Copyright 2023
Joe Baker, Boiling Springs
A note to the reader…
This is a subject I’ve avoided writing about since I
first became interested in writing sometime in high
school. The very thought of
it filled me with shame and terror, and it still does.
I changed my mind in part because I listened to an interview
with the writer and advocate Virginia Sole-Smith, some of which rang
very true with me, and some of which made me angry. Her podcast and newsletter Burnt
Toast are also worth paying attention to.
I also changed my mind because I’ve come to believe piping
up might help me, and it might help you too.
The discomfort on my part comes from the essential requirements
of good writing in the personal essay form. The good stuff, the stuff worth writing
and reading, demands the writer lay his or her cards on the table, face up, in
plain sight. At the same time, the good stuff also demands that the heart of
the story isn’t really about the writer. Rather, it has to be about something:
something bigger. The challenge is facing
down the undeniable truth that the path to that bigger thing lies squarely
through your own heart, and other people are going to see it.
And that can take guts.
Understand, I’m basically a stodgy old man, so there will
always be a part of me that thinks this is not your fucking business. My desire
to be a kind and good man overcomes this, but just barely.
So I entrust this to y’all. I release it like a bird caged
for a very long time. Let’s see if it can fly.
JB, Boiling Springs
Summer, 2023
The Knee
In the late summer of 2021, I took a nasty fall in my garden
and separated my shoulder. I was alone at home when it happened, and I had a
hell of a time simply getting up. A friend discovered me sitting on my deck
with an ice bag on my shoulder, both knees bleeding, and in substantial pain.
Following x-rays, an MRI, and a visit to an orthopedic
clinic, the news about the shoulder was tolerable. It popped out of joint, but
popped right back in. The rotator cuff,
while plenty sore, wasn’t torn, so surgery wasn’t required. At least shoulder
surgery wasn’t required.
The fall was caused by my utterly ruined arthritic left
knee. The joint had been deteriorating for over a decade and was now just
bone-on-bone. I took a powerful prescription anti-inflammatory drug daily just
to be able to function. As a surgeon explained, the excess motion and
instability of the joint had stretched the supporting ligaments to the point
where they didn’t work very well. As a result, I was never sure if the joint
would support my 360-pound body when I put a load on it, and on that fateful
August afternoon, it did not. Given the potential for something much more
serious than a shoulder sprain, something had to be done.
But the knee replacement I needed wasn’t going to happen
anytime soon. A surgeon told me that before he’d even consider conducting the
procedure, I would have to lose at least 50 pounds. He recommended bariatric surgery
and booted me out the door. It was the sort of dismissive and shitty brush-off
lots of fat folks get. Having struggled with obesity most of my life, you’d
think I’d be used to it, but I’m not.
Bariatric surgery didn’t interest me. Neither did appetite
suppressing medications. In part that was due to the suite of side effects and
risks that come with each, and in part it came from experience. At 64 years
old, I’d lost more than 100 pounds three times in my life. I did it all three
times with a combination of exercise, a balanced and restricted diet, and
medical monitoring.
It goes without saying that I also gained more than 100
pounds a corresponding three times. We’ll get to that, but the point is: I knew
I could lose the weight, and I knew how to do it.
I also knew I would need help. My late and very dear GP of
more than 20 years helped walk me through two earlier weight loss episodes, and
he made it clear that help was essential, because eating disorders are the most
difficult of all addictive behaviors to treat. As he told me, when a patient
confesses to a drug addiction or alcoholism, the first and most obvious
treatment is to empty the house of dope or booze.
But you have to eat, every day.
Empirically, there are a wide variety of ways to
successfully and safely reduce your body weight. Weight Watchers, Noom,
surgery, medications, high protein diets, macrobiotic diets, vegan diets,
vegetarian diets, Paleo diets, you name it…they all can work. There is,
however, one thing that I think all successful weight loss programs have in
common: at some regular interval, weekly, bi-weekly, whatever, you have to stand
on a reasonably accurate scale in front of someone to whom you are not related,
and who does not love you. It’s also helpful if you’re paying that person for
expertise and sound advice. For me, and I think for nearly everyone, external accountability
is a critical component. Weight reduction isn’t all straight ahead biology: most
of it’s between your ears.
