5 Years

5 years ago today I took my first anti-depressant. That day I went to my doctor and asked him to help me. He gave me the medication and put me off work on sick leave for a month. That days was brutal. I was in no shape to be making big decisions like taking meds, frankly I was in no shape to be asking for help either.  Somewhere inside I knew that I needed to though.

The weeks, more like months, leading up to that day were awful. I was descending further into the black hole daily. I was trying a lot of things to make it better but nothing worked. And I was certainly at a point where I was no longer able to hide that there was something wrong. Depression is awful. When the idea of taking my own life started to be appealing (not the first time in my life) I knew something had to change. I went to the psychologist I was seeing at the time in a desparate state.

She did something that was awful at the time and so helpful. She looked at me straight and said, " you have depression and you should see your doctor about medication because it is obvious that just therapy isn't working". Hard to hear and harder to act on. I did it though.

That black hole is a place that I never want to return to, and that I live in fear of. The memory of it is what drives me to continue to see a therapist, to see my doctor 4 times a year to make sure the meds are still working, to continue to find ways to live better with seems to be a chronic condition, and to talk about my experiences.  All of these things help me, and I hope that by talking it will help others.

The last 5 years have been a pretty wild ride. Much of it has been really hard. Dealing with some of the causes is an ongoing and tough process. Living near the top of or out of the black hole, depending on the day, makes it all worth it. In this place there is joy, there is happiness, there is sadness, there is grief and all sorts of other emotions. The biggest thing there are here are love and light. Two things that are essential for me to feel alive and the 2 things that I was deprived of in the dark hole.

And so the journey continues....

Stress, or the lack therefore

I was talking to someone at work the other day.  She is at a fairly high level in the organization, and currently she is working on a special project.  She said that sometimes she feels guilty because her job is so much less stressful than a number of other people who are at the same level.  Then she said that she guessed the same could be said for me and my job (as I am one level lower than she is, and and working on a special project).

It got me thinking about where the assumption comes that we feel we are overpaid if our jobs are not stressful?  I think this is a difficult notion, especially in relation to mental health.  Then, I got to thinking about my job and if my colleague is correct?  I've concluded that in my case she is not.  There are really three types of circumstances that cause me a lot of stress, unreasonable time pressure, unclear expectations, and interpersonal interactions that trigger PTSD for me.  Currently, none of those circumstances are present.  Should they be for me to be paid at the level I am?  I don't think so.  For the work I am doing currently, being well thought through and accurate is more important than getting it done in a hurry, and the expectations of what I am supposed to be doing are clear.  As for the PTSD, well I never quite know when that will flare, but that is less about the work environment and more about me anyhow.

I have been in my current job for just over a year now.  When my doctor took my blood pressure 2 weeks ago, it was lower than it has been in a long time.  And the lack of feeling a lot of stress at work has made me more productive, not less.  I make a lot fewer errors, and the quality of the work I produce is certainly better than it is when I feel a lot of stress.  All the things the experts say are playing out in my world.

And, as an added bonus, I feel like I have energy to deal with more of the things in my life that cause the PTSD.  This is not a fun process, and it requires a lot of emotional energy.  In the end, it does make me better able to deal with the situations that can trigger it.

I wonder if there is anything I can do about the automatic assumption that so many people make that work has to be stressful all the time?

Self-harm and speaking about it

A colleague said something to me a couple of months ago. I brushed it off then as nothing, but it really made me think. There were a few of us in the kitchen, and one lady was giving me a hard time about being a klutz. Another one was kinder saying she was familiar with a number of injuries since I started at my current workplace.

Another woman was there and said for awhile she thought it was self-harm, only she knew it wasn't because there were witnesses to the accidents that caused the injuries. I laughed it off with everyone at the time.

However, it wasn't as innocent as accidents, at least not for probably the first 3 years I worked at this place. I wasn't actively harming myself, but I wasn't doing anything to stay out of the way of harm when it came my way. I also was so deep in the hole of depression that I didn't care if I got hurt, and I was having such a hard time believing that I had any value that I was careless with my safety.

In my experience these thoughts left unchecked lead to fantasies of injury, then lead to the thought of taking me own life being appealing. The accidents and associated thoughts were a precursor that time as well. (The thought of taking me life has been there a number of times for me).  Thankfully this time the end result was me saying to the psychologist I was seeing that something needed to change and that I couldn't live like that anymore. Then the journey I have been on for the last 5 years began.

And so dear colleague, friends and readers, I ask you to trust your intuition about things. My colleague was right, although my way of harming myself was much more subtle. Talk to people about mental health, mental illness, self-harm, suicide prevention etc...

These days injuries are accidents. I play dodgeball which comes with its risks. And well accidents do happen. I care enough about myself now to be more careful, and to pay more attention.

Saying It

I am having a hard time, and have been for about 3 months now.  There, I said it, out loud for other people to know.  That's a big step based on how things have been going lately. 

I can feel the darkness around me, hanging over my head, surrounding me.  And I'm scared.  Scared that I won't be able to find a way through it.  Scared of going to that dark dark place I have been before.  Scared of the darkness.

