Just because you could, doesn’t mean you should.

I’ve been learning a lot over the last year of my life, how to function in the face of over whelming anxiety and soul crushing depression is probably the greatest of all my lessons.

After suffering a particularly severe episode which saw me hospitalised over March and April 2017 I fell into one of the most common traps faced by those of us struggling to return to normality after major mental health episodes. I assumed normal would be going back to my day job and picking up my life exactly as it was before my breakdown.

Of course, that wasn’t possible and the more I fought to return to the status quo of my old life, the harder it became to function at all. It has taken me a year to realise, my old life was not good for me, in fact, it was one of the reasons I found myself so far down the rabbit hole.

Why was I fighting so hard to return to a way of life which would see me repeat the same cycle of ignorance, denial, self-harm and hospitalisation? This was not the actions of someone who had their mental health under control.

For someone trying to glue the pieces of their life together, trying to regain the trust and respect of family members, success is not returning to life you had. Success is building a life that works!

So, one year on from sitting on a toilet seat with a handful of pills, (begging my husband to take them with me so I didn’t leave him behind), what have I learnt about living successfully with mental illness?

Well, to start I need to be accountable for me, I need to speak up more when I feel myself starting to slip, I need to fight with doctors more when I know something is not right. I also need to let go of my expectations of other people and learn to deal with disappointment.

I need to accept, I am terrible at taking medication on a schedule and knowing when my scripts need renewing. My husband is helping with this these days because I will go a whole day forgetting to take medications and then wonder why I suddenly so dizzy.

Most importantly I need to realise just because I could do something does not mean I should. All choices need to be weighed against what I know I can cope with, this lesson is hard. I want the big bucks job, I want to see friends in larger groups and more than one day a week, but sometimes what I want is not good for me.

Luckily most of the time I have found what I should, I could.

In what ways do you cope with mental or chronic illness?

Sarah no longer works for the company!

I am quite open when it comes to my mental health, I advocate better treatment for those of us struggling with mental health issues. I try hard to do my part towards diminishing the stigma associated with mental health, especially the stigma attached to those of us who have spent time in mental health units.

I use the privilege of my education and ability to communicate clearly to give a voice to those who may not be in a position to speak out. I’ve used my blog to talk openly about my diagnoses, recovery and past. I give honest accounts of my day on social media. I have however been keeping a secret.

It’s not a huge secret, in fact it probably isn’t even that important to most people. However, I am worried about being judged harshly for this secret because I judge myself. For all the advocating, all the times I tell people not to be ashamed, I’ve kept quiet because I am embarrassed.

At the time of my hospitalisation last year I help a very solid, high stress job. My whole future was based around this career, moving up the company ladder, getting pay rises. I thought I would be there forever. After coming out of hospital I began judging my recovery by how many hours of work I could do.

Success would be getting my life back to how it was before my diagnoses and sojourn in a Mental Health Unit. I would not be beaten by my mental illness. For months I told everyone it was taking time but coming along nicely. I was lying, to my employer, my husband, everyone else, but mostly I was lying to myself.

After 3 months of trying to fit back into my previous life, I realised it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t getting better, I wasn’t making any advancement toward getting back to my full-time hours. My husband and I made the decision to move from our friendly little town to the nearby city. Not only was my family in the city but the mental health services available were far better.

I stepped down as a manager within my company and took a leave of absence. I concentrated on making a home in the new city and coming to terms with losing the mask which had made me such a high-functioning employee. Still I told people it was just a little break and I would be right back at it soon.

After my leave of absence, I did not return. I realised success is not recreating the life I had before hospitalisation, that life is the reason I ended up in a mental health unit. Success will be finding what it is I can do next. It will be putting together a new life, facing each day within the confines of what my illness allows me to do.

Success is counting my spoons and not using too many in one day. It is finding the unconventional ways to help bring money into the household. It is having enough energy to cook dinner for my husband or meet a friend at a coffee shop.

Most importantly however, success is coming clean and letting go of this secret. I left my career behind to focus on my mental health and I will not be ashamed by my choice anymore.

