Depression is a liar

Every now and again I veer away from art, textiles and travel and wander into serious stuff. Today is one of those days. 

Depression is a liar.  It tells you that you’re not good enough.  It makes you withdraw into yourself.  It makes you withdraw from family and friends.  It tells you that you are not loved because you’re unloveable.  It isolates you.

Why have veered into serious stuff?

Last week someone I knew took his own life. It came as a great shock to his family and friends. It was his 40th birthday earlier this year and he had at least another 40 years ahead of him.

As I've read the tributes written by his friends on his Facebook page, I've seen how loved he was and how much people are going to miss him.   He was funny, he was kind.  He was a nurse and his colleagues loved him because he was so supportive.  I'm sure his patients thought he was great too.

He loved my work and had two of my pieces on his wall.

I've no doubt his friends and family are asking themselves whether they could have done more.  I don't know.  And that's part of the problem.

Depression is a liar.  It heaps shame on you.  Shame on the person with depression.  Shame on the people left behind if it gets to the point of suicide.

It's essential to talk.  But depression says your friends have so much going on in their lives they don't have time for your troubles.  When you 'count your blessings' depression says you should be ashamed to feel so low when you have all these things going for you.

In case you are wondering what right I have to write about this, you are welcome to read other blog posts of mine:  Time to Talk and the follow-up More Talk.  There's also this one: Mental Health Awareness.

One of the things we can do is tell our frineds and family how much we appreciate them.  Honour them.  And why keep it just for friends and family - show appreciation to those you meet fleetingly that help you.

If you or someone you know is suffering from depression get help.  I know that's not easy.  It's easy for me to write but it's not an easy thing to do.  It takes courage.

I'll leave you this from The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.

(c) Charlie Mackesy/Ebury Press

and this

And the story behind the song.

Mental Health Awareness

This week has been Mental Health Awareness week with World Mental Health Day on Thursday.  The week started with a video: Every Mind Matters.

I have written about mental health and in particular my struggles with depression before - in a post Time to Talk Day and a follow up post More Talk.

This week I have felt better than I have felt for months.  The previous week in particular was a really down time. I am reluctant to share with people if I am in need because the ladies I trust to ‘have my back’ either have really busy lives or have problems they are dealing with. But by the Friday I was in the deepest hole ever and felt I was not only going to hit rock bottom but disappear into the sludge beneath the rock. Not that I told anyone that. I did however message four friends to ask for prayer. They sent me lovely messages of support.

On the way to church I was thinking about life in general and the verse ‘without vision the people perish’. I was wondering why I do art and textiles, why I bother to run the Jubilee Studio, what was the point of getting up in the morning etc.   During the preach, our guest speaker talked about living with a greater sense of our value, dignity and purpose.

During the meeting I was able to talk to people about the depression and lack of refreshing sleep - often getting up more tired than the night before.  People prayed with me. During the coffee time afterwards a friend gave me a card and a present.

What timing!  She hadn't known anything about my struggles.

If you are a Believer, don't doubt how important your prayers, chats and encouragement is.

If you are not a Believer, don't doubt how important your chats and encouragement are.

Either way, send cards, give gifts, smile, listen.

World Mental Health Day saw the release of this video.

Keep talking.  Keep listening.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

More Talk and a free class

Thank you for all the comments from last week's post Time to Talk.  This is another long, wordy post.

I wrote the original of this blog post as an email to some friends in September 2013 while I was suffering from depression.   I am sharing it now to further our discussion about mental health.  And also to help those of you who don't have problems to recognise when your friend or colleague is having a problem.

September 2013
It is very difficult for me to even write this. I'm not terribly keen on making myself vulnerable and admit that I need help.

I am currently very depressed and feeling like I want to cry – but daren’t in case I can’t stop. I've just done a questionnaire on a website and probably answered 95% of the questions as being depressed.

I'm very good at giving the appearance of being altogether, having my life altogether and being strong. I am very independent and rarely ask for help.

I just need to explain to you what's been going on. I have in the past been diagnosed with clinical depression and so over the years I’ve always known when it was creeping up on me and I've been able to take avoiding action. But this time it has crept up on me without me noticing because I was keeping myself busy. A lot of it stems from the whole of the last 12 months with my dad being ill and living partly in Solihull, partly in Pembrokeshire and then sitting with him while he died. Then keeping myself really busy by clearing out the house and still living partly here and partly there. This has meant with the sale of the house every little thing that pops up to stop the signing of the contract seems to be a major issue for me and I'm not dealing with it very well.

I can probably trace it all back to January 2006 when Andy left home and left the country and I didn't allow myself to cry. Somebody had said to me that him leaving home would be like a bereavement and I thought that this comment was really silly & spent the year saying well everybody's children leave home, lots of children go off to college and lots of people's children emigrate so I didn't allow myself to grieve in that sense.

In 2007 when my mother died I think I cried for about three minutes but really more from the shock of seeing someone die and so I continued on my merry little way.

Then there was the issue of the ending of King’s Church, which I have dealt with in terms of forgiveness and other things like that, but didn't allow myself to grieve about the loss of something that I'd invested 13 or more years in my life into. (I had been the church administrator.)

I very much like to be in control of things, to know exactly what's happening and how things going to pan out. In the last 12 months obviously that's not been the case. I never know whether I will be at church, or at group, not knowing whether I would be in Solihull or whether I’d be in Pembrokeshire. I've really felt that my life was totally out of my control and this obviously added to the stress.

As you know I haven't been sleeping well and the noise in my ears is quite appalling & have really struggled with the fact that despite lots of prayer that God hasn't done anything about that.

I’m currently feeling stuck as though if I make any movement I will fall into the abyss – in order to write this I had to start by dictating it on my iPad. The inability to start something is really trying!

It’s easier to borrow the words from the website I was on to describe how I am.
• I am low-spirited for much of the time, every day
• I feel restless and agitated
• I get tearful easily
• I feel numb, empty and full of despair
• I am unusually irritable or impatient
• I find no pleasure in life or things I usually enjoy
• I feel helpless
• I’m not doing activities I usually enjoy
• I am having difficulty remembering things
• I find it hard to concentrate or make decisions
• I blame myself a lot and feel guilty about things
• I am having a lot of negative thoughts
• The future seems bleak
• I have difficulty sleeping
• I feel tired and have no energy
• I have physical aches and pains with no obvious physical cause
• I am moving very slowly


I have been told I should allow myself to grieve and that my emotional ‘tank’ is on empty and I need to give myself time and activities to refill it. So I would appreciate your support as I deal with all of this.

Thank you.

****************************

You may find this video useful to watch if you want to help people: The Power of Empathy

February 2018
My friends did support me and I'm pleased to say that I overcame.  In 2014 I was asked to construct a class for an online class called MADE.   I accepted and called it Redefining Normal. Using a Brené Brown quote: 'grief is the absence of normal' as a starting point the class explores the things that naturally occur in life - children leaving home, parents dying, job events, retirement - the things that happen to almost all of us. The class investigates what is our normal and how we deal with a new normal.

I am offering this class for free.  Click on this link: Redefining Normal to get to the class.

Thanks for reading all of this and thank you for joining me today.
Bernice