Confession of a serial coper

All my life I have been someone who has 'coped with' things. It is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand it means that I can walk into Court within an hour of having a panic attack and still represent my client and do my job. I can sit outside the courtroom for an hour reassuring my witness, and making small talk with my solicitor and advising on law whenever a question pops into their heads. It also means that I am able to live by myself and maintain my independence. It means I can organise charity events. I can sit and compose myself and write a blog post even when I feel utterly awful and still make it sound coherent.

The curse of being a coper is that to the world I will appear fine. Until I'm really really not. I was talking to a friend about maybe having a scale system to describe how I feel, going from 0 = happy, healthy, and all ok to 10 = suicidal thoughts and complete and utter inability to cope with even the most basic task. I have discovered that I can run at 8 and still appear pretty much fine to the world, and still cope. I can even be at 9 and then a couple of hour's later appear fine. It is only when other people see me at 9 or 10 that they know something is wrong. And that is too far along the scale.

This is not anyone else's fault. It is impossible to read someone else's mind. The problem lies in my difficulty with asking for help, with being vulnerable with other people and opening up and saying how I feel. Because if I don't actually tell people how I feel then most of the time they would never ever know. And for a long time (until last June) nobody properly knew how bad things were.

So I am going to do my best to give a shout when I reach 7 (7 is an important number to me!) or even when I get to 5. So that people know that even if I look to all outwards appearances to be fine that actually I'm not. And I'm going to use the numbers. Because while my ability to cope is getting me through all of this, it's also stopping other people from knowing or being able to help. And I know I need other people, I know there are people who want to help me, and I know that it is cruel if I don't let them help me.

I'm also going to start trying a different sort of antidepressant. One that doesn't have the problematic side effects I've encountered before. So, with fingers, toes and eyes crossed, 9s and 10s might soon be a thing of the past.

Trying to explain

I hope that all of you who know me will forgive me for setting this out in a blog post. In an ideal world I would speak to you all about this individually.

I feel under more pressure than I can possibly cope with at the moment. Thankfully the therapy has meant that I have turned a corner and don't actively want to hurt myself anymore. But last night I was crying and wishing that I could have a heart attack to make everything stop.

I still have depression. Just because I haven't been writing doesn't mean it has gone away. It is going to take more than 9 months to deal with something that has been going on for a very long time and has affected me for my whole adult life.

I don't know how long it will take. And that scares me. I also have no idea what I am doing. And that scares me too.

No one provides a manual for how to cope with depression. Which makes it hard on the person who is suffering as well as the people who are trying to offer support. But what I am finding hardest of all at the moment is that I feel like I am having to support the people supporting me. I find it very difficult to speak openly about how I feel because of the hurt it causes to other people and how sad it can make them. I feel under pressure not to put anyone else through any more misery.

I also have people repeatedly asking what they should do, or what do I want them to do? Most of the time I simply don't know. I have people asking me if I'm going about this the right way. I have people getting cross with me when I can't think straight and do things the wrong way. I'm not sure if there even is a right or wrong way to do any of this. All I know is that whenever I make a mistake it feels like someone has a go at me. And I am trying my very best all the time, but I don't know what I am doing and so I am making mistakes. And then having to live with the consequences.

Most of this means that I don't want to involve other people. I don't want to upset other people. I don't want other people pointing out to me that I don't know what I am doing and criticising me every step of the way. It feels that because I am so capable usually everyone has a higher level of expectation when it comes to handling the depression. But this isn't like anything else. And so I feel under pressure.

It feels like everyone wants me to tell them how this is supposed to work. As if I am the person with all the answers. This time I don't have any answers. I don't know what I am doing. I don't know whether things I am doing help or hurt. And the pressure to organise everyone else, and support everyone else supporting me, and to ask for help, and to be told off when I get it wrong, and to deal with this in a way that makes sense to everyone. I can't take that pressure any more.

I am poorly. I know I need looking after. But I can't be the person who has the responsibility of looking after me.

I'm sorry to anyone who reads this who is sad, or upset, or angry, or any other of however many emotions people might feel when reading this. I promise you all I am doing the very best that I can.. I'm sorry that I can't do any better. And please remember that I am writing about how I feel - I am not criticising anyone else, just telling you how it feels to be me right now.