What is it like to struggle with depression?

***TRIGGER WARNING...SUICIDE AND SELF HARM***

Anxiety is my major demon, and so is usually the focus of my disseminations. Depression is my secondary illness and one I usually struggle less with. However, over the last week I have found the old black dog weighing me down.

At night I am unable to fall asleep, tossing and turning for hours and then in the morning I am unable to wake up. I lie in bed after I have woken up dreading putting my feet on the floor and facing the day.

I am finding less joy in things I usually like to do, art, gardening, photography are just not as important as sitting on the couch watching re runs of Law and order or Netflix.

It’s easy to tell you about the symptoms my depression shows the world, Comfort eating, lying in bed for 14 or more hours, sitting on the couch staring at the tv all day when the house needs cleaning. You can see these things in the dark circles under my eyes, the weight I gain, or my cluttered home.

I can pass other little symptoms off as quirks of my personality. I shudder for no reason so crack a joke about ghosts. I jump in fright too easily but that’s because I’m just highly strung. I turn up to work early every day because I love my job and want to be punctual, it has nothing to do with the overwhelming dread I have to fight every time I need to leave the house.

The hardest part of depression is trying to describe the invisible symptoms to people, the things you have never experienced unless you have fought tooth and nail with the dark morbid monster in your head.

Suicide or self-harm ideation is a big one. Yes, we all have morbid thoughts but for a person with depression these thoughts are much bigger, more constant. I used to walk past a crocodile infested river on my way to and from work. At least three times a week I would stop and think about jumping in.

At a don’t walk sign I always think about walking out onto the road. I lie in bed thinking about getting a kitchen knife and slitting my wrists. I wonder just how painful of a way drinking bleach is to die. Or how about if I swallow a balloon, will I choke to death? Is that plant in the garden toxic? Should I eat some of it to find out?

People close to me think I make these things up for attention, but to be completely honest with you there are times where the compulsion to harm myself is so strong it takes every bit of energy I have to stay alive. The only person who really seems to comprehend the severity is my husband, and unfortunately, he understands because he has seen me out on that dangerous ledge too many times.

Another symptom it is hard to explain is the pressure. Quiet often it feels like someone is sitting on top of me or hugging me too tightly, I need to take a deep breath and try and convince myself it’s all in my head.

Or how about the overwhelming self-doubt? Not just the normal humble doubt everyone experiences. No for someone with depression it is a soul-destroying doubt, it doesn’t just creep in, it rushes over you like a tsunami.

I have been convinced my husband doesn’t love and stays with me because it is convenient. I can be so sure my pets hate me, even as the cats sit on top of purring. I love my Mother in Law with all my heart, but I cannot understand why she could possibly love me. I can hold a good job with great money but be absolutely positive everyone thinks I am bad at it.

Even writing all of this, it still isn’t a good representation of what depression feels like to those of us who suffer through it.

During the witch trials a way to get a confession out of someone was by “pressing” them. To do this a person is laid across a hard surface and more and more rocks are piled on top of them, slowly crushing their bones and internal organs. One rock at a time until the pressure is too much, and they die.

That is exactly what depression is like, one black thought at a time until one day the pressure becomes too much, and you die.

Misandry is not feminism!

I have long considered myself a feminist, I grew up fighting chauvinism at home, at school, at work. In 1995 I was 19 and working as a waitress in an AFL club, a job which truly opened my eyes to male privilege and the societal blind spot toward the mistreatment of women.

I was 20 when I entered my first serious relationship, to a man (boy?) who wanted to tell me who I could see and where I could go. All he wanted was an obedient piece of arm candy, my brain was not needed. He was emotionally and physically abusive, when I finally ended the relationship more than one person expressed their displeasure as he was, “so good looking”.

At 26 I was sexually assaulted in a public toilet while out clubbing with friends. The first police officer on the scene questioned my choice of outfit, the second my sobriety. I knew then, just as I do now, neither of those things had any impact on the crime committed by the man who followed me and broke the lock on the cubicle.

