Month: May 2012

Posted in About today

Looking on the bright side

Posted on by WeeGee

When I started blogging I promised myself that I wasn’t going to write something chronicling the poor state of my mental health because I wanted to record the positives and chart my progress. This is all well and good, but has made putting together an instalment for this weekend a little challenging….

Most of Saturday was a write off. I got a few things done early on and even had an enjoyable outing with a friend but after that was done with hope abandoned me and I spent the rest of the day in hiding. It was a bit of a blow after all the energy of the last few weeks to find myself battling the familiar thoughts and feelings again– above all else I was disappointed to be back in the pit and felt that all of my efforts so far had been a waste of time. I felt defeated and foolish and although I knew I needed to hold on it was a real struggle to find something to hold on to.

I woke on Sunday surrounded by a shrug and spent most of the morning trying to work out what had been the catalyst for this sudden dampener on proceedings – why did I feel so incapable, and more to the point, why was I so willing to give in to the darkness? I still don’t have the answers to these questions, and to be honest, I had to make a conscious decision to stop thinking about it because it was getting me nowhere fast. In the end, I accepted that I was having a bad day and that it was perhaps inevitable that things couldn’t stay quite so up for quite so long.

I had to work very hard to get through Sunday, but I did get through. Moreover, I got through it reasonably well (three square meals and a trip to the outside world) When the evening came around I was content to regard the day as one of quiet reflection – it hadn’t been the best of days but, looking on the bright side, I hadn’t come anywhere close to jumping off the cliff.

I think I’ll need to be honest and keep an eye on myself for a while but hopefully this has just been a very brief interlude and the sinking feeling will lift a little again. I’m feeling a bit brighter today so for now the weekend gets put down to experience and it’s upwards and onwards for me once more.

Posted in Reasons to be cheerful

What not to say

Posted on by WeeGee

Yesterday  I was having a nosey around the Depression Alliance’s website and found an interesting list of ten things not to say to someone who is depressed:

  • There’s always someone worse off than you are.
  • No one ever said that life was fair.
  • Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
  • So, you’re depressed. Aren’t you always?
  • Try not to be so depressed.
  • It’s your own fault.
  • I think your depression is a way of punishing us.
  • Haven’t you grown tired of all this me, me, me stuff yet?
  • Believe me, I know how you feel. I was depressed once for several days.
  • Have you tried chamomile tea?

(full list here – also includes 10 things to say)

With the exception of ‘stop feeling sorry for yourself’*, I suppose I’ve been lucky in that no-one has said any of the above to me. Still, it got me thinking about the way people have responded to me when I’ve told them I suffer from depression, or more rarely, when I’ve been talking about the impact it has on me…

In my experience the most common and the most frustrating thing people say is one of the many variations of ‘but why are you depressed’ or, in other words, ‘depression itself isn’t a real thing; what’s actually the matter with you?’ Sometimes it seems that it is impossible for people to grasp that this is a question that a depressed person can rarely answer. Sure, some bouts of depression are triggered by an event or experience (the kind of event that everybody finds difficult to deal with – redundancy, relationship breakdown, bereavement). However, even when that is the case (bearing in mind that many episodes of depression have no identifiable trigger), by the time the illness has taken hold the starting point has almost completely lost its relevance and the thing that is the matter is simply the fact that you are suffering from depression.

At this point, I do feel I should point out that over the years a lot of fantastic people have said a lot of fantastic and helpful things to me. Often people recount their own experiences of recovering from depression and I’ve always found this to be an extremely encouraging thing to hear when I’m in the pit. There’s a lot of re-assurance to be found in knowing that people you know (or people that know people you know) have found a way to climb out and put their lives back together – it’s a little bit of hope to cling on to.