Following a health crisis and a near-death experience in
late 2014, as will happen to a 400-pound man, I had started working out two to
three days a week at a local gym and restricted my diet. I shed nearly 100
pounds in the process, but I couldn’t sustain the effort, and I had gained 50
of them back. I did continue my training regimen at the gym, and that’s where I
met my first guru. Chris was a recently hired trainer at the gym, and he
specialized in weight management. He’s the age of many of my interns. One lesson
I learned from decades of managing interns and young seasonal employees was the
value of keeping my mouth shut and listening to young folks. This does not come
easily to me. I like to run the show and I like to talk (ask anybody). But if
you shut up, swallow your ego, and abandon some assumptions, kids can sometimes
teach you as much as you can teach them.
Chris turned out to be that kind of young person. He’s
smart, kind, quiet and patient and he knows what he’s talking about. His
university training and his demeanor prepared him well for walking old farts
through the process, and we hit it off well. We looked at what I was eating and identified
the problems pretty quickly.
My blessing and my curse are the same: I’m a good cook. I’m
a first-generation American from an Italian immigrant family. I like to prepare
good, healthy food, and I know how to do it. Processed and fast food don’t do
anything for me. The blessing is eating well, the curse is liking it too much.
I didn’t change the food I ate very much at all. Instead, I reduced the
portions (and eventually the frequency), and I eliminated snacking. I was able
to do this by paying attention, and Chris had a neat little trick that helped
me.
Prior to eating anything, he asked me to snap a quick image
of it, and text it to him. The purpose was not to allow him to judge me or to reply
with a punitive message of some kind. To my knowledge, a year and a half into
it, Chris has never responded to these images with anything but support and
good humor. The purpose of the photography was simply to impose a brief pause
on me before I ate or drank anything. That little pause allows me to consider
and notice the food on my plate. Attentiveness prevents the possibility of
thoughtless eating. It makes me aware of what and how I am eating. It works,
and it turns out attentiveness has applications well beyond food. We’ll get to
that too…
Hand in glove with the restricted food consumption, was
physical training. This included strength training focused mostly on my core.
It also included aerobic exercise, in my case walking miles on my ruined knee
with hiking poles on a graveled path in my local park system. As Chris taught
me, successful weight reduction is probably 85% controlling and limiting your
caloric intake. The remaining 15% is aerobic and strength-focused exercise.
That 15% is, however, absolutely essential. As muscle mass and endurance slowly
and steadily increase, the body’s baseline need for calories (the Basal
Metabolic Rate or BMR) goes up. It can also temporarily reduce hunger, and it releases
endorphins that help you weather the psychological challenges.
In the late fall of 2021, the transformation began. Weekly
weigh-ins documented a steady decline of perhaps a couple pounds a week. The
measurable success encouraged me, and the descending regression line on the
spreadsheet I used to record my progress made the self-denial and sacrifice
bearable. By May of 2022, the necessary 50 pounds had melted off, and I
scheduled a consultation with a new orthopedic surgeon, this one with more social
skills. A date for the knee surgery was
scheduled for the fall, and I took pride in my success.
And in June, some quite remarkable things occurred, and
everything changed.
Father’s Day
Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the
day you find out why."
In my case that
second day was more like a week, but I did find out.
…………………………………………………………………………
On June 17th, a Friday, I went for a two mile
walk with some things on my mind. I lost my dad, Charlie, when I was 13, and it
was a big death. He was a good man, and I loved him. His birthday was the 17th,
and frequently fell on Father’s Day. He often jokingly complained about getting
stiffed since the celebrations were usually combined in our family.
So I walked along with Charlie’s ghost still over my
shoulder all these years later. I am of course used to it by now, but I still
feel it. As I neared the end of my walk, I remember thinking, and may have even
said out loud, “Boy, I could use a hug.” My phone rang. It was a young friend
of mine. He was the manager of the little nature preserve I was walking in. He
told me he’d seen my car at the parking lot and asked me if I could stop by the
small nursery he cared for tucked in an out of the way corner of the preserve.
I agreed and drove the short distance to the nursery.
As I pulled in, I found his car parked at the end of the
road, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. I got out and looked around,
and then I saw him, accompanied by his wife and a co-worker, walking up a path
toward me. He stopped in front of me, looked me in the eye, and said “I just
got fired 15 minutes ago.” He teared up, and began to heave and sob, and I just
tackled him, bear hugged him, and hung on for dear life. The 20-something
couple had just closed on a house the previous week. He loved his job and
poured his heart and soul into it. A change in management and a variety of
personal conflicts had led to his termination. He was, in that moment, utterly
bereft. He’s a good kid. I hung on tight until the worst of it passed then I
held him at arm’s length and told him he was a good man and that things would
work out and that I was proud of him. As I drove away 20 minutes later, I
remember thinking “Well, you got your fucking hug.”
