On my best day I can hardly get my ass moving, but with a young adult daughter and two very needy dogs, I have to get going every morning or else all hell will break loose.
Years ago when I was in my darkest days suffering from treatment resistant depression, anxiety, and panic disorder, exercise in some capacity was crucial to my mood. My psychologist told me to start exercising for a full year before I started doing it. Everyone who knew I was sick told me to exercise. I threw every excuse in the world at them, but I finally ran out of them and had to start being more proactive in my recovery instead of relying on my doctor and my medications.
According to Harvard Health, “Depression manifests physically by causing disturbed sleep, reduced energy, appetite changes, body aches, and increased pain perception, all of which can result in less motivation to exercise. It’s a hard cycle to break, but getting up and moving just a little bit will help.”
So, I started with the simplest thing I could do. I put my young daughter in a stroller and aimed to take the kind of fun walks we used to take when she was much younger and I felt like Supermom.
Now that she was talking well, I decided to talk to her as we walked so I wouldn’t ruminate on my depression. Getting the fresh air, sun, and seeing other people out and about actually made me feel normal, like all my mental health issues had disappeared. My daughter and I talked. And I only had brief moments of letting my anxious thoughts intrude. In all, we walked about 45 minutes, moving more than I had in years.
Then came the next day … I realized I had to do it again. One walk didn’t fix my brain, but it had given it a break from a shitty mood. So out we went again. I’m not going to lie, it was very tough to get going, but I looked at the walks as something I needed to do for me and my daughter. She loved being outside.
Sometimes the walks were long, sometimes very brief, and sometimes we even stopped at the park as well. But it was a huge source of relief for me if I could keep my mind focused on the walk and my daughter.
When the weather turned colder and outdoor walks weren’t doable, I stopped exercising and decided that I had to use work to get myself out of my own head instead of moving. But I was fooling myself. I managed to get all my work done while doom scrolling on Google trying to find new medications, new therapies, and ways to stop or at least manage panic attacks. While work provided some relief, it wasn’t exercise. It didn’t even compare. The walks not only got me outside in the fresh air, the walks were helping me sleep better, spend quality time with my daughter, and were overall just making me feel better, if only for a brief time.
There were no exercise apps that allowed you to stream classes back then, so I got a few DVDs on yoga and step aerobics (remember when everyone did step aerobics?) and decided that I would commit 30 minutes a day to exercise. That’s when I fell in love with yoga. I tried all different styles of yoga and came up with a playlist for 7 days a week of exercise. Feeling my body change was such a great distraction from spending the whole day thinking about my mood.
I am in no way saying that exercise will rid one of depression, slow down a manic episode, or stave off a panic attack, but it has the potential to make one feel some relief. And I didn’t always make it to my living room yoga class, but on those days I felt worse.
So, if you can only get out for 5 minutes, start there. But try to find something you like that you can stick to. It won’t be perfect, and it won’t cure your illness, but there’s enough evidence out there supporting the fact that exercise really can make you feel better.
