Land ahoy!
Posted: May 15, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: boat, Depression, encouragement, pirates, stress, support 6 Comments »I wasn’t really planning to write a blog post tonight. Nor was I going to write about depression for a while, in case it came to define me. Blimey, could it be that I’m being spontaneous? Weird…
Anyway, I was actually online entering Dippyman in the Mind Media Awards in a wild act of optimism. Optimistic and spontaneous in one night? Is this really me? And in doing so, I looked back at some of the amazing, supportive, encouraging, moving and inspiring – not to mention humbling - comments so many brilliant people have left on this blog. Award entry or not, the support everyone has given me since I first wrote about my experiences of depression last September has made me feel like a winner. THANK YOU.
It’s OK, I’m not going to start singing ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings’, but I am going to liken your support to wind in a different way. Not the sort of wind that would make my children snigger, but a strong wind that blows into the sails of a little boat and guides it home from a rough voyage at sea.
My little boat has found itself drifting into troubled waters a couple of times, including a particularly stormy episode last autumn when, in the midst of a good battering from hurricane-force stress and giant tidal waves of self-doubt, the wicked Pirate Brookes leapt aboard to taunt me. It felt like he had maliciously guided me into some kind of Bermuda Triangle and taken over the steering. Now, if you haven’t read my blog before, let me just fill you in on who Brookes is. He is my evil alter-ego – the name I give to my depression. His mischief is well documented elsewhere on Dippyman.
Singing his miserable, tuneless sea shanties straight into my ear hole, Pirate Brookes rocked my boat and my brain until I was well and truly sick, and plunged the good ship Brook into a thick sea fog – like the one in the horror film The Fog, from which ghoulish figures emerge.
But, thanks to the support and kindness of my wonderful wife and family, my friends and colleagues, and the many of you who I’ve never met, the tide has begun to turn. The mist is lifting, the water is calmer, turning from grey to blue, and there is land ahead. The voyage isn’t over, but Pirate Brookes is losing his grip on my rudder, so to speak, and I am inviting him to walk the plank, never to return.
I haven’t reached my Promised Land yet, but I am hopeful that I will, and that it will be flowing with milk and honey. And maybe a cool beer. If your boat is still lurching about on the high seas, and the pirates have hijacked it, hold firm and set your course for the coast. We will be the winners in this swashbuckling adventure, and the riches shall be ours, me hearties.
“Why aren’t you drinking?”
Posted: May 8, 2012 Filed under: Health, Parenthood, Uncategorized | Tags: alcohol free, beer, Citalopram, Depression, designated driver, drinking, non-alcoholic, why not drinking? 10 Comments »During the months I was trying to keep my depression a secret, there was one small thing that kept giving the game away. Was it the mood swings? No. Was it the headaches? No. Was it the lethargy? No again. It was non-alcoholic drinks.
It’s not that I’m a big drinker. After drunkenly embarrassing myself at a friend’s wedding several years ago, I decided I wasn’t very good at this drinking lark, and opted for a ‘quality rather than quantity’ policy. And fatherhood has also deterred me from pushing my limits, because having a hangover after a disrupted night’s sleep and an early start just doesn’t bear thinking about – especially when accompanied by the cacophony of sound that young children effortlessly generate.
When you’re out meeting friends at a pub or restaurant, though, or if you’re going to a party, and everyone else is sharing a bottle of wine or buying a round of beers, they somehow notice if you don’t join them.
So, why this abstinence from alcohol? Well, when I started taking Citalopram, an antidepressant, two years ago, it said quite clearly on the label that alcohol should be avoided. When it comes to medical instructions, I am an obedient chap. I do what they tell me. I am no expert on medicine and its side effects, and I never fancy experimenting with a more rebellious stance. Other people who’ve taken Citalopram have told me it’s OK to drink alcohol in moderation, but those same tales have often ended with ‘but it might make your symptoms worse’ or ‘and then I passed out’. I have very understanding friends, but I can imagine that me passing out during a night out would put a dampener on the occasion. Even that might be preferable to one of my blacker moods being unleashed in a social setting. So the potential side effects, in combination with my low tolerance of alcohol, would suggest I’m better steering clear.
