I'm not shy: social anxiety disorder versus shyness

Self-diagnosis is often frowned upon, but this is one of my self-diagnoses about which I'm confident. I feel like people who self-diagnose are discounted because many embellish their symptoms to fit the illness and try to manipulate either their own symptoms or what their reading to fit with it. For me, discovering Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) was one of those moments of epiphany in which I realized that this is what I've been dealing with all along. I didn't have to manipulate anything to fit. It all just fit.

Growing up, I've always been labelled as and told I am shy. Shy in the extreme, by shy, nonetheless. I was never comfortable with this labelling, but I accepted it as true because I didn't know any different or that it could be anything else. It was also one of those things that I was told it so many times and from such a young age that I believed it must be true, even though it didn't feel right. There were just always instances of my "shyness" that seemed to go beyond just being shy, even before I knew there was something else it could be.

I think I came across SAD when I was actually searching another of my disorders and as SAD as something that kind of goes along with it. I was curious when I first read the words "Social Anxiety Disorder" and so instantly clicked the link and was led to the standard list of things that people with SAD deal with and I was floored. It pointed out things that I thought were just oddities about myself, things that I irrationally thought only I dealt with, but which actually corresponded with SAD.

The one aspect of SAD that always sticks out to me is coming across the line that indicated issues making phone calls. In my mind, I can rationalize that making a phone call is something so simple, so easy, so painless, but then when it comes time to actually make the phone call, I just can't. I feel nauseated, in some cases extremely light headed, I feel cold, I start shaking...and it goes on. All of these are things I also associate with my anxieties in general, but are never something that I connected to the shyness because shyness seems an entity all in itself for me. Those things I feel during phone calls vary from person to person. There are some people who I'll call on the phone without any issue at all, for example my mother. Why? Because I know what to expect from the phone call. I know that I can call her, say what I have to say and that she doesn't expect any more from me than that. The more comfortable I am with the person and the more I'm familiar with how the phone call will go, the more readily I will receive and make the call myself. If there is any amount of unpredictability, I just don't even want to answer the damned thing. It takes a lot to work up me being comfortable talking on the phone with a person. I know there is at least one person who can attest to how difficult it was to get me to even answer the phone when he'd call. Haha.

I laugh at it, but at the same time, it can be deblitating. It can be embarassing. Mostly because people don't understand how someone can be afraid of something as simple as answering a telephone. I don't blame them. When people are afraid of common things, it's often hard to understand. What upsets me is when people don't even make the effort to understand, as if I should just be able to fix it because they say so and move on. It's never that easy.

I find that over time and with the help of others, I'm getting a bit better because I'm learning to trust more (although to me, it's always something just beyond trust), but I still get that nauseating feeling quite a bit of the time. For instance, where I work, there is customer service for hours on end, almost non-stop. My first day of training, I remember being so incredibly nervous that I could barely function. My first night on the floor, I remember being told over and over again to just breathe. I'm certain I was on the verge of passing out. I remember sitting in the break room before my shift, in one of the plush chairs in a corner, feeling completely cold and numb and sick. I imagine that I looked as bad as I felt, which is why people would tell me to breathe, but to be honest, I hate being told to breathe. I am breathing, even if it is irregular. That's not the point. The point is, that although it's been two years since my first shift, I still feel anxious a lot of the time because I have this extreme fear of screwing up and making a fool of myself.

This applies to situations with those closest to me as well, perhaps especially with them. It's a complicated matter of trust. I feel like if I say that I get anxious hanging out or spending time with them that I'm saying I don't trust them. That's not true, or at least I don't feel like that's true. Like I said, it's always something just beyond trust. I feel like perhaps it's myself that I don't trust. Like I don't trust that I can handle whatever is being thrown at me.

You may be thinking, so what? Most people get nervous at work, especially on the first day. There are probably even a few people that just don't like making phone calls. You may even be questioning how someone with SAD can have a blog like this, that talks about personal problems and experiences.

