Posted in Little things that made me smile

Smiling at strangers on trains

Posted on by WeeGee

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. Truth told, I’m a little bit over excited about the theme this year (doing good does you good) because funnily enough, I’ve been thinking about the positive impact that doing nice things for others might have on your mental wellbeing since watching this rather fantabulous Ted Talk recently:

The talk focuses on the positive impact spending your money on others can have on your emotional wellbeing, but since I don’t actually have any money I’ve been wondering whether spending other things – like time or energy – might have a similar effect; this means that Mental Health Awareness week has arrived at the perfect moment to give me an excuse to a) try this theory out for myself, b) get involved in something that I care about and c) include a link to a Frank Turner song* on my blog!**

The song is Smiling at strangers on trains which, for the record, is an awesome little song. My plan for the week, inspired by the title of this song, is simple: my daily act of kindness will be to smile at every stranger I encounter 🙂

I’m quite sure that this will be interpreted as a sign of lunacy by some of those people lucky enough to find themselves on the receiving end of my cheesy grin (I do live in London after all – sometimes just making eye contact is regarded as a sign of lunacy here) but hopefully most people will smile back and the exchange of smiles will provide a little lift and serve as a reminder that the world isn’t all bad…

* For the sake of accuracy, it’s actually a Million Dead song, but this is Frank’s solo rendition (try as I might, I can’t quite get my head around Million Dead!)

**This will doubtless be the first of many such links. For me, Sir Frank is a bit like Pringles: once you pop you can’t stop!

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

Back to the drawing board

Posted on by WeeGee

I’ve spent a lot of time reading the blogs of other people who have similar difficulties and challenges to me and I’ve been amazed how many of them there are, and how many have struck a chord with me. People seem to blog for all kinds of reasons – for some it’s about therapy, for others it’s venting and for some it’s about reaching out for a little bit of old-fashioned human kindness. The obvious question to ask myself now is ‘why am I really blogging’?

When I started my blog a few weeks ago I decided I was going write about my attempts to live well and overcome depression. I knew I wanted to record my journey, and that I maybe wanted to share it if anyone was interested but above all else I was determined that the daily ins and outs of my mental health were going to be something of a side issue: I wanted to keep my writing upbeat and positive – this was going to be about progress and recovery and everything else was getting left out. I still think this was a noble aim, but after almost four weeks of writing I’m starting to wonder if my approach is a little too rigid and perhaps, unrealistic. My rules allow me to say I suffer from depression, that I had a bad day, that things aren’t going well, but they don’t allow me to spend any time explaining or analysing what any of that feels like or what it really means. And those things, are probably the biggest part of my story.

I live with the day to day impact of depression; It’s a big part of my life and in banning myself from writing the truth about it I’m leaving big parts of the story out. I don’t want to change tack completely, and it’s still really important for me to focus on achievements (one of my little aims in life is to make sure that the word ‘depression’ is never bigger than the word ‘achievement’ in my tag cloud!)  but I called this blog ‘how do you eat an elephant’, not ‘the elephant in the room’!

So I’ve decided that it’s important that I allow myself to recognise the reality of being me in my writing here. I don’t necessarily want to turn this into a mirror image of the depths of despair that my mind can come to, but I don’t want to pretend that stuff isn’t happening either. After all, the real achievement is that I carry on – getting little things done and getting slightly better every now and again – in spite of the reality of being me. What I think I’m saying is that ‘me’ is important even if ‘me’ isn’t always pretty.

As I’ve already said, nobody is ever going to want to shout about mental illness from the rooftops, but if someone like me (who has even gone to the lengths of setting up a blog just to write about depression) isn’t willing to acknowledge the truth of it then mental ill health seems destined to always have the quality of a dirty little secret.

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 Book reviews

Goodreads book review – The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ*

Posted on by WeeGee

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel ChristThe Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I came to The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ having read the His dark materials trilogy but found none of the withering and thought provoking criticism of the power afforded to organised religion in those works here. In fact, Pullman’s retelling of the story of Christ felt a little juvenile and little lazy. It added nothing salient to the weary debate about the value and nature of religion, and at times seemed like an unnecessary and cheap point scoring exercise.

Of course Philip Pullman is no stranger to religious controversy and perhaps, given a certain inclination of faith The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ is a deeply controversial work. For my part – not being of that particular inclination – I can only set aside the apparent controversy and conclude that without it this is little more than a story about the nature of stories. I’ve read plenty of stories about stories before; the blurred lines between fact, fiction, truth, history and memory have been explored time and again elsewhere and sadly this book didn’t feel anything like a stand out example of an over familiar post-modern genre.

It’s disappointing not to find something positive to say about a novel, so I suppose it’s fair to say that there is some charm in the fable like nature of this one – although perhaps this owes more to the gospels themselves than to Pullman’s rendering of them.

