My mental health journey
“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced...it is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again.
The absence of hope.
That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts, but it is a healthy feeling.
It is a necessary thing to feel.
Depression is very different. ”
This week is mental health awareness week so you know I’m going to be talking about it.
I usually have mixed feelings about awareness days as I think we should be having these conversations all year round. At the same time, they focus attention on important topics, attention that might not otherwise be directed to them. So it doesn’t make sense not to take advantage of that attention and talk about them. Sunday I put out a bonus episode for international day against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia and shared some mental health statistics around the experience of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Why? Because individuals in this group experience poorer mental health and a lot of discrimination. So I wanted to highlight that because we’re all about raising awareness and challenging the stigma around mental health.
So I’ve been and will be showing up a lot this week for mental health awareness offering a lot of information, support and some hope to people who are struggling at the moment. And I’ll also be sharing more of my own personal mental health story. This is something I have been talking about more openly now, a little on my podcast and more in interviews on other podcasts. But there are still bits I haven’t shared, some parts I hold back. And stories are so powerful as I’ve written about and spoken about before. When we can see ourselves reflected in a story, it helps us feel less alone. Understood. Seen. And this is really important to us. It’s why we love films, music, the arts so much when they capture what we are feeling. It’s why we can be drawn to literature so strongly. When they resonate with us, it can be such a powerful experience.
And my own mental health journey, or at least my awareness of it, began with an experience like that. I had just finished university and had started my first full-time job. It was working for a charity in a finance role but because of the type of charity, I had to attend mental health awareness training. I didn’t really know too much about mental health at that point. I had studied psychology previously at college but we didn’t get too deep into mental health. I sat in the training and they described the symptoms of depression. Feeling down, upset or tearful. Feeling worthless. Empty. Numb. No self-confidence or self-esteem. Loss of enjoyment of life and things you had previously enjoyed. I listened as they went through the list and I honestly was nearly in tears. I was fighting to hold them in.
Why?
Because they were describing me, my life, how I felt. I hadn’t realised what I was feeling (or not feeling) was depression until that moment.
Looking back, the depression had been there for years. Throughout my teens and university but in particular in my final year of university when I was experiencing a depressive episode. I remember driving to work (part-time role) and feeling so completely empty and hopeless. I looked at the cars in front of me on the road and the thought crossed my mind many times, ‘what if I just didn’t stop’.
Fortunately, I didn’t go any further with that line of thinking but it was a fairly frequent thought on those long journeys. And this is this think about suicidal thoughts which I think is often misunderstood. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. It was that I wanted it to stop. I felt I couldn’t cope with how I was feeling, or the lack of feeling, and I felt hopeless. I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. It was too much. I just needed it to stop. And when you’re not sure how to make it stop, it can feel like the only option.
I watched a great TED talk on the topic where Mark Henick says when he felt suicidal, there was no other choice but that. I think sometimes it can be hard to understand this feeling if you’ve never been there and felt that hopelessness. I didn’t think anyone would miss me or care. Objectively, I had some family and friends. But when you’re depressed, or certainly this is my experience of it, the colour completely drains out of your life. The things you loved don’t feel the same. I didn’t feel. I was empty and numb. And everything felt like such an effort. To get up, to shower. And I thought I was worthless. I hated myself. And that isn’t an exaggeration, it was absolutely how I felt. I remember watching an episode of the biggest loser, trying to get some inspiration/motivation to exercise, and the person on there was expressing their own self-hatred. And again I recognised my own feelings in what they were saying. It’s interesting, I’m realising now, that the times I’ve really discovered something about myself and my own feelings have been by seeing them in the stories of others. I guess that’s why I think it’s so important to share my own experience in case it has the same impact on someone else. Helping them to understand what they’re experiencing so they can start the healing process.
“Sometimes when I say I’m ok, I want someone to look me in the eyes, hug me tight and say ‘I know you’re not’.”
