Depression

Why It Is OK To Give Up On Things That Are Damaging Your Mental Health

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 8 Comments

As many of you may already know, I am an avid reader. I actually think the distraction and escapism I find in books is my key coping mechanism in living with mental health problems. It is for this “books help me feel better” reason, that a few days ago, I started reading the next novel on my shelf.
I know you shouldn’t make snap judgements with books or anything in life, but ten pages in I was well aware that this book was unlikely to be a new favourite (or to put it bluntly, I absolutely despised this book with every fibre of my being and wept for the poor tree who had sacrificed its life to become paper that was then decimated by the words comprising this hideous monstrosity). I won’t say the title of this work of fiction here because I don’t want to put anyone off reading a book that may be just what they are looking for, so for the purpose of this post let’s just pretend the book was called “The Orange Segment” (the reason being that, as people who have been reading my blog for a while will know, I HATE oranges with a passion similar to my hatred of this particular work of fiction).

Now, this was a book I was reading by choice/“for pleasure”, to relax and to try to escape a little from the confines of my head. It was not a book that I was being told I had to read for any educational purposes, and I was not being held up at orange point (very much like gun point but instead of shooting bullets at you the bad guy throws tiny clementines at your head), with the threat of being pelted with vile citrus fruits were I not to finish.
Therefore I was well within my rights to put the book down, pick an alternative, and try again. But I couldn’t.

You see when it comes to books/anything in life, I am adamant that whatever challenges face me, I will not give up. I am the kind of person who will run for a train that has already left just to stop my head beating me up that I am a failure who “didn’t even try to stop the train with their bare hands”, and this determination has served me well in some circumstances. People are always saying that once I set my mind to a task I will jolly well do it, and I have always thought this to be a positive thing. That was until I read The Orange Segment and found myself unable to put down it down, instead being forced to sit staring at an intimidating 500 pages of hell before me. In all honesty the mere thought of reading another word made me burst into uncontrollable sobs, I dreaded the next few weeks of using the tiny bits of free time I have between mental health appointments and rituals to spend time reading something that was making me feel miserable, and it was then that I realised that this internal voice of pressure in my brain yelling at me was utterly ridiculous.

Lately in life, I have noticed that society seems to have some kind of obsession with persevering. WITH EVERYTHING.
They say that if you live in England you are never more than 20 feet away from a rat, but to be honest I feel it is more a fact of you are never more than 20 feet away from some poster telling you something “encouraging” like “Quitters never win”, “Keep calm and carry on”, “Just do it” or the ever popular “Never Give Up”.

To an extent I agree with this “just keep going through the hard stuff” attitude. Without perseverance we would probably all still merely be a sperm cell snuggled up under a blanket somewhere watching repeats of Friends on a very tiny television with no interest in swimming in search of some much discussed “egg”. However, lately I think this obsession with perseverance has become a little overwhelming and the pressure people seem to feel to succeed and not “be a failure” is not helping anyone, especially when you have mental health problems making you miserable and leaving you feeling like a waste of space who can’t achieve anything anyway.

Indeed, mental health issues or not, I think this craze of never quitting anything and quitting being seen as “weak” or “easy” is a lot of pressure for anyone, with nobody offering the possibility that sometimes noticing that something isn’t working and changing your course of action is actually a very strong and difficult thing to do.
Why should people always have to run themselves into the ground in every task they try to accomplish no matter what the consequences? What the hell is wrong with giving up on something, quitting an activity once in a while if it is not helping your emotional wellbeing or making problems you already have worse? Cheryl Tweedy/Cole/Fernandez Versini/Whatever her name is has always told us that in relationships we feel are breaking down we must “fight fight fight fight fight for this love” but does that mean there is no excuse for giving up on something that no longer makes you happy? Do two people have to stay in a relationship that is making them both miserable because to give up is weak? ANSWER ME THAT CHERYL. ANSWER ME THAT.

