image from colourbox.com

So…I managed to rapidly decline over the last 48 hours.  I began to lose the ability to cope – even with the fact my bedroom was a bit messy.  I kept feeling like I was in a trance and struggling to get myself out of it.  Struggling to move myself out of one activity onto the next – which can be a problem when the next activity is supposed to be getting food and eating it or taking medication and it takes a few hours to move yourself on.  Forgetfulness notched itself up so that I couldn’t remember what I was doing.  I was loosing track of time.  I was struggling to think to do thing like see what food is in the cupboard, work out what I can make with it, put that into action, and then eat it.  Even making a couple of tea.

I was getting strange thoughts – although I still knew they were strange thoughts.  I was getting thoughts of ways to end it – sometimes because I felt like I couldn’t even face tomorrow, sometimes because I felt like such a failure and embarrassment of a person.

Luckily I already had an appointment booked with my amazing GP for yesterday,  She told me to take the diazepam regularly 2 or 3 times a day (I can’t remember which) and referred me to the home treatment team.  This time I got assessed by some out of hours GP/psychiatry service and not the home treatment team in my home.  I have to say it feels much less weird being told ‘can you wait back in the waiting room while we talk about you and decide what to do’ than ‘can you leave your own living room/bedroom while we talk about you’!!

In between my GP and the assessment I’d managed to contact some friends to see if they would be able to let me stay at their house and hang out with them over the next few days as I knew I seem to function a lot better when there are people around and would be less at risk.  My friends were amazing and came up with a plan for who I could hang out with and stay with over the next few days.  I was so embarrassed that I had to ask that, but I’m so incredibly grateful that I have friends who are willing to welcome me into their lives and homes so much and walk through even things like this through me.  I’m pretty sure that’s what swung the decision that I didn’t need to be taken on by the home treatment team last night if I stayed with my friends and took the diazepam, see my therapist on Monday and go back through A&E / Out of hours GP if things get worse again in between.

Being around people over the last 24 hours has worked wonders.  Apart from the memory issues I can almost feel normal when I’m in company.  To the extent that I thought I’d try staying in my house tonight – my housemates in but is working so it’s giving me a few hours to cope by myself with someone a shout away and two homes open for me to stay in if I change my mind.  It’s been hard – I didn’t manage to feed myself in a suitable time and I’m still ‘trancing’ a lot, but I’m still alive..oops and just noticed the time – time for bed.  At least I only noticed it about an hour late!! lol!

The title for this post is something the psychiatry doctor said to me in my assessment yesterday.  He was encouraging me that I’d done exactly the right things to deal with my crisis – seeing the GP, taking diazepam, asking friends for help, and getting assessed.  It’s an interesting one – ‘You can’t stop yourself from having crisis’ – as I felt myself getting worse I kept telling myself – stop thinking these thoughts, distract yourself – but it didn’t work – I didn’t know if it was just because I wasn’t self-controlled a lot – but in hindsight I know scientifically that there would have been a lot going on in my brain making it an awful lot harder for me to change those thoughts than a standard Joe Blogs with a healthy non-depressed/anxious brain with a negative thought – maybe junior psychiatry doc is right?

I started going downhill a week ago – forgetful, odd thoughts, impulsive…. The last 24hrs are getting worse very jumpy, can’t keep track of time & sleep & meals & medication, wanting to ask randomers for help.

I cancelled tonight’s therapy appointment because I couldn’t handle it. I was a wreck when I got back at lunch, shivering& feeling like everything was terrifying, losing my balance. I managed to get water& diazepam & sat on the sofa in my coat waiting, I didn’t even feel like I could cope with getting lunch from the kitchen. Then the diazepam must if dropped my blood pressure coz I was woozy every time I stood up. I slept most of the afternoon.

