Anybody who follows me or my writing will have already seen my post back in May about depression.
A lot has happened since then.
I'm writing this because I feel that I am almost back at the start, full circle. I am scared.
As I write to you, it is half past 1 on a monday afternoon and I am in bed. I am in bed because I don't know what else to do. I mean, I have things to do. I continually have a long 'to do list' filled with activities, I can often be found clutching the timetable to pineapple dance studios or gym classes. But I'm not doing anything because I can't seem to find a way to start.
Here I am, back at stage one, all over again. I took my course of anti-depressants. About five months I'd say. And they were great. I felt balanced, energetic (for the most part) and positive about things. It's been a month, maybe two since I stopped and I can feel old habits begin to creep up on me. It doesn't come as a complete surprise to me that I am feeling this way. Over the last few months I have been in and out of doctors surgeries and hospitals for appointments and health scares and I am still in the depths of that, though we're getting somewhere. The stress of it is pulling me down again. Back down to where I feel hopeless and lethargic and pointless and barren. And I know it's not 'me'. I know it's this nasty bug, this virus, we call 'depression', we call 'anxiety'. And I'm scared that it's come along to take hold once more.
I feel like I've let myself down. Like I'm broken. Like I'm selfish and that no one should bother with me. It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous.
I've booked an appointment this afternoon to head back to the Doctors and to request to be put back on the pills. I have never felt dependant on them, but now I'm scared that this is becoming my 'way out'. There is NOTHING wrong with taking anti-depressants. Depression is, after all, an illness like any other, a chemical imbalance. So why do I feel like I'm giving up the fight?
You can't always fight. You get tired. I can't fight my own head, my own body. I want to be outside, I want to be dancing, I want to be laughing with my friends, creating, exercising, getting excited with my boyfriend about our new flat, I want to be happy to be alive. I don't want to torture myself anymore. I don't want to be sat here, writing this, feeling like there is nothing to get out of bed for.
So what can I do?
I have wonderful friends, family, loved ones. But if even they can't pull you out of your ever increasing black hole then you have to trust that a doctor and her medicine can. For a few months I felt alive, I felt normal, I felt that I could get out of bed in the morning without fighting off six demons between the duvet and work. So is it a permanent thing? Am I permanently going to require a little help? Many of us do.
I just want to feel stable. I don't want to tip-toe around myself and feel scared that the moment something goes wrong I'm going to catapult full-speed into a crazed pit of despair. I want to look in the mirror and be pleased with what I've achieved in life. Because deep down I'm ecstatic. Behind this curtain of self-doubt and insecurities I am over-the-moon with my life. It's the best life I could wish for and it's everything I want it to be and more than I ever dared imagine. So let me embrace it, let me feel it. Let me live.
Monday 14 October 2013
Thursday 16 May 2013
And so comes the time....
...to share with you a blog I have been meaning to write for a fair amount of time. I've been meaning to write and yet have not found the bravery of expression, the shame of face, the guts of adversity in which to voice, to exclaim, to cry:
I am depressed.
Yes, I feel the eyes of many turn away, disgusted by the self-indulgence, the audacity of a British woman to admit this point of failure. 'Surely she just wants attention!', 'Surely this blog is nothing more than a scream for help, a self-centred cry for notice, a longing for people to see a self-inflicted tortured soul?!'.
To those people, the people who turn away, the people who are scared, kindly do FUCK OFF.
I write here, not as a plea, not as a call to help, not as anything but an account of life, a sharing of thoughts, an honest account of my day to day internal monologue and a plea to end the stigma.
Less than two months ago, I got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. This came as no great surprise to me. I had known for years that I suffered both these things but was unable, incapable of sharing, even with my nearest and dearest. When you try to voice these things you know to be truth, to the unsuspecting caring friendly circle it can seem dramatic, over-exaggerated, or, as many people like to word it: "just one of those days".
Ten years later I realise that this is not "just one of those days". I look seriously at my life. I see nothing but wondrous things. Remarkably, through my deep dark holes of complete desolate ruin I have managed to create a life that is respectable, a life I can happily look upon and say 'yes, well done. If nothing else, you achieved something'. But it's only when I could see this fact and still feel the way I did I realised that I had a real problem.