What about hobbies? What if you decided to run a marathon and then six months into training realised that you had a deep hatred of long distance running (I don’t know why it would take you six months to learn something I grasped in five minutes of cross country at school but I suppose we all learn at different speeds). Should you keep running regardless because in life you should “never give up?”. I am all for perseverance and determination but if something is making you miserable why the hell is it so frowned upon to walk away (at a glacial pace as we have already discovered that we do not enjoy running).

Had I listened to that pressure to not give up, I would have forced myself to read The Orange Segment for no reason other than to shut up this horrible voice in my head telling me to keep going, but after my realisation, I actually challenged myself to put down the book and never to pick it up again. Immediately I was overwhelmed with guilt. I felt I had to pick the book up and finish no matter what, or else I would be some weak and terrible person. It was then that I decided that I needed to write this post for people who struggle with a similar “YOU CANNOT GIVE UP” dictator who is damaging their mental health.
To all of those people, I simply want to let you know that as great as persevering is, sometimes quitting is pretty ok too, and if you need to quit something, be that a job or a damaging relationship that is having negative effects on your mental health, that is ok and does not make you weak.

Now, I do not want this post to be interpreted as a call for everyone to stop doing every activity in life that doesn’t bring them joy and benefit their mental health. If we never did things we didn’t want to do, none of us would go to the dentist, have jobs or meet the in-laws for Sunday lunch (I don’t have in-laws personally but I hear that this kind of thing is something few people look forward to). No, I am not telling you to give up everything that makes you miserable, I am saying give up all the unnecessary baggage and things you put yourself through like bad books or horrendous jobs that are doing nothing for your mental health other than make it worse. If you are similar to me in that you have internalised this pressure to “never give up” to the extreme, when you find yourself doing something you hate, to see whether or not it is a good idea to quit, I would say you should ask yourself one thing, that being:

“Is this going to benefit me in the long term”

This way I think it helps avoid what some people could assume to be a blog post about never doing anything. Indeed, this whole “it is ok to quit” attitude could be used by people to justify giving up on mental health recovery for example. As we all know, recovery is not all jolly fun and challenging yourself to face your greatest fears is not something that makes anyone happy or feels any benefit to mental health…in the short term.
In the long term however, as painful as it is in the moment, challenges in recovery like eating a scary plate of food or touching a door handle are beneficial to your future mental health and are overall good things to persevere through for the pay off, just as revision for exams is worth it when you get the results you achieved by working so hard. Asking this question also avoids “well I hate my job so I am leaving today” issues but it also allows for that too. If you are stuck in a job you hate and have no legal obligation/monetary need to continue, why do it? Just so you can not be seen as not quitting what most people would see as a wise career choice? If you have a job you hate and there is an end goal in sight or a long term benefit of “if I just get through this placement I can advance to a level I actually want to be in”, “I will just keep going until I get another job” or “if I just stick out another year I will have the money to take that course I want to attend” then by all means, keep going.
However, if it is a job you hate, that will only get you a career that will be damaging to your mental health without looking for an alternative, all because of this mental pressure yelling either “it is a good career most people want so you must want it too” or “giving up on my job because of depression means you are weak and a quitter” then dear Lord my friend quit right now. Much like I shouldn’t feel shame for not reading that godforsaken book, nobody should be ashamed for giving up on something if it is bad for them just because the act of “giving up” is bad in itself. If you need to quit your job or quit a hobby that you cannot manage anymore, do it, and don’t ever feel weak or ashamed for taking control and doing what is best for your mental health and wellbeing.

Overall then, if you are reading this and don’t hate anything in your life, then I guess you don’t have to do anything with this post (though thank you very much for reading anyway and feel free to share this with all your friends and family incase they are struggling with mental pressure not to quit too). If you are reading this however, and you can think of something you are doing, whether that be continuing a damaging relationship, something big like a career that is damaging your mental wellbeing, or something small like reading a book you hate, then I would like to challenge you right now/give you permission to quit that detrimental thing and move on to something else that is more worth your time. Not giving up on things at the first sign of trouble is a valuable quality to have, but it is also important to acknowledge that in life, when it comes to finding happiness, sometimes quitting a trip in the wrong direction is the only way to discover the path that is going in the right one.