The next morning, the phone rang, and a dear friend and
neighbor informed me that her sweet and decrepit old dog had passed in her
sleep during the night. A couple friends and I formed a burial detail. We spent
all morning excavating a sizeable grave (the departed poochie was a good-sized
Samoyed) and we laid her to rest in a treeline on her owner’s property. We went
out to dinner that evening and we all did our best to console the bereaved.
Following the previous day’s encounter at the preserve, I began to think the
universe had it in for my circle of friends. And maybe it did.
I’ve run college internship and apprenticeship programs for
a couple decades, and the world is full of nice
young people I mentored at some
point in their lives. I’m still in touch with a lot of them. On Father’s Day
morning, as I sipped my coffee, I came across an on-line article about a
technical subject that I knew one former intern of mine who lives in Hawaii
would be really interested in. I sent him the link in a text message. When I
sent it, it was probably about 4:00 AM in Honolulu.
My phone rang. My former intern was on the line. He’s as
good a young man and as kind and decent a person as I’ve ever met. His brother,
only a year older than him and his only sibling, had just died very suddenly.
He was in shock, his folks were beside themselves. We talked for a long time. I
did my best to calm and console him and slowly walk him off the ledge of
tragedy as best I could. It took a while, but we got there. By the time the
call ended, I was completely emotionally spent and overwhelmed by all the
trouble in this old world.
And then the phone rang again.
This time it was another former intern calling more or less
out of the blue. She’s a wonderful person and a great and accomplished
professional who has begun mentoring and teaching her own interns and young
employees. We’re really close because we’re a lot alike in some ways. She
asked,
“How ya doin?”
“Just OK, been a crazy weekend so far. You?”
“Just fine. So, I was thinkin about you this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! And, well, I hope you don’t think this is weird, or
anything, but, um, well…”
“Spit it out!”
“Well, I wanted to wish you a Happy Father’s Day.”
Now, I’m childless. When I was young, I didn’t think I
wanted kids, and by the time I thought otherwise, it was too late. She just
took my breath away. I wept big, hot tears of gratitude for a long, long time.
Fuckin kids…
I thought about that weekend for the next few days.
I thought about the circle of family and friends and mentees
that surround me. I thought about how much I was needed and relied upon, and
how much I was loved. I thought that at 65 years old, I wanted to stick around
and bask in it for as long as I could. I thought that I could do a lot of good
for a lot of people in this world and maybe pay these wonderful folks back for
all that love and trust and honest decency. I thought I owed them and owed myself
my very best.
I also thought that gaining and losing 100 pounds four times
in one life is abnormal and symptomatic of much bigger things. I thought that
sorrow and sadness and fear and depression had dogged me much of my life, and
that I didn’t want to live with it anymore.
It was a big, damned jolt.
Now I think most of the epiphanies I’ve heard about were the
product of an overwrought imagination and an underwrought intellect, and I
confess to plenty of cynicism and snark about all this, but this really was a
lightening stroke, much like a big love affair.
Over the next couple weeks, I tentatively reached out to a few
people I’m close to and asked them what they thought. This was itself a big act
of courage for me. In the era I grew up, men were raised to be laconic and to
keep their troubles and thoughts to themselves. In every case, I was rewarded.
I was made to understand I was beloved, relied upon, indispensable. I got a hug
so tight from one former intern I thought my head would pop off.
Fuckin kids…
It seemed I had a purpose.
CBT
In early July, I began to seek counseling for depression and
an eating disorder. The first challenge was simply getting in a door somewhere.
One of the absolutely worst aspects of our wretched health care system in the
US is access to preventative health care of all kinds, including psychological
counseling, weight management, and virtually any other care focused on
preserving and maintaining health. I am privileged to have excellent health
insurance, lots of experience navigating the health care system, all of my
faculties, reliable transportation, a comfortable income, and a post-graduate
education, and it took me until November to get an appointment. Had I been in
crisis or suicidal, I could have gone to an emergency department and been seen
immediately, but trying to avoid sinking to those depths was nothing but
hurdles. Those hurdles are a product of political influence, greed, and the
worst kind of cynical disregard for the well-being of others, a disregard that
is now fashionable and rampant in this country. The American system actually
runs on and depends upon a plentiful supply of the sick and suffering. There is
simply no profit in healthy people.
