Category: Reasons to be cheerful

Posted in Reasons to be cheerful

Take that, broken brain (Hold on: the sequel)

Posted on by WeeGee

I was really touched by the comments my lovely WordPress friends left on my last post, Hold On. As always, you proved yourselves to be a thoughtful, kind and very wise bunch and the comments certainly gave me a little lift when I read them at lunchtime during ‘one of those days’.

What really struck me was how, no matter what goes on in our heads, we always seem to find something to hold on to. I think it’s amazing that we find different ways of just keeping on doing it day after day, especially when you consider all of the horror we face.

Anyway, I got to thinking about all the brilliant people I’ve met on WordPress all of the brilliant things they do – raise families, hold down jobs, study, write blogs and so much more. Most of it must seem pretty ordinary to a ‘normal’ person who can do all kinds of ordinary things without having to do battle with themselves first. In my book, that makes the fact that mental people do ordinary things in spite of being mental pretty extraordinary and, for that, I wanted to give anybody who wanted one a big friendly pat on the back:

As for me and what I’m holding on to? I think I’ve worked it out. I’m holding on to the fact that one day all of this will be better and I’m very determined that I’m going to be around to enjoy it when it is. So: take that, broken brain.

Ta ta for now, WeeGee xxx

Posted in Reasons to be cheerful

A WeeGee award ceremony

Posted on by WeeGee

I’m in a funny old mood today, so rather than inflicting it on you lot, I thought I’d take my mind off it by writing an awards post. I like blogging awards – I think they’re a nice little token of mutual respect, and I enjoy answering the questions (and reading the answers) that come with them.

The Daisy Award

* Thank the person who nominated you

I was nominated by Angel Fractured so…. thank you very much Angel Fractured. Angel fractured keeps not just one, but two lovely blogs and you should probably visit them both if you’re not already familiar.
* Tell your readers 7 unusual things about yourself

  1. I have never seen any of the films from the Star Wars or Alien franchises and I have now reached a point in my life when I never will because saying I’ve never seen them is surely far more interesting than sitting and watching them?
  2. I experience mental health problems which is only a little bit unusual since such problems affect one on four of us. (Probably more if you are reading my blog!) The thing is, some people still seem to think that a mental health problem marks you out as different and weird, which clearly, it doesn’t.
  3. I suffer from psoriasis which in itself is only a bit rarer than being mental. However, the kind of psoriasis I have is an awful lot rarer than being mental – so much so that a dermatologist is writing a whole paper about the behaviour of my strange skin as we speak….. Fame at last.
  4.  I speak with three distinct accents depending on who I’m talking to or on my mood:
    1. Plummy southern: It is allllriaght, isn’t it daarling?
    2. Midland: its awwwright, int’ it duck?
    3. Glaswegian: it’s awrit init pal?
  5. In my life I have never started reading a book and not finished it with only  two notable exceptions:
    1. The Mill on the Floss
    2. The Shipping News
  6. I can’t do jigsaw puzzles. My brain just won’t work that way.
  7. I can do an uncanny impression of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films…. it gives grown men the heebie-jeebies.

* Nominate some worthy bloggers

I’d like to nominate two bloggers who are both, like me, quite new to this whole blogging thing. Both blogs are interesting, engaging and (I hope they won’t mind me saying because I mean it in a kind way) are about being mental amongst other things:

The Depressed Moose

Madness 42

And then I’d like to make a special Daisy award to Brandic at Nothinginmynoggin because I love her blog, because I want to and because I can:

“Dear Brandic, ‘Chin up chumley’ (ps that’s a very British saying), Love from WeeGee xx”

The Inspirational Blogger Award

The very inspirational and very lovely Roxy at AdverseUniverse put me forward for this one. If you don’t already follow Roxy – seriously, why not? She’s very lovely and very inspirational and she’s incredibly brave to boot. Thanks lovely (I promise not to swear in my acceptance speech)

The nice thing about the Inspirational Blogger Award is that there don’t seem to be any rules, so you can just make them up as you go along. I’m good at winging it so this one is right up my street 🙂

First up I’m going to nominate three inspirational blogs:

  1. The Quiet Borderline: The Quiet Borderline is amazing. It doesn’t seem to matter how difficult things get for her, she manages to write beautiful and insightful posts and she just seems to keep keeping on in the face of adversity. She truly is an inspiration.
  2. Magically Mad: Magically Mad is also amazing. She says the kindest things which help you through your bleakest of moments, even though things are pretty bleak for her. She’s one of life’s all round good eggs.
  3. Hello Sailor: It must get boring for Sailor getting nominated for so many awards, but I don’t think she realises just how special she is, so I’m chucking this one at her too in the hope she will eventually realise it. Her blog is absolutely beautiful and she is a huge source of inspiration for me, and I imagine, countless others.

In celebration of this award, I thought I’d post a couple of photos of my cat (the best cat in the world). Well you know?  There are no rules and I am a mad cat lady when it comes down to it.

The best cat in the world (ps. sorry they’re all different sizes and rubbish quality, I’m not much of a photographer and they were all taken with differnt phones):

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!