. They are embarrassing, and I am constantly surprised at how far-reaching my battle truly is, but I think God has been opening my eyes to the far corners of the struggle for a reason. This is just one of the many ways anxiety and depression and the phobias I deal with impact my day-to-day life. My victories may be minuscule to the outside observer but every day that I get out of bed, take care of my children and husband, while remembering to brush my hair, or remembering to do things like eat, is a victory. I think a lot of us are facing struggles we are afraid to share, but you are not alone. Sometimes that is all we need to hear for today to be a better one.