The thing I've found quite often with the interenet and writing in general is that it allows me some distance between those who read it and myself. I posted my writing on the interent long before I was comfortable showing my short stories and poems to other people. Essentially, if I can keep a sort of wall between myself and the reader, I'm more comfortable. If I don't have to face the judgement dead on, I feel more comfortable. In posting this blog, part of my mind realizes that I may have to face the people that read this, since I link it on facebook, where those of you that I know in person have easy access to it. But another part of my mind thinks that maybe they won't read it, or that if they do, they will make no comment about it. There is a certain amount of anxiety for me in posting these things, especially when I talk about things that I've never mentioned to anyone. I think it would be easier if I was just posting this and no one I knew in person knew about it because then there would be a definite distance between myself and the reader.

But part of the reason I started this blog was because I'm becoming more and more interested in sharing my own issues and problems, partially to vent, but also to help people, even if only inadvertently. And beyond that, you never know who your words are going to reach.

But I'm getting off task. Another thing I wanted to touch on is my view of what shyness is as opposed to SAD.

To me, shyness has the connotation of being cutesy and laughable. We tend to laugh at young kids who hide behind their parents' legs when they're meeting someone new, or kids who hide their faces because they don't want to face the world. They're just being shy and they're kids so they're oh-my-god adorable. Besides, they'll grow out of it one day. One day when they've experienced the world, they'll grow out of being shy and be the normal, outgoing little kiddies that we want them to be.

Forgive me, my sarcasm is leaking through. I just can't help but feeling contempt for this idea of shyness since I was labelled with it for so long. Probably as well because being laughed at is not something I appreciate. I don't have very many childhood memories, but one thing I remember is laughter. Whenever I would do, or say something silly in a social situation, I would be laughed at. Innocent enough reaction, I suppose, but for me it was always so damaging. I felt like a big screw up and stupid because I couldn't act how I was supposed to by everyone else's standards. I think these sorts of situations certainly fed into my social anxiety and are to this day reasons why I keep my mouth shut a lot of the time. I don't want to be laughed at.

Shyness, though, I also feel is something that isn't permanent. For all my sarcasm in that paragraph, I just can't help but think that kids do indeed grow out of being shy. There are so many people that will say how shy they were as kids, but then that they got over it. And I also don't feel like shyness is as paralyzing as anxiety is. The kid who hides behind the parent's leg will come forward eventually; the kid who's anxious will try to hide forever. At least, that's my experience with it.

Perhaps I'm not being entirely clear on how I view the difference between shyness and SAD, but for me there is a clear difference in my mind. I'm just not good at articulating.

As for posting this blog entry, or any blog entry, it's not as easy as it perhaps seems. Not for me anyway. I don't simply type up these words and then hit "publish", but rather I type up these words, I read over the entry several times, am likely to leave it sitting around for a while so that I can mull over it and think about it some more, come back and reread it again, add anything new that I think I might want to say, leave it again and then eventually come back to publish it after adding more. This entry has been especially bad for that sort of striving for perfection in my words, or whatever it is; I started it weeks ago. I feel like I'd better say whatever it is clearly and concisely or else people won't get it, belittle it and overall judge me negatively for it. Especially with anxiety, I feel like I'm going to be told to suck it up and grow up.

And really, I wish I could, not only because I hate feeling the things I do, but also because I know from repetition that the scenarios are never as bad as my anxious mind makes them out to be.

I feel compelled to attach some of my poetry to this entry, if only because I have so many that deal with my mental processes of anxiety or that I write while anxious (it's a good way to stop the thoughts from spinning in my head). I am, however, only going to include a few that I think pertain to this entry particularly. (A warning that they lead to an external website, in this case deviantART.)

This first is called Symptoms, a poem that rather simplistically indicates what I described above about reading and rereading and editting and so on. In writing that poem, I was speaking specfically about send text messages, but it does apply to much of everything I write.