About three months ago when I realised that I wasn't hiding my faults as much as I'd hoped; when two wonderfully close friends both seperately expressed to me their slight concerns and in turn, their own run-ins with the nasty haunting monsters that are "depression" and "anxiety" I FINALLY got up the courage to book an appointment with a GP. This was a MASSIVE step. It may seem like nothing at all: lifting a phone and booking an appointment, but only weeks before I had found myself in such a hole, that I couldn't even leave my bed, let alone admit to someone that I maybe wasn't 'of perfect health'.
The GP spoke to me with the perfect mix of concern and cold, hard, matter of fact-ness. I had to fill in a form, multiple choice, upon which I made myself be brutally honest, after all, when in Rome... I told the GP briefly of my 'shortcomings' and found myself swiftly in tears, apologising for the way I was behaving. Initially I was incredibly sceptical about any sort of treatment that involved pills/medication. The doctor asked me why. As an actor, especially, I felt terrified at the 'numbing of feelings'. As a human I felt terrified of the dosed up, unnatural way of life. The beauty of instinct taken from me. The inability to cry at a song or film that moved me.
I have been on the antidepressants 'Citalopram' for about two months. After about a month, I couldn't believe my luck. I felt like a new person. All those times I had spent crying in a corner about something I couldn't control: GONE. I felt miraculous. But not in that scary 'I can't control my emotions I'm so excited' way. Just totally in control, positive and forward thinking.
It's also remarkable how quickly other people come out of their little depression shaped closets. Now I'm not going to name names but I can safely say that a great number of close friends swiftly expressed to me that they had suffered the same fate or trialed the same pills. So much so that I was SHOCKED at how common this all is and how greatly under appreciative we all are of each others' mental health. So quickly we are to judge that someone is a bit 'batty' or 'unstable' or suffers mood swings. So happily we all accept that when we suffer those insecure moments of 'losing it' we are to admit that we were just 'having a bad day' or 'something bad happened' or, heaven forbid ladies, 'it was my time of the month'.
In the last week, unfortunately I have found myself slipping back into less uplifting places but then again I did miss 3 pills within a week and a couple things happened that made me feel insecure in life/work so I am not being quick to judge these feelings, I'm actually taking it as a learning curve and moving on, hoping for improvement once again.
Anyway, I digress. As you can imagine, I also greatly expressed to my GP how much I believed that I (and many others) could benefit from 'talking treatment' or therapy and the GP agreed and gave me details of an NHS supported therapy centre for self-referral.
After a few phone calls, emails, a self-referral form, a few more phone calls, a couple missed phone appointments (on their part) and finally an apology, yesterday I received my 'phone assessment' to see if I am eligible for cognitive behavioural therapy. I have to add, I am not suicidal, BUT had I been, this would all be too late for me. The therapist was apologetic about lack of contact but you know, had it been a more extreme case....
The assessment itself was pretty harrowing. Nearly an hour of multiple choice and scale of 1-8 questions about how depressed you are (I mean, come on?!) so that you hopelessly try to remain honest but tortured in the hope that your score will reveal that you need some help (when surely that is already glaringly obvious).
Having grown up a very honest and open person, I gave my all (later to regret it and feel the affects) but for someone else suffering on more of a downward spiral I can only begin to imagine how they may not have passed 'the test'.
Anyway, they think it is right for me to go ahead with CBT. Which is great, if I ever hear from them again....
As previously expressed, this blog is not a cry for help, or any sort of attention seeking scheme. Maybe that's my own paranoia setting in again but I always think we try to make a judgement and assume the worst. If you wish to speak to me about this blog then do so! I have been honest, why shouldn't you?
I am not wishing to gain anything from this post. Only to be safe in the knowledge that I shared, and that maybe someone out there won't be so scared anymore. There are millions of us.
As my dear friend puts it: "We are the broken biscuits".
That doesn't mean we're not just as tasty. ;-p
I am depressed.
Yes, I feel the eyes of many turn away, disgusted by the self-indulgence, the audacity of a British woman to admit this point of failure. 'Surely she just wants attention!', 'Surely this blog is nothing more than a scream for help, a self-centred cry for notice, a longing for people to see a self-inflicted tortured soul?!'.
To those people, the people who turn away, the people who are scared, kindly do FUCK OFF.
I write here, not as a plea, not as a call to help, not as anything but an account of life, a sharing of thoughts, an honest account of my day to day internal monologue and a plea to end the stigma.
Less than two months ago, I got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. This came as no great surprise to me. I had known for years that I suffered both these things but was unable, incapable of sharing, even with my nearest and dearest. When you try to voice these things you know to be truth, to the unsuspecting caring friendly circle it can seem dramatic, over-exaggerated, or, as many people like to word it: "just one of those days".
