Failing Fast

As subtle as a brick

Dunno about you but for me depression comes with a frigging huge dollop of failure. The feeling of failure that is. And it's taken me bloody ages to work out why this is. I mean, I'm not ashamed of being depressed. God knows, that'd be the equivalent of feeling shame about suffering from lupus. Yet every day I get a moment of wondering whether I've been genuinely ill or just copping out. I know for a fact that the answer is the former but there's this nagging feeling that I've been dabbling with the latter.

Problem is that socially there's still a problem with mental illness and such a big bloody problem that even those of us who are genuinely ill are dealt with as if we're swinging the lead. I recall a time when I had to deal with the DWP about my benefit, having to make calls to my local jobcentre. And, by fuck, the way they dealt with me was appallng. I was spoken to as if I was taking the piss. When I was unable to make an early morning appointment because my meds rendered me too incapable, the snorting civil servant on the phone suggested they find a time that coincided with when I could be bothered to get out of bed. 
Now, this reminds me of something my mental health mole told me. Remember him? K-Fix? Well, here's what he says: "There's one human race rather than a league table of humans yet it's pervasive in society that mental health patients are at the bottom of the league table. 
"And just look at the DLA forms you have to fill in when you claim benefit because you're unable to work. Page after page you've been asked to prove how incapable you are so how do you feel when you've finished filling it in?" I can answer that. You feel a complete and utter fucking failure because you're unable to contribute both personally and professionally.
As K-Fix adds, "If you are told you're no good then you think you're no good. The messages are subtle but they're also clear."
He's not kidding. Everything from funding cuts to mental health services, benefit claiming, government messages, media reporting and even friends' reactions can carry those subtle messages that you're swinging the lead. The result? That however sick you genuinely are you've no excuses for letting down society with your unacceptable skiving. Yup, just when you feel about as shitty as you're ever going to feel, along comes society to make you feel even shittier.
I used to suffer at the hands of these assumptions but, by, fuck, I don't any more. Now I've realised that only I know what I am capable of and that this won't be dictated by idiots with generalisations. So every day I make a point of reminding myself of what I have achieved, whether it's a blog post, 20 mins at the piano or just managing a feeling of panic or doom. 
You can shove your subtle messages. I'll keep on doing things my way because, right now, my way is what's getting me back on my feet. Failing? No, I'm succeeding and against odds that could fell even the strongest of us. 

Hello? Hello?
Whoa! Look at how long it's been since I wrote a post on here. Sorry, my beloved kraken-loving gherkins. I've been all wrapped up in this 'ere blog instead which is, I admit, a doleful neglect of my depressive duties. It is, though, a spectacular form of therapy. Online ranting does wonders for my mental state and puts an inevitable spring in my step. I'm never perkier than when I've been indulging in my favoured profanities.
Anyway, I'm going to pick up the pace and will blog here a bit more often. While the effects of that vile fucking breakdown linger on - and, by God, linger they do - you can rest assured that I'll bang on and on and on about every last morsel of it. As ever, I politely request that you gird yourselves...

Sofa-lovin'

Beats a 10K run

Christ, I love a study that states the bloody obvious. And lo! in the nick of time one has come along: An NHS funded study, published in the BMJ, has decreed that combining exercise with conventional treatments for depression does not improve recovery. Well, no shit, Sherlock. 
The brains behind this study coaxed out 361 sufferers of depression, half of whom were helped to increase their activity levels (by beating the black dog off with a large stick perhaps). By the end of the study, though, there was no difference in recovery between the two groups. Problem is that current guidelines suggest that those in the grip of this stinking disease exercise three times a week. 
What, may I ask, the frig? My experience alone could have shown how exercise is about as helpful to depression as setting fire to your own farts. Over the years I've done everything from running and aerobics to yoga and gentle strolls and none of it did anything to prevent the oncoming freight train of depression.
Worse, when I'm in the grip of the black stuff the last thing I am capable of is exercise thrice a week. Jesus, during my breakdown I barely got out of bed for an entire year. I'll be fucked if I was capable for going for a spin around the local velodrome.
See, it's easy to prescribe exercise but the monumental effort involved in doing it when you are depressed is one frig of a different ball game. And I don't know about you but the pressure to exercise at the weakest points in my life was pressure I could have done without. My feeling of supreme uselessness was simply compounded by the fact that leaving the house for a 20 minute walk was beyond me.
So thank fuck that urgings to exercise your way through a breakdown are being tested.   Yeah, the effort is great when you are perfectly healthy but when you are not? Well, perhaps it's OK to occasionally curl into a ball and mentally hibernate until your brain has healed itself. It sure as shit beats forcing your carcass through a list of physical jerks while all your body wants is sleep.
Yet again, thank fuck for the NHS. And studies that, for once, make perfect sense.