I want to skip forward in time over the next 10 or so years. I had periods of depression that I recognised as such. And periods where I felt a little better and thought I was ok (more on that later). I had a course of CBT and took anti-depressants. When I felt better, I stopped taking them. I had a very low period, probably the worst I’ve experienced. And I’ve always kept working throughout my depression. It’s been hard at times but if I was at home alone with my own thoughts that would have been worse. So I kept busy at work. During this period, I thought I was coping ok at work and hiding my depression. It wasn’t until later that colleagues said I had been a robot during this time that I realised I hadn’t been hiding it at all. I didn’t feel able to talk about it at work. When I got home, I slept. I slept a lot during that period and my memory is fairly hazy.
This pattern repeated and it was probably the next cycle after this where I could recognise that my mood was dropping and so proactively went to the doctors for antidepressants. And it was only a couple of years ago that I was able to really engage with my medication and talk to the mental health nurse that I was seeing to start to make some real changes, and to start feeling ok again.
People often have mixed views on medication. Here’s what I found for me. I might have known what I ‘should’ be doing to lift my mood, but when I was depressed I couldn’t do it. It felt like such a monumental effort that I just didn’t have the energy for. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it, but that I couldn’t. I couldn’t get my head around showering some days because the effort it would take was beyond me. The medication helped in that it would give me enough of a lift to be able to do some of those things that would help me with my mood. They allowed me to function but they didn’t cure my depression.
“Depression lies. It tells you you’ve always felt this way and you always will. But you haven’t, and you won’t.”
In the run-up to turning 30 I looked back on the previous 10 years of my life. I had realised that my relationship with myself was not good and that I hated myself. And I realised when I did this mini life review, that whilst I had thought I had been either depressed or ok, I hadn’t really been ok. I had probably been depressed for all of it, but with some deeper dips in there. And I decided that I wasn’t ok with the next 10 years being the same. Fortunately, at this time I was in a place where I could make some of the changes needed, I wasn’t in a deep dip. So where did I start? I’m quite scientific so I researched things that help boost mood or relieve depression. I thought I’d just give them a try, like an experiment, and see if they work. What was the number one thing that kept coming up?
Exercise.
And this is what I mean about the medication. I knew that this apparently would help but when I was really low I could not motivate myself to exercise. I just couldn’t. But this time I was able to. So I found something that worked for me and I committed to just giving it a go. Other things that I tried were being more open with my friends – connecting more and doing things that I enjoyed.
So what did I find out?
Exercise helped.
Feeling more connected to other people helped.
And also changing the way I spoke to myself, learning to shift my mindset, and be kinder to myself helped. Yes, there are things that can boost your mood, like exercise, but if I was continuing to drag myself down with the critical voice in my head then I still wasn’t making progress. I had to do some healing with my relationship with myself and my view of myself. And something else interesting happened.
As I started to creep out of this depression and feel things again a new feeling appeared. Anxiety. I hadn’t really felt anxious before as I had always just felt numb. This was new. But it was also enlightening. I realised that fear was such a big driver in my life. That really everything I did, or didn’t do, was governed by fear. I held myself back from things I really wanted to do because of fear. In social situations I analysed everything and everything I said was carefully thought out, considering what others would think of me if I said that, did that, wore that. I didn’t think I was enough. Good enough, attractive enough, likeable enough.
And so I was afraid that others would see this too, that they wouldn’t like me. I realised how much of a people pleaser I had always been. How I didn’t have an opinion on lots of things, because who cares what I think? And if I did have an opinion I would often bury it down. I’m the middle child so the peacekeeper of the family which may have had a bit of an impact here. And being bullied definitely had an impact on my feelings of not being enough. When you are socially excluded, which is the form my bullying took, when people don’t want to spend time with you, how else do you interpret it but that you are not good enough for them, or not likeable. And once you have that belief, everything else that happens in your life reinforces this belief in some way. Or if it doesn’t, you discard it as a chance occurrence. And this isn’t a conscious thing. I had some friends but this didn’t change that deep-seated belief.
The result of all this?
I didn’t know who I was. I don’t know really if I ever did as this goes back into my teens which were fairly traumatic and unsettled for other reasons. I had spent my whole life worrying about what others thought and who I needed to be so that they would like me that I didn’t know who I actually was. I had completely lost myself under this mountain of ‘shoulds’, these expectations from other people, often expectations that I had just made up.