My teetotal nights out have served me quite well, in a way. Sometimes, when I’ve wanted to talk to a friend about depression, but found it too awkward or weird to just blurt it out, my alcohol-free drinks have given me a way to raise the subject in an informal and light-hearted way. There was one time when I was going to a party in another town, and my friend asked how I’d be getting there. I said I’d be driving. “Don’t you want to have a drink?” she asked. “I can’t at the moment,” I replied. “I’m taking some tablets for depression.” And we got talking, and I realised that discussing such things doesn’t have to be heavy-going.
Do I miss alcohol? Yes, sometimes. A glass of wine would go down a treat, as would a cold beer or a single malt whisky. I’m saving one of these as a treat for when I’m eventually liberated from Citalopram, but I am no longer setting myself unnecessary targets, because they only lead to disappointment and frustration. I’ve already aimed for a cool summer beer (last summer) and a celebratory Christmas tipple (last Christmas). Neither happened. I’ve come to accept my relationship with Citalopram and the completely alcohol-free lifestyle that comes with it, and know that rushing to try and reduce my dose will do me more harm than good.
What I have gained from not drinking alcohol is expertise in a new area – the unappetising-sounding world of alcohol-free beer. There’s a growing number of contenders in this niche market – but which should you go for? Here’s my rundown of the ones I’ve tried. Let me know your verdicts, or if you’ve found anything better – or worse!
Brook’s non-alcoholic beer review
Beck’s Blue: This is the king of non-alcoholic beers, and the one that is making its way into more and more pub fridges. It’s the closest I’ve tasted to ‘real’ beer. Admittedly it’s not as nice as its alcoholic twin, but that would be a tall order.
Kaliber: At the other end of the scale, this is the nastiest beer in this genre. It tastes of used dishwater and is so rank that I once paid for a bottle, took one sip, and bought something else. I NEVER waste a drink…
Sam Smith’s: Although I feel a certain loyalty to this Yorkshire brewery, I don’t feel inclined to stand up for their non-alcoholic lager. I tried it once. It vies with Kaliber for the crown of ‘Most rancid’.
Cobra: I love Cobra beer. Nothing goes better with a curry. But the alcohol-free equivalent is a big disappointment. It tastes of soap. I don’t know why; nor do I wish to know. I’ve given it a couple of chances, but it will not get another.
Bavaria: There are two Bavaria alcohol-free beers in my local supermarket. One, the wheat beer, is a runner up to Beck’s Blue. It’s a little on the gassy side, but tastes a bit like Hoegaarden, which is a good thing in my book, and is drinkable - although you probably wouldn’t want more than one can. The regular ‘malt’ alcohol-free lager is not so good. It’s inoffensive, and it’s cheap, but there are many nicer drinks you could spend your pennies on.
Bitburger Drive: Sounds like it should be nice, but it’s another disappointment. I’d rate it around the middle of the range – infinitely better than Kaliber but lagging behind Beck’s Blue.
Erdinger: I’ve only tried this once. I seem to think it was OK, and one of the few I would go back to.
And finally… Swedish cider-maker Kopparberg has entered the ‘alcohol-free versions of alcoholic drinks’ market with a couple of alcohol-free ciders – one pear and one mixed fruit. The pear one is deliciously crisp and light, fruity and tasty. A cynic might say ‘Alcohol-free cider? That’s apple juice isn’t it?’ And they might well have a point. But it tastes good. The mixed fruit offering is pleasant but not as good as the pear one. Stick to Vimto.
Riding the recovery rollercoaster
Posted: April 20, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: Depression, recovery, rollercoaster, ups and downs 22 Comments »No offence to Ronan Keating, but I don’t usually turn to his songs for lessons about life. However, he had a point when he said ‘Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it’, and, as I’m discovering, that same lesson applies to depression.
It turns out that recovering from depression is, in some ways, like riding the Big Dipper, a famous rollercoaster in Blackpool. It isn’t a smooth ride – it has big ups and big downs, and a few dizzying bends thrown in – and those big dips make your stomach and head feel pretty weird. The differences between the Big Dipper and the Big Depression are:
- You don’t know when the latter will stop and let you get off, or even where it’s going.
- You didn’t choose to get on it.
- Many people enjoy the thrill of a rollercoaster, but nobody enjoys depression.