Going to go back to sleep now. I feel like a zombie. I think I put my tablets in the bin earlier forgetting. I’m afraid to contact any of my friends incase I regret whatever I say when I’m feeling normal again. Sometimes I completely forget what iv told who. I was getting thoughts the world was going to end and the fish in the picture was staring at me. Supercritic minime has checked in on my shoulder so got to try& make sure he doesn’t upset me too much.

Who knows maybe tomorrow I’ll be deleting this post.

In the meantime, sleep might be a good idea. Sleep and hide until normality returns (&try to remember meals&meds!)

Image via Wikipedia

Medication Musings

You that I hate to need,

but love to have.

You that I couldn’t live without,

but often forget to take

until I am reminded

by the return of that I fight,

when I consume you and wait

until again it’s almost alright.

‘Our view of pain and loss as handicaps to be avoided at any cost is not only wrong, but also holds us back… Darkness carries the seeds of redemption. Authentic strength isn’t found in our armour but in the very pit of the wounds each of us manages to survive…. Not putting pain to its natural use – as grist for the evolution mill – is such an extraordinary waste of suffering. While hardship can certainly make us bitter, selfish, defensive, and miserable, it can also be used quite differently: as the artery of interconnection, a bridge to other people in pain, as blood in the muscle that propels us. Crisis takes us to the brink of our limits and forces us to keep moving forward….. Crisis pushes you to travel wide, fast, and deep, expands your heart and calls forth reserves of courage you didn’t know you had, like the adrenaline in the muscles of a mother saving her only child. Only you are the child, and it’s your life – the life of your own soul – that you’re saving’ – Mark Matousek in his book: ‘When you’re falling, Dive‘

‘Pain passes, but the beauty remains’ – Auguste Renoir

‘Optimism is not required for healing’ – Dr. Rachel Remen

The Judas Complex.

Judas certainly felt he was worthy of great condemnation. So did Peter, who told Jesus that he was not worthy any longer. Judas hangs himself and never has restoration with the God whose grace is big enough for any sin. Peter is reconciled and empowered at Pentecost to lead the whole church into the age of the Holy Spirit. The difference is not in anything about the two men – they are each completely fallen humans, you know. The difference is in the grace of God in each of their lives. And Judas, say what you will about his evil character before he betrays Christ, has absolutely no shot of receiving the grace of God because he literally betrays Christ, thinks better of it, and kills himself before twelve hours pass. He is literally dead before Jesus is. Exacting the wrath of God against his sin upon himself, Judas leaves no room for the wrath of God against his sin of betraying Jesus to be poured out upon Jesus on the cross. He takes the wrath of God fully upon himself. There is no chance for substitutionary atonement.

Suicide today is the same thing. Part of depression is often (or always!) a crippling sense of guilt. This guilt may or may not be warranted; guilt can be legitimate or it can by hyper-inflated from the many complicating factors surrounding living life in our broken world among broken people who do awful twisted things to one another. We feel so incredibly guilty when we are depressed, and let me go so far as to say that we deserve it. We DO deserve to feel overwhelmingly, cripplingly guilty – because WE ARE! When we stand before God without the grace of Jesus Christ covering us, we should feel naked and ashamed and like little peons of absolute wretchedness because THAT IS WHAT WE ARE without Christ. In some ways, depressed persons have it more right than the rest of us, who are busy living our lives half-asleep! But the crucial fact that severely depressed people cannot see, and who truly need the help of others and the help of the Holy Spirit to be able to see, is that we no longer stand on our own before God naked without the cover of God’s great grace for our wretchedness.

If the wrath of God has been poured out upon Jesus Christ for the worst things we have done, whether real or contrived and magnified in our own minds, we are no longer responsible for that wrath. When we toy with suicide in our minds, or begin to make concrete plans, we may feel “better” in our depression because we feel like we are doing something to answer our great guilt. NOT SO! Our great guilt HAS been answered. If we submit ourselves to our Savior, our guilt is not ours to deal with any more

Freedom from Worry
When you are experiencing the present moment – you are no longer worrying about the future or dwelling on the past: “The sufficiency of this moment cannot be described; it is empty of everything, even of emptiness itself.”

