Breadcrumbs

I’m sat here writing in my work overalls. I’m wishing I could be smoking a cigarette as type on this rickety old lap top, but I don’t smoke indoors and the lap top isn’t wireless… so I’m comforted instead by a bag of white chocolate mice that I found in Xavier’s cupboard. Some days I don’t manage to get dressed, some days I don’t manage much at all. But today I’m in my overalls and there is the possibility I’ll be going out to face work… it’s a kind of hope. Funny thing to say isn’t it, ‘face work’, given that I love what I do and I’m good at it. But somewhere in my brain there is an irrational fear that at this moment I can’t quite articulate. The chocolate mice feel good on my brain.

I saw Judy for an hour on Wednesday. She is amazing and brilliant at what she does. Together we prod and poke at what is going on, tease it apart… make sense of it on so many levels… and then figure out what we are going to do next. It’s empowering.

Faced with a choice between reading and writing yesterday… I chose to read. My favorite post yesterday was from Susan, On Depression-it's not sloth, posted on her blog If You're Going Through Hell Keep Going. Her post made me think about how things sometimes come together in some unexplained fashion… and how we are guided by the patterns we see as though someone intentionally left us a trail of breadcrumbs. About how that trail can help us overcome fear.

Over the last week I’ve written a lot more than I’ve posted. I’ve been wrestling with several questions and researching a little. I’m a rational and analytical kind of animal, fuelled by an intense curiosity, and when I want to find something out I tend to take it apart for myself and put it back together again. It’s always been my way of figuring things out.

I’m still finding my breadcrumb trail and I don’t quite know where it’s leading… but the feeling is that it’s heading somewhere good. I’m guessing here, but I think that if any of us were diagnosed with a physical condition like high cholesterol, it wouldn’t be long before we’d have researched the condition… understood something of the science affecting us and used that information to understand the choices and changes we’re faced with. Well, depression is a condition affecting my brain… so I’m doing my best to get to know this amazing organ a little better.

I used to think of the brain as this single entity, but that doesn’t really fit. Human beings are unique in the way huge new structures have evolved at the front and base of our brain over thousands of years. It’s the functions of these newer areas of the brain that generally characterise what we think of as ‘being human’: consciousness, valuing beauty, art, emotions, relating to others, having memory.

The older parts of the brain have served us well by giving us the instincts, drive, reflexes and basic language needed to survive in a more animal way, in a much harsher environment. The old pathways that connect what we see and hear to feelings of fear and imminent danger are there still, but the newer areas of our brain, by design, are there to govern over the older parts.

It isn’t an easy relationship between the old brain and its new masters. As I sit here typing and prepare myself to go off to work… I know that the fear I feel stems from the amygdala in my old brain, set off in Pavlovian fashion by a word or an idea. I know it is a powerful feeling. I know that it is a fear that feels difficult to pin down and account for. That in all likelihood my new brain, the part that makes me more human than animal, hasn’t been given the opportunity to make sense of it all and so the fear persists. I know too that in a moment, when I sit down and employ the CBT techniques I’ve learnt through therapy… what I’ll be doing is giving the new brain the chance to make sense of the situation and take control once again. I know too that once I start working, as I do with my hands and focus my mind on something practical, my amygdala, with its negative emotions, will quiet down and leave the way open to happiness.

As I say, breadcrumbs… and little white chocolate mice.

Perspectives (Soap Box)

An article appeared in the Guardian yesterday in which the writer, I think from a personal perspective, dismissed talk therapies in favour of medicating. She revealed she had 15 years of experience with depression, on and off… and yet she said:

“The invitation to "talk with tissues" also rather negates the widely-held scientific understanding of the chemical relationship between serotonin and depression.” 

(Laura Kemp, author of the article).

I’m at a loss as to how she can make such a bogus statement given her own condition and 15 years of living it! Either that or it is necessary to sensationalize a standpoint in order to get the nod from their sub editor. The writer writes it, the editors pass it and another myth about depression is reinforced. Go on to read the comments beneath the article, left by Joe Public, and it’s a very scary world out there. There are people talking anecdotally about the absence of depression in Africa, about religion as a universal cure for mental illness, about our consumerist lifestyle fuelling the depression filled waiting rooms, and about depression being a bourgeois malady brought on by a combination of too much spare time and self awareness.

(Exasperated sigh) where do I start? I can’t believe some of us are still talking about Africa as though it were a country. I can’t believe so much discussion enjoys the freedom afforded by so little evidence. And I can’t believe that there are people that think depression sufferers just looked at one too many copies of Harper’s Bazaar!

Excuse me, excuse me… let me through please, I have some facts… excuse me. The World Health Organization tells us in no uncertain terms that depression is common, affecting 121 million people world wide, it’s among the leading causes of disability worldwide, and whilst it can be reliably diagnosed, few have access to effective treatments (less than 25%). Diagnosis for many in developing countries is prohibited by poor access to medical professional, and the social stigma associated with mental disorders. In other words… don’t let anyone tell you about the state of depression in the African continent. And most tragically, depression is a factor associated with the loss of about 850 000 lives every year through suicide. When you watch the London Olympics in 2012 and admire the capacity crowds in the Olympic Stadium, think of another 9 stadiums just like it… and you have an idea of how many people that statistic describes.

“Depression is the leading cause of disability….(and) 4th  leading contributor to the global burden of disease. By the year 2020, depression is projected to reach 2nd place …. for all ages, both sexes.”

World Health Organization

That said, it really does seem as though mental illness is still fair game, unlike cancer or paralysis or heart disease. When are we going to give depression sufferers the time and space they need to return to good health… instead of persecuting them with ignorance, prejudice and bad science?