The journey to get in the door of a reputable practice
required innumerable phone contacts and emails, interminable searches on-line,
a referral from my GP, and endless patience. While I waited, I continued to
focus on my physical health and on educating myself on the effects of emotional
trauma, eating disorders, and the many paths to overcome these things. There was a lot of stuff to think about, and
a lot of it wasn’t much fun, but as I focused on my upcoming surgery date in
the fall, on educating myself, and on simply trying to be in all ways healthy,
things began to evolve in a new way. As I was about to find out, the rugged and
grinding path to successful weight reduction shares substantial mileage with
the path to mental health.
I finally got to meet my second guru a couple weeks before
my knee replacement. By that point I was 80 pounds lighter than I’d been about
a year earlier. I’d never spoken to anyone about my mental health before, and
it sure as hell wasn’t easy.
Fortunately, by dumb luck, I found the right guy. He’s a 50-something
PhD, an empiricist much like me, and he somehow made it through a rigorous
academic regimen and a long career counseling the heartbroken, addicted, and
hurting with an intact sense of humor.
Opening up was still hard, but he made it as easy as it could be. He also opened the door to the realities and
character of modern mental health care.
For the last quarter century or so, most mental health
counseling has focused on a careful, methodical, and rational process of
self-examination known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. The couch is still there, but Dr Freud is not…nobody
is going to ask you if you are lusting after your mother or father (unless, I
suppose, you actually are).
CBT posits that our emotional and physical reactions to
stimulus, to occurrences, to other humans, to situations, all pass through the
filter of our own perceptions of reality. How we feel and what we do depends on
how we see the world. How we see the world is largely a product of things we
learned and things that happened to us in our past, especially in childhood.
Some of these lessons were explicit, some were learned by observation, and some
came from pleasurable or traumatic experiences. They constitute our internal
narrative: who we are and what happened to us. These perceptions can be
accurate and healthy, poisonous and completely false, or somewhere in between. Modern
psychological counseling focuses on a careful examination of our own
perceptions of reality, and it does this through regular journaling and regular
discussions with a trained clinician. The above is a greatly simplified description
of what can be an enormously complex process.
If you want to know more about this, there’s some resources at the end
of this essay that should help.
My own journey through this process (9 months and counting)
has taught me a great many useful things. Among the most important, in no
particular order, are:
- The simple act of frequent and regular
introspective journaling following a prescribed structure is routine. It is
habit. In this sense, psychological and physical change for the good are much
alike. Indeed, they’re inseparable. Simply put, good habits replace bad ones.
-
Many folks who struggle with depression fall
prey to addiction, because feeding the addiction is pleasurable and a relief
from misery. In my case it’s binge eating. Again, it’s the most difficult
addiction to overcome, since you can live a long and happy life without drugs,
alcohol, tobacco, gambling, etc., but not without food. Further complicating
matters is the shame and prejudice fat folks deal with every day. That shame
and prejudice is traumatic, especially for kids, and each trauma invites more
binging, and more binging makes you fatter, and more fat brings more trauma,
and so on. It’s quite literally, a death spiral. I’ll spare you the details.
Every fat person, indeed, every victim of any kind of shame, bigotry, and
prejudice, has a story. All of them are ghastly.
-
Addicts hurt themselves, and also other people.
You can become so full of anger, self-loathing, dishonesty, fear, and sorrow,
it can blow up nearly every good thing in your life. When you most need love
and support, you can drive it away. Addiction and depression create a bleak
landscape of loss and pain, most of it self-created. Nobody should inhabit that
landscape, but lots of us do.
-
No one asks for or deserves trauma or injury.
The universe is random, and trouble falls out of the sky. It lands on everyone
at some point or another. We are adaptively programmed to expect, notice, dwell
on, and anticipate trouble and misfortune. That evolutionary programming helps
keep us alive and prepared for the worst. What is much harder for all of us to
do is appreciate and notice the many good things in each of our lives.
Love, kindness, lucky breaks, great opportunities, beauty, grace, can all be
taken for granted or even missed entirely.