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Why Baby Steps Are More Important Than New Year’s Resolutions In Mental Health Recovery

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 11 Comments

There are two kinds of people in this world, those who like and make New Year’s resolutions, and those who think that New Year’s resolutions are pointless and should actually be renamed as “things you try to do all year but give up on by February”. I myself however, am somewhat in the middle of these two kinds of people (much like I am on the whole Marmite debate. I don’t love it, nor do I hate it. I am truly indifferent…WHAT DOES THIS MEAN).
I actually like the idea behind New Year’s resolutions. I think it is good to see the new year as a chance to improve on whatever happened in the previous one, see it as a fresh start and a clean slate without all the baggage you have dragged around for the past twelve months. That said, I have not made a New Year’s resolution myself since 2010, and that is because I feel that when people make these promises to change, they are far too ambitious and unattainable. They set themselves tasks like “fly to the moon” or “play tennis at Wimbledon” when they haven’t yet thought to apply to astronaut school or pick up a racket. Back in 2010 I made three new years resolutions, those being:

  1. Be happy all the time
  2. No anorexia
  3. No OCD

As midnight approached I felt a surge of excitement. The moment that clock chimed (lets pretend we still live in a time where it is common to have a grandfather clock that chimes..it is a nicer image than me staring at the digital numbers on my phone waiting for 23:59 to become 00:00), my life was going to change, I was determined, and I had made a promise to myself that 2011 was going to be better. Then it happened. The clock struck midnight, and suddenly my carriage that had brought me to the party turned into a pumpkin and I lost a glass slipper!…Wait..no sorry…got mixed up in the life of someone else a little…no, what actually happened was the clock struck midnight and I felt a weight fall from my shoulders (much like a glass slipper was slipping from the sole of a future princess…)

Finally 2011 was here and I was recovered, I never had to do an OCD ritual again, I could eat and I would be smiling for the rest of my life. Looking back I can’t believe I was so deluded, but the first thing I did in 2011 was to run to the bathroom to wash my hands once, just to prove that I was in control again and could stop easily after one squirt of soap. But I didn’t stop. After the squirt had been collected in to my hands my thoughts immediately burst in and I found myself rubbing my hands together vigorously with the same urgency as I had done in 2010. I became incredibly stuck, thoughts flying so rapidly that before I knew it a significant amount of time had passed, over 100 squirts of soap had been used and the only thing I could see through the tears of despair and frustration was a basin full of bubbles. As I went back downstairs to join the others still milling around drinking champagne and watching the odd late firework banging about in the distance, I felt totally defeated. I had failed. I hadn’t even kept my resolution for 24 hours before engaging in the behaviours I told myself I was finished with, and my hopes for change fizzled out like an old sparkler. Granted I was being a bit dramatic by seeing the whole year as ruined and giving up because of one ritual, but logically because of the strict boundaries of “No” OCD, I had in essence failed, so what was the point carrying on? Clearly recovery was impossible.
It is only now looking back that I realise that the problem with my resolution and the reason I had “failed” was entirely the wording and dramatic nature of the resolution I had made. I didn’t set myself a manageable goal of trying to reduce the amount of time in the shower over the course of the year or anything reasonable, a goal that would focus on steady progress with potential slip ups yet still a continuous effort to push forward. Instead I had set myself the impossible task of transforming from a person who had been dominated by mental health problems for the last 7 years to a “normal person” in less than 7 seconds, which is pretty much like someone setting the goal of “flying to the moon” without realising all the steps it takes to get to that point.

