Category: About today

Posted in About today

A novel way to spend your time

Posted on by WeeGee

Once again I had challenged myself to simply spend time in my own company this weekend without leading myself to the dreaded cliff edge. This was my third attempt in three wobbly weeks so naturally I was hoping for third time lucky.

On Saturday I was as close to bright and breezy as I’m capable of being right now. Painting the smile on, getting out and about and going through the motions came quite naturally and I didn’t have to coax myself too hard to get going. I made it to the supermarket (via the Maple Road farmer’s market, where I couldn’t quite afford to buy anything, but didn’t get disheartened!), cleaned the flat, took a walk along the river and read my book. This is all good stuff, and, if I may say, is especially good for me. But it got better! I also got myself signed up for the 10,000 step challenge, ate four – yes four – square meals, took a long, hot bath and eventually headed for an early night feeling really rather pleased with myself.

And then my old friend insomnia turned up in an attempt to pull the rug from under my feet (Boo hiss). To be fair, I haven’t been sleeping terribly well since I started taking the Citalopram but on Saturday night I was chronically awake for the first time in weeks and it wasn’t long before I started getting frightened. The wee small hours can be a dangerous time for me – it’s the absence of distractions, the quietness, stillness and the dark that does for me. Above all else it’s the notion that I am completely alone and that not a soul on earth knows where I am or what I am doing…. If things are going to get really bad for me, it’ll be in the middle of the night. And if I find myself awake in the middle of the night things almost always get really bad.

Before I knew it, everything was crowding in and I started to feel defeated. I couldn’t sleep and I was in no fit state to be awake and “I couldn’t do this anymore”…. and then a revelation: I had a kettle, a good book, a cat who would be delighted to have my company over a brew and an emergency sleeping tablet that would take an hour to kick in. Low and behold* I had a plan!

An hour and a bit later I was fast asleep and full of Horlicks….. I also felt quite proud, no, I did – I felt quite proud that I had dispensed of the hopelessness, all by myself, at my most vulnerable of moments. Go me.

Today I was mostly tired and groggy! I caught up with a few work emails, pottered up to Canbury Gardens for a wander in the rain, faffed about online and ate three meals. Incidentally, I’ve managed to put a little weight on over the last few weeks, but I’m still hovering somewhere around the ‘telling off’ mark.

Over all I think this weekend has been third time almost lucky. I’m aware that eventually I’m going to have to start getting myself ‘out there’ again but for now taking care of myself (even when the chips are very down), getting things done and finding ways to relax are huge achievements for me and I’m not ready to rock the boat just yet. I’m going for third time completely lucky next week.

Do you know what though? I haven’t hated this weekend; in fact, I’ve spent this weekend feeling moslty calm, reasonably safe and fairly relaxed. What a novel way to spend your time!

*Or is it lo and behold?!

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 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 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 About today

Holiday blues

Posted on by WeeGee

Weekends – the best part of the week, right? And even better when you’ve an extra day off work to make for a long weekend, surely? Maybe not….

During my recent bad patch, I’ve rather taken against the idea of weekends and time to myself. Time to myself has been about introspection, impotence and crippling sadness. Weekends have been about giving in, and accepting that if you don’t want to get out of bed and face the day, not having to get out of bed provides the perfect reason not to. If you see what I mean.

This weekend was always going to be interesting – it was the first one since I took some positive steps towards climbing out of my pit and the first since the medication I’m taking started to kick in. Those things together meant I was in a slightly better place and wasn’t approaching the break with the usual sense of panic and dread. At the same time I was aware that taking an extra day off, so early in the process, could well be a challenge too far for someone, who although a little braver, was still ultimately fragile.

My challenges for the weekend were mostly administrative. Things have gone to rack and ruin so there’s a lot to put back together. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a plan for getting through Friday, just a vague sense of some of the things I wanted to get done and, because of this, the day descended, quite quickly into me variously curled up in a ball or pacing around the flat telling myself I was going to be okay. Somehow though I found myself again and achieved two small things (ordering some shopping and making a phone call) which were enough to restore a sense of calm – a sense that I’d had a setback but that I was still, nevertheless, moving forward.

By the time I went to bed on Friday I had a good list ready for Saturday and alongside this my plan was to change the routine by simply approaching it in a different order and in a different way.

Saturday came and went. I stuck to my plan and followed my list. I had a few wobbly moments but nevertheless almost everything on my list was achieved; not just the administrative and functional things I felt I needed to, or should do, but some of my ideas of things I could do (or things that I wanted to do) as well. By the time the evening came around I’d done some reading, taken a nice hot bath and gone for a walk, albeit in the rain. And here’s the thing. I spent the whole day without retreating from myself at all, in fact, the only thing I was retreating from on Saturday was the weather. I went to bed with the feeling that I had enjoyed (yes enjoyed) a comparatively productive day and perfectly pleasant cosy evening to myself.

I woke up on Sunday with a certain sense of determination. I had proven to myself that I was capable of spending a day alone without leading myself to the cliff edge and thinking about jumping off. Moreover, the chaos that had backed up in the practical areas of life was beginning to return to some semblance of order. I had another list and another plan (well, actually it was the same plan, but you know what I mean).

Again I followed my list a stuck to my plan and with a few more wobbles along the way, primarily because I particularly hate Sundays, I managed to achieve every single thing on my list. In the end the day was spent getting things done, taking care of myself and diverting myself away from the cliff. By the time I was done I felt a lot more settled and less anxious for it. Sunday evening was spent in much the same way as Saturday evening, feeling safe and comfortable without my dark passenger getting in the way too much.

Refusing to accept the behaviours associated with depression and where they put you sometimes isn’t enough, I know that and I need to start working on the strategies for the next time that huge and resounding ‘no’ begins again. Still, for the time being it is enough and things are kinda working out okay.