a warped view

Working with my psych has made me realise that one of the biggest mistakes I make is invalidating my own feelings by explaining away other people's bad behaviour. I've spent the majority of my life rationalising, its something that I think I learned from my mother. It's something that used to make me angry at my mother. She is a big believer in seeing both sides of the story, and consequently so am I. Seeing both sides of the story is not the issue though, I still think that's a great ability to have. The problem comes when you are so good at seeing the other persons side of the story that the feelings they caused with their actions become secondary, or get lost completely.  I realised today that I now do it to my daughter and I want to stop. When she comes to me to tell me about something that has happened with her friends she doesn't want me to be objective, she wants me to soothe her hurt feelings. She doesn't need help seeing why the other person did what th...

So I was a bit anxious about seeing a psychologist. I've done it before in the past and the experiences were mediocre at best. I didn't find them particularly helpful in the long term though they did probably provide some short term benefit. I am always worried that I won't like the psychologist. That I won't feel comfortable with them and I will spend the whole time wishing I could leave. I am, to my own detriment, sometimes too quick to judge people. Although I am most often proved right about my gut feelings I do occasionally get it wrong and then have to eat some humble pie while trying to apologise for getting it so wrong. When I first saw the woman who would be my psych my anxiety levels increased. She had a hard edged look about her, sharp and harsh. Not soft and caring and anything at all like the sort of person I wanted to spill my inner secrets to. Luckily, in this case, I was wrong. Once we got into the session I could see she was very good at her job and...

So a lot has been happening in my world. I've started taking my anti-depressants again and I've started seeing a psych. Things (like getting out if bed and forming coherent sentences) were getting hard and there was no chance of me accomplishing anything harder (like laundry, remembering to eat or what my name was). There is no shame in getting help, I'm just super stubborn and even avoid taking panadol or using band aids whenever possible.  I also decided that I needed to make a concerted effort to start reading again. So I started reading a book I received as a present from one of the loveliest people I know. It's called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and I love it. It's all about Gretchen's quest to become happier and what she did to achieve it. She wasn't particularly unhappy to start with, she just felt she could be happier, more engaged in her own life and kinder to herself and the people she loved. She didn't want her life to just whiz by...

<rant> you know what? no matter how much you think you're doing the right thing. regardless of the fact that i suffer from depression. regardless of how much of a "responsibility" you feel you have. when you tell me that you are going to call the police to do a welfare check on me because i tweeted that i was sad and you've never even met me in real life and we don't have a personal relationship other than superficial tweets on twitter then you're being a condescending arse. and quite frankly, how dare you?! and yes, you will probably get offended by this but i don't fucking care. you offended me first. </rant>

Last Friday I made someone cry. She is a friend of mine, I've known her for over half my life, my children call her Aunty, I love her dearly. I didn't set out to make her cry and I'm not proud of it. I'm sorry that I upset her. I'm not sorry about the reason I made her cry.  We nearly always have drinks and nibbles with my mum on Friday nights. We have a regular cast of friends that join us when they can and last Friday a group of about 8 of us were gathered. It was a normal  Friday night, drinking, laughing, eating, talking. One friend (not the one I made cry) has been having a terrible time of late with all sorts of unpleasantness in her life. She's been quite down and I would suspect is suffering from depression. She made a half hearted "joke" about walking to work the other day and getting caught waiting for the train to pass at the train crossing and declared that for a moment she'd thought to herself that if she threw herself under the train ...

When you look at me do you see a girl who is rude, unapproachable, snobbish? Who thinks she's too good for everyone else? Do you see a mum who just drops her kids at school and runs away because she doesn't want to be involved? Or do you see that I am afraid and anxious. That I try and avoid social interaction because I don't know what to say, because I'm convinced no one will like me. Do you see the scared little girl who was bullied so badly she didn't want to go to school, the scared little girl who was called names and teased and picked on, who had her things stolen and destroyed, who spent more time hiding in the nurses office than she did in class? Do you see the lonely girl who had no friends to call her own? Do you see the desperate girl who sat in her mother's car and begged not to be sent to school, with tears streaming down her face and sobs choking her words? Do you see the woman who still becomes that scared child when she enters a school. Do you ...