The Lesson of Endurance
“In a very simple way, when you come to a week retreat, some of the sitting periods seem to go on forever. If you sit and complain or fuss and constantly try and look at your watch, then it seems almost unendurable. We can learn how much we are the creators of our own suffering. In a retreat, usually about the fourth day, most people give up worrying about their discomfort and find there is an energy that carries them through. It still takes effort, but a lot of the resistance has evaporated. The same principle works when we suffer illness. It is not the same, and yet just as we don’t have to run away in the retreat, so we don’t have to run away from our illness. It is the training that comes to us; it is our life. If we
know how to do zazen, then we find the moment has all we need.”

How We View Ourselves
We should not think of ourselves as a septic tank full of evil that has to be removed. Neither should we think we are pure. No-one is completely evil or completely pure (except for Christ). In those who follow Christ, the (Holy) Spirit within us covers us so that we are declared pure through Christ’s blood, however until the New Heaven and the New Earth comes we still contain our flesh and so contain the potential for both good and evil.
“If I see a tendency to be angry, I still have to let that anger dissolve in the moment of its arising. Once I do that there is no anger. I do not then become a person with no anger.” We will always have the potential to be angry/ do wrong things. The only moment we can stop ourselves from doing wrong is the present one.

Letting Go of the Need to Understand
A warning about chasing after understanding our past: There was a man shot with an arrow. He refused to let the arrow be taken out until he knew who shot it, what caste he was from, why he shot it and so on, so that in the end the man needlessly died. To take the arrow out is to let go of the need to understand everything right now. – An encouragement to live by faith – trusting that God is in control, is just, and submitting to his wisdom even when we can’t see it.

There’s been Ruth, a doctor in Casualty.
Lunchtime soap Doctors has had multiple characters: Ruth (a receptionist), Dr. Simon Bond (GP trainee), Dr. Elaine Cassidy (GP partner), and today’s episode had a suicidal retired neurosurgeon – worth checking out on iplayer!

It’s still common for the public to be shocked when they hear that their doctor/nurse is ill (we are superhuman after all!). Perhaps it’s good that the media is raising awareness that healthcare professionals can get ill, and can suffer from mental illness.

I’d love to know what others’ think of the portrayals?

I was despondently searching the internet to see what others’ experiences of therapy had been and am so glad that I found an article on surviving therapy – it quoted Sue Atkinson from her book “Climbing Out of Depression” :

Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/beyondblue/2010/10/9-rules-for-surviving-therapy.html#ixzz1fhvR55rR

We talked of how it is the difficulties of life – be it abuse or addiction or illness, that allow beauty to develop in a soul – a greater awareness of what others may be going through, a heart to help others, perspective of what is important in life. Others are attracted to people who have this and those that do need to be careful to look after themselves and not give until they have nothing left.

We talked of letting go of caring for others – you can’t keep pulling someone out of the gutter as they end up becoming dependent on you and not developing their own strength whether that involves them asking for help or discovering the strength they already have inside of them.

We talked about letting go of others when we love them and are disappointed in them whether they have hurt us, or shown a lack of concern for those we think they should care about. It can make us feel so sad, even angry. Realising that they are on their own journey, and that we are not responsible for changing them and whatever they are, they are, whatever they have done, they have done. What we can change is our reaction & ourselves and that is our responsibility.

We talked of the freedom of not being labelled and not labelling others whether it be by illness or roles. See others and ourselves as an individual beyond roles & bigger than labels which often place people in boxes rather than recognising spectrums or allowing change.

We talked about ‘telling your story’ – it’s true benefit of healing yourself comes in being free to tell it to ‘safe’ people – owning it as what happened to you, not being ashamed or feeling like you must hide it & realising you can trust. It can also be told as a gift to others – it enables others feel safe to share their own story, shows others they’re not alone, and that it is possible to get through and turn your life around.