-
Attentiveness is key to a better and healthier
life. Noticing what you’re eating and what you’re not. Noticing the good as
well as the bad. Noticing changes large and small. Noticing your mood and
emotions, and the moods and emotions of those around you. Noticing the moment
in lieu of anticipation or of reverie. Listening. Silence. A quiet and calm
mindfulness of the world within and without is always your friend.
-
Everyone’s regimen is different. I have opted to
go without anti-depressant drugs or appetite suppressants, and I have opted not
to undergo bariatric surgery. To date I’ve been successful without these
things. Other folks may need all three to succeed, and maybe I will someday.
That’s perfectly fine. People who have successfully used medications and/or undergone
surgery will tell you that they also had to develop a routine and commit
themselves to change, and that it was a lot of work. The important thing is finding
your own path.
-
I am as irreligious an old pirate as you will
ever meet, but I do know people whose path to a happier life has been guided in
part by their faith. I will say that my own practice includes meditation nearly
every day, in part because it clears my mind and forces me to live for at least
a short time in the actual present moment. I had a discussion about this with a
devout friend and walked away thinking that prayer and meditation share a lot
of common ground. CBT shares a certain amount of real estate with Stoic
philosophy and Buddhist thought and some aspects of many religious and
philosophical traditions that have been around for millennia. There is nothing
new under the sun.
I’m pretty damned sorry I waited until I was 66 to get help.
At Christmas time, during my knee rehab, I had dinner with a young mentee back
from working in California to visit his folks.
I told him what was going on and I shared my regret at not doing this
long ago. He’s 28. He swallowed a mouth full of dinner, took a sip of beer, and
regarded me from across the table for a long moment before he said, “Well, you
weren’t ready.” Out of the mouths of babes…
Fuckin kids…
The Heart of the Matter
So much of what has happened to me in the last year and a
half seems dramatic and even miraculous in broad perspective. As I write this,
I weigh 116 pounds less than I did when I began the process in late 2021. More
importantly, I feel more satisfied and centered than I have in a long time,
maybe ever.
But this was no miracle. It has instead been a slow and
intentional journey through mostly unremarkable and repetitive routine. I track
what I eat and when. I track my exercise regimen. I meditate and write each
day. I see my weight management coach and my therapist every two weeks. I remain
mindful. I listen. I submit to the discipline with all the patience I can
muster.
I have, of course, given up some things I like. I suspect
most of you reading this can enjoy a dish of ice cream, or a few beers, or some
nachos, thoughtlessly and without much care or consideration. I miss that
carefree liberty, and I probably always will. Understand that I can be relaxed,
and I enjoy my food and drink perhaps more than I ever did, but I will always
have to pay attention to it, track it, and check my worst instincts at the
door. There is no end to the path I’ve chosen.
It's also worth saying that I’m not “cured” of anything. The
depressed, angry, fat guy is still there. He’ll go away when I do. What I have gained is a set of tools for
dealing with him, and a sense of rueful understanding of just who he is, and
how he got that way. I will never make excuses for the worst of his excesses,
but I have learned he is hardly unlovable. He is an imperfect soul trying to
make his way in the world, and trying to be better, and that’s all I or anyone
else can ever ask or expect of him or of anybody. I understand completely that
everything could go south again, and I could wind up right back where I started
or worse, but I try each day to not let that happen.
What I have lost, in every sense, pales in comparison to
what I’ve gained. I can wax ecstatic
about it all, but you don’t need to hear all of that. I will say that I’m not
only a smaller man now, but perhaps a better one, and certainly a happier one.
Much of my sadness and regret has been replaced by gratitude. I find that I
don’t spend much time these days reflecting on the things that have happened to
me or the things I wish I could change or could have done differently, or even
on past accomplishments that I’m proud of. Instead, even from the perspective
of a man much closer to the end of life than the beginning, I seem to be full
of anticipation and plans for the future.
That seems like a good sign, no?
Barking
The
moon comes up.
The
moon goes down.
This
is to inform you
that
I didn’t die young.
Age
swept past me
but
I caught up.
Spring
has begun here and each day
brings
new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday
I got a call from the outside
world
but I said no in thunder.
I
was a dog on a short chain
and
now there’s no chain.
Jim Harrison
Epilogue: Help (if you want it)
If any of this sounds like it applies to you, pause and ask
yourself a question: Do I really want or need to do this? You have the only
opinion that matters here.
