Patience, time, faith, family and friends

They do say that patience is a virtue. The need for patience when you have long term problems with your mental health is one of those unfortunate non-negotiables! An ankle broken in a particular place will normally take a certain amount of time to heal but much of the time I have been working on improving my mental health (with the support of the medical team caring for me) the time required for 'healing' has been a frustratingly amorphous concept.

Simply put, in the short term why do I have a couple of good days followed by three or four bad days; in the long term will I ever feel completely confident that I am over the worst and am unlikely to regress?

It is utterly unnerving to make progress and then to drop back again. One feels the hard work has been pointless and that a day of 'duvet ducking' beckons! But it doesn't and it shouldn't!

I have no idea when I will feel completely well again and, yes, I am frightened that it may never happen. But I have to keep trying and I have to keep believing. I am struggling with the length of time this is taking and what feels like the rather nebulous time form of my illness. But my family and friends have stood by me. Although I am certain it has been incredibly tough for those who are sharing the journey that is my recovery from mental breakdown, they have stayed with me. they have shown me nothing but love, patience, compassion and understanding. In a single word they have shown faith in me and continue to do so.

Here is but one excellent example. For a period of time today my blog seemed to have dissappeared and I am not sure why. A close friend texted me to say where was my blog and, more importanly, was I ok? Kindness like that has been one of the things that has kept me going. The concern of those close to me is what I try and hold onto when I lose faith in myself.

To all those who have stood by me and still do, thank you for keeping me going when I couldn't do it for myself. Thank you, in advance, for all the times in the future when you will undoubtedly do it again and again. And thank you for continuing to show faith in me when I have absolutely none in myself.

Collateral damage

Any patient taking any form of medication for an extended period of time will tell you that the whole thing is a trade off. What I mean by that is that whilst some medication is actually 'fit for purpose', that is to say it actually does have a positive impact on cause and symptoms, the side effects can be unpleasant.

I mentioned this in my blog a few days ago. For the mental health patient side effects can be dramatic and distressing; that is, the prescription may be correct but the impact of the side effects is not just physical it upsets you mentally as well. For me, suffering headaches and feeling nauseous for much of the day doesn't exactly encourage me to feel particularly positive! And those are just two of the side effects!

It seems to me that some medication really does take a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The question is at what point does one simply say 'enough and no more'. For the time being I am going to press on and do exactly as my medical team have advised. But the sledgehammer is a powerful weapon and right now that weapon is causing a fair amount of collateral damage.

Pushing through

On waking this morning I felt tired, stressed, anxious and, in simple terms, flat. However, I made it my intention today to fight back and continue to be a major player in my own recovery. You see, most mental health patients do actually want to be better at least as much, if not more so, than an athlete with a broken leg who wants it to heal so that they can run again.

I ran myself today. I have been long convinced that physical fitness has a significant impact on mental health- now I am absolutely certain. I am pleased that my determination to improve my physical fitness has produced such positive results and today I managed to run just over 4.5 miles in 40 minutes. I am not saying it was easy, it wasn't! But knowing the 'feel good' rush that follows physical fitness, and the commensurate improvement in one's general feeling of mental well being, makes it worth pushing through the pain barrier. As self medication goes running is better than alcohol I would venture to suggest!

To those reading this blog who are, perhaps, not so far into their recovery as I am, I offer today's blog as an encouragement to try and 'push through'. There are days when we mental health patients can do it and when we do it's definitely worth a reflective 'pat on the back'.

A positive note to end on today and begin the weekend! Thanks for continuing the journey.

Breaking down........not what you think!

I broke down today. For once I don't mean my mental health took a turn for the worst. Encouraged by my wife to go out on my trusty Triumph (motorcycle!) for an hour and enjoy the lovely weather I did just that. Unfortunately a small electrical fault saw me marooned on the side of a busy road whilst waiting for a recovery vehicle. These things happen!

Significantly I was not even remotely anxious about it. I have breakkdown cover with my insurance so I knew that whilst I might have to fix the 'bike at home it was unlikely to be expensive and I was not going to be struggling to get home.