During my 41 years I have personally experienced too many true moments of misogyny to count. Males who feel it’s their right to tell me I am too fat, too weird, too opinionated. Men have demanded I sleep with them, grabbed my ass, grabbed my breasts, forced my hand onto their groin all the while laughing at my discomfort.

Every single one of my female friends can tell you similar frightening stories. These are the reasons feminism is needed. These are the reasons women are demanding to be heard. Therefore, as a gender we should be standing together to say no more!

We aren’t standing together though, some women are tearing other women down, calling each other names, and treating each other badly. They hide behind the banner of feminism claiming females who disagree with them are part of the problem. Rest assured it’s very easy to disagree with them, all you need do is like men. I’m not talking about being hetro or bisexual, they find it perfectly ok to date men as long as you hate them.

According to these women who call themselves radical feminists (or radfems) all men are depraved, pathetic and without a single redeeming quality. They maintain Transwomen are still men and even greater deviants worthy of more scorn then cis men. Females who profess to be happily married or in a great relationship are liars or deluded.

Personally, I am unwilling to tar all men with the same brush, seriously, it’s no different to hating all Muslims, believing all refugees are looking for a free ride or saying all priests are paedophiles.

Generalisations are never something we should become comfortable with. It is this opinion which has seen me labelled as “part of the problem”, “a lib fem”, or my personal favourite “a handmaiden”.

How dare I respect and allow someone to choose to identify with their true gender, how dare I not label them perverted and mentally ill.

How could I possibly be happy in my marriage and defend my husband, calling him a wonderful and caring man.

I am apparently an awful example of feminism, a terrible curse to all women, because I judge men individually on their actions and not as a whole group based on the actions of many.

I know my opinion is not a popular one with radical feminists, but it is still my opinion and I am entitled to it. Funnily enough, it is not me personally attacking these women, rather it is usually them calling me names and labelling me unenlightened and uneducated.

I have fought for an end to sexism and equality of the sexes for most of my life, equality is the key word here however. As a feminist I know there is a culture of misogyny we need to address. I do not believe the current wave of misandry invading the world of feminism is the answer.

         
          Why can't I be a feminist if I have male friends?


          Why would anyone want to meet hate with hate?

How is replacing misogyny with misandry a solution?

Are we really, honestly confusing feminism with misandry?

Today we lost an angel

Beryl was the most amazing woman, a true role model to everyone, not just an off the rails young adult like me.  I was barely 20 when I found myself kicked out of a share house with nowhere to live. Faced with the prospect of being homeless I had no idea what to do. It was my best friend Timmy who approached his parents to see if I could board in the empty room they had.

Mr and Mrs H being two of the most compassionate people you could ever meet said “yes of course!”, and for the measly sum of $40 a week gave me a place to live and fed me to boot. I think I must have been quite the handful back then, I remember both of them taking me aside more than once to have a chat about what was appropriate behaviour under their roof. I truly give a lot of credit to the person I became to my Mumma H and the slow but steady guidance she gave me.

I grew up a child of divorce, our mother left the family home and we stayed with our father. I do not blame my mum or think she could have done anything different but that’s another story. I longed to have a mum, to sit around a kitchen table and talk about life, someone who would love me and take care of me without keeping tally of what I owed them. Mrs H was the proud mother of four boys, correction the VERY proud mother of four boys. She longed to have a daughter to take care of and share girly things with.

We were quite the match, though perhaps Mumma H would have liked a slightly less damaged, headstrong, and rambunctious acquired daughter. Still she loved me, I was part of her family, expected to be there for Mr H’s Sunday lunch, the one day of the week the family sat down together. I treated the younger boys like my little brothers and fought with my Timmy as if he was my big brother.

As happens children grow up and young adults leave home and make no mistake the Mr and Mrs H’s house was my home. As time passed I went back to visit less and less but I never forgot the kindness they showed me. I never forgot the love they had for a damaged little girl trying to be a grown up. My most cherished gift is still the beautiful, handmade wooden key Mumma H gave me for my 21^st birthday.