Snap!

Hanging on

Dunno about you, but something scared the shit out of me when I first went to my local psych unit. I had this Gothic image of my CPN caging me, screaming, when I flashed him the foetid recesses of my brain. Fuck knows why. Logically, did I really think that I was his first interaction with someone who was, er, brainally challenged? Then again, logic didn't come into it back then. In fact logic didn't come into many things at all.
Anyway, I'm burdening you with this information because I've been chatting to my mental health mole, K-Fix. And you know what? He tells me that when patients come to him, not only does he have professional experience of plot-loss but he has experienced it personally too. 
Now that shouldn't be a surprise. But it did make me realise that none of us are infallible. Here's what K-Fix says: "My first experience of mental health problems was when a friend of mine, who was a father figure to me, went to a hotel and committed suicide. No one knew it was going to happen and he hadn't told anyone that he was feeling this way. It was terrible.
"Then some time later I went through some personal difficulties and I too became depressed.  
"These experiences helped me decide to go into mental health nursing when I was in my 40s.  If nothing else all of this has given me an insight into what my patients are going through." 
And isn't that all any of us want? Someone who knows what we mean and how we feel when we sit there blubbering or raving or panicking? And OK, we want the expertise too but remembering that CPNs, therapists and counsellors have all had their shit times makes one frig of a difference to anyone else having a shit time.
So here's a mad idea. Perhaps we should grill our mental health professionals on their own personal woes before we start spilling our own guts. I know, I know, it'd never work but I'd be more than happy to hand my fevered brain over to someone who'd suffered from their own stint of brain fever. If nothing else it'd be a kindred spirit to cling onto and that's a good start for any recovery dontcha think?

The Other Side

K-Fix he ain't

Breakdowns. Who'd have 'em? Well, queer thing is that I've met someone who makes a living out of the bloody things. By that, I mean making them better, not actually causing them. Well, not that I know of. I shan't bore you with the details of how I've stumbled upon this mysterious creature but stumble I have and he's been glorious enough to tell me one or two things about life on the opposite side of the appointments diary. Let's call him, I dunno, a kraken fixer, K-Fix for short. Ooooh, how down wiv da kids!

Anyhoo, from here on in, as well as regaling you with the tales of the dark side I'll be regaling you with tales from K-Fix. He's offered to give us a taste of what it's like to wrestle with mental health illness from a professional point of view. I know! How cool is this guy? 

So, you know how, when the black dog pissed over your leg, that you thought you'd be bundled into the nearest asylum? Or the mortification you felt at sobbing and snotting your way through Tesco? Or how you thought your counsellor would come over all Nurse Ratched on you? Well, K-Fix'll be grabbing our sweaty paws and leading us through the lot of it. He'll bust some myths, explain away a few fears, reveal his personal experiences of mental health snarl-ups and generally be a cooling flannel on the fevered brow of depressives everywhere.

So watch this space, my kraken-loving muffins. It'll soon be too helpful for words. And if the shock of that doesn't get you, K-Fix will.