The second is a poem that very quickly became my most read and most favourited, even though I never expected it to be, which I think attests to just how we can all connect to one another. It's called I DON'T BECAUSE... and basically deals with my reasoning for not doing certain things.

And finally, as a sister piece to the last is I DO BECAUSE..., which I wrote six months later and at a point in which I felt like I'd progressed a lot. I really like this poem, if only because despite any issues I have, I've learned to cope with them a little better.

In addition to this, here is a website with a page that I think goes over SAD pretty well. Social Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia Symptoms, Self-Help, and Treatment (again, an external link, to helpguide.org).

Take care, all.

<3

Lackluster: from loving something to nonchalance

Each of us has things that we love to do, whether it's sports, or art, or some other activities. For me, one of those things that I used to love was bowling (I'm talking about the five-pin kind here), and now I find myself trying to explain to my bowling-obsessed friends that I just don't care. Well, don't care is not the right phrase. More that I'm just not as passionate about it anymore. Why? It wasn't simply something that went away one day, that's for sure.

When I started bowling as a kid, I really liked it. I'm not a big sports person at all, but bowling I stuck with. From the time I was about five-years-old and on, I went out every saturday for the youth league, had fun and got what little bit of socializing that I did. Over the years, I got better and better at the sport itself, and in a way, that's when my dislike of bowling started to sink in. Sounds ridiculous, right? When you start to get good at something you're usually proud and want to keep going. I was proud. I had my awards displayed on a shelf in my house (still do, although now they're more symbolic of nostalgia than anything) and I felt good going out every week. Believe me, I wanted to get better, but it gradually ended up being for all the wrong reasons.

As I got older, I became more competetive. Even in youth leagues, you start entering tournaments and going out and facing other teams from other bowling houses and even from other cities and other provinces. I ended up qualifying for a bunch of these tournaments and I would go out and bowl them. Competitiveness is not a problem in my eyes; it's the mentality that marks whether competetiveness is good or not. And my mentality wasn't one of the good ones. Whether they actually did or not, I felt (and still feel a lot of the time) that people expected more of me. I expected and expect more of myself. Bowling became about competing. It became about impressing others. It stopped being about fun.

When it stopped being about fun, it stopped, of course, being fun. I'm sure those who've bowled with me and watched me bowl could see how frustrated I'd get. For a while it was even frustrating to the point of tears because I just couldn't do as well as I felt I needed to do, especially in comparison to others. My scores started plummetting and I started to hate the sport I once loved because I just didn't feel good enough. It was true and genuine hate it to the point where I didn't want to go anymore--even when I still did go--and I stopped bowling.

A significant break came when I more or less took a year off as I started my first year of university. Mostly it was because I had class at the same time as my regular league, but at the same time it was good to take the time off. The frustration I associated with the sport dwindled because I wasn't participating and by the time I was able to go back and bowl again, I was feeling good about it. However, it wasn't long before the feelings of frustration, anger, and hatred started to surface again. Again, I had to stop. And even now I have periods where I simply do not want to bowl because I know I won't do well or I don't even have the patience to try. Indeed, there are some days where I can go out and not give a damn just how I do, but for the most part, I tend avoid it now.

I don't think I so much hate bowling anymore, but I certainly don't enjoy it as I once did. My view and impression of the sport has been tainted, and by no one but myself. Honestly, I have to distance myself from it, or else I feel like I risk hating it once again. Now when I do bowl, I mostly go for the social aspect of the sport, especially since there are certain people that I pretty much only get to see while there.

I've partly written this blog because, like I mentioned, bowling-obsessed friends don't get how I can not want to bowl. Part of that, I think, is their own passion for the sport, which I think is great and really admire, and another part of it is because I've never really gone into detail about why I have such nonchalance. Another reason I've written this blog is to put forth something I've learned. You should love something and participate in something because you love it, not because of expectations, real or imagined. For me at least, it got me into such a negative mindset that I now lack the sport I loved. There are days when I really and truly miss it, but then the memories of frustration sink in again and I'm put off by it. There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve, and there's certainly nothing wrong with being passionate. I guess what I'm trying to say is just be careful and wary about why you are doing something. Is it to impress others, or is it for yourself?

