After writing a series of posts on mental health myths and facts, I asked readers for questions regarding mental health and mental illness. I received several questions, but I decided to start with one that had something to do with running.
How does running affect your mental health, and how does your mental health affect your running?
This is one I think about a lot, and I think it could be applied to pretty much anyone. Substitute running with an exercise or exercises of your choice, and this answer could definitely apply to you.
Running can help prevent mental health issues, maintain mental health, and mitigate mental health problems. With my diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder and bipolar, running plays a huge role in preventing symptoms and mitigating those symptoms when they occur -- especially in regards to the mania and depression in my bipolar disorder.
Mania tends to come with increased energy, racing thoughts, and poor sleep. Running helps prevent and control those symptoms by giving a positive outlet for the excess energy, and helps me feel physically tired, making it easier to sleep.
Depression often leads to decreased energy, lack of motivation, and a general feeling of malaise along with the classic symptoms of sadness and anxiety.
Running is a huge help with depression. It often helps me fight the feelings that come along with depression by releasing endocannabinoids and other mood boosting brain chemicals associated with mental well-being.
The feelings and improved brain chemistry from running also help with my anxiety. Besides just the physiological improvements running brings, running also gives me time to process my thoughts. That time especially helps me with my generalized anxiety disorder. By removing other distractions, thinking while running can help me examine some of my thoughts and notice some of my cognitive distortions and finish runs feeling more calm and less anxious.
While running affects my mental illnesses in many positive ways, my mental illnesses can also affect my running. Depression is probably my biggest challenge because it saps my motivation. At times it's a big struggle to will myself out the door to go on a run. When I do get myself on a run, that lack of motivation can make a thirty minute run seem like an hour.
Mania and anxiety can also affect my running for the worse. Both can make it very difficult to concentrate, and doing everyday activities like getting ready for a run or packing a gym bag become a challenge. With things taking longer than they should, I sometimes end up with less time to run -- especially if I want to run in the morning before work. Making breakfast, getting my work things together, and getting properly attired for running can sometimes take as much as ten extra minutes, meaning I've lost the time for over a mile on my run.
My mental illnesses can also affect my running in how I plan and execute a training plan. As I've said before, anxiety and depression can make following a plan more difficult, but mania can do just the opposite. I have to be careful when training for a race when I start to feel a little manic. Goal-driven behaviors often accompany mania, so sometimes mania leads me to train more than I should -- either by sacrificing more time than I should on running and running related exercises, or by increasing my running too much and risking injury.
The interplay between running and my mental illnesses is something I'll always have to manage. When manic, I often will need to hold myself back to prevent being injured or spending too much time exercising. When depressed, I'll have to dig down deep and continue to convince myself that despite how hard it can be, I need to push through and get myself out on runs.
If you have any other questions you'd like answered, feel free to comment, send me a private message, or email me at: leckbann@gmail.com
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