Life may be a rollercoaster, but sometimes, given the option of just riding it or not, I’m sure I’m not alone in sometimes wishing I could step off for a while and have a breather. Anyway, I’ve always been a bit timid when it comes to rollercoasters. It’s something to do with being really high up and then plummeting down at great speed – much like my own experience of trying to recover from depression.
Once I’d had my first round of counselling and was feeling better, I assumed that meant I was on the mend and I was full of optimism. I felt so good this time last year that I started to reduce the dose of my antidepressants, but my moods began to darken again and so the dose went back up. I tried again a couple of months later, and this time it went well. Hurrah, an improvement! I’m getting better. Yay! So down goes the dose again, but not for long, because along comes a prolonged period of stress, and the dose goes back up again. Up and down goes my mood, down and up goes my medication. Then came a difficult situation and a big drop – time off work, increased medication and a second round of counselling.
My problem was that, while my first round of counselling had sorted out a lot of problems, such as boosting my self-esteem, realising that I wasn’t a failure and starting to look forward to things again, there were still some lingering issues that my evil alter-ego, Paul Brookes, had kept behind in his secret vault. He knew I still worried what people thought about me and he knew I still felt the need to excel at everything, as if trying to prove something. He knew that I didn’t feel good enough. He unleashed these missiles of misery with great glee last autumn.
This experience is summed up in a line from Learn My Lesson, a bouncy tune from Rizzle Kicks’ debut album, Stereotypical:
The art of learning lessons is a lesson that I’ve never learned.
I knew the same things that Brookes knew, but I hadn’t learned from them and hadn’t tackled them adequately. With the benefit of hindsight, a second round of counselling, some reading and support from friends, I’m a little wiser and am trying to learn my lesson so that I don’t have to go through it all again.
Reassuringly, the more I read and learn about depression, the more I realise that this rollercoaster recovery ride is completely normal. There will be good days and bad days. I can feel capable of anything one day and nothing the next. On a good day I can be full of fun, ready to take on the world. On a bad day, I feel like a liability, a burden, and my dark moods overwhelm me – like a grenade packed with fury and bitterness that could blow up at any moment.
Two things I’ve read recently have been particularly helpful to me in realising that a bad day doesn’t mean a catastrophic failure and a dramatic slide back into the great pit of doom:
It is the nature of depression itself that your progress will inevitably be both slow and erratic. (Sarah Medina 2002, Light: a way through depression, Lion Publishing)
Recovery isn’t, unless you are very lucky, a smooth path upward. If you try to hurry yourself to full recovery, the process can be very turbulent indeed and take an age. If you do everything right, there are still usually a lot of ups and downs along the way… (Dr Tim Cantopher 2003, Depressive illness: The curse of the strong, Sheldon Press)
So let’s not kick ourselves when we’re down. The recovery rollercoaster will rise again soon, and one day, the ride will stop and we will be able to get off, breathe a sigh of relief and go for an ice cream or a doughnut.
I wrote this blog for the Blurt Foundation, who provide support for people with depression.
Beware of the extra mile
Posted: April 11, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: Apprentice, beware, board room, business, Depression, extra mile, stress 13 Comments »There are people ‘going the extra mile’ all over the place these days. From job interviews to appraisals, from pitches for new business to CVs, from websites to board rooms like Lord Sugar’s on The Apprentice, you can readily hear or read this phrase without having to travel an extra mile yourself.
The ‘extra mile’ of which they speak is that heroic extra effort, that additional, metaphorical distance that is travelled by keen, conscientious or ambitious people up and down the land as they strive to meet and exceed expectations and targets, to make money, or to impress and please people. It often achieves these things. But then what? What happens next? Well, it’s time to go another extra mile – the extra, extra mile perhaps – either for the same person or purpose, or for another one. And it happens again and again and again.
The sad thing that happens if you carry on going the extra mile is that you run out of extra miles and fall off the edge of the map (my own new nugget of business waffle – like it?). You then discover that getting back onto the map involves going more extra miles than you’ve ever gone before.
Sadder still, you realise, with the benefit of wisdom, hindsight or counselling, that:
a) you were actually going the extra mile so people would like you and give you praise;
b) you did that to prove to yourself that you were good enough; and
c) the extra miles you travelled got you nowhere.