How much mental illness can people take? How many posts on a blog? How many text messages asking for help, for comfort, for reassurance? How many sob filled phone calls? How many times can you show up with a tear stained face with nothing to offer but melancholy and pain? How many times can you cancel at the last minute because you realise you can't bring yourself to leave the house before people stop asking you places? How much depression can you show people before they stop trying to be sympathetic and get fed up with the drama? Every time I want to tweet that I'm not doing ok, or post on Facebook that I'm not coping, or write a blog post about the darkness I worry about people's limits. I worry that I'm THAT whiner who just goes on and on about depression all the time. Who never has anything good to say. Who brings everyone down with her constant downers. I wonder how many eyes will roll. How many will want to unfollow or unfriend me. How many will try and offe...

there's not much in this world that is more devastating than a dream that is killed just before it is about to be realised. this has just happened to me. it is something that i suppose most people would consider trivial in the general scheme of things. it was afterall, just a job. but to me it was more than that. it was a chance to finally be the me that i've always wanted to be, to prove that i am capable of things, that i can achieve something more than getting out of bed in the morning. it was a chance to make something of myself. to be more than mundane. i have spent the last couple of hours crying tears of mourning for the me that i will never be. none of this is helped by my depression of course. dreaming seems like a fool's game, something i'm not likely to want to partake in again for quite some time. it is no one's fault but it hurts like hell.

I am feeling down. Have been for a while. That's why I haven't been posting. It's not an all encompassing downness, I have moments and days where I feel fine, but the thought of blogging (along with numerous other to-dos) have left me feeling tight chested and anxious. I've also been avoiding people, avoiding social situations and I've been crap at communicating with the people I love. I've stopped tweeting, stopped texting, stopped calling. I'm hiding. It's impossible however, to hide from yourself. Today, right now, I am feeling particularly down. I was fine this morning, I had a lovely day with the HSP and saw a movie I've been desperate to see (Oz). Yet this afternoon the cloud descended around my shoulders and I suddenly felt the darkness wrap it's fingers around my heart and squeeze. I suddenly and instantly wanted to bury my face in my pillow and cry. Not just cry, sob, that physical crying that involves your shoulders, your chest, your ...

There's some pretty special things about me. I have depression, anxiety and ADHD. This gives me some pretty special super powers. It gives me the ability to speak without thinking, to over share when I shouldn't, to get carried away with things rather than staying level headed and in control. It makes me think things are a good idea when they aren't. It gives me an extra special ability to piss people off. It allows me to feel especially shit when I fuck up and leaves me feeling like I want to crawl into a dark hole and stay there. Can you tell I'm having a special kind of day?

Growing up in Darwin we always had very laid back routines. In my early years my mum, dad, nanna and grandad worked in a family business and so there were long days spent at work with dinner time often being after 7 or 8pm. This kind of laid back attitude to dinner time continued through my childhood and into my teenage years. This meant that I would regularly get to bed quite a lot later than other kids. It was a shock to us when we moved to Perth in my 16th year and discovered that the weirdo southerners would sometimes eat dinner at 5:30 or 6. Ridiculous! I don't know if it's because of this laid back start to life but I have never really had a time that was my bedtime, even as an adult. I have a time that I know should probably be my bedtime but it comes and goes with little notice most nights. I'm also what is generally classified as a night owl, the later at night, the more productive I feel. I can often be found on my computer until 2 or 3am. Sometimes this is b...

So I wasn't going to write a blog post today. I haven't really felt like writing about my mental health the last couple of weeks, the words just haven't flowed. I've been doing reasonably well and I never want to write about things when they are going well. I'm all about the doom and gloom. Then all of a sudden, BOOM! A series of small events and I'm on the edge of tears and feeling like shit. This week I got into a hated discussion with someone on twitter. This person has said a few things in recent weeks that have really gotten to me and I've been contemplating unfollowing them but was worried about hurting their feelings as I don't hate them or anything, I just don't see the world the same way as them. Or maybe they just purposely write things on twitter to cause shit and I always seem to be the one who bites. In any case I got into a disagreement with them this week which ended with them telling me they were blocking me. After weeks of worrying...

More than just a bout of the blues, depression isn't a weakness, nor is it something that you can simply "snap out" of. Depression is a chronic illness that usually requires long-term treatment, like diabetes or high blood pressure.  Depression ranges in seriousness from mild, temporary episodes of sadness to severe, persistent depression. Doctors use the term "clinical depression" to describe the more severe form of depression also known as "major depression" or "major depressive disorder." According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression is one of the most disabling disorders in the world. It affects nearly 121 million people worldwide. Roughly 25% of women and 10% of men will experience depression at some point in their lifetime. Depression that goes untreated can lead to social, professional, financial and personal difficulties including academic, career and financial difficulties.  At its worst, depres...