Lost

Imagine that you have been told that the main thoughts that have kept you going in life have in fact been harming you. That your wish to look after other people has meant that you put them first and neglected yourself and made yourself unhappy. Or that your focus on goals and achieving something with your life has actually made you a tyrant in your own head.

Imagine that you look back on your life and can only see a string of situations where you either hurt yourself or let yourself get hurt to appease other people and make sure they were happy. And knowing that actually dealing with things the way you used to hurt other people too.

Then imagine that you want to talk about it but that you don't have the language for it. You can only talk in terms of things going wrong or mistakes. And you are told that that won't do you any good either. That you are persecuting yourself. That your language shows that you aren't thinking about things in a way that will necessarily help you.

Imagine that you find yourself without the steers you used to rely on, and without even the language to ask for help in a way that won't hurt you.

Imagine being lost in your own head.

Simple question: if you were in that situation what would you do?

Write what you know

There are a series of strange things about dealing with depression. Mostly it is information that you can get from anywhere and can be warned about, but until you live it you don't necessarily fully appreciate it. Here is a sample:-

 

Weight loss

 

One of the big issues for me (and as I understand for at least some other people who suffer from depression) is losing weight. When you are already small enough that the NHS won't accept a blood donation from you because you are too light, losing more weight is not that fantastic! As far as I can tell it comes from two sources: not having an appetite (usually because of too much adrenaline in my case) and not being bothered to look after myself (because when I'm having an off day I can't see the value in looking after myself).

 

And weight loss has a big impact on other things. You feel more tired and have less energy. Also if I don't eat I don't sleep well (a realisation that resulted in me raiding biscuits at 1am this morning).

 

The problem is that while other people can repeatedly tell me to eat (and trust me they do!) it doesn't necessarily motivate me to eat. When you can't be bothered with yourself making the effort to look after yourself becomes ten times more difficult.

 

Therapy

 

A warning that everyone gave me at the outset of therapy was that it can make things worse. I am living proof of the fact that that can be the case. Having to talk about things that I have buried for years is hard; it brings difficult emotional experiences to the forefront of my mind and it is like I am living them again. Similarly discussing the way that negative pernicious thoughts have developed means having to face up to some of the darker sides of my character. Things about myself that I have never wanted to acknowledge. All of this has led to some vivid and highly disturbing nightmares, and some days spent simply not being able to concentrate or think straight.

 

The other thing that I have found is that in dismantling my character and thought processes I have lost a lot of the aspects of myself that I clinged onto to make me 'me'. Now that they are gone I feel a bit pointless. The classic ship without a rudder metaphor springs to mind.

 

None of this means I am going to stop the therapy. On the whole it is helping and I know that I am getting better over time. But it is not an easy process.

 

Talking to people - actually talking about how you are feeling

 

This is the tricky one. Talking to people is one thing. I could talk about depression until the cows (or should that be horses?!) come home. At this point I know all the facts about depression, I've read up on anxiety, I can tell you a lot about the practicalities of having a mental health problem, the NHS and the various options available.

 

Actually telling a friend how you really feel is more difficult.

 

I think this is something that everyone struggles with. I'm sure everyone has had a point in their life when they have felt, for all sorts of reasons, that they couldn't actually tell someone how they felt. Whether it's being afraid of being vulnerable, or being afraid of hurting someone else, or just being afraid of opening a can of worms and causing yourself a whole load of problems that you really can't be bothered to have to deal with.

 

With depression all of this can get heightened. But it is also when actually saying how you feel can make the difference between feeling alone and isolated, and feeling cared for and loved.

 

I hate telling my friends how bad I feel when I have a dark day. Telling someone I love that I see no point in my existence and would rather not be here is not a fun conversation. It is also a conversation that makes me feel incredibly vulnerable, and scared of being hurt either by not being taken seriously, or being told I'm just attention seeking and crying for help. And especially when you are quite a private person, or have been hurt in the past, trusting people enough to do it can feel like the hardest thing in the world.

 

 

I don't know how other people get through these things. I only know how I'm getting through it. I have taken a leap of faith in hoping that these things will help and that eventually I will feel almost entirely comfortable in my own skin. And when hope and blind faith are all you've got sometimes it can feel a little precarious!

