Living With Depression 2

After my last post someone pointed out that the Mersey Ferry analogy made it sound easy to manage depression.  If that was the case I'm sorry because that was never my intention; I was just trying to share something that I have found helpful but far from a cure.  As I said at the time I have been only partly successful in using this advice as while I notice if my mood is artificially high I don't notice when it starts to slide downwards.  My motivation for writing the post was that I realised that I had been on a downward path for some months but hadn't noticed it until it started to become a problem.  As I battled with how I had let things slip so easily I wrote this:

The Fall

The way ahead look clear

The sun was bright

The path was firm

No need to change direction

Then the clouds rolled in

But still the path was firm

No need to change direction

Then the rain rolled in

But still the path was firm if slippery

No need to change direction

Then the mist rolled in

But still the path was firm if slippery

No need to change direction

Night came

The way ahead was hidden

But the path was firm under my feet

I was sure I’d find the way

Stumbling forward

I didn’t notice

I’d wandered off the path

I didn’t notice the gentle slope

Beneath my feet

I didn’t notice the slope get steeper

Until it was too late

And I fell

And as I looked up

I thought

“How did I get here?”

Living With Depression

As far as I can tell I have been living with depression for around 40 years but it is only in the last couple that I have been receiving help and treatment; it took a complete breakdown to get me to that point.

One of the misunderstandings about depression is that it is all about feeling down and miserable but you can be like that without depression.  Depression is where you don't control your emotions but they control you so you swing between highs and lows without being in control.

The most useful advice I have received is this:

For those of you who don't know this is the Mersey ferry which crosses the river Mersey between Liverpool and the Wirral.  What is important about the ferry is that the river is tidal which makes it harder to steer the ship directly from one side to the other.

Now what, I hear you say, has this got to do with depression.  The answer is in the ebb and flow of the tide over which the ferry has no control.  If the tide is flowing in the ferry has to be steered downstream to arrive at the right place and if the tide is flowing out the ferry has to steer upstream.  It is the same with depression if  it is pushing your mood high you have to steer it back down and if it is pushing you down you have to steer it back up.

Now I'm not saying I've mastered this because so far all I am able to spot when I'm getting too 'high' and have been able to bring myself back to an even keel. (Too high is dangerous because it leads to a crash.)  So far I'm not very good at noticing the much slower signs that lead to a 'down' but I'm learning.

Climbing A Ladder

On Sunday it rained.  Most of you in southern England will have noticed that but did you notice it blew in from the east and not the west?  I did because when the rain is driven in from that direction the windowsills by the stairs get wet.  This isn't a common occurrence but as I'm in the (very long) process of decorating the hall stairs and landing I had to do something about it.

On close inspection it turned out that when the windows were fitted, as part of the loft conversion work, the pebble dash was brought flush to the wood at the top of the frames instead of overlapping it to prevent water ingress.  Over the years one or both have shrunk leaving a small gap over the window frame; there was also no sign of mastic which didn't help the situation.  This close inspection was done by going up my ladder to both windows; the top one being on the second floor which meant the ladder was on its full extension.

Today I used quick setting cement to build up over the wood frames and then applied mastic over the edge between the wood and cement. It wasn't until I'd finished I realised something odd - I'd just gone up a ladder to a second floor window.  This may not sound odd to you but I suffer from vertigo in buildings (not mountains or cliffs) and going up a ladder that high has always filled me with dread; I'd be clinging on for dear life.

Today it just seemed a natural thing to do so I can only assume that the Prozac I take for my depression has either lessened or cured my vertigo.  This isn't all good news as I used to be very cautious up a ladder and I'm now a bit worried that I may be too relaxed about it.

Eli, Eli, lamasabachthani?

For me living with depression is something I have had to get used to; it will always be with me.  Medication is definitely helping but the level of medication needed to eradicate the depression would also kill me as a person - I'd exist in a dulled world.  Of late I have got better at noticing the warning signs and consciously adjusting my  behaviour to prevent a crash.  However there are times when external factors jump up on me giving me no time to adjust and this happened to me the other night.  I am currently fighting off a chest infection with the aid of antibiotics and oral steroids and this and the enforced inactivity won't have helped.  However I was still surprised when I plunged into despair while trying to get to sleep and what I experienced led to the following poem.

Eli, Eli, lamasabachthani?

My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?

I cried in the dark of the night

My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?

As the thick veil of depression enshrouded me

My God, My God, why have You deserted Me?

As hope faded to nothing

And then I was silent

And in the silence a voice spoke

“I thought you’d deserted me.

In your pain and suffering I was always there

Even when the fog descended

But you let go of my hand when you lost sight of me.”

My God, My God, why have I deserted You?

Dyslexia and Phonagnosia

I've been a bit busy of late with my son's wedding in Sheffield, a return trip to pick up the things we left behind and a night away to try out our new trailer tent but I do want to bring this article, which appeared on 29th July on the BBC web site, to your attention.