Timmy is still my closest, most precious friend, more family than some of my blood relatives. It hit me hard when Mumma H was diagnosed with cancer. Even when I was in other cities and out of touch I would be asking Timmy how our parents were. I rejoiced every time she was in remission and worried each time it came back.

I could not have been happier on my wedding day to have my second mum right there wearing a corsage and approving of the man I was marrying. Timmy and I know our mum’s secretly (well in my mum’s case not so secretly) wished the two of us would marry. Neither mum seemed to care about the small problem of us both liking boys! Mumma H liked Jason though and told me he was a lovely man.

This week cancer won, it took our beloved mother, friend, and wife. It is a sad week for us all, but I know it is saddest of all for Mr H, he lost his best friend and partner, a once in a lifetime woman. I have no words to take away his pain, how do you live so close to love personified and continue when her light is extinguished?

How do any of us go on now we have lost our angel?

Today we lost an angel

My loving second mum

Today we cry together

Our grief will make us one

Today we lost an angel

A soul so true and rare

Today she found her peace

Home into her lord’s care

Today we lost an angel

What more is there to say

Today our hearts are shattered

For we lost an angel today.

~24~08~2017~

My story of growing up with an undiagnosed mental illness

I have suffered from generalised anxiety for most of my life, it can make it very hard to function as society feels you should. It is especially difficult before you have a diagnosis, when you don’t understand what is going on in your head and body.

Before receiving an official diagnosis, it was hard to take my troubles seriously. Even harder was living with a family who didn’t understand me, teachers who thought I was too sensitive and needed to harden up and peers who openly named me the weird, moody, scary, psycho chick. I couldn’t be “normal” so I embraced the labels my peers gave me, I hid behind this imagery. “That’s just Sam” became a common statement among my groups of friends.

I hid well behind my labels, delving into the metal and goth cultures, alcohol and pot, I wagged school, sitting alone in a park because the thought of being around people made me cry uncontrollably. Of course, I always had a good story for where I was, the crazier the better, I didn’t care if my friends believed me.

High school ended and people expected me to go out in the real world. This is something I didn’t know how to deal with, but also something I didn’t know how to talk about. After all it was the 90s and mental illness was very much a taboo topic. Suicide seemingly came out of the blue, nobody knew why someone would do it. You were deemed fine as long as you got out of bed every day.

Of course, since it was the 90s it didn’t matter how late you stayed in bed or that you stayed up most nights writing morbid poetry. Being so drunk you forgot your address was cool. Smoking pot in a nightclub’s bathroom stall just a normal night out. You could find a good place to party every single night of the week and who cared if you turned up to your shitkicker job still drunk or hungover.

The 90s was the birth of grunge, and my generation took up the unwashed, grass-stained (pun intended), emotionally wrecked banner with pride. It was the perfect place for an emotionally fragile, non-functioning young adult to hide. Sitting on a couch for days getting so stoned you forget to bath while watching the same re runs on Mtv was not an alarming warning sign of severe depression. It was perfectly normal and the same thing everyone else was doing.

The 90s was probably the best decade of my life, I self-medicated without ever really admitting something was wrong. Most of the time I knew something was wrong but it was easy to ignore. My family had already written me off as a waste of space, I lost touch with all of the decent friends I had, choosing to hang around only with the ones who would party with me.

I ignored my university studies and instead took jobs way beneath my skill and intelligence level. I was a stoner, I drank too much, I flitted through jobs every 6 months or so, I played online computer games, in the words of my father I “pissed my money up against a wall”. I used to get mad at him for saying this but I could not deny I spent every dollar I made on drugs and alcohol.

Of course, the 90s ended and the last die-hard stoners of my generation disappeared in a puff of bong smoke. The things I had used to hide behind as a teenager and young adult were no longer acceptable. People actually expected me to have my life together, know what I wanted and be in a position to go out and get it.

The 00s were not kind to someone like me, piece by piece the charade that was my life came crushing down. Not being able to get out of bed before lunch time made me lazy. Throwing in a job after 6 or 12 months because I just can’t make myself leave the house made me selfish and flaky. People started throwing words like clinically depressed, anti-depressants, professional help, at me.

