So my therapist says that I have anxiety and depressive tendencies, and a lot of people don’t know what that means. Some people think that it means I have depression and other people think that it means I shouldn’t use my thoughts as an excuse to not go out. The thing is - my mental health lies somewhere in the middle. With anxiety, I get the usual response of “just relax” and it doesn’t help.

Everyone’s mental health is different. For me, my anxiety is my biggest issue. My friends often don’t see this because I am working on getting better, and I really am handling some things better. I wrote a previous article about how I follow my head instead of my heart, and that process actually helps with making decisions that would otherwise cause me stress.

What a lot of people don’t realize though, is that it took me a long time to get here. I have been in therapy for less than a year, but I started working on handling my stress years ago. I was not always making good progress, but I started way before most of my friends now met me. They didn’t see what I was like before to compare how far I’ve come.

Now I deal with my stress in different ways. Where it use to be easy for people to see a lot of the time, I am more relaxed. I try not to dwell on things I cannot control. I try to take things one step, or day, or week at a time. I read a post asking if people ever felt like they were saying “I just have to make it through this week and I’ll be okay” every single week. That may not be encouraging for most people, but that’s how I live.

My depressive tendencies means that I am usually fine, but certain things trigger my more depressing thoughts. Normal things like death cause me to think bad thoughts, the depressive part of it is how long those thoughts last. What may last a couple days for mentally healthy people to get over will last me weeks, or months. For example, I lost a cat in 2014 and still cry over him sometimes. Most people would still be sad, but not sad enough to cry over.

My depression mainly comes out when I spend too much time alone. My problem is that I like to be alone. I genuinely enjoy my own company, which is more than most people can say about themselves. Being alone also allows me to destress because I don’t have to worry about other people. I can’t spend too much time alone or I start to have really poor thoughts about who I am and what I should be doing.

I used to combat the depressive thoughts in different ways, and it would usually work. I would go dancing, write, read, paint. I’d try anything. After meeting with my therapist, I realized I was spending too much time by myself. At first this didn’t make sense to me, but after having a semester where I had to be around people most of the time, I finally understand.

This past semester I started writing for the Parthenon. This was a class and a job. For the class, I was required to turn in at least two stories a week. I had to go to events, conduct interviews, and have time to actually write the stories. This didn’t include the time I spent working at Starbucks, going to class, or spending time with my friends.

Throughout the week, I was very busy. This was great at keeping the depressing thoughts away, but it certainly didn’t help my anxiety. I was awake by 6 a.m. every week day and didn’t get done for the day until roughly 10 p.m. I was busy all the time, but I loved it. I was stressed pretty much all the time, but I was in a much better mood.

Then I decided to give myself a night to relax. I didn’t have classes on Fridays and all my responsibilities were done midday, so Friday night was all mine. Now, I went out every now and then, but I spent almost every Friday night by myself. This time gave me a chance to just relax and recharge.

When I explained this to people, they thought it wouldn’t help with my depressive tendencies. I then got to explain that all my relaxing activities took place on Friday nights. They stopped helping me before because I was doing them so often and ran out of ideas to paint, write about, and so on. Not knowing what to do would just make me feel even more upset because I felt like I wasn’t creative enough. But one night a week was just enough to be a distraction against poor thoughts and give me a week at a time to come up with new ideas.

Even with the progress I’ve made, it’s still kind of confusing to me. Staying busy helps my depressive tendencies but not the anxiety. Relaxing keeps my anxiety at bay but not my tendencies. It’s a constant battle that I am still working to find the balance with, and who knows if I will ever find the perfect. I am way better than I was, and I will continue to work hard to be better than I am.