Herbal & Nutritional Supplements for Anxiety & Depression

I don't want to sound like a commercial, but I've found some herbal and nutritional supplements that are helping me with anxiety and depression.

First off, everything I've tried from the company WishGarden Herbs is fantastic. The stuff I use to help me relax for sleep is called Serious Relaxer. It has wood betony, valerian, hops, wild lettuce (a weed many of us have growing in our yards-aka lettuce opium-I saw some growing there today), and some other herbs. This stuff is amazing. It works for muscle stiffness as well as mental relaxation. I can't say enough for this product. The one I use in the daytime (2 or 3 droppers, twice a day) is called Emotional Ally. I've found it to be very effective. I also purchased the one called Deep Stress - the ingredients look very promising, so I'll soon find out how this one works for me also.

I take 8 fish oil capsules a day, which is reputed to aid with depression, although I started taking it for arthritis pain. It seems to be good for my hair and skin too.

Magnesium and calcium seem to be helping as well.

I take liquid B-12 when I need an energy boost.

My naturopath prescribed a supplement called Deproloft, an herbal/nutraceutical antidepressant. It's made by Thorne Research. It seems to be getting the job done during most of the day and evening. My worst symptoms happen when I first wake up, so recently I've tried to eat something right away, and then take the supplements ASAP. This morning I took the Emotional Ally liquid immediately upon awakening. The second most challenging time of the day is late evening, when I become something of an insomniac. That's when I do the Serious Relaxer.

I haven't had much luck with pharmaceutical antidepressants (most of them made me feel worse instead of better) and I am usually not particularly comfortable dealing with mainstream medicine, so I have gone the naturopathic route. I am fortunate to live near a major naturopathic college which offers excellent medical services at low fees.

Mean Bosses

I just ran across an article from "Fast Company" suggesting that "Being A Meaner Boss Will Help Your Company--And Make Your Employees Happy". What kind of weirdo would think that?

Here's the link to this depressing article: http://www.fastcompany.com/1830539/why-being-a-meaner-boss-will-help-your-company-and-make-employees-happy?partner=gnews&google_editors_picks=true

There was part of it that rang true, and that was the research concluding that disagreeable people attained greater success in the workplace (success meaning mainly that they make more money- not my definition of success, but many people in our society equate money and material things with success.)

A Job Where I Could Have Blue Hair

My friend Jamie has beautiful purple hair. It's almost the color of my house, only with slightly more magenta tones.

One day I was talking with Jamie, and I mentioned that I had sometimes considered dyeing my hair a cobalt blue color, or adding a few blue streaks. So Jamie gave me some blue hair dye for my birthday. That was two years ago, and the unopened box awaits me on my bedroom shelf.

Now, it just so happens that the time that Jamie gave me the blue hair dye was right around the time I was starting to get freaked out over the state of my bank savings. And of course, the reason that I was freaked out about my bank savings is that I am afraid to get a Job.

My brain is telling me that "They" (whoever "They" are) might not hire me if I'm older, or fat, or gay, or "overqualified", and "They" definitely won't hire me if I have blue hair! Never mind the fact that I probably won't have the guts to show up at these places anyway, and maybe I wouldn't like Them if I did.

So here is the conclusion I've come to: if I am going to get a Job, it needs to be a job that passes the Blue Hair Test. It should be a place where I could have blue hair. Whether I have blue hair or not.

The color of my hair is not the main issue, but it is a symptom of the problem. I just want to be able to freely be myself, and quit repressing myself, and not care what other people think of me.

Eddie Owens Martin Couldn't Relate to Society

"I built this place to have something to identify with, 'cause there's nothing I see in this society that I identify with or desire to emulate."  - Eddie Owens Martin, Artist, 1908-1986

Eddie Owens Martin (aka St. EOM) of Buena Vista, Georgia, a sharecropper's son with a 6th grade education, made a living as a fortune teller while building Pasaquan, the masterpiece outsider art installment in which he lived. He built his elaborate compound out of cinder blocks, cement, and various reclaimed materials, and painted it with mismixed Sherwin Williams paint from the local hardware store.