After all those gruelling extra miles in pursuit of great rewards and riches - otherwise known as fulfilment and self-esteem – you still haven’t convinced yourself that you’re good enough to meet your own exacting standards. Striving to excel in every situation and to please everyone hasn’t worked.
I’ve been talking in metaphors and riddles up to this point, so allow me to spell out what I’m talking about. I’m one of those people who has always ‘gone the extra mile’. It has brought me plenty of kind words from plenty of people, but it has also brought me great stress, which then brought me depression. The real benefits of going that extra mile are few and far between, and you can find yourself incapable of going a single mile, let alone an extra one.
This isn’t a ‘poor me’ story. It’s a warning. Conscientious people are prone to depression because they keep going and keep going. Now armed with the benefit of hindsight from two rounds of counselling, I’d say that if you find yourself about to embark on another extra mile and it feels a step too far, stop, take some time out, and reconsider. Do it now, then you might be able to do some more extra miles when they’re really necessary and when they’re worth the destination.
“What have they got to be depressed about?”
Posted: April 4, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: celebrities, depressed, Depression, Frankie Sandford, media, Robbie Williams, stigma, Time To Change 19 Comments »I want to apologise to Robbie Williams.
This may seem an odd statement, as the Take That star and I have never met and I haven’t done anything to upset him. But a few years ago I remember hearing that he was depressed, and thinking to myself: “What’s he got to be depressed about? He’s rich, famous, talented, successful – yep, it must really be terrible being him.”
Only now I have experienced depression myself do I realise that it doesn’t care what you have or who you are. It doesn’t care how many fans you have or how many top ten hits you have. It is an illness and it can affect anyone. Take Frankie Sandford, of The Saturdays, for example. She’s a beautiful, talented, successful young woman, yet her experience of depression made her feel “worthless and ugly. I felt if I disappeared it wouldn’t matter at all”.
The work she is doing to highlight the reality of depression is both brave and brilliant. So what is so brilliant about it? Frankie is an idol for young people, some of whom will be going through depression themselves, and others of whom might not have a clue about the damage it can do. Her story will reach and inspire many more people than a non-famous blogger like me ever could, because she is also a major star in the media, whose words will appear in all kinds of high-profile places. I think it’s fantastic, and, as I’ve written before, if there is one silver lining to depression it’s being able to share your experiences with other people who are in the same boat, and perhaps raise awareness among the people who aren’t.
Although they have glamorous lifestyles that many people envy, celebrities are human after all. And if one in four people will suffer from depression at some point in their lives, it stands to reason that this is happening to them too. It has happened to me. I smile a lot, I laugh a lot, I have a lovely wife and children, I have a job and I live in a nice place, so what do I have to be depressed about? I’m not the sort of person who gets depressed, am I?
Well, yes, actually. It is very easy, and common, for depression to be muddle up with feeling depressed. Feeling depressed happens to everyone at some point. There are all kinds of reasons why you might feel down about something. But depression is not a passing feeling. Nor is it a choice. It is not as if the likes of Robbie and Frankie sat themselves down and decided they fancied being depressed, and could just snap out of it when they’d got bored of it or when someone else told them to. Depression is a horrible mental and physical illness that feasts on stress and gorges on negative thinking, which it whisks up into a whirling vortex and relentlessly beats you about the brain with. Whoever you are.
So, sorry Robbie. You’re now one of a growing number of famous people – like Frankie - who I respect enormously for talking openly and descriptively about their experiences of depression. As for the lesser-known or unknown people who are going through this ordeal, well – and be warned, this is going to sound cheesy – we may not have fans, we may not have a ready-made audience, but we do have each other, and we can get through this, one day at a time.
* I wrote this blog for Time to Change, who are doing a brilliant job of tackling the stigma of mental illness.
Why I drank slime
Posted: March 10, 2012 Filed under: Health, Humour | Tags: Depression, diet, health, mental health, slime, Spirulina, superfood, supplements 10 Comments »It is often said that things that taste nice must be bad for you, and that things that taste disgusting must be good for you. Sometimes though, a disgusting thing that’s meant to be good for you is so disgusting that you don’t care how good for you it is.
This is true of my adventures with a dietary supplement called spirulina. Spirulina is widely hailed a ‘superfood’. Although it can’t make you taller, make your hair grow back, give you x-ray vision, turn you into a love god or enable you to fly, it seems it can do pretty much everything else.