So why, I am wondering, did I not get anxious about the day's disaster when I get overwhelmed with anxiety about money most of the time? If I could answer that question I wouldn't need my Doctor and CPN any more! But it has made me think and those thoughts, today, are positive. There are times when I do deal effectively with stress and anxiety; I am able to rationalise situations and circumstances so that my perceived level of emotional trauma is diminished. Simply put (and continuing yesterday's toolbox analogy) I do have the skills I need but I have yet to learn their application in those areas of my life which need them most, that is to say, my mental health and the levels of anxiety associated with it.

I think that puts a positive slant on the day and gives me, and hopefully those who are reading, encouragement for the future.

Self-help

Those who have suffered periods of poor mental health know only too well that whilst self-help is the best help of all, it is also the hardest to achieve. This is a particularly apposite observation as I learned today that my CPN is moving to a new job. This disturbed me considerably as we get on, I trust him and his clinical care of me has been hugely infuential in helping me to make positive progress - although it sometimes feels like one step backwards for each two forward steps and sometimes the opposite! Driving back from my consultation with him this morning I reflected on the fact that I ought not to feel more vulnerable as a result of the news he has to move to a new job, because what he has actually helped me to do is to oil the (metaphorical) tools in my mental health toolbox and get some of them working again.

Whilst I have been unwell I have found it easy to interpret people's actions and/or words as wholly negative, as though when words are not carefully chosen or something goes awry it was done deliberately to hurt me and impede my recovery. Driving back today made I realised that this is rubbish, to be blunt! Ignorant and afraid people sometimes say and do cruel and hurtful things and they sometimes do so consciously and calculatingly; the stigma attached to mental health issues makes this almost inevitable. However, part of self-help is trying hard not to be paranoid, rolling with the punches a little when necessary and learning to trust one's own judgement again.

My CPN may be moving to a new job soon, and I do sincerely and genuinely wish him all the best, but now I know he is leaving I realise how much he has taught me about self-help, how much progress that has enabled me to make and how much more hope that gives me for the long term. Oh yes, he also said the side effects of my new medication shouldn't last long (see my last blog) so fingers crossed!

Side effects

It happens to all patients from time to time and especially to mental health patients. Problems with medication I mean.

I am adding this brief blog tonight in the hope that soon I will have something more positive to report soon but, more importantly, to provide some encouragement to fellow mental health patients who also feel 'messed about' by their medication.

Right now I am suffering unpleasant side effects which just makes me feel I have added problems rather than resolved any. Perhaps my medication will be changed again, perhaps my present prescription just needs more time to 'bed in'. Either way I am feeling rough and hope it doesn't last too long.

An even keel

I had a great holiday; the whole family had a great holiday. For me just being away was therapeutic and the slow pace of life on the canals was a wholly positive experience. The times when I needed some space we just stopped the boat, I got off with my faithful spaniel and we walked together along the towpath for miles. Even the weather was pretty good.

I did not want to come home. Being away in such a positive and therapeutic environment was such a 'breath of fresh air' that I have found normal life very challenging again. My old anxieties have been thrown into sharp focus such is the contrast with the state of my mind whilst on holiday. But one can't stay on holiday for ever.

I am also learning that when I think rationally about one problem (for me, as I have said, my anxieties are all about finances, will my pension be enough when I come to retire, when I leave my present employment will there be work for me, how will my sons cope with university and student loans) I can often find a way of reasoning with myself to alleviate the anxiety even, on occasion, significantly diminishing the anxiety in my mind. But as soon as that has happened another one creeps in 'under the radar' and I am filled with self-doubt all over again - sometimes the anxiety creates such fear I experience nausea. This has been very bad since returning from holiday. When I was on holiday I was much calmer and less anxious but, as I have already said, I can't stay on holiday for ever!

For the time being I am trying to get back on an even keel (as opposed to a canal boat keel!). My long suffering family have been kindness and patience personified.

Rain check - I hope not literally!

Tomorrow I have a week's holiday with my family - a week on the canals at no greater speed than 3mph - just the ticket! I am looking forward to this a great deal but, having been unwell for so long, it is not without its attendant anxieties. I am acutely conscious of the fact that I am going to be out of my 'comfort zone' for a while: in one's own environment there is always somewhere to retreat to, emotionally or physically.

Nevertheless, following on from what I said yesterday about taking the driving seat in my own recovery, I am determined to be positive, to try and keep the worst of my anxieties at bay and generally have a good time. I am equally determined not to spoil things for others - so often, as I have often mentioned,my nearest and dearest suffer vicariously throughmy poor mental health.