In a comment after the article Laura went on to say:

“I think dwelling on it equals navel-gazing and I haven’t got time to do that; I’m a busy person! I just want to get on with life and enjoy it.”

And there again, I see investing time in yourself to get better being called navel-gazing. Time that is no different to physiotherapy or rehab; hard work essential to return your normal functions and operate in the world again.

I hope more and more we realize that we are not all the same… that we can’t project our experience of the world on to others… and that we don’t all feel quite so comfortable in our own skin.

Is the glass half empty or half full? I don’t much care for what’s in the glass anyway. Ask me if the world is a safe and secure place to be in, or is it inconsistent and unpredictable? Ask if I feel secure and confident or inadequate and uncertain? If I feel capable or am I overcome with self-doubt? Do I believe in myself? Do you have a strong sense of who I am, or does who I am confuse me? Do I let people in close, or am I isolated and lonely?

To all those people that take a pop at depression I say: Do you think there is only one answer for all of us to these questions?… No?… Then let people sort out their s**t and you sort out yours. And if you have children… start paying more attention to the answers they are forming.

I'd like to hear what you think...

Time Travel

It’s the afternoon of my angry morning. I escaped to sleep… and when I woke up the world seemed like a better place to be than where I left off. I find that depression always brings a spade, digs up memories that I haven’t seen in a while and puts them out, right in front of me so I live them all over again. Even though the experiences at school are over now, somehow I felt like it all happened yesterday and my anger was newly sharpened.

This morning, I felt sick at all the self absorption. I’d like to know how to shed this anger. A good friend said that I shouldn’t curse… that there is karma in the world, and that will take care of things. I’m trying to take that on board, she’s always right.

I did feel out of my depth once again, and so I turned back to Judy. I’ll be seeing her again soon and I’m sure that will help straighten me out. In the mean time a few friends, both virtual and real, got in touch and I drew strength and warmth from their words and their concern. When it gets cold out there penguins huddle close to stay warm, and in a funny kind of way this little laptop has allowed me to do the same. Thank you for thinking of me.

When Hurt Turns to Anger

I’m telling you now, before you read on, I’m in no good mood and I’m not going to be polite, or sensitive or any such thing. You read on, that’s your problem.

Then I stop typing…

When I’m filled with so much anger and hate… what do I let out first? Everything wants out.

Let’s start with school. The fucked up school where I worked. The place where the head had absolutely no fucking idea about home-life balance… she saw her husband every now and again at the weekend for Christ’s sake! Obsessed with her own fucking image… determined to be queen bee amongst her cronies… stuck in the 70s… What a fucked up person she is, running the show… projecting her fucked up ideas onto her workforce. She used to spit blood to me about people who had done nothing more than called it a day and gone home to their family. They still don’t know what she had to say about each of them… and to this day she demands their loyalty despite betraying them many times over.

When it came to depression, she hadn’t a fucking clue. I wished it on her… I sat and cursed her with it so that one day she’d know what a fucking ignorant cow she was. I had an occupational therapist who was great, understanding… supportive. She was telling me I needed to become better at communicating how things were going… so that people could help and so that I didn’t pull any surprises. I’d keep the lid on things, hiding depression like an alcoholic hides drink, and then suddenly it would be ‘where’s Mehdi?’

I took advice well, did what people asked me to do. I told my Head how things were going and she looked me in the eyes and told me slowly ‘I don’t need or want to know how you feel, I just want to know you can do your job’. I’d have been better off that day if she’d put a bullet through my brain.

Never mind my own negative predictions about the future… I was being told by the Head that I was going to be unemployable… nice thing to say to someone struggling with depression.

When I was recovering and returning to work… these were the people I had to be with… people who were insensitive to depression and who didn’t have any patience for it. You had to be tough on the outside… no one cared what was on the inside. I’d sit amongst my colleagues and talk with them only to learn later in meetings with my Head that they were busy judging me and passing their feedback to her… all of a sudden they were the mental health experts being asked for their learned opinions and me… I was supposed to take it.

You know, there were three days when I was returning to work as a behaviour experiment set up by my occupational health therapist. It was for me to learn about how I was responding to the environment. Back then I had very little insight into how depression was affecting my capacity in different environments and situations. I’d show up, say my awkward hellos and find out what I’d been tasked with. At briefing a couple of colleagues sniggered as I was welcomed back… I know who they are and I’ll probably never forgive them. It was tricky, because I wasn’t there doing what I necessarily do day in day out, and someone else was directing me. At the start of the day, there’d be a moment or two of hanging about whilst they sorted themselves out. I remember looking out of the window for a little while, trying not to get in the way given everyone was so busy. It transpired that looking out the window was diagnosed as ‘spaced out’ by my colleagues and it was another nail in my career.

I know… being hooked on approval meant I’d placed my worth in the hands of others. And when they didn’t treat it with care, and trashed it, I got upset. And now instead of blaming myself for empowering them so, I blame them because they took my precious worth and destroyed it.

It was strange to be in an environment where we all supposedly cared so much… for the youngsters at least… and yet behind the scenes there was so little care for the adults… the staff. The caring seemed to stop with the children. We, on the other hand, were expendable.

When I left it was for me. I’d got to know the environment better, my colleagues better and it was fucked up… and it wasn’t the place for somebody who was recovering from depression. How can you hold a gun to someone’s head and tell them… if you get ill again you’re finished. Like I had some way of deciding if I got ill or not! It’s still fucked up… probably will stay that way until people are exchanged and with it culture changes.

I wasn’t going to be dependant on them for anything… not even a reference. So I started my own business. Fuck’em…. Better still, curse them.