Well here we are in September again at another start of a school year.  It seems like Easter was a few weeks ago but I guess time flies when you’re in the midst of a global pandemic.  The start of school is always conflicting for me, on one hand I loved school; I love to read and write, I love new books, I feel best when I’m in a routine.  But on the other hand, even with the best intentions, I wasn’t a great student.  I did fine, but if I didn’t understand something I was too embarrassed to ask for help, so things that might not have come easy to me became that much harder, and if something did come easy to me I tended to get bored and then put it off and procrastinate about it.  I wanted to enjoy the process…but generally, I didn’t.

I went back to school at 26 and figured that I would enjoy it so much more because I would be studying something I WANTED to study and since I had better habits in general, I thought that it would stand to reason that my school habits would also be better…well that didn’t turn out to be true at all.  Between working nights and taking care of our apartment and the other adult commitments I now had, school was actually MUCH tougher.  So while I’m a big fan of education and people pursuing their passions, formal education has, thus far, not been my jam.

What I am a fan of?  Independent learning and self-study courses.  If I’m interested in something then the first thing I’m doing is looking up books on the subject; googling author’s credentials, checking reviews, seeing what experts in the field recommend as required reading.  If I’m interested enough then I might go as far as to do a course if it’s something I can do mostly on my own, with a fairly lengthy window in which to do it.  In my career as a personal trainer and weight loss coach now there is a never ending number of topics I can study like this.  Sports nutrition, eating for weightloss, strength training, program planning, pre and post natal health and fitness, equipment specific and sport specific training, group vs one-on-one training…the options are endless…thus far (after getting certified as a personal trainer) I’ve gotten certified specifically in Healthy Eating and Weight Loss, Kettlebell, TRX, and Running Mechanics…currently reading about Plant Based Sports Nutrition and coaching language and cues.  

We all learn differently.  Some people wouldn’t do well with a self-study course, others won’t do well with having no choice but to sit in a classroom listening to someone talk.  For me I learn best through reading on my own and then (where applicable) just doing it.  The vast majority of what I’ve learned to manage my mental and physical health came through my desire to read about things that interest me. Some of the day-to-day coping mechanisms and skills that I use to manage my mental and physical health may have come from therapists or other medical experts but even those that did generally also came from them recommending a book for me to read.

Over the years I’ve had people use the term “got better” a lot in conversation about my health struggles. Something like “but you got better” or “how long did it take you to get better” or “how did you get better then” and I’ve always found that very confusing.  I mean yes, technically I am better; I’m better at recognizing and managing my emotions, I’m better at setting boundaries, I’m better at utilizing coping skills, I’m better at setting myself up for success, I’m better at avoiding things that trigger me.  But I’m not “all better” like I recovered from food poisoning with all my symptoms just having gone away…that’s just not how this stuff works.

And if you’re thinking I’m talking about my mental health here it actually, usually, doesn’t work that way for physical health things either.  If you’re diagnosed with high blood pressure and choose to try lifestyle changes to help manage that, it isn’t temporary, it’s something you will have to work at and be cognizant of forever.  I know now how to best manage the frequency and size of the ovarian cysts that I get so they happen much less severely and frequently, so I’m better at managing them now, but the situation is only improved when I am.  My cysts themselves didn’t “get better”.

The common denominator for “getting better” is learning.  Even if whatever it is that you are dealing with is best treated with medication, doing the research to know for sure that that is the right choice for you is the absolute best thing you can do for yourself.

For years I took whatever solution that was handed to me to treat my reproductive issues.  If they thought the next step was surgery, then I had surgery.  If the “only option” was a medication that induced temporary menopause, then I had hot flashes and mood swings for months (not to mention the insomnia and weight gain).  If I was in pain and they said they would give me percocet or morphine, then I took them.  I 100% believe that the doctors I was dealing with believed that they were doing the right things based on what they were qualified and educated to provide in those situations, but it wasn’t until I looked to other experts, in very different fields, that the idea even occurred to me to try altering my diet.  As a teen I accepted that I would likely be heavily medicated for most of my life and it wasn’t until I went to a counselor (in addition to my psychiatrist) that I considered learning coping skills and trying to adjust my mindset, instead of just assuming I’d never function without medication.

Huge sidebar, if you need medication, absolutely take it, I do still take medication to help me for both physical and mental issues when I need it. My point isn’t that you shouldn’t take medication if it helps you, my point is that you should know all the options and have chosen medication as one piece of a bigger picture.  The medication should help you enough that you can do whatever work needs to be done to help yourself that much more.  This is true for mental health issues as well as physical – if you have high blood pressure, then take the medication if your doctor recommends it, but also look at lifestyle factors.  

If your doctor feels you should be on medication, that might be the right answer but you still should know everything you can about that medication and how it works, AND if there’s anything else you can do to help the situation while you’re taking it.  (But please don’t just google it and read a bunch of stuff from random people on the internet.)  Most doctors don’t have a lot (or any) education in nutrition, so if you can see a nutritionist or dietician (after looking up reviews and credentials of course!)  I went to a naturopath when I was fed up with the endless cycle of treatment options and that is what helped break that cycle for me.  I needed a counselor along-side the psychiatrist to truly make progress with my mental health.  I needed my gym community to get consistent on exercise in order to be able to stick with my nutrition goals.

If there were three things I have learned about “getting better” that seem to be universal they would be 

      1. If you aren’t honest about the issue, you will never be able to fix it.
      2. Learning is the key.
      3. It usually takes a combination of things.

We don’t get better by blindly following one-size-fits-all advice.  We get better by seeing where things went wrong, owning our shit and getting informed about all the options we have, being honest about what we’re willing to do and then actually doing it.

One of my favourite lines in a song is from Tim McGraw, “I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.” And that’s how I answer people now when someone asks me now how long it took or how I got better – it took until now, today, this moment – but I’m also not done.