Dyslexia makes voices hard to discern, study finds

Apart from having a lovely new word, Phonagnosia, it goes a long way to explaining something that has puzzled me for a long time.  My family will tell you that I'm deaf but when I take a hearing test my hearing appears to be normal.  The answer is that along side my dyslexia I have phonagnosia which makes it difficult for me to discern voices.  To explain what this is like I'll give you a couple of practical examples of how it affects me.

Firstly it makes it difficult for me to know that someone is speaking to me unless they prefix it with my name or I am expecting them to talk.  Unless I'm either looking at someone or hear my name it takes me several words to realise that I am hearing speech and to work out whether it is anything to do with me.  This slowness in picking up speech patterns means that I appear to be ignoring the person speaking.  Of course my parents didn't help me by giving me the name "Hugh" which, to my ear, is almost identical to "you" and this has led me to believe someone is talking to me when they are talking to someone else.

The second example is the social setting of a large group of people eating together at a straight table. If I am sitting in the middle I can pick out the voices of the people sitting either side of me and the three opposite but if I'm on the end of the table I can hear the person next to me and the person directly opposite; all the rest a just noise. Oddly if the same group is sat round a round table I can pick out each voice, presumably because each voice comes from a different direction and I can use that to separate them out from each other.

Now all this on its own is bad enough but in my case it's another piece in a bigger jigsaw, my depression. If I am in a situation where several people are talking, such as a party, I find myself isolated as I can't pick out the individual voices to hear what they are saying.  This sense of isolation has played a big part in my depression as the feeling that I’m looking in on social events from the outside and not really involved in them has led me to withdraw into myself.

So I’m not deaf, I’m not ignoring you, people aren’t ignoring me – I’m phonagnosic.

Pollen and Depression

Last week was not a good one for my state of mind; I noticed it and my wife told me.  The reason was simple, the pollen level was high.

Now this, at first glance may not seem to be a very obvious connection but, for me, it is.  When the pollen level is high my chest tightens up because of my asthma and this results in a drop in the oxygen level in my blood.  It is this that causes me a problem because oxygen is the fuel that powers the brain and blood is the delivery system.  Less oxygen in the blood slows my brain down and makes it harder for me to think clearly.  Up to this point what I have described is normal for a lot of people with pollen triggered asthma but for me there is an added complication - I am battling with depression.

Most of the time I do fairly well in this battle but it takes more of my mental effort than I realise.  Anything that makes thinking harder is a problem and in this case just a high pollen level is enough to make me slip back.  This isn't an insurmountable problem but it is just one more thing that I have to be aware of as I battle with my oddly wired brain.

One thing to be drawn from this is that my physical health affects my mental health and I am sure that this is true of a lot of other people. We are made to be complete beings and any imbalance in one part will affect the whole.

Moving On

This post was nearly The Problem with Alcohol 3 but that would have been too limiting.  However it is a problem that I want to talk about, the problem of moving on.  Put like that it sounds easy but I am finding it to be a problem; a problem for me, a problem for my family and a problem for those who know me.

To explain what I mean I have to explain a bit about what happened to me.  I had a breakdown that had been a long time coming but when it did it was rather spectacular.  This resulted in me receiving treatment that has enabled me to understand what happened to me, why it happened and, I hope, what I need to do to stop it happening again.  The end result is that I feel like a different person and I want to move on.  Sounds simple doesn’t it.

The problem is that I’m not actually a different person but a modified and updated version of the old person who still looks the same and, in some ways, still behaves the same.  People around me still treat me the same way as they always did and will bring up things that the ‘old me’ did.  I want to shout and say “That’s not me, that’s the old me but I’m a completely different person now.” but that won’t work.  I am both the old and new me.  I have to show everyone that I have changed so that they will treat me differently because if they bring up how I was too often it drags me down and stirs up the old me.  That is not to blame anyone but myself for how I used to be and, therefore, how others react to me now; I’m just trying to explain how things are. 

So you see moving on isn’t as simple as it seems.  I don’t just have to move myself onwards but I have to be able to take my friends and family onwards with me and that isn’t easy.

Now I haven’t written this to get sympathy but to explain what it is like to recover from mental illness; in my case depression.  If this is how it is for me it is probably the same for a lot of other people who go through mental illness and come out the other side.  We want to be accepted and loved for who we are and not reminded of who we were – we know that only to well without any reminders.

The Problem with Drink

I recently read an article about the Bishop of Stafford condemning binge drinking as sin; actually what he said was “Alcohol abuse is one of the major ‘sins’ of our time – and it is one that governments do very little to prevent.” and I agree with him.  We now have a society in which significant proportions go out not to have a drink with friends but to get drunk without any thought for the costs to the whole of society in policing them and treating them when they hurt themselves, others or do permanent damage to their bodies.  Unfortunately bishops are no longer respected figures whose pronouncements have the ear of government but are considered to be out of touch with the modern world and so they can be ignored; even when they are right.

