CBT 2

Chapter two was about identifying how someone else’s moods can affect their mood. Which if I am honest wasn’t much use to me – as I’m reasonably good (I think) at making those links between other peoples thoughts and behaviour.

Particularly in the form of a task constructed for such a thing.

It’s my own thoughts I can’t always identify and prevent from spiralling.

To take a mundane example I’m pretty prone to ignoring or missing positive information where the opposite sex are involved. Assuming that there is no way they would “like” me because they are out of my league am I don’t like myself very much most of the time.

Anyway more will come I’m sure.

Why don’t you just do something?

“why don’t you just x?”

I hear a lot of that. For many it’s a default response and I suspect in many cases it’s born out of a well meaning frustration.

Believe it or not there was a time when I wasn’t in the thrall of the malignant sadness and I knew others who were.

Despite having experienced the lick of the black dog myself I acted in much the same way people have to me. Told them they had to leave the house, had to stop hiding away and face things and asked them why they didn’t just do x?

You see one of the great tragedies of being well is that sometimes you can forget the lessons learnt inhabiting the lonely and painful shell of depression. As a psychiatrist once said to me she heard a musician talking about depression. In the throes of his illness he wanted to cut off his own hand but now better looking back he just wanted to grab people he saw with the illness shake them and tell them to do x.

He had lost the link to the experience and the understanding. He had lost the understanding that when you can’t even get out of bed, when leaving the house is a gargantuan endeavour that being told you should do x or being asked why don’t you do x is no better than a shiv.

Worse a shiv wielded by a visitor to your lonely cell who should bring some form of comfort. But brings only a reminder of the pathetic shadow that sits doing its best to imitate who you once were.

People with depression don’t need advice, they don’t need to be told to do things.

As shocking as it may seem they probably already know.

They just can’t.

It may seem like they are just picking a scab that will never heal. But it’s support that’s needed not advice.

CBT 1

I dunno if I would really do this were it private. So here it is public. Probably ill advised but hey what post on here these days isn’t?

Mind over mood. Worksheet 1.1

Environmental changes/Life situations
Near enough two years sober.
Stress over money (specifically large debts and worries over affording rent)
Finding new flatmate stressful
Relationships not working out and ending.
Leaving my schizophrenic mother after a pretty harrowing psychotic episode directed at me.
Issues of addiction.
Family keeping things from me.
Family generally not being expressive of emotions.
Problems relating on much more than a superficial level with most people.

physical reactions
Low appetite.
Sleep pattern out of whack.
anhedonia
Headaches
Irritability
Tiredness
Agoraphobia

Moods
Sadness
Guilty
Shame
Scared
Lonely
Paranoia
Self Loathing

behaviours
Starting stupid arguments
Self harm
Pushing people away
Languishing in the house
Trying to do too much and setting myself up for failure.
Not getting out of bed
Avoiding work
Avoid meeting new people
Avoid using phones
Passive Aggressive snark
Relying on other people rather than myself to lift my mood.

thoughts
Think it would be better not to be here then condemned to always come back to the bleak square one.
Find myself disgusting physically, intellectually and morally.
Hate myself for abandoning my mother for 15 years
Hate that I have to sometimes cut myself to feel normal
Think everything I’ve ever done is shit and constantly seek approval and praise to briefly convince me it isn’t.

That will probably do for now.

A story of me.

At one point or another the illness get’s too much and the mask has to slip.

So you all get to see the pathetic, petty, selfish fuck up and human cunt garbage that hides behind the pretence of me being a reasonable, even likeable, human being. In reality I am just a hateful mess of guilt, shame and recrimination.  I am an idiot who does a half hearted impression of someone with half a brain I sit here and wait for everyone to find out just how stupid I am. I am Beyond ugly, physically repulsive, a distended and corpulent mess of fat, stretch marks and scars. My reflection makes me want to vomit. I am a consumer, a machine for taking without giving back. I am without a doubt a spectacular waste of all the oxygen and other resources that goes into maintaining myself as this useless blight.

But why? Did Mummy not love me?

I’ve now spent more than half my life wondering that. She’s ill you see. Far more ill than I am. A delusional schizophrenic diagnostically. I wonder many things about Mum. Does she believe I exist for one? Does she ever think about us? Does she still believe the malevolent forces of the SQA (the Scottish Qualifications Authority) are moving against her and hiding secret messages in number plates? Does she still think there are recording and listening devices hidden in the TV and Radio? Does she still sleep with a knife under her bed?

