I Don't Want to Talk About It

A fortnight ago I wrote about my experience of depression and diagnosis of it.  The post was quite well received and some interest was shown in a follow-up about treatment.  I like to indulge my adoring public so you have only yourselves to blame for the following!

Once I was diagnosed the question of treatment came up.  My GP didn't want to put a teenager straight on antidepressants so he referred me for 'talking therapy'.  Now, I can talk.  I can talk and talk and talk.  I can even talk about personal and embarrassing stuff like the time I threw up in a bin at school, or the fact I thought 'fatigue' was pronounced 'fat-ee-goo' when I was at Uni doing an English degree, or about how my right boob is considerably bigger than my left.  I'm not so good at really discussing private thoughts and feelings.  I'm British; I don't really do all those icky emotions.

However, the Wolf emphatically pointed out there would be no point in me going if I wasn't going to be completely open and honest so I answered all questions truthfully and in detail: thoughts I obsessed over, personal admissions and - indeed - all the icky emotions.

The whole time I was talking the therapist seemed...disinterested.  Perhaps I'd watched too much TV but I expected him to pick out something I'd mentioned and focus on discussing it.  Or, perhaps, he'd just show some amazing insight into my psyche from all I'd told him and so be able to cure my depression.  Or we'd strike up an unlikely but humorous friendship and both end up learning something about ourselves.  Unrealistic, perhaps, but it was called talking therapy.  I was expecting there to be an emphasis on the...you know...talking!

It's not like there was anything shocking in all I'd told him; I'm fortunate enough to have had a relatively uneventful life free of abuse or hardship.  Still, I wanted some acknowledgement that I had spoken, that I was an individual.  Instead, he showed me a booklet I was to fill in and sent me on my way.  It was obvious I could have told this guy absolutely anything and his response (handing over the booklet) would have been the same.  So why had I even bothered?

The booklet was a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) self-help style book to be filled in.  I know more about CBT these days and have heard some really good things about it.  Back then, I knew about Pavlov's dogs and that was about it.  Really, it shouldn't have mattered how much I knew because my therapist should have given me all sufficient information and built up some sort of rapport with me so I placed a little trust in him.  The actual information he did give me coupled with his general attitude just meant I felt dismissed and patronised.

Of course, these days I'm used to that.

The booklet itself was very basic and seemed to me  to be condescending.  I'd researched depression pretty thoroughly before going to the doctor in the first place because the last thing I wanted was to be told I was talking nonsense.  The booklet just seemed to reiterate everything I'd already read and offered very little I couldn't have found on Wikipedia.  It was literally along the lines of, 'when you start to feel sad, try to think of happy things.'  I thought, 'If it was that smegging easy nobody would ever have depression in the first place!'

Thanks for that.

Next appointment, I told the therapist all this.  I thought he could suggest an alternate approach or even just talk through the merits of the book.  Perhaps there was a different book?  He told me it had to be simplistic to be understood by anyone who might need it and that was that.  I was to carry on with the book and he'd see me next week.

The third appointment I told him I felt much better and didn't think I needed to come back.  He accepted this, no questions asked, and I went home feeling utterly hopeless.

Actually, this kid's book is a little weird.

Months later we moved into a new flat and changed GPs so I decided to try the new doctor and confess my depression hadn't gone away.  The GP I saw suggested antidepressants almost straight away.  Again, I was relieved I was again being taken seriously...until she she told me she could only prescribe me a week's worth at a time because it probably wasn't wise for someone in my mental state, 'to have lots of pills lying around.'  Then I wondered if she was taking it a little too seriously and I wasn't sure whether I should tell her my suicide 'plan' - for want of a better word - had never involved an overdose...

I wouldn't electrocute myself either but, seriously, this book is odd...

Depression can make you paranoid.  I was convinced, to start with, the GP had given me a placebo (though, why she would be so worried about all those pills 'lying around' if they were sugar pills I don't know) but the side effects I got for the first week convinced me they were the real deal.

I felt...stoned.  Sort of, anyway.  I just felt incredibly spaced out and slow.  I had a part-time job as a sales assistant and I was convinced my boss would call me into the office to tell me there was a discrepancy in my till during that first week.  I'd get to the end of my shift and have almost no memory of serving any of the customers who'd come to my till.

The Wolf and I went to play badminton and as soon as we started he just laughed at me.  I thought I was moving at normal speed but he said it was like I was moving in slow motion.  Imagine a not particularly sporty 19 year old probably wearing the same pair of Skechers trainers I've owned since I was about 14 or 15 (they're still the only trainers I own), a pair of purple tie-dye short shorts and a baggy t-shirt with Tigger on the front drifting around the badminton court (are they called courts in badminton?? - told you I'm not sporty) and trying to swing at the shuttlecock at half the speed necessary to make contact with it.  It probably was quite comical.