At the same time, I have received a great deal of practical advice (put your shoes on and leave the flat being a particularly valuable one) and recommendations for resources and support material (this one being my favourite so far). Above all else, people have been kind enough to offer a wealth of helpful words of wisdom which have helped me keep my head in troubled times. For example here’s a particular gem that a former counsellor passed on to me years ago and which still means a lot to me ‘Everyone who got to where he  is had to begin where they were’ (R.L. Stevenson)

Having given the matter some thought I have been reminded that actually, the people around me right now are pretty fabulous and the people I have shared my secret with, both recently and in the past,  have almost always responded with genuine empathy and compassion.

And that there is a reason to be a teeny tiny bit cheerful.

*To be fair, I think there was a certain amount of justification at the time and under the circumstances!

Posted in Book reviews

A note on book reviews

Posted on by WeeGee

In some ways it must  seem a little odd to include a book review in a blog about battling depression, so I thought I’d write a little note to let readers know (and more importantly remind myself) why I have decided to include these.

I was quite determined when I started writing that this blog would only be about depression insofar as it would be about my efforts to manage the condition; I was quite clear that I wanted to use it to focus on the positives and to record my progress and successes…. And, in my mind reading and reviewing fiction is most definitely progress for me!

When I’m not well reading becomes a lonely and solitary activity that I can’t seem to manage but when I’m doing better fiction is a huge part of my life – in some ways I see it as my first and last love. It’s important that I’m able to read and to engage with what I’m reading, and including the reviews here is yet another of the checks I am putting in place to keep myself on the right path. If the reading and reviewing starts drying up, it’ll be a little warning sign that things are taking a downward trajectory and an indication I need to take some action.

That’s the plan, anyway…

Posted in Book reviews

Goodreads book review – Death at intervals

Posted on by WeeGee

Death at Intervals

Death at Intervals by José Saramago
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The central premise of José Saramago’s Death at intervals is simple, if impossible – one day, without warning, people stop dying…. And so ensures a fascinating exploration of some fundamental and enduring human concerns –our relationship with mortality, our reliance on governance, the morality of euthanasia, the roles of state and religion, and (not least) the nature of love and the meaning of life.

I loved this book in so many ways and the story itself is mischievous, thought provoking and challenging. Whilst Saramago’s rendering of the conventional sentence feels a little meandering and difficult at first it is well worth the effort and perseverance, particularly when it comes to the perfectly drawn plot twist – the anticipation of which runs to more than ten pages and feels like a sentence spilled into a paragraph spilled into a chapter. (Incidentally, if you want to get the full effect of this book I’d recommend reading it without first reading the publisher’s blurb on the back cover). For me, the stand out thing about Death at intervals is the ambiguity of the narrative voice – at times it is difficult to determine where speech ends and the narrative voice resumes. Unreliable narrators are something of a favourite of mine, because, as Saramago himself puts it ‘one cannot be too careful with words. Words change their minds just as people do’.

In summary I think this is a brilliant novel by a brilliant writer and I’m looking forward to reading more of his work.

View all my reviews

Posted in Moving forwards

Not drowning but waving*

Posted on by WeeGee

It’s been four weeks since I hit rock bottom and started making my way back up to the surface again and four weeks seemed as good a time as any to step back and review how things have been going so far.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, my last episode involved a rather spectacular unravelling of the practical and the ordinary. I wasn’t just an emotional wreck (which is bad enough) I was also a practical wreck and for a person who is usually Mrs Organised** this felt doubly distressing. Still, if I’ve learned only one thing recently it’s that the only way to deal with practical problems is to take practical steps. Dealing with this side of the chaos was about rolling my sleeves up and digging deep (there’s a line in a Maximo Park song which sums this up quite neatly (to me anyway) “what happens when you lose everything? You start over again’). And so ensued an impressively thorough spring clean of the flat, a session of opening three months worth of post, a trip to the supermarket, a meeting at the bank and some robust financial planning. I’ve definitely had some notable successes in putting the practical aspects of my life back together, and this is definitely helping with the anxiety and (utterly terrifying) panic attacks that had been creeping in.