<3

My version of happiness: on getting there.

I can remember that for many years I was in a state of deep unhappiness, if not depression. I'm reluctant to throw the term depression around because I was never and have never been diagnosed with it, but I always felt it was a depression. This was especially true my second year of university. I, who have always loved school, hated going to class, to the point where I did skip classes often. I also didn't want to do readings. I didn't want to go to lectures or seminars and when I did go, I didn't actively participate, which is not only important to the classes, but it's also important to how I learn (I'm not one who can learn academics by myself). One thing I remember specifically is that I stopped attending my Creative Writer's Club workshops and events. If you know me, you know writing is my life, and the fact that I suddenly just stopped caring is a huge red flag for me. From what I've read of depression, having a sudden apathy towards things you once cared about is a big part of it.

It got to the point that I was seriously considering quitting school and even quitting life. I feel like I've had a lot of dark moments in my life (in particular throughout grades five to eight), but I think this was probably the lowest point at which I had been.

Why didn't I "quit life", as I have so worded it? There are a number of things that began happening that led me to where I am now. One of the key things that I remember is that during that time I reconnected with a childhood friend, and for all I harass him now, I very much value and appreciate him. That's not to say that my other friends were worthless to me, but it helped in a way to have that voice return to my life. Indeed, it is somewhat because of and for him that I write this, because I see his struggles now, and for all I try to help, I just can't seem to do so. I don't know how to break through, but he keeps bringing up how far I've come and I'm hoping that elaborating on it a bit more will help in his understanding of just how I got here. Maybe it will come of some use to him, or maybe even others.

While I was in that state of depression, I was doing a lot of what I guess people would call "soul searching." To me, that just sounds melodramatic and fictional, but essentially, I was just trying to figure out some things about myself (still am) and that's partially what was throwing me into the state in which I was. I came across and identified what I consider to be my problems (only a few of which I will touch on in this entry), but I didn't know what to do with them or, more pressingly, how to fix them. The lyrics I felt best fit me at that time comes from the band Brand New: "Ask me what it's like to have myself so figured out. I wish I knew." I felt like I had myself figured out, but I still felt...broken, for lack of a better word. I had no idea how to apply or manipulate the knowledge I had gained of myself.

And then one day I knew.

I didn't really know how to fix my problems, but I came to the realization that what I needed to be happy was to know and more importantly believe that I deserved to be and could be happy. I'm of the opinion that people feel like happiness should come to them, but I think that we must find it or see it right before us and be willing to accept it. If we don't accept it, then we have nothing.

I think I'm oversimplifying here. I need to backtrack and elaborate on something here, or bring it to light.

While in the depressive state, and even years and years before that, I was both consciously and yet unconsciously practicing what I call "the sickness mentality." What do I mean by that? In popular culture of the Western World, we are becoming more and more aware of disorders and illnesses, mental and physical alike, and are beginning to discuss them more. Shows such as Intervention, Obsessed, and Hoarders come to mind specifically, but also Dr. Phil, Oprah and the likes participate in these sorts of discussions. I think awareness is fantastic, but the problem that I see with it, and that I allowed myself to become wrapped up in, is that it promotes a sort of victimization. My problems are all the fault of this mental illness or this physical disorder, so you should pity me and I'll throw myself a pity party while I'm at it. Not only that, but these sorts of shows separate use and make us feel this twisted kind of special or a sense of twisted entitlement that only leads to isolation and being miserable. It leads to this unhealthy mindset that I at the very least embraced and trapped myself in.