People who know me may well be saying “hypocrite” knowing that I like a drink and have often had more than is good for me and, in all likelihood, for those around me.  To that I have no answer except to say that I now acknowledge that I had a problem and I no longer drink as it is incompatible with one of my medications.  That, however, is only part of the story as I wasn’t an alcoholic (I would stop for periods when I wanted to) but my drinking was one of the ways I was trying to cope with the depression that had been part of my life since I was in my teens. While I admit that I like good beer, full bodied red wines and malt whisky they, in themselves, were not the problem; I was drinking, and drinking too much, to dull the inner pain of depression.  In the end this didn’t work and I end up in what my wife called the ‘loony bin’ for 2½ weeks.

It was only then, and through months of counselling, that I could openly admit what I knew deep inside – I had a drink problem.  When I was put on Prozac I had to give up drinking as it won’t work properly when combined with alcohol but this has given me the opportunity to not drink and to begin to appreciate not drinking. I am limited to the small glass of wine I am allowed at special celebrations such as birthdays, anniversaries and my son’s forthcoming wedding and that is all. I had thought that if I ever stopped taking Prozac I would be able to have the odd drink but I now realise that this won’t be possible as I rarely stop at the ‘odd drink.’  So I am now going to say openly something that inside I have known for some time: I have to give up alcohol. 

I have to give up alcohol not only for myself but for those around me, family and friends, who have had to put up with me drinking too much.  For years I have kidded myself that the only person I was putting at risk was me but I have just read the book ‘Jesus, my father, the CIA and me’ by Ian Morgan Cron and it made me realise how much I have damaged my family (and possibly others) by my drinking. I can’t go back and undo that damage but I can make sure I stay clear of drink so that I don’t make the same mistakes in the future.

I will still allow myself the small glass for celebrations but that is all or I will slowly (or quickly) fall back into drinking too much.  Alcohol in itself is not the problem but there are some of us whose genetic makeup makes us vulnerable to its hold even though this can take years to make itself apparent but once it does our best hope is to steer clear and not drink.

I know I haven’t explained myself very well so I have tried to put what happened to me into a poem.

I like a drink.

I like the taste of good beer.

I like the taste of full bodied red wine.

I like the taste of malt whisky.

But somehow that stopped being enough

I needed a drink.

Not for itself,

But to dull the pain.

The pain of being.

The pain of being me.

The pain of living.

The pain of living with depression.

At first it was just a drink.

Then it took more.

Enough to make me hide it

From those closest to me.

I needed the drink

Not for itself

But to kill the pain.

Then I could cope.

A couple of pain dulled hours

And I could cope with the pain.

For a while.

But I wasn’t coping.

The pain was building;

Building until even the drink didn’t help.

It was only then

When all hope had gone

That I could admit the truth.

The truth that drink didn’t help.

That it just hid the problem.

Hid it from me.

Hid it until it was too big to hide.

Too big for me

To cope.

It was only as the pain washed over me

That I could confront it,

Find the wounds

And bind them.

Some wounds will heal.

Other have to be cleaned

And dressed

So they don’t spread infection.

And that means no drink.

So the wounds can close

The infection die

And with them

The pain.

Depression in Cricket

Article in today's Daily Telegraph gives sympathetic coverage to Michael Yardy, the England cricketer, and his fight with depression.  I have no doubt that there will be some in the sport who will tell him to pull himself together and get on with it but I am glad that he does seem to be getting the support he needs.

You can read the full article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/8459510/Michael-Yardys-battle-with-depression-should-act-as-a-warning-to-administrators-says-Englands-Matt-Prior.html

I'm Sorry If I Got Angry

I would describe myself as passionate - others would say 'volatile' or 'hot headed' if they are being kind.  I've always known I had a short fuse and could easily blow up and despite years of trying I've never managed to keep my temper totally under control. Yesterday I suddenly realised that getting angry is just another part of my depression.  You see depression isn't just being down in the dumps, it's when your emotions control you instead of you controlling them. I live on a rollercoaster which can make me happy or sad for no apparent reason and having a short fuse is just another part of that.

What I’m not doing is trying to excuse my behaviour nor am I saying that to be angry is wrong.  Starting with the second one anger is not sin; God gets angry so it must be OK; what does matter is what we get angry about.  God doesn’t get angry about just anything but about injustice and sin so it’s OK for us to get angry when other people are treated badly. However we shouldn’t get angry about anything that annoys us as it could well be us who are in the wrong.  I get angry about things for both the right and wrong reason but the real problem for me is that I ‘explode’ rather easily.  Unfortunately this is just part of the illness called depression and so while it can be controlled to an extent I will always be rather volatile.  All I can do is to apologise afterwards when I’ve calmed down and hope that most people will realise that it isn’t me going ‘off on one’ but my illness.

If I’ve ‘blown up’ at you for no apparent reason I’m sorry.  I don’t like being like this but I have to put up with it and I hope you will give me a bit of leeway and accept me for what I am.  You see the other side of the coin is that the very volatility that make me ‘go bang’ also enables me to be aware and sensitive to other people feelings and I don’t want to lose that as it’s a gift from God.