Is she still looking for Batman?

Did she ever hear me knocking 0n the door every time I went up just to try and see her over the past 15 years? Was she always out or did she just ignore me?

Twice I’ve been in love (properly anyway). Once was passionate and bordering on mutual self destruction – it ended messily. The other was stable but amazing. So of course I had to run away. Run away before the mask slipped.

It’s all getting a bit disjointed now.

I don’t like myself very much and I want everyone else not to like me as well because that makes it easier.

I don’t drink because I know that would probably let me jump over the last few hurdles that stop me from not being here any more.  But it worries me how much I want to be drunk.

Warning: may be triggery.

WARNING: This post may be triggery for those who have mental health issues and have considered taking their own lives.

 

Suicidal ideation isn’t nice. It’s something I pretty much have to deal with semi-regularly. Much of the time these thoughts can be silenced or muted by medication, friends, blogging and various other stuff. Sometimes they can’t – and that isn’t good.

It’s particularly “not good” as my default coping strategy has for many years been “superficial” self harm (or cutting myself). Maybe as a means of “control”, maybe as some sort of “release”. Likely a mix of both. It’s a maladaptive strategy and one I don’t advise. Recently I’ve been better at catching thought spirals and distracting myself before they get out of hand. But that takes a lot of effort.

But hey everything involved with being depressed takes a lot of effort. Getting out of bed in the morning takes a lot of effort. Getting out of the house to do anything takes a lot of effort. Making plans with people takes a lot effort.

A lot of effort to build up the self worth to consider it a good idea to get up

A lot of effort to put on the mask so you can face the world.

A lot of effort not to hate youself every minute of every day for the fat, untalented, stupid bastard you really are.

A lot of effort to do anything when you are in the grip of the malignant sadness.

For instance it is taking me a lot of effort to type this blog as I’m convinced it’s badly written, poorly realised shite.

But I felt I had to write something. Rather than responding to various conversations and attitudes that I find quite distressing.

I’ve thought about killing myself several times over the years, months… hell I even had intrusive thoughts about it last week. For those not familiar with the concept I had thoughts I didn’t want, about ending my own life, continually buzzing around my brain. They just appeared in there and wouldn’t go away. Wouldn’t leave me alone. 

Cos you know I don’t actually like these thoughts. Don’t like thinking I’m worthless, don’t like thinking all my achievements are mediocre and meaningless.Don’t like remembering there are times when I am not like this. Times when I wasn’t like this. Times when I wasn’t stuck in this fucking prison of self loathing, self absorption and self destruction.

And you know what doesn’t help? Being told suicide is “selfish” or “unacceptable”. Sometimes there are more complex reasons for these views than is apparent when people use them. Sometimes people just really do think that suicide is selfish.

Which is kinda the reason I spent much of my depressive life not seeking help. Battling on alone against pure fucking misery. Because I didn’t want to be ill. Not just because I wanted to be well but also because I didn’t want to be fucking selfish.

Thinking of suicide isn’t selfish, it isn’t unacceptable. You can maybe argue that suicide itself is. But I disagree. It’s applying a moral judgement using emotive language to an act that most probably can’t fathom. SO I don’t care that you might think it should be unacceptable or considered selfish. 

JUST KNOW THAT DOESN’T FUCKING HELP!

And if I do kill myself than know it’s (in part) down to a sort of twisted altruism so you don’t have to put up with me any more. 

My wee poll on Scottish independence

I have no way of getting a truly representative sample but thought this might be interesting.

There are two sets of three polls for people living in Scotland (just below) and the rest of the UK (under the Scots poll) and one simple poll in case anyone from anywhere else shows up at the bottom of the post.

Cheers for coming along to vote. Please do click on all three.

For people living in Scotland use these polls.

For those living in the rest of the UK use these polls.

For those living outside the UK.

Preaching the end of me

What can I say.

I’m low.

Maybe as low as I’m likely to get at present. Engaged in a constant battle with intrusive thoughts about self harm and suicide. Actually tempted to jump off North Bridge today. Though obviously I didn’t it still scares me that it seemed easier to walk up to the edge than walk away from it (so to speak).

I’m fed up with other people being shit. I’m fed up with other people being indifferent.

I don’t appear to have any support mechanisms anymore. I appear to have systematically burnt all my bridges with any old friends or otherwise just conspired to being shite at maintaining friendships.