And so I realised that as well as the exercise and sleep and nutrition that could give my mood a boost from a physiological level, I needed to do some deep work on the psychological level. I needed to work through some of the trauma from my teens, I needed to change my limiting core belief – I am not enough, I needed to change the critical voice in my head and I needed to figure out who I was. Because if I didn’t do these things then nothing would change. The exercise etc. would be giving me a temporary boost but my thoughts and my deep-seated beliefs would keep dragging me back down into that dark place.
Self-help gets a bad rap sometimes but there are some amazing books and resources out there. And over the past two years, I’ve been on a journey of self-help. I haven’t been having therapy but I have been focusing on self-healing. Podcasts have been amazing, TED talks and books. And other things I’ve added in such as journaling and practicing gratitude. These have helped me start to shift my perspective and to get to know myself. And I’ve been living more in the moment, practising mindfulness. This usually doesn’t look like a sit-down meditation practice to me but just going with the flow and trying to be present.
Some other things that have really helped me in this process have been connecting with other people on a much deeper level. I began a counselling training course, having reached a point where I felt ok enough in myself to be able to start this, and as part of this training, there is a lot of self-reflection and exploration of feelings and experiences, which has been challenging but really helped me. I also started attending a meditation evening at a buddhist centre which had a combination of the meditation, becoming in touch with my spiritual side and discussions and connection with others. And of course wild swimming. I cannot begin to describe how transformative my wild swimming was in 2019. From June through to September I swam every day in the river at 7am. Usually with my friend and we would have these amazing deep connections whilst soaking in the serenity and beauty of the river. It was so grounding and uplifting at the same time. It gave me space to process my feelings and to feel connected to myself again. One of the hardest things for me personally during lockdown has been that I can’t swim in the river.
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are. ”
I could keep going on about my own journey but I really want to just offer some advice around the things that have really helped me. If you listen to the podcast you may have heard these before many times. But here you go:
- get to know yourself
Learn to listen to yourself and check-in with yourself. If you know yourself, then you can recognise the warning signs in yourself that something is off, maybe that your mood is dropping and try to do something to stave off that dip
- be kind to yourself
Nurture yourself. Treat yourself as your own best friend. I’ve found it is much easier to motivate myself from a place of love and nurturing that from one of punishment and self-loathing, particularly around exercise.
- connect with other people
I have found that being open and vulnerable with the people in my life has led to much deeper relationships. I feel closer to them. Because I feel more secure in myself I am able to open my heart more to others knowing that I’ll be ok – I can let my barriers down a little
- move your body
Find a form of exercise that works for you and do it regularly. If you can be out in nature this is an added benefit
- have a meaning or purpose in your life
We can be really fixated on purpose but actually, for me, I realised that when I wasn’t helping other people I didn’t feel like I was really living. That might be a bit cliched but it’s true. I honestly feel that my purpose is to help other people (hello coaching) so when my work and how I spent my time didn’t match this, I didn’t feel fulfilled. I wasn’t in alignment.
- find joy in everyday and practice gratitude
I’m putting these together as I think these are both ways that you can shift your mindset. When you focus on seeing the moments of joy that happen each day, or on appreciating things you are grateful for, you are shifting what your brain focuses on. You will start to see more of those things which has a snowball effect.
These have fed into my own personal values and that of Psykhe – to live a joyful, meaningful, and healthy life and wanting to inform, inspire, and empower others to do the same.
I’ve also added in the idea of being kind to yourself, knowing yourself so you can accept yourself and then move forward towards the life that you want. I didn’t go after the life I wanted for so many years because of fear. But I’ve learnt to feel the fear and do it anyway, to challenge myself to just give it a go. Because I know now that I am enough. I can handle it if things go wrong and I can pick myself up and try again.
And so I hope that this gives you some hope too that you can be ok too. If my story has resonated with you then I just want you to know that you are enough. You are amazing. You are loveable. You can be ok. And all of these things might be hard to accept right now but I know that you can reach a point where you can read them, hear them and say them to yourself and really believe them.
And I know that because that’s where I am now.
“No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”