A chronic inability to ask for help

I don't know whether this is a depression problem, or a more general problem. Either way it strikes me as something that deserves comment. And so I'm going to comment on it!

I have an aversion to asking for help. It's something that I can do, but it requires a lot of effort on my part. If I pick up the phone to call a friend when I am really struggling then it will take me at least three 'go's of talking myself into the position where I will actually dial.

The thing is that my failure to ask for help (or to find it really difficult to ask for help) is not borne out of a false sense of pride or arrogance. I know that I can't do everything myself. No matter how hard I try. My difficulty with asking for help is that I don't want to inconvenience other people. And also that I don't want to ask for help and then be rejected.

I generally view myself as a bit of a problem in other people's lives. Hell, I consider myself to be a problem in my life! So why would anyone want to be involved in sorting me out? I struggle to see myself as actually just being another person who other people would want to talk to and be around.

This may appear odd to some people. I know that I generally speaking come across as self-confident and capable. Almost capable to the point of refusing help and being stubborn! And I can imagine that on occasion it could be perceived as rudeness. But it is never intended to be.

As an amusing anecdote to illustrate the point; today (for the first time) I have had a cleaner helping me out. This is a person that I am actually paying to help me! And yet I still find myself almost incapable of sitting still and keeping out of the way and just appreciating the help. (This may sound very familiar to several of my friends who have had to repeatedly tell me to sit down in the past!!)

So yes, asking for help is important. But I freely admit that I still don't really know how to do it!

It's awfully high up here...

A lot of what I am doing at the moment feels highly counter-intuitive.

In order to recover I am learning to force myself to do nothing. I am having to put effort into relaxing, as it does not come naturally to me! To get out of the depressive slump I am having to get happier with who I am, and in not trying to change myself suddenly I do change and I'm happier. One of these days it feels like I will go to push a door that says pull and it will open!!

Then there are the feelings that become involved. At the moment I am a lot happier than I was last week. Unimaginably happier. And it seems like that should be enough and just a pleasant respite from the past month. But, counter-intuitively, with that respite comes a certain amount of nervousness.

The current 'phase' that I seem to be going through feels unpredictable. Yes, there are explanations for why the past month was quite as shit as it was. Yes, the fact that I've felt ok before means that getting back to that point was always going to be able to happen faster, as I know where I'm going. But there is part of me that starts thinking 'isn't this all going a bit quickly this time?' and 'can I trust this?'.

I have also had the experience over the past month that each time I had dealt with one issue, the next one came close on its tail. It was almost like having a brief moment to get a gasp of air before being pushed underwater again. Whereas this time I seem to be floating on the top a bit. I'm having a chance to get my breath back.

I know none of this will sound like a bad thing. All of this is positive: I'm feeling much better. But I am a planner. More to the point I'm a worrier. I want to be prepared. And there is that small voice in my head which is saying 'what if it happens again?' There is that moment when I wake up in the morning and almost do a quick check of myself 'am I ok today?'.

For me my downs and extreme lows are incredibly scary. They are violent, desperate and all consuming. Thankfully there is a very small group of people who have been around me when they have been as bad as they get. I don't like the idea of scaring other people as well. And so I have very good reason for not wanting to end up there.

It is a difficult truth to accept that I may well end up there again at some point. I probably haven't had my last down. They may get less frequent and less severe but there is still a real possibility that they will happen again, regardless of my best efforts and intentions. And that is a scary reality to face up to and accept.

So while I am very thankful that I am in the fantastic position that I am now, I can also look down and recognise quite what a long way down it is.

The set-back

It doesn't take a great deal of understanding for someone reading these posts to realise that this whole situation frustrates me. It frustrates me a lot.

 

In December I felt like I was making real progress. For the first time in a long time I actually knew what it was like to feel content. I even knew what it felt like to feel happy. It is strange when you've had 15 years feeling below par to finally feel happy again. It's wonderful. It was the most amazing refreshing experience. I was actually enjoying being me.

 

I think that is why things have felt so hard recently. A lot has come up over the past month. I have found myself in a series of situations which have pushed me to my limit in terms of my mental health. And these experiences have resulted in the full works: extreme guilt, insomnia, anxiety, flashbacks, panic attacks. You name the depressive response, I've had it.

