I touched briefly the other week on stressing the importance that AFL is not strictly for those with a physical chronic illness, but also for those who suffer from forms of mental illness. Many of us have a tendency to disregard mental illness because we can’t directly relate with the exact pain or difficulty the person is dealing with. Sure, we can all relate to physical pain in some way, shape, or form. We have all felt physical pain. Yet, when we get to the mental level of pain, it is outside of our empathetic stratosphere and we lose the ability to relate to the exact specific pain our friends are dealing with. I know this because I was one of those people. In my arrogance, I used to disregard mental illness quickly. That was, at least, until I was affected by mental illness in a two-fold nature.
I’ve spoken about some of the mental illness I “suffered” a couple summers ago. Yet, I haven’t truly spoken about it. Not in depth. I was, in all honesty, embarrassed and at the same time hesitant to talk about it because I know it’s only a fraction of what some people deal with. I have often typed out my story, or begun to talk about it with someone, only to quickly backpedal or press delete because my story is only a pebble in a giant pond of mental illness and I was afraid to be responsible for more people disregarding others and creating more stigma. Yet, I see now that this is the very way we destroy stigma; by talking about our own stories, big or small. So here’s my entire story of struggle with my form of mental illness.
Often, we tackle physical bodily problems without much regard for the mind, yet it was my physical ailment that helped introduce mental illness into my life in a significant fashion. It was through Ulcerative Colitis that mental illness re-manifested itself in an unseen form to attack me, and I can say wholeheartedly that I was in no way prepared. Yet, let me start from the very beginning, and for that we are going back a few years.
To get some background, we have to travel back to my high school days. With the exception of grade 8, I have always been pretty much rail thin. I’ve never been amazingly muscular but I’ve never been amazingly heavy. I’d probably classify myself as nerdy fit and I had never had any reason to seriously hammer the gym. I had always been active. That is, until my university years. Like just about everyone, I had gained my freshman fifteen, but then that turned into 30, and then showed no real signs of slowing down. I had left high school at probably about 140lbs, and by my third year of university I had hit a whopping 185lbs and totally inactive. I still remember looking in the mirror and thinking, “Woah, okay my body doesn’t suit 185lbs of fat, so let’s do something about this.” And thus began my journey of getting in shape. This is good right? Right, well, until it becomes an obsession.
I worked out, and I did it hard. I had help of many friends along the way and I learned a lot on the way. I widdled myself down to 165lbs with weightlifting and kickboxing. That was great, but then I got into Jiu Jitsu, a weight class dominated competitive martial art. I loved it because with the weight classes I was finally motivated to lose that last little bit of fat, get a full six pack (which I was obsessed with), and enjoy the sport. A friend of mine even recommended I drop down a weight class and fight at 158lbs, I could make it after all. So I did, and began my cut. I dropped even further to 160lbs, and then 155lbs. It was at this point that I began to really enjoy my results. The problem was, no one else agreed. My mother became worried, my friends all teased me, and I grew evermore persistent. I thought my friends were teasing me because I had too much weight still, and my mom was always worried, so whatever. I kept losing weight and I kept fighting. I started only eating half plates of foods. Meat the size of my fist, 1 cup of veggies, and at most maybe a slice of rye bread with a little butter. Breakfast was 2 eggs and a slice of toast. Looking back, it was terrible but I still didn’t see it.
The first indications of an eating disorder occurred one Easter. I had starved myself so much that when I ate a full plate and dessert that I was so overfilled that I ended up throwing up 30 minutes after. Okay that’s not right…. But, as crazy as it sounds, I continued, terrified I would climb all the way back up to fat if I ate normal. It wasn’t until I saw a family counselor (for my parent’s divorce) that I first started believing my disorder. I realized just how skinny I had become, which at its peak was 149lbs, at a body fat lower than 8%. Not cool. It took me 2 years just from this point to battle that eating disorder and gain proper weight (for me up to 158lbs healthily). This all happened in the absence of my Colitis.
So you could say I was predisposed to mental illness before Colitis, but I fought it, I had won and I was heading forward to a bright future. But then Colitis ramped up, flared hard and I was back in the dark, spinning in circles, looking for the enemy. My first wave of mental illness after my flare was a bout of acute depression. Now, this really was an acute bout, and was nothing serious, or life-threatening, but nonetheless, it was real. I have discussed it before so I won’t dive too deep but I will say that for a brief period of time, it took all my energy to leave the house. I was terrified to leave. What’s worse is I began losing confidence and began to think very negatively. I thought my fiancé was going to leave me, no matter what she said. I began to think I was worthless. An anchor at best who was only good to be maybe a stay at home dad, while I relied on my wife to do everything for me because I couldn’t leave the house. My only escape was video games, and I relied on them heavily. I kept moving forward with the thought of, “just get through today, tomorrow will be better I hope.” The days turned into weeks, and the weeks to months. Switching medications didn’t help my health and the cycle of lack of hope continued. At least once September came I was leaving the house for school, but even then this left me feeling alone. I was terrified to talk to classmates. I was the weirdo that couldn’t be 20ft from a bathroom and left class a lot. Truthfully, I can’t tell you why it stopped. But come November, I began a Paleo diet, things got a little better, and I rode that for all it was worth! My friends and fiancé helped me so much. They got me out of the house, accepted my condition, and helped me cope. It definitely helped that I’m stubborn and wouldn’t give in, but to know exactly why I snapped out of it, I have no idea. But the battle was far from over.
A year later, the depression turned back into an eating disorder. My Colitis turned from annoyance and embarrassment into full-fledged pain. My stomach would hurt so bad at completely random times, yet to me I began to associate it with food once again. Food became the bad guy and I wanted nothing to do with it. I began eating like a bird again, this time not associated with my weight but with my health. The hunger pain was worth the lack of acute pain associated with the Colitis. Without repeating myself, I will sum it up quickly. I basically had a repeat of my earlier disorder but with more vigor to continue to stay pain free. This went on for 5-6 months and I never bothered weighing myself to worry about the number. It wasn’t until I spoke to another counsellor that I was able to help myself. Jarek, my counsellor through UOIT mental health services, helped bring me back from a skeleton once again, helping me with anxiety of eating and identifying that my symptoms resembled an eating disorder (he can’t diagnose, so he didn’t but made a connection). This leaves us here in the present. I have battled back for the second time from an eating disorder and have gained the upper hand against the battle of mental illness.
Hopefully, as you guys can see, mental and physical illness can attack in tandem. It’s no laughing matter. Mental illness on its own is nothing to scoff and disregard. This stresses the importance that whether we suffer from a physical illness or not, we should all be banding together to fight all forms of illness, be it mental or physical. Together we can fight back from illness. Together we can all be healthy and we can all live long healthy lives. We just have to keep the fight up. We will endure above disease!
NOTE: Image from a user post from Robert Downy Jr. Facebook Page