So what have I actually been doing with myself...?

Recently a number of people have been asking me what I am actually doing with my time down here at my mum's place. Generally I talk about the Photoshop course I'm doing one night a week and then deflect the question.

This post is partially for those people, but mainly because I think it's important to talk about this topic. If sharing my experience helps even just one person in the future (even if that person is my future self looking back through my blog) then it will have been worth couple of hours I've just spent trying to work out how to write about it.

Depression is a difficult subject to talk about, but reading this article I stumbled across the other week made me want to recommend the article to everyone I know. Because if I'd known more about depression earlier - or if someone in my life had known enough to point me towards help when I'd struggled with (undiagnosed) depression at other times in my life - who knows how different my life would have been...

Emma Jane in the article linked above puts it this way:

"I feel terribly self-conscious sharing such a harrowing and intimate story in public. (Most people in my life have no idea.)

But Andrew Robb's book Black Dog Daze and next Saturday's World Suicide Prevention Day have reminded me of something important: that while talking about mental illness may be excruciating, not talking can be fatal.

In fact, I reckon those of us who can emotionally finance disclosure may have a moral imperative to do so because so many others suffer in such deadly silence and stigma."

I absolutely agree.

It's not that I'm not happy to talk about this with people in person, but it is awkward to tell people. Especially if it's a group situation. It's difficult enough in one-on-one conversations to bring up the fact that "actually I spent most of my time last month either a) playing computer games to forget about how depressed I am or b) being depressed, sometimes so much so, that I was unsure whether I would make it to 28th birthday"

And then there's the fact that there's still a lot of misunderstanding around depression. If I haven't talked to someone about it before, I don't know how they're going to react. Perhaps they've had experience with depression (personal experience or someone they're close to), or perhaps they'll turn out to be one of those people who "doesn't believe in depression". Having to deal with someone's misunderstandings around depression can be really difficult.

"Misunderstanding about depression can give a depressed person even more of a focus for self hate," she says. "When people I know tell me to cheer up or to just snap out of it, I start to blame myself for the way I feel, and it has taken me many years to trust myself enough to know that it is not my fault and that I deserve happiness."
- The Stigmas of Depression by Dave Ward

So this is a hard post to write and publish in such a public forum, but it's made somewhat easier by the fact that the situation I outlined earlier is no longer true. Yes, 3-4 months ago I quite likely would have answered that way. Today things are better. Not perfect by a long way, but better.

So in answer to the question - the majority of my time is spent on recovering from depression.

Which involves:

• Weekly sessions with my excellent psychologist. (Who I thoroughly recommend if you're around here and need one)
  
  
• Making exercise a non-negotiable part of my day. Every day. (ie. "Even if I do nothing else today, I will still make myself spend 30min at a brisk walk on mum's treadmill). I've never liked exercise by the way, just to put that in perspective.
  
  
• Doing things I enjoy and/or that give me a sense of having achieved something (cooking, photoshop course, piano, blogging, catching up with people)
  
  
• Trying to slowly get through the HUGE backlog of things I really should have done but haven't. (And am probably being penalized in some way or other for not doing - whether it's late fees on financial things, or friendships declining due to not getting back to people)
  
  
• Doing things that allow me to forget the depression temporarily (escapism - mainly computer games)
  
  
• I also put a fair bit of effort into trying to avoid cane sugar, and trying to avoid getting run down. Neither of which are as easy to avoid as they may seem, but I do my best because both of these things seem to make me fall into moderate/severe depression much more easily
  
  

Progress is measured mostly by how much strength and energy I have to do things, and partially by keeping track of my overall mood (ie my average mood over the space of a week or so). Spending more time doing things I like each week and less time in escapism, is progress. Spending more time doing things that really ought to have been done already and less time lying around feeling depressed is progress.

I was on anti-depressants for a couple of months. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm not keen on drugs of any kind even prescription drugs. (That was the understated way of putting it, by the way...) The point at which I gave in was when I realised that the main reason I had for not killing myself was that it was just before Christmas and it'd be - slightly - more considerate to my family to wait until January. Due to the drugs, taking up exercising daily, and finally finding a psychologist who was right for me in this town, January wasn't as bad and it's been slowly (ever so slowly) upwards since then.

However I'm glad to now be off the drugs for a number of reasons I won't go into here. My deal (with myself and my doctor) was that I could go off the anti-depressants provided I continued to stick to daily exercise. That is my anti-depressant now. It is my top priority.

I don't know why I happen to be one of those people who is prone to depression. While I have a fairly good idea of what triggered this episode - which I believe started in June last year - and what made it much more difficult to recover from, I don't know why I tend towards depression rather than (for example) drowning my sorrows in alcohol, or throwing myself into work, or - heaven forbid - actually dealing with things easily and getting on with my life.

I do know, however, that depression is something I have struggled with at other times in my life. It just wasn't diagnosed as depression. I certainly struggled with undiagnosed depression throughout most of my teenager years and I can think of at least 2 times between then and now when I was probably depressed for some months but unaware that's what it was.

To quote Emma Jane's article again:

"These days, I view depression as being like diabetes, asthma or any other chronic illness requiring ongoing management.

Having an unquiet mind is my particular health burden and I've just had to get my head around the prospect of being on and off medication and in and out of therapy forever.

Sure, it can be expensive, inconvenient and embarrassing. But [...] the worst-case consequences of letting things slide are just too, too grave."

I personally am refusing to accept the prospect of being on and off medication for the rest of my life. But the other part of that sentence, the part about the prospect of being in and out of therapy forever... is something I've been thinking about recently.

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Acknowledgements due to Take it from me, the black dog's bite need not be fatal by Emma Jane. Which really is an excellent article, please go over there and read it.

If you have never experienced depression yourself, I encourage you to learn more about it. Doing so might just save one of your friends' or family members' lives in the future, or it could simply make their struggle with depression easier for them. Here's a good place to start. And here's another article to continue with.

In Australia you can get a medicare rebate for the majority of a psychologist's fee, provided you have a referral from a GP. You're allowed 10 sessions a year under medicare. It's not hard to get a referral to a psychologist from a GP, or at least it wasn't for me. Sometimes finding a psychologist that you click with is difficult. Don't be afraid to try another psychologist if the first one you try doesn't seem right. I had sessions two other psychologists before I found the right person. Persevere until you find one that suits you. It's worth it.

Your GP can also give you a medical certificate to take to Centrelink, which allows you to receive Centrelink unemployment benefits without having to meet the fortnightly job search requirements. It's not a great deal of money but it's sufficient for me to live off considering I'm not paying rent. It allows me to pay the gap between the cost of the psychology sessions and the amount medicare refunds you, and it's what will allow me to continue seeing the psychologist on a fortnightly basis when my medicare subsidized sessions run out in a couple of weeks time. Full price is expensive. And if anyone sees it as having a holiday at Centrelink's expense... Well, I would happily swap these payments for not having to live with this depression any day. Yes it is nice to not have to work at the moment. But the other side of the coin - the part of it that made me eligible for these payments - is seriously not worth it. Not even if Centrelink was paying 5 times as much as they do.