Today I have 'Hope'.  Yesterday was a 'Cage'.

I rarely blog.
I don't have people read my blog.
I don't really know what makes a satisfactory blog.

11th to 17th May 2015 was Mental Health Awareness week, my 51st Birthday was in there on the 16th, last year my 50th though full of great memories was also tinged with sadness as I celebrated it with the spectre of my anxiety and depression hanging over it.  I look back at photos of last year and I can see that I'm not there fully, I'm absent, my face looks almost like someone else.

Mental Health is hard to explain to folks, every experience of an episode of troubles is unique though obviously symptoms are shared amongst sufferers.  The most eloquent thing I can say about it is that my episodes see my emotions flattened and my body thinking 50-95% of the time that I'm in a fight for my life, andrenaline flooding me.  I have never been able to quite understand what my triggers might be, apart from it's complex.

Earlier this year I weathered an oncoming storm, I saw the signs that things were not right and I was able to seek interventions both medical and therapeutic and remain at work.  I was elated and excited that I had beaten the Black Dog.  I thought I was stable, I thought I would be able to celebrate my 51st and look back on photographs that saw myself incumbent in the moments and not absent.

However the elation turned into manicness and I buzzed for a while and then I sunk.  I didn't notice and see a secondary set of signs and though I was overwhelmed by depression and anxiety I tried to work through it.  For 3 weeks between 8 and 9 in the mornings as work and later in those days I sat paralysed at work, unable to solve problems, analyse issues, run work, decide what to do, I was effectively like the duck, possibly looking serene though absent on the surface BUT underneath I was prickly with adrenaline and my webbed feet were flapping away, problem is I wasn't moving anywhere.  I was also prone to oversharing, 'I'm rubbish', 'I'm not effective','I'm not able to do this','I'm ........', well you get it.

My wife and my manager both asked me to get to the GP, I got to the GP and the only immediate thing that he could do was take me out of the workplace.  I have now been off for 7 weeks.  It has taken 6 weeks to access a Mental Health Nurse in the NHS and that was with me overwhelmed with anxiety, buzzing and prickling with andrenaline being incredibly pushy BUT also being incredible incoherent I think in eMails and Phone Calls.

I have spent every day trying to get better, trying to practice 'Mindfulness' as launded by Ruby Wax and others.  I have spent every day using the Happify App to try and take the CBT style tracks and rewire my head whilst accessing the Mental Health services.  I have spent every day thinking I'm worthless and thinking I'm not getting anywhere.

In being absent from my life I have engaged with family events but I have not felt the normal emotions that a Grandchilds birthday should provide, Nieces birthdays, then felt guilty that I wasn't as excited as I should have been about my new GrandDaughters birth.   First world problems, I'm not fighting for my life in a conflict or escaping tyranny, why is my head giving over to negative impressions so much more than anything positive, weighting those negative ruminations with so much that they wipe the positive ones away so quickly.  I was signing off any correspondence with 'I hate my head' which is tantamount to 'I hate myself'.  I have had great support from friends and family however that doesn't change me, I wasn't able to turn this 'Titanic' around and it felt in rumination that I was heading for an iceberg.

There is so much that I could say, that I could try and explain, that would probably exist as gibberish, there are challenges ahead as things were not right and are still not right, there are dark thoughts that none of you would recognise as me, however ................

Things have moved on, medication has been adjusted 3/4 times by GP and MHN. I have Talking Therapy underway, I still prickle, I still am in a low mood and hungover much of the time with the more tranquilising Meds I'm taking but today I have 'Hope' ................

'Hope'

synonyms:

aspiration, desire, wish, expectation, ambition, aim, plan, dream,daydream, pipe dream; More 'Hope' is essential to looking at the future and putting the breaks on negative ruminations.  I understand the CBT work that I have done over the last 6/7 weeks, understood it's science in the way that it ought to work for me to rewire my head, I couldn't make it work though.   It seems that I needed 'Hope' to be a key to that.  It's early days ........ but I have had my first better days for months. Thanks to all my friends and family.