No sad days

It dawned on me that it has been a while. Quite a while of no sad days. I can remember the last one quite clearly. It’s been nearly 3 months since I had a really horribly down day. It had been about a week of a really dark space, which started on the weekend where no one saw it. The mood hadn’t left on the Monday. Called in sick. Tuesday I had to go back to work. The mood hadn’t left but I had to go in.


I had quit smoking cigarettes the week prior too. So I was attempting to process difficult moods without a habitual nicotine hit. The start of that first week not smoking I would do a quick stair run exercise substitute for smoking, but when the flat mood hit, it became a silent people break in the privacy of the unused stairs, hiding really. I wasn’t in a good head space that day… 


I managed to make it through the day without needing a cigarette but it meant I had a mood that needed to be redirected somewhere. It needed to be let out somehow and I’m guessing I looked a bit of a wreck that day.

The next day I overheard a couple of staff talking about ‘yesterday’ and I knew it was about me. I pondered, started to feel self conscious and instead of worrying I did something about it this time. I sent an email to my team who’d had to witness my behaviour the day before. I had insight within a day to realise that I had appeared pretty stressed yet I couldn’t explain why at the time. The email was titled Mental Health in the Work Place.

 

I guess it is how I am finding my voice, how I can walk my talk of being a more open honest person. This has to date been something I've struggled with because a big part of me would rather keep this vulnerable side of me private.


I explained that it had occurred after three really flat days, one of which I’d stayed home for.  That its dealing with a topical stressful project. That I’d quit smoking a week ago and was relearning again to regulate my mood without them. I explained that now that I’m back I have to learn how my face presents when I’m down. I had spent a year with no one seeing so I’d forgotten. It was just going to need a bit of practice.


I said 'no reply necessary.' I still got some feedback and it was really helpful. I felt acknowledged and not made out to feel 'you're weird.' What was more helpful though, was that this action was “real.” It was in real life, not behind a closed door counselling discussion or private. It was about integrating my hidden silent part of me with depression, with the actual reality of how that transpires in real life and where I spend a lot of time, at work. 

 
It gave me strength. I wasn’t going to let pressure and stress take over when I was back at work. I just maybe had to explain the behaviour that might result when things get hectic. I explained that in times like I looked yesterday, I would benefit from a quick walk, or a chat on the oval or something, to break the intensity. I invited them to ask me ‘next time’ because I may not be able to see that I needed it. This wasn't just about self care.It was also about being more supportive as a team.

I realise now that the day I sent that email, was the first day in the last three months of 'no sad days.' It was one of the first days of true integration of past and present. It’s important to remind myself to remember this. In the long monotonous days, weeks and months on end of flat moods, you forget that life was ever any better. You can’t see out of that space. Depression may never quite leave, but the time between heavy intense dark days starts to spread out. That occasional light day in a week starts to multiply. And all of a sudden 11 weeks have passed since that last sad day.

 

Note to self: acknowledge progress.

What's this about then?

“What is normal?”

It’s been a conversational comeback for many things over the years. Especially when openly discussing that you’ve been deemed, ‘not normal.’ In these open conversations we accepted that some of us have had interesting life experiences. These filter our adult perspectives and perhaps narrow views. There have been a number of people that I have met that have allowed for ‘not normal’ thoughts to grace their minds however people only reveal experiences where they have been labelled ‘ill’ when realising that they were in a safe space to share. 

"What is normal," has been one of my favourites phrases for years. For years I’ve known that I’ve haven’t been normal, I haven’t grown up in a normal Australian household and then I had to get treatment for the way my mind thought because, it also wasn’t normal.

Juxtaposing this disparity was also the association of what having a mental illness means admitting. It means admitting that there is something less than desirable about the way that you think. How your brain processes thoughts and how you cope? It can be life sentence, or it can be an opportunity for self discovery and personal growth. There is an assumption that people who need treatment for mental illnesses are severely unwell, ‘crazy’ or many other labels that I choose not to use.

I was confronted with many of these realisations when I was 17 and I first had to experience the stigma of going to hospital for my mind, because it was not normal. I went through a period of time where I advocated for better awareness and education about it, until I realised that I also didn’t want to associate with the illness for life. I was able to detach from identifying with the illness because I no longer needed treatment for it.

I didn’t realise what I powerful experience I had learnt, until I needed to do it again 15 years after the first episode ended. I had hoped I was one of those people that would only have mental illness affect them once in their life. Unfortunately not.
 

I wrote about my experience of the acute end of mental health treatment and the current state of community follow up. My experience the second time round was framed by my knowledge of what I know and expect of services, of how we respect and treat people experiencing similar journeys.  Yet, I didn't get that level of care and I could wear two hats in the experience I was having, of being a client and how I would be if I was the worker. 

This is story that I feel I now really need to tell: It is my story of ‘the road less travelled in depression recovery.’ 

I feel we really need to consider the long term treatment of depression because it is an illness that is growing and one that I feel then becomes too quickly reliant on antidepressants for a long time. The available psychotherapy is limited to ten sessions a year. So medication is the long term option. More and more are on medications for years. And many years later, if you are someone undiscerningly listening to your doctor, you are probably still taking them 4 or 14 or many years later.