On some level, I had always known there was something wrong with me but now other people were seeing it too. As a teenager, I had often thought about suicide, I use to hide my father’s pills thinking when I had collected enough I would take them all.

Now as an adult with no direction I turned again to these thoughts of self-harm. I was prescribed sleeping pills from my doctor and I would often play Russian roulette with them, washing handfuls down with alcohol. I would sleep for a couple of days, miss work but eventually I would wake up and have to go on with my crappy life.

I started seeing doctors to try and get help, but I would never admit I thought about suicide and instead told them I just over thought things too much. For years all I got was sedatives and sleeping pills which I took too many of never caring if I would wake up or not.

It wasn’t until I met the man who would become my husband that I realised I really wanted help and started truly looking for doctors who could help me.

Reaching my late 30s without ever being diagnosed with a mental illness made finding a doctor to take me seriously quite hard. Eventually I did find the help I needed and if you would like to know about that story it is the first blog I posted on my mental illness, Isn’t It time we shattered the stigma attached to “Invisible Illnesses”?

My story of growing up with an undiagnosed mental illness is not original, there are many people who would be able to tell you a story like mine. Many people suffer in silence however, afraid the world will judge them for being open and honest about mental illness. Others are not sure if there is anything wrong with them, like I was they are trying to make sense of not being able to function “normally” in a world they are not equipped to deal with.

Being diagnosed with Anxiety and Depression was such a relief for me, I would really love to hear from others how they found themselves feeling about their diagnoses.

Anxiety's crappy little "non-refundable" gifts!

I have been seeing a psychologist for ACT therapy (Acceptance and commitment therapy), which is about accepting our unpleasant emotions and thoughts and committing to techniques which diffuse and lessen the power these things have over us. I asked her how ACT therapy is going to help me with the physical sides of my anxiety. The answer was not thrilling. It isn’t going to help with the physical symptoms at all.

All this therapy, learning about “clean emotion” versus “dirty emotions”, all the self-help and mindfulness exercises and anxiety is still going to be my constant companion. Yep, that’s right, I get to accept the unpleasant feelings, (which I will admit makes the feelings less intense) but I am stuck with all the wonderfully crappy gifts my anxiety gives me.

Sweaty palms, racing heart, nausea, stomach complaints, indigestion, dry mouth, tension headaches and migraines are all here to stay. I can not stop the night terrors or insomnia, I just accept these are part of being me. The saddest part of all of this is these crappy gifts are source of more anxiety.

 Who likes going to a high stress job tired and cranky with your head feeling like you’ve been hit a few times with an axe? No one that’s who, once we realise the above scenario is a bad idea we stop getting hangovers on work days!

When I already feel bad I know it will be a hard day at work, I can accept my feelings, choose not to show them which I am really good at by the way, I did it for years. The physical markers of high anxiety are still there however, I am that co-worker who runs to the toilet too many times. The woman who seems to cry at absolutely everything. The person staring at a wall not hearing what you are saying. I’m chewing quick eze or sucking on a peppermint. Guzzling water to combat my dry mouth and stuttering my answers.

This is what all of anxiety’s crappy little gifts look like to you. I seem like a happy smiling, well adjusted person. A little scatty perhaps and slacking on the job because I “hide” in the bathroom, but I’m friendly and nice to people.

So, ACT therapy is not going to help me with any of these things, all it is going to do is make it so I no longer see anxiety as a big bad insurmountable emotion. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing, a great thing, it’s just a little disheartening to realise this is my life. Anxiety is my life, sleeplessness, nightmares, hot flushes (oh yeah, they aren’t just for menopause), headaches, none of it is going away.

Next time you look at someone who tells you they suffer anxiety, depression, or another chronic or mental illness just stop and take a second to consider how strong they must be. They are out there trying to get through life, smiling when they can and battling the emotional demons. They are doing all of that while dealing with all those physical crappy little gifts their illness gives to them on an hourly basis.’

Look at them and realise they are a freaking superstar, brave for admitting to a mental illness and braver still for fighting through the fog and symptoms every single day!