I just feel alone all the time.

Though the only person I hate more than you is me.

I’m fed up with my own inability to cope and I’m fed up of going through this time and time again.

What’s the point in getting better to just go back to square one at the slightest setback?

Can’t help coming back to the same question “why am I still here?”.

The only answer I have thus far is cowardice.

I’m pretty sure I won’t do “anything stupid” (though frankly I fail to see how ending this cycle of misery could be considered anywhere near idiotic) but who knows maybe one day?

The Black Spot

I thought about the full stop again today, the end of the sentence.

The last few weeks have been punctuated by feelings of being in parenthesis. Being somehow separate from everything and still unable to escape this melancholy period.

Depression is something like vanity for masochists sometimes. When your happy for everything to be your fault. To be the malevolent singularity around which the world revolves, to be the cause and effect of everything that could ever go wrong for everyone.

You ask people if they are alright or if things are going well not out of kindness or concern but out of paranoia. To reassure yourself you haven’t upset them and put your own mind at ease.

Sometimes I would be happy just to remain functionally miserable. To force a smile and wear that as armour against the world while the soft centre fails to hold. But that’s not always an option unfortunately.

I worry the sadness seeps out of me and infects others around me. So at first they become wary and eventually become frustrated and driven away by my constant trials and tests.

Faults in friends become deadly wounds piercing my sides like spears. I start to despise those closest to me and those who have drifted away overtime.

But at the same time I need people to like me, to need me more than ever.

So I can drive them away. They have to prove they care about me so i can conspire to make them not care. Why? Well people, friends, social networks they all get in the way of the end of the sentence.

So I Strive not to be missed and aim for shrugs where the bad news breaks rather than tears.

I’m waiting for the end of the sentence – but I’m still not sure I want to write it myself.

PhP help (again!!!)

Hello can anyone help me here? Want to alter this code so that my sidebar doesn’t appear on any page other than the front page of my blog

</div><!-- #container -->

<?php wp_reset_query() ?>

<div id="primary" class="aside main-aside sidebar">
<?php arras_above_sidebar() ?>
	<ul class="xoxo">
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				<h5 class="widgettitle"><?php _e('Welcome to Arras!', 'arras') ?></h5>
				<div class="widgetcontent">
				<div class="textwidget">
					<p><?php _e('Arras is a WordPress theme designed for news or review sites with lots of customisable features.', 'arras') ?></p>
				</div>
				</div>
			</li>
			<li class="widgetcontainer clearfix">
				<h5 class="widgettitle"><?php _e('Recent Posts', 'arras') ?></h5>
				<div class="widgetcontent">
<?php
				$r = new WP_Query(array('showposts' => 10, 'what_to_show' => 'posts', 'nopaging' => 0, 'post_status' => 'publish', 'caller_get_posts' => 1));
				if ($r->have_posts()) :
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				<?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?>
				</div>
			</li>
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<div id="secondary" class="aside main-aside sidebar">
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Or is this something I should do from where this is called rather than in the sidebar file itself?
As it is appears here?

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Lib Dems: in need of a reality check

It’s been something of a roller coaster for Liberal Democrat supporters since the general election. Going from the dizzying heights of becoming a party of government in coalition at Westminster (not just the Welsh or Scottish assemblies (it’s a parliament cheers Vince)) to the utter drubbing the electorate handed them last Thursday.

The reaction from Libs has been interesting also. Seemingly only Scottish leader Tavish Scott seems willing to take the blame for the poor results and admit that these were a damning indictment of the Lib Dems joining the Tories in Coalition.

Lib Dems: it matters not what progressive policies you have implemented in government, it matters not that you believe you have softened the nasty party and taken the edge off the Tories.

All the ultimately matters is the electorates perception of you as a political party – the reality is neither here nor there. But it is also worth considering the reality and perhaps, I am afraid to say, the electorate just doesn’t care as much about the same things as Lib Dems as Lib Dems do.

So all your “look, look what we’ve done” jumping up and down might only make you look like a small child begging their parent to watch them do a trick. The parent will watch but won’t give a shit.

If the Lib Dems want to win the electorate back they need to start persuading them that they are doing more harm than good as opposed to telling us that we are wrong for thinking that they betrayed us.

Obviously this is harder and requires more fortitude than playing the victim – but it’s the only way back and if nothing else it’s a damn sight better than blaming Labour for everything that’s gone wrong.