Ten years later I realise that this is not "just one of those days". I look seriously at my life. I see nothing but wondrous things. Remarkably, through my deep dark holes of complete desolate ruin I have managed to create a life that is respectable, a life I can happily look upon and say 'yes, well done. If nothing else, you achieved something'. But it's only when I could see this fact and still feel the way I did I realised that I had a real problem.
About three months ago when I realised that I wasn't hiding my faults as much as I'd hoped; when two wonderfully close friends both seperately expressed to me their slight concerns and in turn, their own run-ins with the nasty haunting monsters that are "depression" and "anxiety" I FINALLY got up the courage to book an appointment with a GP. This was a MASSIVE step. It may seem like nothing at all: lifting a phone and booking an appointment, but only weeks before I had found myself in such a hole, that I couldn't even leave my bed, let alone admit to someone that I maybe wasn't 'of perfect health'.
The GP spoke to me with the perfect mix of concern and cold, hard, matter of fact-ness. I had to fill in a form, multiple choice, upon which I made myself be brutally honest, after all, when in Rome... I told the GP briefly of my 'shortcomings' and found myself swiftly in tears, apologising for the way I was behaving. Initially I was incredibly sceptical about any sort of treatment that involved pills/medication. The doctor asked me why. As an actor, especially, I felt terrified at the 'numbing of feelings'. As a human I felt terrified of the dosed up, unnatural way of life. The beauty of instinct taken from me. The inability to cry at a song or film that moved me.
I have been on the antidepressants 'Citalopram' for about two months. After about a month, I couldn't believe my luck. I felt like a new person. All those times I had spent crying in a corner about something I couldn't control: GONE. I felt miraculous. But not in that scary 'I can't control my emotions I'm so excited' way. Just totally in control, positive and forward thinking.
It's also remarkable how quickly other people come out of their little depression shaped closets. Now I'm not going to name names but I can safely say that a great number of close friends swiftly expressed to me that they had suffered the same fate or trialed the same pills. So much so that I was SHOCKED at how common this all is and how greatly under appreciative we all are of each others' mental health. So quickly we are to judge that someone is a bit 'batty' or 'unstable' or suffers mood swings. So happily we all accept that when we suffer those insecure moments of 'losing it' we are to admit that we were just 'having a bad day' or 'something bad happened' or, heaven forbid ladies, 'it was my time of the month'.
In the last week, unfortunately I have found myself slipping back into less uplifting places but then again I did miss 3 pills within a week and a couple things happened that made me feel insecure in life/work so I am not being quick to judge these feelings, I'm actually taking it as a learning curve and moving on, hoping for improvement once again.
Anyway, I digress. As you can imagine, I also greatly expressed to my GP how much I believed that I (and many others) could benefit from 'talking treatment' or therapy and the GP agreed and gave me details of an NHS supported therapy centre for self-referral.
After a few phone calls, emails, a self-referral form, a few more phone calls, a couple missed phone appointments (on their part) and finally an apology, yesterday I received my 'phone assessment' to see if I am eligible for cognitive behavioural therapy. I have to add, I am not suicidal, BUT had I been, this would all be too late for me. The therapist was apologetic about lack of contact but you know, had it been a more extreme case....
The assessment itself was pretty harrowing. Nearly an hour of multiple choice and scale of 1-8 questions about how depressed you are (I mean, come on?!) so that you hopelessly try to remain honest but tortured in the hope that your score will reveal that you need some help (when surely that is already glaringly obvious).
Having grown up a very honest and open person, I gave my all (later to regret it and feel the affects) but for someone else suffering on more of a downward spiral I can only begin to imagine how they may not have passed 'the test'.
Anyway, they think it is right for me to go ahead with CBT. Which is great, if I ever hear from them again....
As previously expressed, this blog is not a cry for help, or any sort of attention seeking scheme. Maybe that's my own paranoia setting in again but I always think we try to make a judgement and assume the worst. If you wish to speak to me about this blog then do so! I have been honest, why shouldn't you?
I am not wishing to gain anything from this post. Only to be safe in the knowledge that I shared, and that maybe someone out there won't be so scared anymore. There are millions of us.
As my dear friend puts it: "We are the broken biscuits".
That doesn't mean we're not just as tasty. ;-p
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