I want to go there someday. Here it is:

http://www.amazingsights.net/st-eom.html

Even Nice Dogs Get Insulted

In our society it is considered perfectly acceptable to make rude remarks about fat people. Lately while volunteering at the Humane Society, I've found that many people will also freely comment on fat dogs.

Yesterday I was in the kennel brushing a beautiful Shepherd mix named Sadie Lynn. A woman walked up and said "Isn't it terrible that anyone would let their dog get so fat?" Now, I happen to be fat myself, so perhaps it didn't occur to this woman that a comment like that might make me feel badly, too. In fact, I have a bigger percentage of weight over the accepted ideal than Sadie does!

                                                       "But I'm a good dog!"

I tell people who make these thoughtless remarks (and there have been several) that I walk and exercise Sadie frequently, and that Sadie is getting "in shape" (a phrase that implies that there is a certain kind of shape we should be...hmmm....) much faster than I am.

The other day I was about 25 feet away from a boy of about 7 who looked at Sadie Lynn and said "Look at that fat dog!"

To her credit, the boy's mom said, "Look, you hurt that poor dog's feelings! (Dogs are quite sensitive to human emotions and even if they don't understand all the words, they totally understand the tone of voice.)
And then the little boy said "I'm sorry, Doggie. You're a good Doggie." That moment improved my faith in humanity, at least a little bit anyway.

Dogs also get subjected to canine stereotyping/dog racism. One day I was walking a bully breed mix (probably Lab & Pit Bull) by the name of Sancho. He was the sweetest old dog you could ever hope to meet. One day I was walking Sancho back to his kennel, and Sancho flashed his famous smile at the people nearby, since Sancho loved all people and wanted them to know it. Some kids were delighted by him, and the mom noticed, and pulled the kids out of the way and said in a horrified tone, "Oh no, that's a Pit Bull! We don't want a Pit Bull." Sancho waited for months to be adopted even though he was the nicest dog in the place.

                                             "I Iz a Labrador Retriever I Promises"

Allen Ginsberg Worked for an Ad Agency

Before writing Howl and before Beat Generation fame, poet Allen Ginsberg worked for an advertising agency for five years creating ad campaigns for toothpaste and other consumer products.

During this time he was seeing a psychiatrist for depression. His psychiatrist asked Ginsberg what he thought would make him happy. When Ginsberg told the psychiatrist that writing poetry made him happy, the psychiatrist said, "Go do that, then," and so he did. He quit his job at the ad agency and went to San Francisco. And the rest is history.

Bukowski Worked at the Post Office

"There will always be something to ruin our lives- it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken."          -Charles Bukowski

The writer Charles Bukowski worked at the post office as a letter filing clerk for more than a decade. Before that, he worked in a pickle factory. In 1969 Bukowski accepted an offer from Black Sparrow Press publisher John Martin and quit his post office job to dedicate himself to full-time writing. He was then 49 years old. As he explained in a letter at the time, "I have one of two choices – stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve."

I remember reading his book Factotum and thinking, this guy is a master at describing the banality, inanity, and desperation found in so many modern workplaces.

He also said "If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose."

I Want to be Happy in the Morning

Sometimes I am, shall we say, less than perceptive about the manifestations of my anxiety and depression. Like, after I left my last real job eight years ago, my life got much better. I started volunteering at the Emergency Food Program. I turned their weedy yard into a highly productive vegetable garden full of lettuce, cilantro, collard greens, kale, tomatoes, beans, corns, and squash. I was having the time of my life.
My relationship was great, my home life was good, I felt excited about what I was doing.

But I would still have constant bad dreams about the workplaces where I had been so miserable. And I would still wake up every morning with a sense of dread and impending doom.

I kind of shrugged it off, saying I'm just not a morning person. True enough. I like to stay up till about midnight every night, and I pretty much always have.

It has finally dawned on me that I shouldn't be waking up every morning with a sense of imminent disaster. And I have just now realized that perhaps the reason I feel this way every single morning is that maybe somewhere in my subconscious mind I think I'm getting up to get ready to go to Work (capital W "Work", as in Job, as in Office, as in Corporation), not work in the garden, or work around the house, or work on an art project, or volunteering. Work, that bad place where I used to have to go. Even though I haven't been there in eight years now!