There were two particular benefits of spirulina that interested me:
- it reduces fatigue, giving you more energy;
- it boosts your immune system.
I was in great need of both these things when I went to talk to the occupational health nurse at work last spring.
Two of the effects or symptoms of my lingering depression had been physical and mental lethargy, and a constant stream of tedious minor ailments and illnesses. The nurse suggested a number of things – particularly some supplements to my diet - that might help to get me fit again. Spirulina was one of them.
Eager to eradicate my troublesome symptoms and get on with the business of shaking off my depression, I went out one lunchtime to a health food shop in town and left with various tablets and potions, some of which I’ve stuck with and others that had no discernible effect. And then there was the spirulina. Popping in to a nearby smoothie shop for a fruit fix, I spotted a brown bag, labelled ‘spirulina powder’. The chap in the shop raved about its greatness and offered it to me at a reduced price.
“Mix it in with a smoothie or juice,” he advised. Off I went, clutching my bargain bag of superfood, eager to try it out and reawaken my dormant inner superhero.
Spirulina is a naturally occurring algae, and what I hadn’t expected was that it would revert to its natural slimy state at the merest hint of moisture. Even before it morphed into thick, dark-green slime, the smell emanating from the open bag was a clear warning that this was not going to taste good. But it would be good for me, so I would be brave and do what was necessary to reap the rewards of this miraculous gloop.
I put a spoonful of spirulina powder into my morning smoothie, and watched it turn green. Not a nice, appetising green. Slime green. Pondweed green. Algae green. I stirred it furiously to try and blend in the claggy blobs of goo, but lumps of it stuck to the spoon. Then I took a deep breath, and downed some. So much for my new va-va-voom – this was more like va-va-vomit. It was utterly, utterly rank. Not only did it taste vile, it encased my teeth, and the taste lingered. One perfectly good smoothie ruined.
Day after day, I tried to complete a glass of this rancid concoction, and each time coughed, spluttered and gagged my way through it. Thinking I must be getting the mixture wrong, I tried different juices. Still it stank. Still it tasted putrid. I tried mixing it with water. Even worse. Nothing makes algae feel more at home than water, and the spirulina thrived in my glass, but much less so on my taste buds, which rejected it out of hand.
I persisted for far longer than any right-minded person would do, but my enthusiasm for experimenting with spirulina was in terminal decline. Having tried just about everything else, I gave it one last go – on its own. No mixture. No blending. Just the spirulina powder, on a teaspoon. Well, as bad ideas go, this one was a medal-winner.
On contact with my mouth, the powder seemed to expand and fill my mouth, so I could hardly breathe. The saliva in my mouth transformed it into one part super-claggy slime and one part dynamite. The putrescent slime clung to my teeth, tongue and gums, and the dynamite part built up in my mouth, choking me, until it exploded, leaving me staggering around the kitchen, erupting like some green-cloud-spewing volcano.
It was the final straw.
I did try spirulina tablets, the less offensive cousin of the powder, but the jar demanded that I take six tablets every day. “Not at that price,” I objected, so I took one a day, with no benefits whatsoever, until the jar was empty.
Some time later, I saw the man from the smoothie shop and he asked me how I’d got on with my purchase. I told him it had been unbelievably revolting. He asked if I’d mixed it with juice. I said yes, I’d mixed in one teaspoon of the powder, as he’d suggested…
“A whole teaspoon?” he said. “No mate, you only need half a teaspoon.”
Ah yes, that was what he had said. My memory, along with my energy, had disappeared into the fog of depression, and I’d somehow remembered the wrong quantity. But it was too late by then. I had fallen out with the spirulina and thrown it all in the bin. And there was no way I was going to put that stuff anywhere near my mouth again.
Is there anything funny about depression?
Posted: February 25, 2012 Filed under: Health, Humour | Tags: comedy, Depression, funny, jokes, laugh, mental illness, pun, unfunny 9 Comments »It’s had a go at my moods, my self-esteem and my energy, but one thing depression hasn’t been able to defeat is my sense of humour. Although I haven’t felt like laughing a lot of the time, there is still part of my brain that’s hot-wired to automatically generate puns at every opportunity.