Although I've not yet been diagnosed, I know that I have at the minimum three mental disorders, but I suspect as many as four or five. The one I'm most comfortable speaking about openly is Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), which I'm planning to go more into detail with in another entry. In any case, because of these disorders, these parts of myself which I had "figured out", I felt alone and in a way like I should embrace them all the more because that's what the media was teaching me. True, these television programs promote getting help, but not all of us have the means, knowledge, or the courage to do so because something else that media has taught us is that we shall be ridiculed for our problems, especially mental ones. More often than not, people are also very keen on belittling each other's problems by saying things like some starving kid in Africa has it worse off. I'm a strong advocate of stopping this behaviour because while that child in Africa has it tough, it doesn't make our stories or issues invalid. Again, I fall to a quoate, this time from the television program M*A*S*H: "How dare you act like your brand of suggering is worse than anyone else's!" How dare we, indeed. If someone needs help, we help them, not hinder them.

All the same, I had allowed myself to fall into and stagnate in that "sickness mentality." I felt like I should be allowed to and maybe even deserved to suffer. At some point, however, through my own reflecting as well as through things like To Write Love On Her Arms (damn, I feel like a broken record, but this organization is so important to me at this point), I came to the knowledge that even with my disorders, I could be happy and deserved to be happy. Being happy doesn't necessarily mean having a clean bill of health or being "cured" (I actually dislike that term), but, now to me at least, it means taking everything in stride and dealing with it bit by bit. Another problem I had (which is linked with my SAD) is that I dwelt too much in the past and lamented/mourned over things that I ultimately could not and cannot fix. I had to come to accept these things and while I appreciate that it is because of these things that I am the way I am, I now try to live in the now and not worry over the could-have-beens and what was (the key word there is "try").

Basically, by deciding I was going to be happy, I became happy. Again, I feel like I'm oversimplifying. It is the process of getting to this decision and believing it that matters. You know where you want to end up, now you have to get yourself there.

I remember in high school, a friend of mind said that she lived without regret. Whether it was true or not is unimportant, but at the time, I didn't understand how that was possible. Stuck in the past as I was, the idea of no regrets was beyond my reach, but now I feel like I understand. Now I feel like I live without regret. Sure, there are things that I wish I could have done differently or that I wish had happened another way, but I don't regret them for what they are. I learn from and build myself on them. They aren't weak links, but things to learn from and treasure for what they are.

Through all this, I also learned that I cannot hinge my happiness on others. I don't mean become a social recluse; not at all. What I mean is that although I love and appreciate those I'm closest to and am happy to have them be a part of my life, I'm not going to depend only on them to make me happy. You all bring me happiness, sure, but I need to be happy with myself, too. I must know that while it would be terrible and heartbreaking to lose you, I can survive without you. I fear that I am being demeaning and devaluing the importance of loved ones, but I'm not intending to be. I'm just not entirely sure how to articulate.

That was part of my "sick mentality" too, though, because for the longest times I felt like I couldn't be happy unless I had someone else there, whether that person was a friend, family member or a sadly non-existant signficant other. I just had to have someone there and was miserable because I felt like there was no one. I could go on for days why I felt (and sometimes still do feel) so alone, but that's not for now, if ever. It's empowering to realize that you can stand on your own, but as I was trying to explain above, it's also fantastic to have those who will help support you just in case and who love you. In a way, I think I gained a better appreciation for my friends and family when I realized this (if only because they stuck by me through my miserable times). I was able to recognize and value them for what they are rather than what I wanted them to be.

If you'll notice, I mention things like that I still do have these thoughts and that I still feel as I did sometimes. My happiness doesn't stem from having found some magical "cure" or because I found some way to "fix" myself and my problems. I'm happy because I know I can live with and survive through them. I am by no means stable; truth be told, I consider myself to be very unstable, always on the brink of falling back to where I was, which scares me. But I am happy in the now because I'm trying not to worry about what may (or may not) happen somewhere down the line.