So this could be the reason that I am more likely to be deeply depressed first thing in the morning than at any other time of the day. It's because my conscious mind takes a while to catch up to the fact that I'm not going anywhere bad that day, not if I can help it anyway.

I'm RETIRED

Sometimes I wish my hair would hurry up and go grey so I could do a better job of looking RETIRED.

I wish I had more savings left, so I could just stay RETIRED.

I like Senior Discounts and using my AARP card because they make me feel so very RETIRED, the way I like to feel.

Dumb Spam from "Simply Hired"

I don't know how I got on the spamming list for "Simply Hired", but today I was brave enough to open the latest email they sent me. Their feature article of the day was

"Does Your Resume' Read Like an Obituary of Your Career?"

Hell yeah. It sure does!

Anxiety Over Volunteering in an Office

I have been volunteering at an animal shelter for the past eight months, working directly with dogs. The shelter needed help in the office with data entry and telephone work, so I volunteered for this.

Now, keep in mind that I've been volunteering there for several months, and I walk past the office area every day that I'm there. It hadn't bothered me at all. I look forward to going to the shelter, and pretty much enjoy every minute I spend there. In fact, it's one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life.

The night before I was going to work in the office, I started feeling weird. I was thinking I wouldn't like it, and thinking that the people in the office probably wouldn't like me. I was worried that maybe I wouldn't be able to do the job anyway, and then maybe I wouldn't like volunteering at the shelter any more.

The next day, I woke up really early and paced around my house nervously. I was worried about every damn thing, whether my clothes were OK, whether I would be able to learn things and remember them, whether I would say the right things, etc., etc. I felt ridiculous about the silly things that I was obsessing about. I sure hoped nobody would notice how nervous I was.

Well, I've done this assignment twice now, for four hours at a stretch, and as far as I know, nothing went wrong. I even got complimented on my performance (I hate that word "performance" in relation to work. Maybe I should think of a different word.)

Yesterday at the shelter office, there a few things that gave me anxious feelings. First of all, the supervisor was wearing a suit to work that day. He usually doesn't, so perhaps he was going somewhere special that day. For all I know, it could have even been a funeral or something. Evidently business suits trigger anxiety in me.

Then, he wanted to introduce me to his boss, who works in a corner office. That made me feel ill at ease too. He seemed like a nice enough person.

This whole experience has made me very aware of my strong desire to be free from these specific types of anxiety, since they are obviously interfering with things I want to do.

Trying to Figure Out Exactly What the Problem Is

I'm actually a very industrious person. I thought about trying to become a slacker, but I didn't feel I was very good at it. It's possible some slacker-type jobs might work for me- I'd have to identify what they are and find out about them. There must be some video store jobs left.

Interestingly enough, there is a clothing company called Ergophobia. They sell clothes for skaters and surfers. (There's that slacker image again.)

I think my fear is not connected to all types of work, but specific types of work, and in particular, certain types of work environments. The other part of the fear seems to relate to certain types of interpersonal interactions.

I am seriously phobic about office work and office-type environments, especially high-rise buildings. The picture you see above is making me feel queasy.

I've been in clinics and medical buildings with several floors, and they don't usually bother me. I've never worked in one, so maybe this is why.

High-rise hotels are a little weird for me, because of business travel associations. Ditto for airports.

Work or Volunteer Positions That I Liked

Looking back over my life, were there any types of work (paid or unpaid), that I mostly enjoyed? Here's the list:
- Working for two underground/alternative newspapers in the 70's- I wrote articles and poetry, and did layout/pasteup
- Cleaning hotel rooms. I liked the fact that I could think about whatever I wanted to while I was working, and it was good exercise.
- Being a Resource Assistant at the Women's Studies Union at the University when I was 18.

The next one is 30 years later....
- Volunteering at the Emergency Food Program. I planted and maintained the vegetable garden to provide produce for people in need.

And then.....
-Volunteering at the Humane Society. They let me hang out with the animals any time I want. I'm there about 3 or 4 days each week. Sometimes even more.

