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!