I'm not trying to present this as the model to follow or the one quick fix, but as I said, it keeps coming back to my story as if I have some secret. I don't. I'm still learning just like anyone else and even still have my struggles. I'm only trying to show that and to also maybe help kickstart others on their own way. Each of us has to find our own happy. Not based on other people's definition of happy, and certainly not based on the media's definition. Maybe those things will have influence, as they inevitably do, but this is your version of happiness for which you're searching. It might come in two seconds from now, or maybe it will take you years to find like it did for me. Just keep going and eventually you should trip over it. :)

<3

Suicide Prevention

This past week, September 4th to September 10th, 2011, has been National Suicide Prevention Week, and today, the 10th, is World Suicide Prevention Day. While I don't feel that it is something that is highly publicized (although it should be), it is one of the many things that is very important to me. I say it's not highly publicized because although I see postings about it on the internet through the different non-profits I follow (such as To Write Love On Her Arms and Love is Louder), I haven't heard about it on the news and I don't see any others posting about it on my facebook or even twitter feed. Perhaps it is simply not as important to them as it is to me, which is fine, but I would like to see more postings about it.

As I've indicated, for me, suicide prevention is very important. I know people who have struggled with thoughts of suicide and although this may come as a surprise to those I know, I have also had thoughts of suicide. I have, to date, never attempted suicide and to be honest, admitting any of this on a blog that I know people who know me may stumble across is quite frightening because judgement is something that I fear greatly. Apart from that, I also don't want people to freak out and start treating me differently, afraid to step on my toes. Despite these fears, however, because I think it's something that we should all not be afraid to talk about, I feel like I shouldn't be afraid to talk about my personal side of it either.

Reflecting on the many years that these thoughts have gone through my head, it's interesting to see just how many different mindsets I have gone through where these thoughts persisted. From deep depression to happiness to somewhere in between, it's just been a recurring thought. For a long time, it was a daily thought. It drummed away in my head from the moment I woke up to the time I went to sleep, a constant whisper in the back of my mind because I was just having trouble dealing with different things. There was school, work, and just a bunch of different situations that were all barrelling down upon me that were unbearable.

But then one day the thoughts stopped. I was convinced that I had stopped being suicidal, that I had overcome every adversity around me, and I was proud of myself. I still am proud of myself, but I have learned that the thought of suicide is just on the brink of my mind. Going through a tough situation showed me that suicide, to my mind, is still an out if I can't handle something. The thought that I wouldn't be able to handle something sounds ludicrous to me now because of some things I have been through, but there's always the fear that something will be too much.

What I feel is most interesting is that I am at a rather happy point in my life. I still have struggles and moments of being down, but I decided that I will be happy and even more importantly that I deserve to be happy. After years, I came to the realization that happiness is not something that just comes along one day, but rather a conscious decision that needs to be made. I said to myself, no matter what happens to me, I'm going to make it through and that I can and more importantly will be happy. Maybe it sounds corny or cheesy or something to that effect, but it is something that has changed my life for the better.

So if I'm so happy, why do I still have thoughts of suicide? I'm sure it has something to do with other underlying issues that I have, but I cannot say the exact reason. In any case, it is because I know that life is valueable and because I have struggled with these thoughts myself that I am so into promoting anything about suicide prevention. I want to help others realize that we can make it through, even if it feels like the worst thing in the world right now. I want to help others realize that happiness is just a decision away and that it's something that can be attained by all of us.

As with most mental illnesses, however, suicide comes with a social stigma. Suicide victims are seen as cowardly, attention seekers, weak, and all around not people that deserve attention. True, there are some people that just use suicide for the sake of getting attention and not because they're actually need help, and those are the people that have tainted the view for everyone else. But the fact that someone wants to die and even worse take his/her own life is not something to overlook for be taken lightly. People who are suicidal are not cowards or weak. Perhaps the situation that made a person commit suicide seems really trivial to you, but obviously to that person it was not something that he/she could handle. Maybe it was something that he/she was never taught to deal with. Maybe there is some other reason that it was all just too much. Just because it's something that you find trivial doesn't mean that it's trivial to someone else and we shouldn't belittle others for their feelings.

