Shades of Grey

Life is not black and white.  There are always shades of grey.  I have had lots of experiences through my journey with depression, and other places too, that have hammered this point home.

I have friends that have cheated on their spouses.  This is an action that I always used to think was unforgivable.  I found a new way to think about it when it was good friends that were involved.  I saw their vulnerability, their remorse, their pain in the situation.  And I decided that I couldn't walk away when they most needed a friend.  I learned that being a friend and being supportive doesn't have to mean thinking their actions were ok, it means showing compassion, giving people a break, knowing that we all do things that are hurtful to ourselves and to others.

Being involved with the lesbian community has shown me some things as well.  What I have found there is people who want to be accepted for who they are.  In some pockets I have found people that are unable to do that for other people.  I sometimes tell the story of a friend of mine.  Her religious beliefs say that it is wrong to be gay.  For a bit after I came out this was a sore spot between us, but eventually we agreed to disagree.  I have had some pretty bad reactions to this story in that I should continue to try to change her mind because she is wrong and how can I accept  her like that?  I respect that this is what she believes and she respects that I don't believe that and we move on.  I truly believe that compassion and acceptance has to go both ways.

 I have had some friendships change for the worse because of my coming out and my journey with depression.  A different friend says I don't need those people in my life because if they can't deal with those things then they are not my true friends.  In some instances she is right.  But there is one person in particular where I am not convinced this is true.  I think there is a lot of hurt and misunderstanding between us and maybe if we can find a way to broach that we can change our relationship again.

I once heard someone say that her diagnoses of mental illness were her life sentence.  This person is an advocate for anti-stigma work and I admire that.  For me though, I don't like to look at depression as a life sentence.  Yes it appears to be chronic for me and something I will live with for the rest of my life, but is it a sentence?  We all have things in our lives that we have to deal with.  My friend has diabetes and has since he was 7.  Would people characterize this as a life sentence?  Maybe.  I view depression as part of my life, part of who I am and part of how I live.  It's not the most fun part to be sure.

Taking care of myself has taken on a whole new meaning also.  I used to think I was great at taking care of myself because I could work and earn enough money to pay for all the things I needed.  I didn't need anyone's help with anything. This is certainly one way to take care of oneself.  I wasn't taking care of myself in a number of other ways though.  I wasn't paying any attention to my mental health.  I wasn't paying that much attention to my physical health.  I let myself stay in unhealthy situations way too long because I didn't know how to get out of them.  I let physical pain go on for a long, long time before doing anything about it.  I never took sick days from work, even when I should have, and the odd time I did I felt extremely guilty.  Now, I am much better at really taking care of myself.  Finding a balance among all the things in my life; work, alone time, physical activity, friends, family.  I take sick days more often than not as mental health days.  I get a flu shot (because when I don't I catch every virus going around).  I pay attention to how I feel and take action on it.  I work really hard at living according to what I think is important, and not what other people think is important.  I ask for help sometimes, although this is something I am working on.

Side Effects of Depression

For the last 15 months I have been going to see a physiotherapist twice a week or so.  It started with a sore knee, then a stress fracture in my foot.  At first the treatment for the foot wasn't working, so we started looking for the cause.  Turns out my hip and back are out and I have inflammation on my SI joint (the spot where the spine and pelvis come together).  That was causing me to walk funny and hurting my knee and caused the broken one in my foot.

This is all a side effect of depression.  When I was really struggling with depression, and even for a long time after my diagnosis I ignored a number of signs of the injuries I am currently working on healing.  The 2.5 years before the diagnosis I was hiking 2-3 times a week for 5-10 hours at a time.  I eventually had to stop because my foot was so sore I could barely walk.  The nerve pain down my leg has been there for a number of years, etc etc.

In the depths of depression, I wasn't able to manage anything other than surviving every day, or hour or minute.  For the first 3 years of my recovery, it took up SO much of my energy and that along with things like my job and family took up everything I had. And so my physical health suffered, a lot.

So now, I am working on the exercises the physio(s) give me and healing my back etc... so I can be healthy mentally and physically.

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.