Developing Resilience

I haven’t written directly about mental health unrelated to music for a while. It isn’t that this is something that is no longer important to me, or something that I’ve forgotten about. On the contrary, forgetting is not an option. In fact this blog is about just how much mental health has been to the fore in my mind and the way I deal with it has been put in the spotlight in recent weeks.

Dealing daily with your Mental Health

When you are someone who lives with anxiety and depression, every day brings its challenges. Every day. There is no end as such, there is no miracle cure. You wake up on a daily basis knowing you will have to battle with your own thoughts to some extent.

Some days it is easy, like noticing dirt away on your sleeve. You acknowledge it is there and brush it off. Ready for the day.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the whole day will be good. One tiny comment or action can change the outlook of the whole day requiring a reset or adjustment. You can never be off-duty. That little voice in your head is always looking for a chink in your armour.

Waking up on other days, it feels like you are clashing with an oversized tiger that has been starved for a week while you a have one arm tied behind your back, and you are wearing a blindfold. The tiger has a crowd of people behind it willing it to win, and on your side you have people laughing at you and telling you you’re useless. Actually, that scenario sounds like it would be easier to deal with than battling your thoughts on some days.

Suffice to say, you don’t know how you might wake up on a day to day basis. Sometimes the events of the previous night can impact the way you wake, other times it appears to be totally random, thoughts just pop in to your head.

Depression is not a choice

The thing is, feeling this way isn’t a choice. Nobody chooses to be depressed or anxious. Who would choose to wake up every morning feeling that whatever you do that day will be a waste of time? That you yourself are a waste of space or even that the world and the people you love would be better without you in it. If you have experience mental health illness and you have to deal with your thoughts and beliefs on a day to day basis, the battle is real, it is a necessity, part of the way you live your life. It is also exceedingly tiring, dealing with normal day to day life and keeping on to of and in control of your anxiety and depression on top of that.

Despite what some people think it is not just a feeling of sadness or as some people would have you believe, people wallowing or intentionally feeling miserable about something. On some of the days when I have been at my happiest, something can strike to bring on a panic attack raising anxiety to critical levels or bring on a depressive episode. It doesn’t need to be anything negative, a seemingly innocent or potentially happy set of circumstances can bring it on. It is a chemical imbalance. There doesn’t even have to be anything major to deal with, just life and the intricacies of getting through a day sometimes is enough.

It doesn’t matter how seemingly great life seems from the outside. A good job, a lovely family, nice house…..depression doesn’t account for these things. It isn’t a competition either. It shouldn’t be about comparing yourself with others and wondering why you feel the way you do as others have it much worse than you. It is a fight to understand why you feel the way you do when the seemingly have it all, it is wondering why you feel the world would be a better place without you. Its sleeping as much as you can as it is blessed relief from thinking. Or not being able to sleep due to the way you are thinking.

If there is any choice it is the decision you make not to let your depression or anxiety win. I say “if” though. Often even that is not a choice, you can battle with all your inner strength, use all your strategies, take your medication but sometimes, the depression still wins. Not always a real choice. Something breaks.

Be Happy?

I often see simplistic comments and motivational quotes about choosing to be happy or choosing to smile. That is all very well, I can choose to be happy one day, it doesn’t mean I’m not depressed or feeling incredibly anxious about everything. That smile on my face could be covering a multitude of beliefs and feelings. You get to be good at wearing a mask. Which makes it all the worse when the mask slips.

Life sucks sometimes, but fortunately, it doesn’t suck all the time. I don’t mean to be flippant here and I know there are people out there for whom life does suck all the time. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and that is a life of hell that they need to manage every day.

Life used to suck most of the time. That was the way I lived my life, getting through one shit day at a time. I feel I need to explain that. Life itself didn’t suck. Even the day itself may not have been shit. As I said, I am lucky, I have a beautiful family, a good job, a roof over my head, nice things, I go on holidays… Life and all I have in it is good.

However, it is, and was, the way my head worked, the decisions I made and the resultant actions I undertook as a result of my negative self-beliefs and thoughts that made life seem shit. It made me seem like a miserable bastard most of the time. As a result I had the ability to make my family miserable, I created arguments when there was nothing to argue about. I shouted at my kids constantly for no reason. I avoided doing things and contacting people, making excuses that I was too busy or had too much to do.