Wha...?

The last thing I want to do is put anyone off getting treatment for depression.  The side effects from antidepressants can vary pretty wildly from person to person and - as I said - this fuzzy state didn't last long.

After a couple of weeks the tablets started to help.  It's hard to describe in what way they help, in much the same way it's hard to describe how depression feels in the first place.  The severity of my depression varied from week to week anyway and I think I felt a bit better as soon as I'd been prescribed the antidepressants just for the fact I was doing something to help so it was hard to tell when the tablets kicked in.  It wasn't like I felt amazingly happy overnight;  I wouldn't say the meds even take away the depression, as such, but they level me out enough that I can deal with the situations and thoughts that made me feel depressed.

I guess it's like - and bear with me here because I've said before I'm crap with metaphors - if depression is being lost in a forest in the dark then the antidepressants don't take you out of the forest but they do provide you with a torch and...compass (not that I'm sure a compass would really help me if I was lost in a forest...maybe a map...or a mobile phone?) so you can find your own way out.

Since then I've been back to the doctor to say I'm depressed again - and been put on antidepressants again - three more times.  The only regrets I have around taking antidepressants is I stopped once I felt better (normally after about three months) without consulting my GP.  The last time I went back the doctor told me I should stay on for at least two years for the best chance of avoiding another recurrence.  I've been on them now for perhaps nine months and other than changing the kind I was taking because these treat anxiety better (something I'll perhaps write about another time), I've taken them consistently and plan to carry on doing so for at least the next year.

And that's okay, actually.

Linked with:

Me, My Mental Health and I

I was toying with the idea of writing an 'All about Nym' post.  Some sort of flippant, humorous and probably slightly twee list of things I like and dislike or some facts about me or some such.  But having paid attention to my last blog post asking for feedback and just thinking about which of my posts seem to get the best response, I think I know what would go down better even if I've shied away from writing an entire blog post about it so far because it seems self indulgent.  Besides, if my 16 year old sister can open up about how ASD and meltdowns affect her (in this post) then I feel I really should show the same sort of willing (though, I can't promise the results will make for such good reading).

Okay.  I suffer from depression.

Not a particularly shocking or daring admission given - besides the fact I've mentioned it on this blog before - depression affects one in...ten...five...four...I'm not sure, actually, Google couldn't seem to come to a consensus.  Loads.  Loads and loads of people have depression at some point and even more people know someone who is depressed, is what I'm trying to say.

I think I had been suffering on and off with depression for a long time before I realised what it was.  A long time.  As in, I remember taking myself off to my dad's workshop to read and just crying and crying for no reason then lying when Mum asked if something was wrong and I was nine at the time.

I was twice that age when I figured out what might be causing it.  The Wolf and I got a flat in Glasgow the September after I turned 18 because I'd been accepted into the University of Glasgow.  I remember unpacking one of the boxes for the kitchen - the Wolf was at work so I was home alone - and as I was taking the bubble wrap off a champagne flute I dropped it and it broke.  And then I broke...down (this seemed like a good metaphor when I started).  This wasn't some ornate, crystal champagne flute or anything.  At least, I'm pretty sure it wasn't!  No, it was part of a present from a friend; what with me turning 18 and everything (for any US readers, the legal age for buying alcohol in the UK is 18) and I think it was even part of a set of two but it just upset me so much that I'd managed to package this breakable thing up and transport it all the way from home with it intact just to drop it after I'd unwrapped it.  It was like a Of Mice and Men thing except instead of my home being destroyed like in the poem or having to kill my best friend like in the novel my champagne flute broke despite all that bubble wrap.  Okay, so maybe they're not comparable but that's the point.  It wasn't the end of the world (it wasn't even the end of me drinking champagne since we couldn't afford it at the time, anyway) but I sat on the floor of our tiny kitchenette and sobbed and sobbed.

None of these are the glass in question.
Obviously, since that one...you know.

I don't think it was as a direct result of this I sought help but this was certainly one of the incidents that led to my realisation it probably wasn't 'normal' to cry for half an hour over breaking a glass.

I've been asked before what depression feels like and it's hard to answer, not least because when I'm not depressed I don't think I truly remember what it was like when I was in the midst of it.  The thing with the glass was common, though.  You know how sometimes you have a really crappy day?  Maybe you were kept awake half the night by noisy neighbours, then you realise you're out of milk when you go to make tea, then you forget your purse/phone etc. when you go out and each thing on its own is just a small irritation you'd normally sigh about and shrug off but after a whole day of small irritations it just takes one more to make you snap?  That's part of what being depressed is for me.  Small annoyances seem like the very last straw every single time.  The number of times I cried through washing up just because...I didn't want to wash up (we ended up getting a dishwasher eventually) is ridiculous.  If I was alone - I don't do crying in front of people - it didn't take much: something breaking, realising an item of clothing I wanted to wear was in the wash, not being able to decide what to eat.  Any of these things could cause me to cry and cry.