Instead of being so fixated on judging someone, we should be out to help the person. One of the reasons I've kept my own struggles with suicide as a private thing is because of the fear of judgement (although also because I've always felt that I should be able to fix my own problems). I think, "Will people look down on me? Will they abandon me? Will they see me negatively?" I think that these are probably common fears among us. To say stop judging people would be silly because it is something that we do even without thinking about it, but I think what we should do is push these judgements aside so that we can help others.

I wonder how we got to this point where we are quicker to judge and dismiss others than we are to help them. I don't think I'll ever know just how we did, but I think we should start to turn it around the other way. Instead of being senselessly judgemental, let's offer a shoulder to cry on or our time in listening. Something as simple as a kind word may save someone's life. Is that so hard? I don't think so. I realize that it may not always be as simple as I'm maybe making it sound, but I think an important part in suicide prevention is being there and showing each other that we really do care, no matter what.

So, I implore you, don't turn away from those who need help. Instead, see what you can do to help them.

<3

Writing Love.

The image to the right features my most recent tattoo. Now written permanently on my left wrist is, quite obviously, the word "Love". Thinking about it, I'm sure "love" is a very common tattoo to get (whether written in English, or in Chinese or some other language), and of course everyone would have their reason for getting it. I figured I would share my reason for getting such a common tattoo.

Some of you who know me personally will have probably noticed by now that I am supportive of a non-profit organization called To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA), and indeed, that is what inspired this tattoo. It's not as simple as that, though, because I wouldn't get a permanent marking on me just because I liked an organization. For instance, I like the World Wildlife Fund as well, but I'm not about to get WWF or a panda tattooed on me. The reason I chose to get "Love" permanently written on my arm is because of just how much TWLOHA means to me and how it has affected my life.

As is usual with me, I don't entirely remember how I came across TWLOHA. I imagine it would be something like I found some reference to it on another website I frequent called deviantART, and I decided to check it out. How ever I found it, I'm glad that I did, because I think it tells a great story and spreads a great message. From their own website, TWLOHA describes itself as "a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.  TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery" and their slogan, which can be found on their apparel, accessories, banners, etc. is "Love is the movement." I find that TWLOHA goes beyond this mission statement, however, and sends the message of love and hope to everyone, even if they are not struggling with something as serious as addiction. Everyone has their days where they're just feeling down and crappy and when those come along for me, sometimes I'll come across something, such as the daily quote or a song that being featured, from TWLOHA and feel even just a little bit better.

What I think is really great is the sense of community that TWLOHA creates and encourages. It brings people together in a positive way and they work to support one another through the tough stuff; and even if these people only interact with each other in an online basis, sometimes it just helps to have someone to talk to or to have someone say it will be okay.

One of my personal connections with TWLOHA comes with fighting depression. I'm sure there are many out there who think, "What do young people have to be depressed about?" and this sort of question doesn't sit well with me. Just because we are young doesn't mean that we don't feel depression. People who ask questions like that come across as saying that our feelings are invalid because we couldn't possibly know the trials of life. This is the completely wrong approach to the situation. Instead of trying to invalidate each other by passing off one person's problems as less than another's, we should be coming together to try and make each other feel better. It doesn't matter how "severe" the problem is, the point is that people are hurting. To me, TWLOHA isn't focusing so much on WHAT is making someone depressed or what someone is struggling with, but rather encourages people through those struggles and tries to emphasize that each of us is important and that we matter.

That's one of the biggest beauties of TWLOHA: although it does have its specifics and certainly has a specific incident that spawned its creation, it goes beyond that. Whereas other oraganizations are really specific in what they're supporting or promoting, TWLOHA is broader. Perhaps "love" is a specific as well, but the definition of love is quite broad.

And this is why I have "Love" permanently tattooed on my arm. I fully believe in what TWLOHA is doing and I want to spread the message of love. Perhaps a tattoo is only a small contribution, but I believe that any little bit will help.

Love is the movement.
Hope is real.
Rescue is possible.



More about To Write Love On Her Arms:
http://www.twloha.com/vision/
http://www.twloha.com/vision/story/