 

And all of that lead to this past weekend. This past weekend I felt exhausted. I felt like I had been treading water and dealing with problem after problem, and handling them and then the next one would come along in quick succession. And I had had enough. I was mentally exhausted. Which lead to the biggest depressive problem of all: suicidal thoughts.

 

Everyone talks about set-backs. Every information leaflet, helpful website, telephone call, therapy session. The path to the recovery from depression is not smooth. People talk in terms of two steps forward, one step back. Set-backs are normal. They are part of what happens to everyone.

 

But this weekend was the set-back which nearly broke me. The set-back which made me feel like I was back at square one. The set-back which has had me reassessing everything I'm doing and how I am handling things. The set-back that has me questioning myself and the solutions that I have been using to help me. It feels like I must be doing something wrong and that is why there was an issue, that is why there was a set-back. That I need to review my options.

 

And the need to review my options comes mainly from looking at the people around me and listening to their kind advice, and feeling like I need to do something. That there must be something I'm not doing right. The pressure is immense. The concern that I have screwed up in some way is ever present. The guilt is horrible. The guilt has been so bad that I haven't wanted to write here. I haven't wanted to let down any of the people who read this.

 

The thing is that as I write this I know that actually I haven't screwed up. I've been doing the right things for me. The past month has been a hard month. Depression is a hard and cruel illness. I haven't done anything wrong. Set-backs, even severe set-backs, happen. It takes time to recover. It can take weeks to recover if the set-back is particularly bad. But do you know what, I am recovering!

 

So I'm not going to spend any more time worrying about what I've done wrong. Or trying to justify myself to anyone else with accounts of what I have and haven't been doing. The most important thing is that I'm still here.

 

I may have bruises on my legs. I may have a substantial dent in my bin where I kicked it against a wall. But I'm still here.

 

So I'm afraid world you're just going to have to carry on putting up with me. I'm not giving up. And to quote Frank, I'm doing it my way.

The hug vs over-thinking

It is very easy in all of this to get trapped into a pattern of over-thinking things. You would never believe it, but it is actually something I am trying to train myself out of! But when I am trying to baby-sit my own mind, and keep an eye on any potentially depressive thoughts, and make sure I ask for help soon enough that my friends can help me - well it can lead to a bit too much thinking and analysis going on. Not entirely unexpectedly!

And of course thinking too much can (at least in my place) lead into anxiety and worry. Thinking about thinking can lead to actually not doing anything. And that really is no good! I work a lot better when I am getting on with things than when I am sat by myself thinking over stuff and trying to anticipate what might go wrong.

But it is ok - because there is a super-hero waiting in the wings who helps with all of this. It's called The Hug.

There is one thing that I have picked up on/learnt/realised; I don't know why but I find that when someone gives me a hug I actually stop for a moment. My brain stops doing its crazy over-thinking (if crazy over-thinking is going on!) and it starts to at least slow down, and sometimes even to stop. A hug lets me have  a moment where I actually give myself a pocket of time to allow things to stop. (Well, have you ever tried to hug someone while running at the same time? It just doesn't work!!)

I expect that there is some scientific or anthropological reason why hugs are as powerful as they are. There is probably something about human beings being social creatures. To be honest - I don't care! All I know is that a hug works. Simple as.

So today when I am feeling a bit on edge and nervous about what this week is going to throw at me, I'm going to go out and get myself some hugs!

Sometimes storms can be a good thing

There are some experiences which it can be very hard to talk about. They can feel so mad and crazy that just accepting that they happened can be difficult in and of itself. For a, mostly, rational person like me the 'inexplicable' is an odd thing to deal with. Or possibly the better way to phrase it is the 'inexpressable'.

 

There are times in life when words can only get you so far. I spend my days trying to put complicated things into words. It's my job. To explain things that are sometimes highly complex to people so that they can understand them, or so that their solicitor can understand, or a judge. And to a certain extent in writing this blog I am trying to do the same thing. To put difficult complex emotional experiences into words so that people can understand what someone with depression feels and fights against. (Although I reiterate that I can't speak to what is happening in other people's heads; I only have direct access to mine!)

 

It is also fair to say that I find it helps me to be able to express things in words, or systems, or diagrammatic terms. My brain deals with them better that way. It is a way for me to get a better grip on what is happening to me.