Even in my darkest moments, I don’t know if I’d have been able to resist the obvious ‘tooth hurty’ gag if someone had said to me that they had an appointment with the dentist that afternoon. If you wanted a blog about double entendres I could definitely give you one. If you wanted pencil puns I could quickly get to the point. If you wanted puns about baking bread I could rise to the challenge. As for dairy puns I could milk that subject until the cows come home.
While I try to see the humour in most aspects of life, there are some things that just aren’t funny. Depression is one of those things. Confusingly, despite its extreme unfunniness, there is a link between this miserable illness and comedy. People experiencing terrible depression can still be very funny. Take Kenneth Williams, for example – a man who made millions laugh, but who suffered from depression throughout his life. He is one of many high-profile comedians or comic actors to have grappled with mental illness while making a name for themselves as someone who tickles ribs and splits sides.
Making other people laugh is a good – but often unintentional – diversion from what is going on in your head. On the outside, you appear bright and bubbly, like a glass of champagne. On the inside, you might feel more like flat cola or sour milk, but nobody would know, because you’re still cracking jokes. When there’s nobody else around to amuse or entertain, that’s when the forces of darkness are at their most powerful and dangerous. With just depression for company, there’s little chance for a chuckle or a chortle.
Humour, it would seem, comes in spite of depression, not because of it. For all those depressed people who carry on making others laugh, it’s not depression itself that’s funny. How many jokes do you know about it? I’ve just done a quick Google search for ‘jokes about depression’. It turns out there are some, but unless I’ve missed any hidden gems, most don’t actually seem to be about the depression I know and none made me laugh. This doesn’t surprise me. I’d already experimented with my own jokes about depression, substituting parts of some very old and well-known jokes with depression-related symptoms or scenarios, and found them about as funny as a cabbage. For instance:
Patient: Doctor, doctor, I have constant headaches, I’m frazzled, I hate myself and don’t look forward to anything any more.
Doctor: Maybe you have depression.
OK, let’s move on.
Why did the depressed person cross the road?
Because they hoped the other side would be better than this one.
Oh – again, not funny in the slightest.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Someone with depression.
Someone with depression who?
Let’s stop right there. That one doesn’t even make sense.
How many depressed people does it take to change a lightbulb?
Who cares about the lightbulb?
Enough! You get my point. If this blog was a stand-up routine I’d have been booed off.
Much as I love a pun challenge, I have to admit defeat. I just can’t think of anything funny – or even worth a small smirk – about depression. Can you?
A match for the Dark Side
Posted: February 15, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: Darth Vader, Depression, Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker, mental health, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, stress 6 Comments »There is a scene towards the end of Return of the Jedi where the evil Emperor stands over a stricken Luke Skywalker and ferociously zaps him with lightning from his finger tips.
“Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Dark Side,” he goads Skywalker, as our young hero writhes around on the floor in agony.
But the vicious villain is wrong. He is ultimately overthrown, and all because of Luke’s faith that there is still some good hidden away inside his father, Darth Vader – one of the ultimate movie baddies.
So where am I going with all this?
Well, last September I wrote about my depression for the first time, using a Star Wars analogy with Vader as ‘Stress’ and the Emperor as ‘Depression’. Since that first adventure, I’ve experienced the pitfalls of The Empire Strikes Back, the second part of the original Star Wars trilogy. When I say I’ve experienced it, I don’t mean I’ve sat down and watched it with a giant, over-priced bucket of popcorn. No, nothing fun like that. I’ve lived through the resurgence and revenge of an evil power – the one I call Paul Brookes. He is my alter-ego, who corrupts my thoughts and feelings with his equivalent of the Dark Side of the Force.
Brookes appeared to have taken a deadly blow in the first episode of my depression, but he was gathering strength, somewhere just out of view. He was waiting for my stress levels to build again, and looking for the right time to move in for the kill. And, like Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, he resurfaced and wreaked havoc. OK, so I wasn’t frozen in carbonite like Han Solo, and I didn’t have my arm sliced off like Luke Skywalker, but I did take a brutal beating from my nemesis.
Brookes’ powers had grown. Just as the Empire ruled the galaxy, Brookes ruled my brain. Just as the Empire had been building a second Death Star (a moon-sized space station with enough fire power to blow up whole planets with one blast), Brookes had been working on demolishing my rebellion with his own destructive devices – crushing my self-esteem, convincing me to take everything personally, kicking me when I was down and smashing the life out of me.