I'm not afraid of dogs.

I also like to proofread term papers and essays for my friend who is from Japan; she's in an MFA program, and the papers she writes are fascinating: art history, comparative cultures, social issues, and other interesting topics.

I Miss My Old Friends

Over the course of the huge bummer that was my career, I met some people I really liked. It's too bad that I associate these people with jobs and work, because that means it's highly unlikely I will ever seek them out. I'm kind of shy and socially avoidant anyway, so seeking out anybody is kind of challenging, but if the people happen to be former co-workers, chances are it won't be happening. This makes me feel sad. Maybe someday.

One of my favorite co-workers committed suicide. He had a great sense of the absurd, and his outrageous sense of humor helped me get through my five years in one particular call center. He was a good friend, and we would commiserate about how much we couldn't stand all the shit we had to put up with around that place. When I was working in that call center, I hated it so much, that I often considered driving my car off this particular bend in the river, because I thought it would look like an accident. But I couldn't do that to my son, my parents, or the rest of my family and friends.

Sometimes I Google the names of some of my old co-workers. I wonder how they're doing and if they're happy. I remember the cool lady who bought old Barbie dolls at the Goodwill and turned them into Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Cher, and Tina Turner. There was a gal who drove race cars who was absolutely brilliant and one of the most original people I ever met. There was the marketing guy who wanted to be an artist- he actually did this- he's down in Mexico painting & having a groovy life, and I know this from Google.

The yucky nonprofit I worked for was in a sick building. It was built over a parking garage, so all the carbon monoxide fumes would circulate in the air system. People would get mysterious illnesses and get sick and die. People had fibromyalgia, aches and pains, cancer, heart problems, and worsening of existing medical conditions. My supervisor there (the nice one) died. There were at least two cases of brain cancer, and at least two cases of lung cancer and breast cancer- several of these people were my friends. One was the Union steward who organized the Union there; she died of lung cancer and she had never even smoked. The Union was having the air tested because many people were growing concerned about the sick building syndrome there. I don't know what the final outcome of that was, because I left.

I Got Rid of Everything That Reminded Me of Jobs

I quit working for the hierarchical nonprofit corporation in 2004. I sold my house in a middle class neighborhood and bought a little tiny house with a huge yard on a blue-collar street full of potholes that looks like it should be out in the country somewhere. I wanted to be an urban farmer because vegetable gardening and chickens make me happy. I was going to have a new life.

I got rid of all my office clothes. I got rid of day planners and briefcases. I tossed all the "motivational" books like "Who Moved My Cheese?" I even divested myself of all the textbooks I studied while pursuing my BS in Management (the story of that degree is one I'll tell another time).

One time there was a guy fixing my washing machine, and he saw the world globe I had in the basement, and he commented that he wanted to get one for his kids. Naturally, since it had a little plaque affixed to it congratulating me on my 15 years of service, I was more than happy to let him take away that globe. I hope that he and his kids enjoyed it.

I had kept a huge cache of mementos from all my various work assignments, classes, seminars, and projects. One day I went through it all so I could recycle it. Some of it was rather poignant- there was a time that I worked in HR at that telecommunications company, and I was asked to give my analysis to upper management of what would help morale during all the massive downsizing, and I actually told them what I thought. None of my suggestions were implemented. I guess they went in the garbage, too.

For several years after that, I would get symptoms of anxiety when I saw objects that reminded me of offices: office-type desks, office chairs, calendars, planners, filing cabinets, etc. For some reason computers were exempt- maybe I had enough recreational associations with computers to make them seem benign or even friendly. I am just now getting to the point where that stuff doesn't bother me as much. I could probably go to a Staples or Office Depot store now. I'm pretty sure I could.