In Control

But here is the crux of this blog. The battle may be hard and long but how I am experiencing life in the here and now makes it worthwhile and proves to me that I can be in control.

In recent weeks and months, like many of us, it seems like every new week or month brought another challenge. Without going into the minutiae, I have had my tenacity tested recently having had to deal with family health scares, tests and operations and the threat of redundancy among other things. Some of these are now resolved and some are ongoing, but life doesn’t wait for one thing to end before it tests your doggedness again.

The old me would have crumbled. The old me would have let the black dog take me for a walk. The old me would have let all the little voices in my head take over and create the worst scenario for every possibility. At certain times in my life, just one of these things happening would have been enough to send me spiralling into depression and lacking the ability to deal with them.

Stronger

However, despite these situations, at present I am stronger and more capable of dealing with these things than I’ve ever been before.

So why can I deal with these potentially life-changing situations when in the past a simple off the cuff comment I made to someone could have me reeling and analysing what I said, and why, for days and weeks and as a result closing myself off to that person or avoiding certain situations as a result? Or maybe something like reading a simple post on Facebook or Twitter, reading between the lines, creating every possible negative scenario that could be meant by what would, in reality, have been a stupid generic post aimed at no-one in particular. I would dwell on the potential outcomes and relate them to my life assuming the worst. Not a way to live your life. Not a way to deal with hurdles.

It has been a long journey to get here, but I finally feel that I have the balance right. The combination of medication, mindfulness and other strategies I have in my toolbox currently gives me everything I need to deal with the varying degrees of stress, anxiety and negativity in my life. It enables me to face every day head on and deal with any setbacks throughout. The strategies allows me to acknowledge my negative self-beliefs and thoughts and deal with them in the appropriate manner instead of letting them win or trying to ignore them and not dealing with the source.

I know I can never say never, but I want that to be the old me, forever. I don’t want that version of me to return. Maybe that is making things too simple. That IS still me, but life doesn’t suck all the time. n fact I can say life doesn’t suck at all. Depression and anxiety suck. What I’m saying doesn’t mean I am no longer anxious or depressed. I have accepted that they are part of who I am. The difference now is they don’t control me. I control them. I have trained the black dog.

Take one example, my job situation has not yet been resolved. As I type this, I am still under threat of redundancy. However, I am totally at peace with that and in control of my feelings and actions. I’m not letting it control every aspect of how I live my life. As a result, I am on holiday having a great time with my family. Something that would have been incompatible in previous incarnations of me.

Life goes on

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not someone who now thinks everything is wonderful, the world is a beautiful place and everything smells of roses. What I can do though is separate the wood from the chaff. No matter what happens in my work situation, I have identified the positives in all potential outcomes, and also some possible drawbacks, but with ideas of how to mitigate or minimise these. As a result, I have the ability not to dwell on them, I can get on with life and enjoy holidays and a social life and push the other things to the side and deal with them as and when required.

I had a telephone interview during my holiday. A few years ago, that would have been my one and only focus and in my head would have ruined a whole 2 weeks holiday, I would somehow manage to forget any positive aspects of the holiday. This time though, it was an hour out of my holiday. I didn’t stress before it, dealt with it to the best of my abilities at the time and have now forgotten about it (apart from writing this). Nothing I can do about it now. I’ll deal with the next step when that happens.

Some of you reading this will think. Well what is the issue here? That is just dealing with life. Others may be relating to certain aspects. The thing is, we are all different. 1 in 4 of us will experience mental health issues to an extent. We are all individuals and will be impacted to different degrees and in different ways.

If you are fortunate enough never to have experienced issues with your mental health, and have got this far in reading this, I hope it helps you understand what some people go through on a regular basis.

If you can relate to anything I’ve said, to a greater or lesser extent and you are still trying to resolve your thoughts and beliefs, I hope reading this gives you the hope that you can deal with it. Everyone is always at a different stage on their journey. If things seem hopeless now there will be times of lucidity ahead. I can’t tell you what will make the difference or when it will happen. I can tell you though that from my experience the fight was, and continues to be, worthwhile.

Links to support:

SAMH: https://www.samh.org.uk/
Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org/
Time to Change: https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/
Sunstone Counselling: www.sunstonecounselling.co.uk Obviously there are many counselling services available. I had my counselling and CBT through Sunstone.