Someone once said to me that when things are bad, they don't get better until they get different.  So, here I am trying something different.  Hoping that by letting others in they will bring some light with them.

Lucky

Recently a friend who also lives with depression thanked me for being braver than she is because I talk about it. This came in the context of her having to take a few days off to adjust to some new meds, and not feeling like she can tell her boss why she is taking the time off.

There are times when I feel brave in talking about living with mental illness, there are times when I feel lucky because I have been in circumstances where I was pretty sure sure it would be ok, and there are times when I am pretty sure how I present things helps in making it ok.

I have told 2 bosses about my challenges. Both have been really good about it. The first one I knew pretty well and I was pretty sure it would be ok. I then also got her to help me work part time and she was really good about it. In fact her only reaction when I asked was that she wasn't sure how to make it happen so she would have to get back to me on that.

The second boss I didn't know at all, so telling her was perhaps risky. The thing is I hate feeling like I have to make up illnesses when I need a day off for mental health reasons. I hate having to make up fake doctors when I am off to a counselling session. So, I told her. 

The thing is, I don't really care what people think about this part of me. And maybe that is what makes it alright. I have accepted depression as part of my life. I, most of the time, don't buy into the stigma. I know, most of the time, that this is a chronic illness like any other and once in awhile I need to do something to keep it well managed. Coming from this angle made telling my boss not so scary because telling her was in the name of advocating for my needs, not apologizing for my absences.

So, am I brave? Am I lucky? Am I advocating for myself and in doing so caring for myself? All of the above I would say.

Pathways

It's funny how my brain works sometimes.  There is someone at work who I talk to once in awhile.  I find that when I do have interactions with her I am always drawn in by her way of being, by the way she talks about things, by the interaction in general.  Then afterward, and pretty much every time, I find myself having a hard time.

The way this person sees the world is so different from the way I do, and that is probably where the attraction and the hard time come from.  I like to get to know people who see the world differently, to understand their viewpoints and perspectives. This is the attraction piece.

The hard time piece comes from the way she does see the world.  She so often sees the world as the glass half empty.  So often what she says is a worry about something that might happen.  And this is where the hard time comes for me.  After a conversation with her yesterday I came home and found myself fretting about all of the scenarios she had brought up (all of which I see as unlikely to ever happen), and wondering what on earth I would do if they happened. 

I recognize this behaviour in me, it was so ingrained when I was in the thick of depression.  It is also not how I interact with the world anymore.  But, with this person I find myself going back there, every time.  Funny how one person can open up all those pathways for me again and I can go back to being the way I was.  Thankfully, I usually notice that I feel off fairly quickly and can talk myself out of it.  I can remember that her way of being is hers and I can choose not to be that way anymore.

The  challenge  for me, I think is to figure how to manage this in the future.  I will undoubtedly be in a position to talk to this person again.  How do I avoid the attraction so that I can keep the conversations shorter and to the point I need to discuss with her?  How do I remember to let her have her stuff and not worry about it?  Things to think about.

The un-stigma

Psychotherapy is for the strong, the brave and the healthy. Talk about a powerful message. I was in to see my therapist this week and this is the message she was giving me. More than that though, the conversation came as a way of helping me articulate something that had been rattling around in my head.

For a long time now, probably ever since the day of my diagnosis of depression, I have had it in my head that I will only be ok once I stop taking medication and no longer go to therapy.  Recently something shifted in me and I realized how not true this is.

I am pretty sure that depression is chronic for me. (I will be happy if this is ever proved wrong). And so, I need to continue to live with it, rather than suffer from it. Personally, I don't like or use the phrase "battling depression". For me, it feels like I am fighting myself, and the only way to be ok is to eradicate all signs of depression. I much prefer living with it. The same way people live with diabetes.

With this mindset, I really have started to piece together the things I need to live in a healthy way. So far, medication is a part of the picture. I will try again to stop taking it, at some point. Exercise, eating fruit and vegetables, and less processed sugar. Not over packing my life with activity, leaving room for down time. I am sure there are other things as this is a pretty new exercise for me. The final one though is psychotherapy.

I see a therapist about once a month. It does me a tonne of good. For the most part, things are going pretty well these days and so my sessions with her are different than they used to be. It is nice to have a place where I talk about things that are hard to talk about, and often I find a different way of thinking about things.

So why for the brave, strong and healthy? Let's say that therapy is one of the hardest things I have ever done. It has been a place where I have faced a lot of difficult truths, about me and about others. It is a place where I have had awful panic attacks because of the areas of discussion. It is the place where I have relived some pretty awful trauma in order to make some sense of it. And it is the place where healing began and continues to this day. So that explains the strong and brave part.

The therapist I saw this week said that really, for the most part, the people she sees are the healthy people. The people who are interested in finding new ways of being. The people that are truly suffering are usually the ones that do not seek help and spin in circles. I was once one of those people. My life felt so out of control. Thoughts that now seem irrational, seemed totally reasonable, including feeling so stuck in a traumatic situation that the only way I could see to end the pain was to take me own life.

Then I got some help, some real help. From someone who saw past the facade and made me face some hard stuff. But also started me on a journey from mental illness to mental health.