I know what I’m saying is controversial. I know and acknowledge that medication is needed at times of crisis. I see how needed it is. I remember how needed it was for me in 1997 when I was 17 and again when I was 37.

I'm not saying don't take them, I'm saying we shouldn't be taking them for life. I don't think we are encouraged to get to a point of being told, "ok the medications were for a reprieve in dealing with those feelings at that time, why don't you try and now understand what there is to learn from that experience?" Instead when one tablet stops working we are told to try another one, expected to live on a merry go round of up and down side effects. We are told there is no cure, suppressing these symptoms is the best we can hope for. I don’t believe this is true.

I happened to bump into a lot of people that were in and out of hospitals and on medication for the whole 15 years I had between major episodes. In those 15 years I chose instead to go and process why I was depressed, instead of just hoping a tablet would fix those feelings for me. I did a lot of self work. I got to a point of no longer identifying with being depressed. I stopped talking about it because - why continue? It's not like admitting you've had a mental illness brings any advantage in any situation. I moved on.

What if I, years ago like so many other people I met in the adolescent wards of a psychiatric hospital, always listened to what I was told? Would I have been as medicated still all this time? That was the prognosis I was given, that I would be on medication for life. Would I have been able to do the work I have done, created community projects or impact the people I have met?  Would I have ever been able to learn from it, if I still thought it was a just a chemical imbalance they were fixing?

I had wanted to write about this when I was younger. I was supported and encouraged through the advocacy work I did. I couldn't find the words then. 

Maybe I needed this passage of time to see that the treatment hadn't changed, but I had without it. I had now twice, overcome the illness by moving through it instead of suppressing it.  Now I have to acknowledge this is my personal lived experience. Since coming back to work it is a story that has been enveloped in shame and stigma for me. In the face of all this talk about mental illness, I still find it easier to write about it.

I met people in hospital that had been medicated on depression meds for years. I'm talking specifically about depression. Do you know how this changes a person over the years? The weight gain, uncertainty and loss of self empowerment? The level of self responsibility it takes away? The morphing of drowsiness, personality and confidence it sapps from you?

Our Western system does not acknowledge that these states used to be revered in tribal communities. What if the way our health system works, is simply a matter of where we are born? Imagine the difference if we were told that the lessons we are experiencing would reveal themselves with an answer later. There is trauma, pain and hurt that so many of us have buried pill under pill under pill.

Sometimes there’s a reason buried trauma resurfaces in life. It forces us to re-evaluate ourselves. It does this in times of crisis, of nothing left to lose. It forces us to face up to what was a part of us left behind. Buried silent shame. My experience of being in a psych hospital is my silent shame. Because it labels me different. Of needing something to correct, a fixed range of acceptable feelings. Because talking about it means you're weird, strange and so many other labels. Because people still make comments about stereotypes that are wrong. The shame of it prevented me from talking about it for years.

My depression is deep. It is skewed, spiritual and philosophical. But I would rather understand and experience and integrate that part of me and my thinking, into how I see the world. It doesn’t serve me to not face up to these feelings. Or I can suppress them for years on a merry go round of different psych innovations always gracing the chemist shelves...  

The story I want to tell is how I managed to go through the episodes and years of depression comparing the years on medication, with the years off it. This is what I’ve learnt. This is what I want to share.  

Change the World Perth

I did something different today. I had a whole day where I was truthful in all conversations and present in all interactions. It was with a handful of people that were also, as truthful in a power charged room of energy. It was delightful. I was my true self. It was the #changetheworldevent in Perth by @HancockCreative. What an amazing day that echoed something I’ve hesitated and paused over, now for a year. The importance of telling the stories of why we do what we do. In telling the right story.

I am at the#changetheworldevent and @nickbowditch has challenged me by asking “what would I do if I wasn’t afraid?  So I’m tagging @Rebecca Dettman and @Jane Donovan  because I really respect them and want them to know about my cause, whatisnormal9.blogspot.com/ and the work that I do. Well Jane, right now you got me thinking about the traights you’ve taught so many, about the #highlysensitiveperson but also the gifts that come with being one.  And dear Bec, you first gave me a voice on Soul Doctor. 

Alicia please realise that though I left early, it was because I had already experienced as much as I could and I acknowledged I was now needing to withdraw. Withdraw from the sheer number of people and the volume to be in quiet and process it all. Today I felt inspired, honoured, empowered and motivated. This event did more for me, individually as a person, behind the hat I wear at work. I’ve not really been able to fully own the experiences I’ve been through lately. I haven't known how and so I leave a lot unsaid at times. I do have a cause and a powerful journey of lived experience. Of self realisation, discovery and meaning. This came through after two lengthy episodes of depression, 15 years apart. I did a lot in those 15 years.

Why have I been afraid about sharing this?  A lot of it comes down to, what will people think?   I've started to realise, that my audience is not my family,  it is not my colleagues. Its the people who are trying to understand, live with or support someone living with depression. It is people who are curious in finding another way and it is for people that believe they can possibly be the captain of their own future. There are a lot of people that want to hope, that want to believe change is possible. I believe it is.