If you’re a fellow fatso, consider first if that bothers you,
and if so, how much. The fat content of your body has no relationship to your
value as a human being. You are just fine as is. There are a lot of real loud
voices in our society more than ready to try to rub you into the ground over
it, and the world is full of cheap jokes, slights, and ugliness directed your
way. One way to confront all that noise is to insist without animus on your own
right to dignity, to love, and to the respect that is the due of every human
being. That can take a hell of a lot of fortitude. It can be helpful to
understand that lots of prejudice comes from other wounded souls who need to
belittle other people to ease their own misery. The world is full of trouble,
and not all of it is yours. Compassion can be helpful. Counseling can also be
helpful.
I can tell you that my own calculus was influenced by
consequences both physical and psychological (see above) and profoundly
personal. I am walking around with a half dozen serious and chronic physical
consequences of obesity, all of which are a lot better now, but none of which
will ever be completely cured. The psychological injuries are also better but
also permanent. I kept my own counsel, I made up my own mind, and I followed my
own heart. You should do that too. I don’t think you need “saving”, whatever
your troubles. In my experience, you can’t really save anybody anyway. People
by and large save themselves.
If you are thinking about changing things, do understand
that your physiological and psychological selves are inextricably linked, and
your best chance of making a change is through addressing both. Your specific
path will be different from everyone else’s, just as your own problems and
story are unique to you.
Help with the psychological side of things can come from
many places. There’s on-line personal counseling (thanks to the COVID
pandemic), face-to-face, one-on-one and group therapy, lots of good empirical
information on the web and in books, and a variety of spiritual and
philosophical approaches you might find helpful. There’s a starter list below.
I cannot emphasize enough that there is no shame in seeking
help. When I started therapy, I was
chatting with an old friend I’ve known for 25 years or more and discovered to
my amazement that he’d been in therapy for decades. He’d undergone a truly
shocking childhood trauma that involved a violent parent, and the counseling
had given him the tools he needed to put the trauma in its proper place and
context. When he finished sharing some of his story with me, he ended it with
“Good for you man! I don’t know why the hell everyone doesn’t seek counseling!” He’s got a point there…
Resources:
-
American
Psychological Association: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
-
American
Psychiatric Association: Eating Disorders
-
Feeling
Good David D. Burns
-
National
Institutes of Health: The Binge and the Brain
-
American
Psychological Association: Mindfulness Meditation
There’s also all kinds of good and effective help available
for folks that are interested in healthy weight reduction. All of it will work
a hell of a lot better if you’re also addressing your mental health at the same
time. As with mental health you can consult with someone remotely or in person,
and there’s good information in abundance in print and on-line. Here’s two good
places to start.
Resources:
-
Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention: Losing Weight
-
Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention: Physical Activity for a Healthy Weight
These on-line resources are obviously just a starting point
and are good places to begin educating yourself. There are a couple points of
emphasis to remember whenever you’re surfing through the messy wilderness that
is the world wide web.
- The above sources are from reputable
organizations and entities, and the information they contain is factual. If you
don’t know it already, the web is full of harmful, hateful bullshit, and people
with an agenda. If it sounds too good to be true, it almost surely is. When
someone starts asking for money or personal information, be extremely
suspicious.
-
Online data, books, publications, and
periodicals are incredibly useful. In my experience, they are no substitute for
finding a good caregiver, and forming a relationship with that person.
Obviously you won’t hit it off with every provider, and you might have to look
for awhile, but the reward can literally be life changing. Depending on your
specific financial situation and your insurance, some of this care might be
partially or completely covered, and it can take a hell of a lot of work and
time and frustration to find out. It’s well worth the effort and the money.
A final thought: If you’re contemplating all of this, you’re
possibly doing so from a dark and daunting place. One of the few things our
mental health system is good at is responding to emergencies. If your troubles
have driven you to consider self-harm, dial 988 right now and get help.
Please don’t try to address a tragedy by causing another one. You don’t deserve
it, and those around you don’t either.
If you are simply daunted by the enormity of the challenge,
try to calm yourself, and remember that success in self-care is about routine,
small changes, modest increments, patience, and paying attention. A sense of
humor and some self-awareness are also helpful. Just take a step, the next one
will follow.
And remember, you have lots of company. I’m here too.
.JPEG)
