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.