 

But it has become more and more apparent to me that there are irrational things in this world; the most irrational being those things called emotions. And I'm not very good at those!

 

Yesterday I tried to do something new. I let myself feel. My grandfather passed away around this time last year, and I personally found it a very traumatic and upsetting experience at the time. Although I didn't let myself feel truly upset at the time. So yesterday afternoon when I started to have flashbacks (by which I mean vivid images in my head, so that I couldn't concentrate on work or focus on what was going on around me) I decided that this time I needed to let myself cry. I wanted to let myself get upset and actually feel what was going on.

 

I just never expected the emotional storm that followed.

 

Once I had started to cry I couldn't stop the inexpressible pain that I felt. Although the word 'pain' doesn't really describe it properly either. It was overwhelming. It was indescribable. And feeling like that was scary. I tried my hardest to talk to people about it but I couldn't explain it. There were no words adequate to describe what was going on. And that was when I started panicking - because I couldn't verbalise the experience in any way.

 

A large number of you may be thinking 'well, welcome to the human race!' I know lots of people who struggle with emotions and can't express them. And being English probably doesn't help!

 

But what happened afterwards has been the strangest thing of all. I slept more soundly than I have in weeks. I now feel like a weight has lifted and my mind feels freer. I feel a lot more settled.

 

Again I can't explain it! But maybe, just maybe, feeling that awful needed to happen so that I could let go of it and feel better afterwards. And maybe, just maybe, actually feeling things that are irrational needs to happen in order to feel human again.

Walk update

Lovely readers!

 

Last week I told you all about the fundraising walk that I am going to do. Latest update is that the walk is still going to happen, but I have decided that it is going to happen in 2014.

 

In the meantime the blogging will continue! There is still a lot being learnt, and a lot that I want to write about!

 

Also if you feel in a giving mood then please do consider paying a little visit and contributing a sum (no matter how small) to The Samaritans http://www.samaritans.org/ I honestly don't know what I would do without them.

Routine - my new favourite thing!

One thing that has become clear to me as I deal with depression is that I am learning all the time! And my friends are learning too!

I am learning what is behind the thoughts in my head that were bringing me down so much, and in therapy I am learning how to be honest with myself about how I really feel and think about things. My friends have learnt the best ways to deal with me when I do have a dip (they're quite clever people!). And, it sounds strange, but I am also learning to love the fact that sorting out the dips is more of a team effort than ever before - which broadly translates to my having learnt how to ask for help and who I can trust to ask for that help.

However, the most important thing I have learnt this week is that as I am getting better and life is getting steadier the ways to deal with and manage my depression are subtly changing. When I started this blog in September I was still in a fairly bad way. When I had downs they were frequently unexplained and could be quite prolonged. The feelings of being down were still hanging around the whole time, and although I could manage to do day to day things (mostly) I didn't feel that I had any space where I was 'free' of the depression for very long. At that time I wrote about how you can feel down for no apparent reason: that it doesn't depend on have you eaten or not, have you slept or not, has something happened or not. Back then the depression had a force all of its own.

A few months later and I am doing much better, and so the way that depression affects my life and the way that I deal with it has subtly altered. And I have reached the conclusion that not only do different people need different help (because the way that depression affects people is personal and can be very varied) but also the way that you deal with depression in the same person can change over time.

Over the past few weeks I have generally been feeling 'free' of the depression. I have days where I feel free of it all day. It has a much more limited impact on my life. When a thought comes into my head rather than allowing it to take over I can see it as being the 'old depressed me' and put it to one side, and then I feel fine again. My outlook on life has changed a lot and I'm much calmer than I used to be (ok - yes I'm still impatient, but this is all relative!).

But when I look at the downs that I have had over the past few weeks the 'have you eaten?', 'have you slept?', 'has something happened?' questions have become far more relevant.

The times when I have my dips now are times when anyone among us would end up being grumpy. If you don't get a good night's sleep, the next day you feel a bit shit. If you don't get food, you can end up feeling fed up. If something happens which makes you cross, well you are likely to be put out for a bit. The only difference is that for me those things can snowball a bit if given the space to. It becomes much more difficult for me to deal with the depressed thoughts and dismiss them if I am feeling tired, hungry, or am already in a bad mood (i.e. if I'm already feeling weak).