Brookes isn’t dead - yet. His Empire has not been defeated - yet. His Death Star has not been destroyed - yet. But note the word ‘yet’. Because Brookes has not killed off my hope that I will get better. He has not finished off my faith that good times will return. He has underestimated my tenacity – my determination to hang on, no matter what wounds he has inflicted on my battered body and mind. He has failed to recognise the threat that the powers of good pose to his existence.
Just as Luke Skywalker had to face up to his destiny and confront the forces of evil to complete his training, I now stand with a mission ahead of me. I have an Empire to overthrow, a galaxy to reclaim, and a better life to lead. Brookes has made me small, weak and feeble – pathetic opposition to his sneering arrogance and despicable disregard for my wellbeing. But he has not taken away my terrier-like persistence. Not permanently. I am playing Brookes at his own game. He hibernated until the time was right for him. Now I’m emerging from my own slumbers to take him on in a climactic battle.
Do not underestimate the power of the bright side of the Force, Brookes. I’m back. And this time it’s personal.
Man up? Never
Posted: February 8, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: Blurt Foundation, chin up, Depression, just get on with it, Man up, masculinity, well-meaning 13 Comments »There are some phrases or sayings that people just churn out when they don’t know what else to say.
Often this is something harmless about the weather that they might chirpily say to the postman or newsagent: “Nippy outside, isn’t it?” or ”Lovely day.” In football, there are mundane cliches that players, managers and pundits trot out when they have to say something but haven’t had time to think about what that something might be: “He’s come in and done a job” or “At the end of the day it’s all about getting three points.”
People can take the same approach as those tongue-tied football experts when confronted with an awkward situation or inconvenient truth. Say, for example, a relative or friend reveals they are struggling with depression. Unless you’ve experienced depression for yourself, it’s hard to know what to say, because you don’t know what that person is thinking or how they’re feeling. So, out come those reliable old gap-fillers: “Chin up,” “cheer up, you’ve got lots to be happy about,” “pull yourself together,” ”stiff upper lip” and all that.
I have nothing against such well-meaning attempts at helping someone to feel better. They’re often said with a kind heart and good intentions. OK, so they’re rather thoughtless and not exactly helpful, because cheering up is one of those things you would probably tend to do if you were blessed with the capacity to do so at that particular time. Even somebody who isn’t suffering from depression but is having a bad day might not react favourably to such merry, faux motivational small talk. Your well-meaning adviser is simply failing to understand and diagnose what is wrong, and is using their limited or non-existent knowledge of it to give you a slightly feeble and misguided pep talk.
There is a similar phrase I’ve heard a few times recently (not directed at me) that is not only unhelpful but is also ignorant and, to be blunt about it, stupid. That phrase is ‘man up’.
I am a man. I have the parts to prove it, should the need arise – so to speak. No amount of ‘manning up’, in any circumstances, is going to alter my manliness. It has remained at a constant level throughout my adult life. Before I was a man, I was a boy. Nobody tells you to ‘boy up’, though, so we can forget about that.
I have heard two men recently saying that they were going to ‘man up’. They meant they were going to try and toughen up. If that means they’re going to face their problems head on and get the help they need to get better, then fine. The alternative meaning, though, is that they’re going to do that ‘strong, silent type’ thing that’s meant to personify the rugged, heroic, masculine, chisel-jawed breadwinner, who ‘just gets on with it’. My problem with that is that ‘just getting on with it’ is what frequently seems to cause depression. There is only so much ‘just getting on with it’ a person can do before it starts to take its toll on their health. For ‘just get on with it’, read ‘just get stressed out, just fail to express your feelings, just take on too much, just get mentally ill as a result’.
Worse, though, is when someone else tells you to ‘man up’. I saw this on Twitter recently, in response to a well-known sportsman openly tweeting about depression. The tweet helpfully advised him to “man the f*** up”. In reply, he simply and brilliantly retweeted this moronic insult so that all his followers could see it.
This use of ‘man up’ was deliberately hostile and provocative and clearly wasn’t the well-considered product of an ingenious mind, but the ignorance riled me nonetheless. It’s based on the presumption that someone going through depression is just having a prolonged sulk, and can suddenly jolt themselves out of it when they receive a timely piece of unexpected guidance. It’s also grounded in a ridiculous misconception of what a man should be.