Big Decisions

The inside of my head

I'll be buggered if I've noticed something oddball about my recovery from a breakdown: I haven't a bloody clue whether my judgement is sound. In fact, my ability to judge situations is now such a moveable feast that I'm about as bewildered as Katie Price after marrying a Muslim.
Now, I'm known for being loudly opinionated. And I continued to display this delightful quality throughout my mental decline and subsequent floundering. Problem is that during this stage of derangement my judgement of various situations didn't so much change as violently mutate. I'd utter stuff which, to me, sounded like distilled common sense while, to the rest of the listening world, sounded like the blabberings of a nutbag. For example, I was so convinced that I'd be locked away that I did all but stock up on postcards. And I was so absolute in my belief that I wasn't Kraken Junior's mater that I announced this to just about everyone who cooed over her.
Course, now that the clouds of doom are floating away I can see that these were the thoughts of someone who was keeping her right mind in a bucket in the shed. Yet when I make judgements now, I'm still not entirely sure what they are fuelled by: barkingness or crystal clarity. So every time I do make a decision about something, I dunno, whether to buy soup or go lion taming, I have to ask myself where my fevered decision is derived from.   
If it sounds exhausting, that's because it fucking well is. You know those people who analyse things to death? I think I've become one of them. Christ help me if I was expected to move house or take up a wildly different career. I'd think it into submission and then book myself into Broadmoor.
Course, this is getting easier. Seeing as no one, so far, has stumbled backwards, bug eyed, because I decided to plant lupins or wear purple eyeliner I'll assume that I'm not indulging in major lifestyle fuck-ups. I'll rely on social disquiet to alert me when my judgement becomes so alarmingly skewiff that I'm found casually barking messages in Klingon into a stolen policeman's helmet.
Until then, all I can do is practice. Practice at refining my judgements, that is, not speaking Klingon. I like to think I'll get better with time and then, God help the lot of you. I'll be back to my loudly opinionated self and that's when the social disquiet will really kick in.

Great Danes

Carrie-ing on. Geddit?

Whoa! What the frig have you been doing if you haven't been watching Homeland? Seriously, it's the depressive's telly of choice thanks to the goggling acting of Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the bi-polar, Sargent Brody-shagging/hassling CIA agent.
The series ended this week with Mathison choosing to undergo Electroconvulsive Therapy in an effort to rid her of her burgeoning illness. And, by Christ, it was the best depiction of a woman with mental health problems that I've ever seen. Seriously, there were moments when I forgot it was telly and I thought I was seeing into my own fevered mind. It made me do a little wee right there on the sofa.
Soaringly manic at one point, crashingly depressed the next, Danes' Mathison was a masterclass in what it's like to be fucked over by your own brain. While watching Danes go through all the stages of bi-polar disorder I had tooth-curling flashbacks to the moments when I have been engorged with panic, crippled with confusion, verging on hysterical, enflamed with rage and, finally, rendered physically and mentally immobile by impenetrable layers of darkness. 
Why in the fuck is it so rare to see anything like this on TV, outside of some Channel 4 come-and-see freak show? Because Danes' acting wasn't just a parroting of the realities of mental illness, it was done with what seemed to be a complete understanding of what it's like to feel scared, abandoned, angry, lonely, isolated and desperate. 
And, get this, it also made me feel ever so slightly proud to have a wonky noggin. In the grasp of her mania Danes managed to crack the conundrum that had dogged her and her colleagues throughout the series. I felt as if I'd been thrown a bone and reminded that while mental illness can be crippling there are lights along its long tunnel too. 
In those last few episodes of Homeland Danes' Mathison turned into some sort of idol for me. Not because she is superhuman, skinny and staggeringly glamorous, but exactly because she isn't. She's juggling her job with her mental illness and, just like the rest of us, the cracks show, gape and then you fall in. 
Thank fuck for that. Just when I, as a sufferer of depression, was feeling ignored by the world Homeland came along and gave me a teeny tiny voice. I can only hope that Danes' portrayal makes that voice louder and louder with every episode that passes.