Ergophobia Defined

From Wikipedia:

Ergophobia also called Ergasiophobia, is an abnormal and persistent fear (or phobia) of work, finding work or functioning, ergophobia may also be a subset of either social phobia or performance anxiety. Sufferers of ergophobia experience undue anxiety about the workplace environment even though they realize their fear is irrational. Their fear may actually be a combination of fears, such fear of failing at assigned tasks, fear of speaking before groups at work (both of which are types of performance anxiety), or fear of socializing with co-workers (a type of social phobia).
"Ergophobia" is derived from the Greek "ergon" (work) and "phobos" (fear). "Ergo" is also used to form other English words, including "ergometer" (a device that measures the amount of work done by muscles) and "ergonomics" (an applied science that designs interfaces and working environments with the aim of maximizing functionality and improving worker comfort).

Source

Description above from the Wikipedia article Ergophobia, licensed under CC-BY-SA full list of contributors here. Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.

Workplace Phobia Articles, Research

There's a Wikipedia entry on Workplace Phobia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_phobia

In 2009, German researchers B. Muschalla and M. Linden published a study on Workplace Phobia entitled "Workplace phobia--a first explorative study on its relation to established anxiety disorders, sick leave, and work-directed treatment." Here's one link to it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19844838

And, an article in the UK Telegraph (mentions one of the same German researchers, Michael Linden):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561309/Work-phobia-an-anxiety-disorder-not-laziness.html

Here's a better link to the PDF of the article from Beate Muschalla from the German Journal of Psychiatry:http://www.gjpsy.uni-goettingen.de/gjp-article-muschalla.pdf

And here's one from allaboutcounseling.com: http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/library/workplace-phobia/

This amused me- From Wikipedia, a list of "Aspects of Workplaces" (look 'em all up when you have the time!) Wow, I can relate to a lot of these....

• Absenteeism
• Aggression
• Bullying
• Conflict
• Control freak
• Counterproductive behavior
• Coworker backstabbing
• Cyber-aggression
• Democracy
• Deviance
• Discrimination
• Diversity
• Emotion
• Employee silence
• Employee surveys
• Empowerment
• Evaluation
• Feminisation
• Friendship
• Gender inequality
• Gossip
• Happiness
• Harassment
• Health surveillance
• Humor
• Incivility
• Intervention
• Jargon
• Listening
• Micromanagement
• Mobbing
• Morale
• Office politics
• Performance appraisal
• Phobia
• Privacy
• Probation
• Profanity
• Queen bee syndrome
• Relationships
• Revenge
• Romance
• Sabotage
• Safety
• Spirituality
• Staff turnover
• Strategy
• Stress
• Surveillance
• Toxic workplace
• Training
• Violence
• Wellness

Just for fun, let's find the Wikipedia link for "Toxic Workplace": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace

I Dream of Elevators and Collapsing Office Buildings

I'm a mellow sort of person who loves gardening, animals, gourmet cooking, and the Grateful Dead. I love to visit art galleries, plant nurseries, and the library. I make art out of found objects. I'm basically an old hippie.

Why can't I have dreams about things I enjoy? Why can't the bad dreams stop? I have them just about every night. It's like a curse.

I dream about being lost in big gray high rise office buildings. The building's on fire and I can't escape. Alarms going off. Walls and ceilings caving in. Being trapped in elevators, stuck, going nowhere.

Sometimes the dreams aren't quite that bad. Maybe I'm leaving the job and packing my stuff in cardboard boxes. Every time I think I've finished, and the boxes are ready to go, then more stuff appears in the desk drawers. So I pack it up. Then I check the drawers again- more stuff. The office fills up every time I empty it. And I have to get it all boxed up, or I can't leave.

Often I dream that I can't find my way out of the office building. It becomes a surreal labyrinth with multiple corridors and hallways. I get lost in it. Wandering around lost.

I have an idea. I'm going to make a dream catcher out of the vines and twigs in my yard. I'll make the dream catcher from the healing herbs and the sacred trees, and I will ask to go to a good place at night in my sleep, not the bad places any more.

HR: Telling People That They're Out of a Job

I gravitated towards the "human" aspect of business: Human Resources, formerly known as Personnel. It seemed that people who worked in HR were helpful, kind souls who would help people decipher their company benefits, help them access training and education, and help them apply for jobs within the company. It seemed like a good direction for me.

Well, to my great dismay, my company then went into the downsizing mode, or as they euphemistically called it, "right-sizing". Getting rid of people. Getting rid of the "fat" and the "dead weight". "Doing more with less" was the motto.