On a daily basis I’ve been splitting my tasks up into the things I need to do, the things I should do and the things that I want to do and in following these lists I feel I am achieving a good balance of sorting things out and taking care of my interests. The last part, taking care of my interests, has already started to have a positive impact. We’re not talking major things here – just a bit of reading (I finished Death at intervals and commend it to anyone and everyone and have now stated reading Philip Pullman’s The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ), plenty of music in the background (thank you Radio Six Music) and a spot of exercise (this week wii fit, maybe even running in the outside world next week!). All of these things seem to be coming together as a useful reminder that I am a proper person who cares about and has an interest in things – I’m sure also sure that the exercise has an impact on my mood day to day. There’s also been this blog which has been a welcome distraction and a good way of refocusing the mind away from the darkness that threatens to consume me.

As has been mentioned elsewhere I’ve spoken to colleagues about my difficulties and am definitely feeling a bit more like myself at work. I’ve had my first psych appointment so have a really good crisis plan in place. I also had my initial CBT assessment this morning – I think it went quite well and I’m interested to find out what the next steps will be. This type of contact is important to me. If nothing else it serves as a check and balance preventing me from withdrawing from the strategies that have been serving me well in recent weeks. It will also be good, in the fullness of time, to get different perspectives and different ideas about managing the symptoms right out of my life.

Of course the dark passenger is ever present and I’d be lying if I said there hadn’t been some tough times. On the upside, the tough times have felt a little shorter lived and a little less severe of late – there was a time when  I wasn’t  able to contemplate getting through the next few minutes, now, if I’m struggling at all, I’m struggling to think about getting through the next few hours. I’m taking this as a big positive because whilst you can do quite a lot of harm to yourself in a  few impulsive, wrong-headed minutes, a few hours has (so far) been long enough for me to take a few deep breaths and  reach  for the crisis plan.

Insofar as that the last few weeks have been about me managing better rather than me being completely better I think it’s fair to say that things are working out okay at the moment. I’m almost looking forward to what the next four weeks might bring.

 

* With apologies to Stevie Smith for indulging in a small spot of kind-of-plagiarism.

** It took me ages to decide to capitalise both Mrs and Organised and fear I may still have got it wrong.

Posted in About today

That sinking feeling (post script)

Posted on by WeeGee

I neglected to mention in my last post that I cancelled my plans to meet up with a friend on Saturday because of my ‘down day’. This was a bit of a shame, because it would have been another thing ticked off on the small things lists. Nevertheless, thinking about it now, I feel that I made the right decision in postponing the visit. I wasn’t at all at my best on Saturday – notwithstanding the hangover I felt small, quiet and insignificant. Rather than forcing myself through the stressful and unpleasant experience of trying to pretend that everything was okay, I think it was better to take a little time to get myself back on track.

It’s far nicer spending time with people when the fog isn’t crowding in and I think I’ve decided that a better experience is available  if you are honest and realistic about what you can and can’t do on any given day. With this in mind  I’m looking forward to catching up with my friend when I’m more myself instead of (as would normally be the case) beating myself up about past failures.

Posted in About today

That sinking feeling

Posted on by WeeGee

Weekend number two and a weekend of rather mixed fortunes from a mental well-being point of view.

It started badly – I was suffering from my first hangover in ages, so not only did I have the usual residual feeling of self-loathing to deal with I had post alcohol self-loathing to throw into the mix. I woke late, and spent the first few hours of Saturday pacing around with that familiar sinking feeling persisting in bringing itself to my attention.

Thankfully, the memory of my achievement last weekend (I seem to recall saying I enjoyed it) was a potent one and I became quite determined that a repeat of that success was within my grasp. I left the flat and took a walk down by the river – one of the best things about my flat is that it’s a stone’s throw away from a particularly pleasant part of the Thames – in attempt to clear my head.