The reality of depression is that it is not merely a bad mood that you can snap out of, however manly you may be. It’s an illness. As I was mulling over – and probably scowling about – the idea of ‘manning up’, I caught side of the inhaler by my bed, and it occurred to me that there are some parallels between depression and asthma:
- both are medical problems
- both have varying degrees of severity
- both can be triggered by a range of factors
- many cases of both can be managed with the right treatment
- both can be killers
If I were ever to have a severe asthma attack, I hope it would not even pop into someone’s head that they could suggest I ’man up’, because that would not help me to get my breathing under control and prevent serious harm. It is equally daft, useless and dangerous to aim a ‘man up’ at someone fighting depression. What possible good could that phrase do? It is about as much use as a PE teacher telling you that you ‘need more confidence’ when you’re not doing very well at a particular sport. “Ah yes,” thinks the teenage boy, “you are right. Glad you pointed that out. I will locate my ‘confidence’ switch and that will solve all my problems’.” If you don’t have confidence, how exactly are you going to find more just because someone has suggested it?
‘Man up’ could have been a phrase that encouraged men to face their troubles in a healthy way – it could have been about admitting to a problem and asking for help. Instead, it is a sub-cavemanesque grunt of ground-breaking stupidity that enforces meathead sterotypes of masculinity. Gentlemen – it’s time we gave it the boot.
I wrote this blog for the Blurt Foundation. Visit them at http://www.blurtitout.org.
Does this black cloud have a silver lining?
Posted: February 3, 2012 Filed under: Health | Tags: black cloud, Depression, mental health, mind, silver lining 17 Comments »There’s a well-known saying that every cloud has a silver lining. Sometimes I’ve suspected that the only silver lining in my black cloud is a bolt of lightning that’s about to fry me on the spot.
Other times, I’ve spent so long staring at the black cloud that it’s got bored of just hanging around above my head and dropped monsoon-like rain straight into my face.
The cloud I’m talking about is depression. It’s more than just a cloud – it’s a whole weather system, wreaking havoc in countless ways. It follows you around, showing no mercy.
When the cloud descends it’s like dense, black fog – a suffocating wall of smog that makes any potential silver lining slip away, deep into the impenetrable gloom. Which is terribly unsporting of it, isn’t it? It envelopes its victim and seeps into their brain, controlling their mood, but it doesn’t stop there. It tries to infect everyone around that unfortunate person too.
Not content with its cloud-like tendencies, depression can whip up a whirlwind of stress, anger, worry and raw emotions and pelt you with them, like a giant storm smashes windscreens with grapefruit-sized hailstones. You can feel like your head is spinning like a tornado, or you can feel buffeted from all directions by a hurricane that nobody else can sense.
It takes on other sinister forms too. It can be like quicksand (OK, I know it’s not a kind of weather, but it’s sort of elemental so bear with me), dragging you down, zapping your mental, physical and emotional energy, sucking the lifeforce from you.
But however much it might not like it, my cloud does have a silver lining. More than one, in fact.
For a start, it’s given me something to write about. When I started blogging, I had no idea I would end up writing so many posts about depression. Then again, I didn’t exactly intend to have depression. Nobody would choose the wretched thing, would they? I mean, it’s… well, depressing. But writing about it has helped me to get to grips with what I’m feeling and to put it into words, and the best thing about it is that it’s helped other people too.
The other positive thing to come out of my depression – which, incidentally, is still stalking me – is that so many people, friends and strangers alike, have shown me such kindness and support. I’ve learned that there are loads of other people out there who have gone through the same thing, or are still going through it, and we can all help each other. And, despite the misery of depression and the ongoing struggle to overcome it, I’ve actually learned to like and value myself a bit more than I used to, because the kind words of others have proved to me that I’m really not as bad as I thought I was.
If there’s a black cloud hovering over you, chasing you or engulfing you, don’t give up on seeing the summer sun. It might take a while to appear, so, in the meantime, grab and appreciate any flashes of silver you can find. They are up there somewhere.
I’ve written this blog for Mind. Find out more about them here: http://www.mind.org.uk/