Whilst away I can't blog. However, I do intend to keep a paper diary so that on my return I can reflect on my experiences out of the 'zone', as it were. So this is a week's rain check - but I am hoping for sunshine, literal and metaphorical.

Thank you so very much to those who are still following - it is helping me more than you know.

Chicken or egg - and does it actually matter?

In my experience, poor mental health is all about cycles; more to the point, it often feels like one spends a huge amount of time and energy attempting to break out of cycles. For me cycles are all about anxiety for, as I have already described, anxiety is the worst of the symptoms that come with my clinical depression.

There is an additional problem for me; when I have had a couple of days of slightly less anxiety I become anxious about when the anxiety will return and how severe it will be. Cycles within cycles you might say.

When I was in hospital the therapeutic approach of choice was Group Therapy. Initially I was unconvinced about its efficacy but soon I was as zealous a convert as you could find! The most helpful thing about Group Therapy isn't the occasional amusing interludes when the patients 'gang up' on the therapist (although please forgive me, they can be very funny) but hearing people voice your own anxieties. I found that whilst I was the only one with an obsessive-compulsive concern about financial matters, the fear that anxiety (in general terms) engenders in the sufferer is common. Of course the most dangerous time is when the anxiety (symptom) starts to feed the depression which created it and the cycle becomes self-perpetuating; the anxiety becomes the cause and not just the symptom.

This is a complex and intriguing equation, a kind of psychological 'which came first the chicken or the egg' question and one which I raised with my CPN last week. His advice was as sound as it was unequivocal - clinically (that is in designing a treatment regime of medication and psychological therapies) it doesn't matter. I didn't expect that! But it did help. For my part I can add only this: I will forever be indebted to the medical team that are treating me. They are actually doing so much more than treating me they are caring for me and encouraging me to care for myself - the goal, in my view, of any mental health patient, should be to take the driving seat in their own recovery!

In the meantime I keep trying to wrestle the metaphorical steering wheel away from my anxiety so that I have more control over the vehicle that is my mental health - I dream one day that it will be a finely tuned Aston Martin rather than an MOT failed battered Vauxhall Corsa! My anxities frighten me and sometimes they terrify me - I promised to blog openly and honestly. But I hope and pray that whether symptom or cause (or both), with continued medical support and therapy, the companionship of my family and friends, and not a little determination from myself, the beast that is my anxiety will eventually be tamed! Now where did I leave the keys to the Aston Martin?

Catching the Bubbles

Thursday was a pretty good day; yesterday and today not so good. So my blog this evening is a simple reflection of the fact that for those of us who suffer with mental health issues some days are better than others and it is not always possible to know why. I imagine that if I knew why, on waking, a good day instinctively felt so I would ask for a repeat prescription rather than the cocktail of medication I currently imbibe!

It is true to say that everybody, absolutely everybody, sometimes wakes up, utters a profanity or expletive (or both) and rolls over wishing the day would go away. We all have bad days. But if you are fortunate not to suffer with depression and anxiety like me, I hope that this might help demythologise what might appear to the uninitiated just 'a bad day' but to the mental health sufferer appears to be the north face of the Eiger. A bad day, simply put, can be absolutely terrifying. I am not trying to talk anything up, it isn't always terrifying but it can be.

I wholeheartedly welcome the new national initiative Time to Change. I saw the advertisement on television again today and was reminded how marginalised mental health sufferers can feel. 'You just need to get a grip' is a popular phrase used by the unknowing towards the suffering. It isn't really anybody's fault but it is true to say that unless you have suffered you can't even begin to discern the depths of fear that depression and anxiety can generate.

On a day when I wake and, for an inexplicable reason the day ahead is a terrifying prospect, 'getting a grip' is something I can only dream of; just like trying to catch bubbles, the nearer they come the more tantalisingly attractive they are but as soon as you reach out to touch one, 'pop', it's gone!

I hope and pray that I will never cease reaching out for those bubbles in the hope that one day soon they won't all go 'pop'! Further, I am honour bound to record here that of all the people I have met who, like me, suffer from poor mental health, not a single one of them who wouldn't 'get a grip' if they could. So please, if you are in good mental health, please heed the national initiative Time to Change and please do accept that if it was as easy as just 'getting a grip' we would have!

Thanks for sharing the journey thus far. The link for Time to Change is on the right - do please take a look.