When I returned I donned my trusty elastic band. I wear it around my wrist when the thoughts are coming thick and fast and I don’t have the capacity to deal with them. Every time a thought comes in I snap the band (gently) to banish it. There is something about the action and noise combined that I find useful. The point is that whilst I can’t stop the thoughts from coming, I can choose what to do with them and when I’m feeling overwhelmed the best thing for it is to send them away for a little while.

With a strategy in place for dealing with the thoughts I felt able to tackle the challenges I had diligently listed out for myself. As I’ve already said, it’s not about big things at the moment, but about building up layers of small things until I’m ready to move on to some of the bigger challenges ahead. On balance, and looking at the lists, this weekend has been another success, despite the shaky start:

The process of splitting up my tasks in to the categories of need, should and could has been positive one for me. In the past, after I’ve unravelled, I’ve always tried to put things back together starting with the easiest and building up to the most difficult. Whilst this has worked, to some extent, it has always left the worry and guilt associated with past ‘failings’ hanging over me. Tackling things this way allows me to get into routines, whilst also dealing with the anxieties.

So after weekend number two, I’m pleased to say that things are still getting ticked off, one by one, day by day, and in dealing with the practical and habitual I feel much better able to hold on to myself. Long may it continue…

Posted in Welcome to my world

It’s good to talk

Posted on by WeeGee

I have a slightly nerdy interest in the way we use technology to access and share information about ourselves and the world around us (this, I think, led two of my friends, quite independently of one another to describe me as ‘a bit geeky’ in recent weeks.) So it’s probably for that reason I was able to spend a rather enjoyable day researching the behaviours associated with emerging web 3.0 technologies (bit of background here). Quite aside from leaving me feeling like the proverbial pig in mud, my adventures in web 3.0 got me thinking about the way my own use of technology, particularly social media, is connected with my depressive episodes. I think it can be mapped out as follows:

  • Early stages: heightened use followed by loss of interest/low use
  • Mid stages: Period of ‘lurking’ followed by further loss of interest/low use
  • Late stages: Complete withdrawal/closure of accounts
  • Improvement stages: Period of lurking/account reinstatement followed by heightened use
  • Recovery stages: ‘normal’ use resumes

And so it continues on a never-ending loop! Thinking about it now, it seems like such a shame that the withdrawal bit kicks in. Over the past few weeks (early improvement stage) I’ve been dipping my toe back into the world of social media and have found it to be something that supports my well being. Interacting online is actually quite a powerful tool in combating some of the thought processes behind depression, and if you think about it, is actually a lot easier than interacting out in the real world. It is, as the advert said, good to talk and the great thing about communicating online when you’re depressed is it actually doesn’t matter whether anybody is listening or not!

Writing this blog has been one of the best ideas I’ve had in a while. In some ways, it’s about telling the story of me to myself. In order to write it I have to put some of the thoughts and actions brought on by my illness to one side, and focus instead of the things I’m trying and achieving and how I am going to portray those things in words. Likewise, my reinvigorated interest in Twitter means I have to engage with things that are happening around me and find a (hopefully witty) was of expressing my thoughts – this is a really useful way of keeping myself in the here and now. It helps that things like Twitter and blogs have an output, but much more important is the way that this kind of communication helps you to ignore yourself!

I’m heading over to Pinterest at some point this weekend for a bit of a nosey about – I’m sure I can do something useful with it. In the meantime, I’ll be tweeting and blogging and lurking on Facebook and will hopefully continue to be distracted in a good way.

NB. My only comment about Facebook, by the way, is that it usually serves as an excellent reminder that your life isn’t nearly as terrible as you think it is!

Posted in About today

Sing when you’re winning

Posted on by WeeGee

In celebration of finding myself singing along to the radio earlier today* I have finally completed my sparkly new Spotify playlist. This is an important step forwards because, although I am usually passionate about music, I felt like I’d lost my enthusiasm in recent months. Making a new playlist is something that appears on one of the small things lists, and this is the first one that I’ve been able to cross off completely. I think that’s what you call progress!