My job turned into a nightmare of telling people they no longer had a job. I had to attempt to help people cope with overwhelming levels of fear and stress. Every day was another day of referring people to the EAP (Employee Assistance Plan), escorting people to the hospital emergency room, getting people into alcohol and drug treatment, calling security when someone was flipping out in the office, etc., etc. The fear and stress became a part of me.

We were told that we were expected to present the company changes and downsizing in a positive light. I couldn't really do that. That would have been a lie. I tried to subtly express with my facial expressions and my voice inflections that I thought it was a mess and an outrage. I believed that then, and I will believe that always.

"Isn't He Dead Yet?"

When I was supervising call center employees at the company we called U. S. Worst, upper management was obsessed with cost control at any cost. As supervisors, we were expected to do anything and everything to reduce costs, including following employees into the bathroom to find out what was taking them so long. We advised our agents to answer with a one-syllable name to reduce call time. We had a light switch in the center of the room that each person would turn on and off when they went to the bathroom and returned, to ensure that only one person could be using the toilets at a time. The place was really obsessed with toilets and employees' bathroom habits.

I especially dreaded meeting with my boss to go over the reports of employee absence, illness, and disability. There was a long-term employee, a really nice guy, who had been living with HIV for a number of years. I'll never forget when my boss was scanning the disability reports, and when she got to this person's name, she said in an irritated tone of voice, "Isn't he dead yet?"

The Bombs Exploding in the Lobby Sounded Real...

...but it was a large screen TV showing the bombing of Baghdad in the middle of the lobby of our corporate high-rise building. I had to walk past this horrific display each day in order to get to the elevator to get to my office.

My son was serving in Iraq at the time.

I was having frequent anxiety attacks. I found it hard to walk two blocks to the Starbucks because I would have weird dizzy spells where it felt like my head was floating above my body, and I couldn't tell how far I was from the sidewalk, or if my feet were firmly on the ground. I was afraid of passing out on the street. I started using a cane because it made me feel more stable when I was walking during dizzy spells and panic attacks.

I Hoped That a Nonprofit Would Be Better

There was a great deal of hierarchy at (name of nonprofit corporation deleted). I expected a nonprofit to have a more progressive atmosphere, but this was not the case. There was a lot of emphasis placed on rank and one’s place in the organizational structure. A distinction was made between “professional” staff and “support” staff. If you were “support” staff, as I was during all but the last six months of my five years there, then you were pretty much a non-entity, and expected to cater to whatever the higher-ups wanted- errands, coffee, etc. I felt ashamed that I had spent all those years going to college part-time while working full time and raising my son, and then ended up unable to work at a respectable salaried position. I had to constantly tell myself I had worth as a person, because my environment was certainly not telling me this.

Walking Past Armed Guards Every Day

When I was supervising in a call center, our agents took calls for the local prisons. Some of them turned out to be socializing with prison inmates on the phones, making dates with them, and in at least one case, running off to marry one of the inmates in the penitentiary. Several employees were fired. Anonymous threats were made, and as a result of this situation, we ended up having armed guards in the middle of our workspace for several months.

Early Retirement

I worked for a major telecommunications company for 20 years, was offered an early retirement buyout and took it. So there I was, officially retired at 41. Yippee!

My goal was to never, ever take another soul-sucking corporate job for as long as I lived. Whether I could actually make that work was another question.

Trauma Story

In 2000 I was working at (name of company deleted). I was at the Reception desk in the main front lobby when an employee named Tony came out of the elevator and asked to see the CEO. Tony seemed angry and agitated. Tony had brain cancer and had been out on disability. I remember Tony saying loudly “I need to see the CEO, I need my medical benefits!” Some of the managers came out in the lobby and the next thing I remember is seeing security guards physically dragging Tony into the elevator while he was kicking, hitting, and screaming on the floor. The guards were literally dragging him by the arms and legs. I became faint and sick and went around the corner to my supervisor’s office, told her I had to use the restroom right away, and went in the restroom and threw up. I then asked if I could be excused for the rest of the day since I was nauseated and could not stop crying.