Or finding there was only Goram Eclairs left in the tub.
Actually, we probably couldn't afford Cadbury's Heroes at the time.
Which would also have made me cry.

Whilst I didn't realise this was, in fact, depression I did know my reactions were not completely normal so I hid it all from everyone bar the Wolf.  Though, even with him, I didn't confide exactly but when you live with someone in a small, one bedroom flat the darkness will seep out.

When we were little my brother decided it would be fun to try to make 'slime'  He went about this by combining the inside of a glowstick with some WD40, a rubber (eraser for you non-Brits - he didn't put any condoms in to my knowledge, though he probably would have if he'd had one) and who knows what else.  This was all stored in a small plastic pot with a magnifying glass lid designed - I assume from the plastic spider that came with it - to hold spiders and insects.  He blithely added all these ingredients and left the little tub on a shelf.  The terrifying concoction eroded the plastic, ate its way through the wooden shelf underneath...and the shelf below that.  It was...sort of fascinating but pretty scary and weird.  And not entirely unlike my depression eroding away my hope, patience, self confidence and very gradually dripping its acid on the Wolf and our relationship and my relationships with everyone else, too.

See, whilst I did hide my depression from everyone I knew (very well apparently since more than one of my friends said I was literally the last person they would have thought was depressed after I finally told people), it still took its toll on all my interactions with other humans.  When you construct this happy, jokey, easy going facade for all conversations you're left behind it peeking out.  It's not really you having chatting and smiling, it's this construction.  Once you're alone again you feel all the more lonely for having faked your way through all your chances to properly connect with someone else.  That is the single most overriding feeling when I'm depressed, actually,  Sure, I feel defeated and distressed and miserable and guilty and paranoid but more than anything else I feel lonely.

Within a few months of the champagne flute breaking I took an online test where if you tick yes to more than X number of questions it indicates you may have depression.  I scored more than the minimum number and decided to go and see my GP.

But I was scared.  I wasn't scared he'd say I had depression; I was scared he'd say I didn't.  If I had depression there was a reason for why I felt the way I felt and there was a chance I could get better.  If I didn't...then I was just a miserable git of a person and that wasn't ever likely to change.

One of the reasons it had taken so long for me to realise I might have depression was because depression was a real condition and surely me crying quite a lot and feeling completely and utterly hopeless and alone was just being a teenager.  The impression I got from the little I knew about depression was that it rendered you incapable of any sort of normal life without you grabbing at the nearest sharp object to hack away at your wrists.  I was having a hard time but I had some good days here and there and I managed to function and even talk and laugh when around other people.  If I had a particularly rough night of obsessing over every single bad thing that had happened in the last year or so and finally crying myself to sleep at 3am (very quietly so as not to wake the Wolf) then the next day when I was out at Uni and the sun was shining and people were going about their lives all around me I'd tell myself I'd been silly and everything always seems worse in the middle of the night and I just needed to pull myself together.  I'm British, after all!  Stiff upper lip and all that.  Surely I could just walk it off.

But as stiff as my lip was (that sounds really terribly bad now I've written it down) and as much walking as I did to and from campus every day, I still had these awful episodes and an overriding sense of things being hopeless.

I went along to the GP appointment with a list.  I was worried I'd be laughed out of the room for being a melodramatic teenage girl so I clutched my little notebook of evidence (this was to stand me in good stead when I needed to document all Tyger's autistic traits and behaviours for evidence almost a decade later) and hoped I'd be taken seriously.

Which one is best for taking notes on Great Expectations and which
is best for noting down all the signs of a potential mental illness?

I earnestly went through my list of symptoms: both psychological (feelings of despair, guilt, irritability etc.) and physical (insomnia, headaches, loss of appetite, fatigue...).  The doctor was lovely and thankfully did take me very seriously.  I had to fill out a sort of assessment questionnaire, which went over the same ground I'd already covered with my little notebook but this was official and asked how many times I'd suffered from each thought or symptom in the last week.  It came back showing I had moderate depression.

I was so relieved.

The doctor said he was reluctant to put someone so young straight onto antidepressants so he referred me for 'talking therapy' instead.  I was secretly a little thrilled.  As much as the thought of having to actually tell someone all about the ridiculous things going on in my head was, I felt a little like a character out of an American TV show.  They all seemed to have 'shrinks', after all and at 18 it seemed almost glamorous.  As it happens, my experience with the talking therapist was not particularly positive but I suspect this is reaching it's attention-holding limit so that may be the subject of a future post.

If you're disappointed I didn't write a blog post about my likes and dislikes I can tell you I like tea and stepping on crunchy pine cones and dislike motivational minion memes and the volume for the TV being on an odd number.  It probably wasn't worth an entire post.

Linked with: