How many Blogs are there by people suffering from stress or depression? There must be thousands of them. Some are by drug addicts, alcoholics or abuse victims but the majority are by ordinary people. I’ll be honest; I’m usually the first in line to mock these people. My response to these Blogs usually involves the unnecessary over use of both the exclamation mark and the F word - for example:• Get a fucking grip of yourself!
• Counselling? Don’t make me fucking laugh!
• You may be depressed but why do you feel the need to tell the whole fucking
world about it?
I think you get the picture.
A couple of months ago I was going through some issues (I know I hate that phrase too but the facts are private and I’m not sharing them on here) and I started suffering with insomnia. Other than in the last few weeks leading up to my Mum dying I’ve never had problems sleeping. Suddenly the night became something to fear and dread. I tried reading, listening to the radio in the dark or I would spend the early hours staring at the television hoping that at some point I would drop off. Yes I had some serious personal shit to deal with but I would also lie there worrying about all sorts of mad stuff. Seemingly inconsequential problems would suddenly seem massively important and insurmountable. After about 5 days with virtually no sleep I exploded. There was a great deal of shouting and then I burst into tears and couldn’t stop. I’ll be honest it was all a bit frightening.
Like most men I go to the doctors about as regularly as politicians tell the truth but I made an appointment and dragged myself to see my GP. I didn’t want to see the Doctor because I was genuinely worried at this point that I might be going completely fucking insane. I had visions of straitjackets, padded walls, an evil nurse and a mute Red Indian. In the end the Doctor was brilliant with me. We did some stress / depression tests, we talked about the things causing the stress and insomnia and came up with a plan to get me through it. The plan included medication and going to see a counsellor. I’ll be honest I wasn’t too keen on either but if it was going to help me feel better I was willing to try anything.
The medication has helped me calm down and I now manage to get some sleep. The medication isn’t so strong that it has turned me into something from a George Romero film but I do feel grogy in the mornings. The counselling isn’t what I expected and has helped enormously. The counsellor has talked me through some meditation type exercises to help me at times of high stress. I was cynical about this and was amazed to find it did actually help. The best thing about the counselling is just having someone to talk things through with. I get a lot of stuff of my chest and the advice given is excellent. It isn’t the head in the clouds psycho-babble I had feared. It’s about opening up about how you feel and not being scared of admitting your ill because only then do you start getting better. It’s about learning to recognise the triggers that set you off. I’m now taking each day as it comes because sometimes I still feel like shit. I know I’m not 100% yet. I’m still on medication and I’m still seeing the counsellor but I feel much better than I did.
Lots of people have a hard time skating across the thin ice of modern life but for most people the ice doesn’t actually break. Not everyone is so lucky; sometimes the ice breaks and people slip through the cracks. They feel like they are trapped under the water desperately trying to smash the ice and escape. The ones who manage to skate round the cracks often mock the ones who fall through. I used to be stood with the mockers but now I’m one of the mocked.
I won’t suddenly read lots of Blogs about depression and this Blog certainly won’t be turning into one but I will no longer take the piss and be judgemental of other people blogging about the subject. Getting things of your chest by writing about how you feel can be part of the healing process. A Blog can allow you to do this with the protection of some anonymity. If writing a Blog or an online diary about their illness helps people in the recovery process then good luck to them. It’s not for me, you or anyone else to judge them.
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