Anyhow, here’s a link to the playlist, just in case you’re interested:

Small things

Enjoy!

*The song was A girl like you by Edwyn Collins (and no, I can’t explain why I would sing along to this song in particular).

Posted in Moving forwards

This train terminates here

Posted on by WeeGee

Transperth B-series train at McIver station

Until recently I was avoiding getting the help I needed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want help, or even that I didn’t think I needed help, it was just that I felt so completely beaten by everything that I didn’t know how to start thinking about where to start. To some extent, I suppose I had decided that I was beyond help – that this really was it, and there was nothing that I, or anybody else, could do to stop it. Over the course of the piece, there had been a few abortive attempts to get help but I always managed to straighten myself out just enough to be able to think I could manage my symptoms on my own; the lesson I learned during the months I was managing on my own was that I couldn’t actually manage on my own.

When you’re in the middle of an episode it’s incredibly hard to admit that you are having problems coping with yourself and that life has got too much for you. Nevertheless you need to try to focus the mind so you can reach in and grab yourself by the scruff of the neck; in the end, all you’ve done is take a wrong turning somewhere along the line and what you need to remember is (motivational quote warning):

“When you board the wrong train it’s no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction”

Eventually I found the strength to stop running and get off the train.

Step one in the right direction was booking an appointment with my GP. Over the years I have been fortunate in almost always receiving excellent care from the GPs I have been treated by (when I eventually engage) and my recent experience has been no different. Quite aside from the relief of getting in place the interventions that I knew I needed, just getting to the doctors’ surgery felt like and achievement and a baby step towards a better place. I left the surgery with a psychiatric referral and a referral for a refresher course in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as well as a prescription for the anti-depressant Citalopram. Anti-depressants aren’t new to me, but are a form of treatment that I have tended to resist in all but my bleakest times. It felt like it was a big thing for me to decide that an anti-depressant was right for me at the moment. Although I had a few concerns, they were quite easily dealt with in the end:

  • Anti-depressants aren’t prescribed in the short-term, so I knew that if I decided to go down that route I would have to continue taking them over a period of months and that a managed withdrawal would be necessary – on balance that didn’t seem like a significant reason not to take them
  • I haven’t always had a good experience with anti depressants, on occasions becoming numb and more withdrawn and on others experiencing a significant worsening of my self-harming problems – I chatted this through with the doctor and we agreed that I would continue regular appointments with her throughout the course of treatments so that my state of mind was properly monitored. We also spoke about my strategies for managing any crisis intervention that might be required, and I felt a little better knowing I had a plan.
  • I’m only too aware that medication alone is not the answer to depression – this isn’t a real concern if the other things you need are being put into place
  • I was worried about short-term side effects having an impact at work – this one didn’t really fly, because my symptoms were already affecting me at work

Once I’d had the chance to talk and think things through, it seemed like a good idea. At the heart of my decision to medicate was the simple fact that I needed to get from a to b and that once I’d dragged myself through the motions I didn’t have any energy left to make that particular journey.

I’ve been taking the Citalopram for just over three weeks now and feel like it is helping to clear the fog. I did experience some early side effects (restlessness, heightened anxiety and difficulty sleeping) but these passed in a fairly quickly. I was also a little bit too ‘up’ for a couple of days, with a ridiculous number of disjointed ideas and plans flying around my head but this also seems to have passed – I wonder if I just wore myself out?!. Now I’m starting to feel a little bit more like myself at last; Citalopram hasn’t been, and isn’t likely to be, a miracle cure. Still it feels like a tiny chink of light is shining into my dark space and I feel able to think about what I can do next to support myself and manage my symptoms.

To return to my train analogy, it feels like I might be about to board the right train…… I suppose this is where the hard work starts.