Which is why - and I am fully aware I may be alone in this! - I have loved going back to work this week!!

Routine is now my greatest ally in the world! Going to work means that I need to get up in the morning, that I eat at regular times, that in addition to going to the gym I am walking to work and back every day, and most importantly that I am doing something with my day so that I feel tired and can sleep properly at night. Two of the biggest triggers to my depression are being knocked on the head in one go! 

Now, I am not suggesting that routine is a cure-all. I am going to have to make sure that I don't get overly tired, and so taking work steady still has to happen. I also know that I may have the odd day where, for whatever reason, I have thoughts in my head which do lead to a dip. And as far as those sort of thoughts are concerned, well that's what therapy is for! But having a day to day routine is definitely the starting point for giving myself the best chance to actually enjoy days that are free of all the depression stuff.

So there we have it - if I start feeling down anyone is now free to ask 'have you slept properly?' or 'have you eaten properly?'. And if I haven't eaten properly then please feed me! I like pretzels and cookies.

Only human

Even if you are someone, like me, who considers the end of one year and the beginning of the next as a quirk in the calendar, it is difficult not to reach a date in the year and look back at what was going on last time that quirk happened.

I think it is fair, honest, and right for me to say that 2012 will probably turn out to have been one of the most important years of my life. Obviously I can be astonished again in the future (life has a way of doing that!). But at the moment 2012 is the year that everything change significantly, and for the better.

A year ago  today I was exhausted. I was suffering from insomnia, anxiety and undiagnosed depression. I had a lovely new boyfriend who in the space of a week had suddenly seen the depressed side of me, and had had to endure a fairly major down on New Year's Day. I knew that things weren't right with me but I couldn't see a way to make any of it any better. I had given up on having a life in which I could be properly happy. I was going through the motions of existing. I didn't really have any feelings other than apathy down to really darkness. And the occasional points of happiness seemed like something that came along once in a blue moon and were incredibly rare.

And if I had sat down and thought about it last year I couldn't have even accepted that there was a problem with that. I knew I wasn't happy with it. But I wasn't doing anything to change it. I had lived like that for a very long time. It was normal. I almost felt like it was who I was, and the part of me that felt like it was all wrong was dismissed as being self-involved, and wanting things I couldn't have. The ever present refrain of  'what are you complaining about, so many other people are so much worse off than you, you're so ungrateful' kept going round and round in my head.

Today everything is quite different. Over the past year a lot has happened: I have lost a very dear grandfather, I have been forced to move house, I have had months of not being paid, I have gone through a break-up, I have taken two overdoses, beaten myself up, harmed myself, done some of my most important work to date, organised two charity karaoke gigs, been admitted to a crisis care centre, started writing a blog, written for Mind so that other people know that they are not by themselves no matter how lonely they feel, started therapy, been honest to my colleagues at work about what's been going on, gone to a couple of brilliant gigs, the list is quite long...!

But most importantly in 2012 I finally asked for and accepted help. I started to be honest about who I am and have started to talk to people about what is really going on in my life. I have told my friends what is going on, I have told the doctor, I have written countless e-mails (not all of which have been sent!), I have written diary entries, and I have written here.

And the upshot is that today life feels very different to how it did a year ago! I feel very different to how I did a year ago. I actually know what I want to be like. I have no idea what I ultimately want out of life - that's all going to be an interesting adventure in itself!! But I finally - after a good ten or more years - have a better idea of who I am.

So 2012 has been a pretty special year!

The thing is that during this past year I did need help. Everyone does once in a while! My help has come from all sorts of places. And there are a fair few people who know how grateful I am that they were there and who hopefully know how much I love them. But one of the most important sources of help for me was the Samaritans.

At the beginning of this blog I said at some point I would talk about fundraising - well here it finally is!

On 24 July 2013 I am starting out from Land's End and will be walking to John O'Groats. I will be walking to raise money for the Samaritans and to raise awareness of depression and how it affects people. As I prepare for it and when I am actually walking I will do my best to keep up with telling people what's going on. I have no idea what to expect, apart from the fact that I expect that my feet will be a bit sore by the end of it!!!

So here's to 2013 - what the hell is going to happen next?!?