View all my reviews

* A note on book reviews

Posted in Practical issues

Joining the back of the queue

Posted on by WeeGee

I had a bit of a setback earlier this week. Turns out, the waiting list for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in my borough is considerable and I’m at the back of the queue!

I’m feeling a little cut adrift, to be honest. The psych appointments are all well and good, and I fully appreciate that they are necessary but…. point number one: they make me feel like a bit of a mentalist (I am a bit of a mentalist so I’m allowed to say that) and point number two: I worry that the focus on the symptoms and the feelings somehow reinforces the symptoms and the feelings, if you see what I mean. I’ve followed CBT courses twice before and found the approach incredibly helpful. I like to understand and I like to have a plan and using CBT techniques provides both. Over the last month or so I’ve tried to put as much of what I have learned in the past into action, but I do feel that both a refresher course and some regular contact with a specialist is something that would be helpful for me at the moment. Nevertheless, for now I need to hang on in there by myself for a little while longer. There are plenty of excellent self help CBT tools on the web, so I guess I’ll be turning to them* for the time being.

I don’t suppose for one minute that I’m the first person to have found the energy and courage to admit they need a little help only to be told that whilst help is available it will be a long time coming. At the same time, it’s certainly no secret that mental health services are under resourced and over-subscribed so NHS waiting lists in excess of 12 weeks are hardly surprising. The question is, what can I do about this state of affairs? The depressed me says nothing – people get what they’re given, and have to suck it up and hunker down; the ‘other’ me says not a lot, but maybe a little!

Mind are a fantastic charity who do a lot of brilliant advocacy work and play a huge role in keeping the issues associated with mental ill health on all kinds of important agendas. They also work closely with those affected by mental health difficulties providing advice, services and local support networks. Mind do great things and have an important role to play both in providing much needed resources and in ensuring the needs of those experiencing mental health difficulties are at the forefront of the minds of our policy makers. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days now and I’ve decided that doing something to support Mind could be just the little thing the other me could do!

And so I’ve found this on the Mind website and I think I might give it a go. Even if I only manage to raise a couple of quid, I’ll have done something positive, right? I’m also fairly confident that the exercise, and the outdoors will do wonders for my well being and hopefully the challenge will give me an external focus whilst I wait for my name to reach the top of the CBT queue. Finally, maybe I’ll be able to do a tiny little bit to raise the profile of Mind and the awareness of mental health difficulties amongst my friends and family as well.

I’m not entirely sure that I know what I’m letting myself in for – I do a fair bit of walking and I’m not altogether averse to running now and again but I’ve no idea how many steps I actually take in an average day. 10,000 sounds like quite a lot, doesn’t it?! Anyway, I’ll be signing up this weekend and I’ll keep you posted.

Of course if anyone reading this is looking for something to do over the summer, they’d be more than welcome to join me – little things added together make big things after all!

* Mood Juice is a particularly good one.

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

If you’re happy and you know it….

Posted on by WeeGee

Chatting to a friend over lunch yesterday I became aware of a frustrating misconception about depression which hadn’t really occurred to me before – the notion that the opposite of depression is happiness and that depression is simply the experience of being very sad for a long time.

Sometimes I rather wish I had just been sad for a while. Sad, I think, I could have done. Sad doesn’t crowd in during the threadbare hours to chase you out of yourself; it doesn’t turn out the lights, one by one; it doesn’t steal the things you care about and taunt you because you can’t find their whereabouts. Sad isn’t a menace threatening to stay by your side for eternity; it doesn’t convince you to abandon all hope, love and laughter.  Sad doesn’t take your life away, incrementally, until the only thing left to do is jump off the cliff edge it has led you to.

It’s funny where a throw away comment can take you, isn’t it? My friend simply said ‘I’m really glad you are feeling happier’. It was meant as a kindness and an encouragement, and it was taken as one, but behind the scenes it got me thinking about what I’m really trying to achieve here. Is this a search for happiness? My conclusion, I think is ‘no’. For me, trying to recover from depression isn’t about trying to find happiness, it’s about trying to find health. It’s about getting myself on a mental and emotional even keel which allows me to experience a range of emotions safe from the harm that my dark passenger can and does inflict.

Sad is sad. It’s the opposite of happy. Depression is depression. It’s the opposite of well and the opposite of what I’m striving to be.

Posted in Practical issues

Counting the pennies – an afterthought

Posted on by WeeGee

In the off chance that my good friend (who knows who they are) reads this post, I should express some heartfelt and public gratitude for the awesome practical support, particularly on the money side of things. If my good friend doesn’t read this post, readers will at least know that I have a good friend who has been awesome, particularly on the money side of things!

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…