Quite often, when trying to explain my depression to people I use the phrase "my depression voice" or the "irrational voice" to describe the constant critic that lives in my head. Occasionally I wonder if people are going to take that to mean that I hear voices Beautiful Mind style or that I might start conducting a fight club with myself or talking to a giant rabbit. I can promise you that none of those thing are true, or are going to come true... well I might start talking to Frank but it's unlikely. However the truth is that I do deal with a constant voice in my head. The depression voice is always there, sometimes whispering quietly, sometimes screaming at me until I break. The depression voice is that arsehole that is constantly telling me that I'm not capable, that I'm worthless, that people don't like me. It's the voice that stops me from leaving my house, its the voice that looks in the mirror and tells me how ugly and unlovable I am...

Do you remember this poem from when you were young? Mondays child is fair of face, Tuesdays child is full of grace, Wednesdays child is full of woe, Thursdays child has far to go, Fridays child is loving and giving, Saturdays child works hard for his living, And the child that is born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay. This poem has always pissed me off a little because you see, I was born on a Wednesday. As a youngster I was adamant that this poem was quite frankly full of shit. I was a perfectly happy child, my face was fairish, I had a small amount of grace, I was both loving AND giving. Why did all those other days get awesome things and I was stuck with woe? *kicks dirt with toe* But now I'm older I see that this was really just some sort of scary prediction about my depression. I mean what else could it be?! (What do you mean there's no meaning at all and someone just made it up a really long time ago when people still said g...

Sometime ago there was a regular thing on Tuesdays where we all posted ten things we were grateful for that day. I haven't done it for a while and thought it was probably time for more gratitude so Tuesdays will now be known as Ten Tuesday and will be full of thanks. Feel free to join in in the comments section, on your own blog (put the link in the comments so we can all read), share on twitter with the hash tag #10tuesday or jot them down in a notebook (so bespoke!) I am grateful that... 1. I am surrounded by people I love and that love me 2. this year I might finally figure out what I want to be when I grow up 3. I have been given the opportunity to go on an amazing adventure 4. people believe in me 5. big splashes of rain just fell on my head 6. I have an overseas holiday to count down to 7. I had a lovely dinner with my family tonight 8. I have both Bahen & Co. and Gabriel chocolates hidden away in my house for when I need them 9. I have people that I can talk ...

something you're proud of in the past few days So I've been putting off writing this post. Whenever I do one of these blogging things there is always something that puts a road block in my way. One post that brings everything to a screaming halt and destroys any mojo I may have had going. Right now I am struggling to think of anything I'm proud of. It's been a rough month and a half (ish) and my confidence has taken a pretty big hit (again). That ridiculous depression voice is in my ear telling me that all of the worthlessness is me. That I have little, if anything, of value to offer. This isn't helped by losing my contract for work (long, boring story). More proof that I am shit. SHUT UP DEPRESSION VOICE! However I now have a tiny glimmer of awesomeness that I am clinging to. My inflatable life saver of light. I have been offered the opportunity to work on a film next year. Not only that, but I will be working with some of the newest additions to my list o...

So apparently I am one of a very small percentage of ADHD adults who experiences a worsening of depression symptoms when taking Dexamphetamines.  To start with I didn't notice, but as I continued to take my daily doses my depression symptoms have gotten worse and worse. The situation reached critical mass on Sunday night. My thoughts and behaviour got beyond my control and I had a complete meltdown. The rest of the week has been nothing short of difficult. There has been tears at the drop of the hat, an inability to regulate my emotions (more than usual), and a highly emotional state in general. The smallest things have sent me spiralling out of control. The hsp says its the worst he has ever seen me. It has left me feeling afraid and ashamed. My logical brain knows that there is no reason to feel this way but my logical brain is not exactly the loudest at the moment.  Luckily I had an appointment with my ADHD doctor today and I informed him what was going on. ...

Dear Norms, I'm writing you this letter because there's a few things we need to get straight. For a start, you might be wondering who these Norms are and if you're one of them. Norms are people who haven't had an atypical brain function diagnosis (i.e. depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar, PTSD, cognitive issues, etc etc). They're a bit like muggles, if people with mental health issues were wizards. I've addressed this letter to all of you because you might be guilty of some of the things I'm going to talk about without even realising it. So here's a list of things you need to know/understand 1. Just because my illness(es) don't produce physical symptoms you can see (like bruises, broken bones, hair falling out etc) that doesn't mean my illness isn't real. I can one hundred percent guarantee you that while it is classified as a mental illness there are physical symptoms that I deal with every day and this is on top of the emotional and psyc...