Admittedly, I have always struggled with people telling me to “take things steady” and “take baby steps” when it comes to recovery. I am a very black and white person, either I am better or I am not, “baby steps” and little goals like “exercise for five minutes less per day” do not help me. I want total freedom from this mental health cage, not just the same cage with an ocean view.
However, my attitude to all this recently underwent a bit of refurbishment when I was glancing through pictures on Facebook and stumbled across a photograph that I posted online in 2014 to commemorate the fact that I had graduated from university, and for the first time, as I looked at the picture, taking “baby steps” made some sense.

babysteps
As you can see this picture is a comparison shot between little 4 year old me on my first day of school, and 22 year old me graduating from university after a rocky 18 years bumbling through the education system (I look pretty happy in that picture but that was because my mum took it before I found out I wasn’t allowed to keep the funny hat and gown. That was a major disappointment. The only thing I got out of that day was a piece of paper saying I had a theology degree. Who the hell wants that? I didn’t go to university to be educated, I went for the damn hat!)

Looking at these pictures it is very black and white. In one I have a degree (and a marvellous hat), and in the other, I have no degree (and no hat. 4 year old Katie had a hard life). That said, though there is a stark difference in achievement between those two pictures, it isn’t because I made a grand resolution at the age of 4 that changed my life in a second. When I was 4, the thought of getting a degree one day had not entered my mind.
Imagine if someone went back in time now, found little 4 year old me and said “go and get a degree in theology this year”. I would probably have cried (and asked what the hell theology was). When I was 4 there was no way I could just go off and get a degree. I had birthday parties to plan for my teddy bears, letters to write to Santa and hopscotch competitions to attend! I couldn’t tie my shoes yet let alone write essays on Saint Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo (genuine name…Hippo…it has been years but I am still amused), so setting that goal for me at age four would have been overly ambitious and basically would have set me up to fail.
Had this time travelling person told me to go to school that day however instead of getting a degree right then and there, I would have probably looked at them, nodded and then got on with it. When doing so I wouldn’t have realised that me turning up for a morning of finger painting was actually the first part of my journey to that oh so lovely yet tragically temporary hat (and a degree I am now stuck with forever), but it was. Without achieving all those little steps in-between, the sports days, the story books and the words of wisdom over the years, I would never have got that degree (actually maybe cancel the sports day bit..I don’t think they were particularly important…).

My 2010 new years resolutions to totally recover in the blink of an eye then, were basically the equivalent of me telling 4 year old Katie to go and get a degree before the little tike had learned to read, and it is in realising this that I can see the value in making new years resolutions, as long as they are the baby steps to get you to your goal rather than a leap to success that no Olympic long jumper could make even with a springboard.
If you want to set yourself a resolution for 2017, make a resolution that you can do over time, that allows for mistakes and gradual progress rather than instantaneous results. If you want to recover completely from OCD, make your goal to try and reduced the number of times you get caught in rituals over the course of the year. If you want to recover from depression don’t set the goal of being happy all the time, simply think about the things that could one day make you happy and go out trying to achieve them, even if that goal is just phoning up to enquire about a course. It is the same with progress in eating disorder behaviours as well as any other mental health condition, and though admittedly it takes a lot longer than the midnight miracle method I wished for in 2010, I think it is the only way to make it through this journey.

My hope in life is that one day I will be able to take a picture as someone who is no longer struggling with mental illness and to see it alongside that 4 year old me as a sign of how far I have come in ways other than education, and working towards that is my goal for the next twelve months. 2017 is not going to be “my year”, the year I change, recover totally and get a brand new life, but it is another year in which I will continue my 2016 resolution of doing all I can, listening to professionals, talking and attending all appointments, to one day make that massive goal of recovery. Taking my medication this morning has not made me better, but hopefully it is a baby step along the way.

Happy New Year everyone x

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How To Get Through New Year’s Eve When You Have Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 10 Comments

If you are one of those people who really struggles around Christmas time what with all the anxiety of social interaction, disruptions to routine, pressure to be “merry” and bountiful buffets of sausage rolls and Christmas pudding…THEN CONGRATULATIONS!
If you are reading this that means it is now Boxing Day and the bulk of Christmas is over for another year (except for Boxing Day obviously but if you struggle to manage that then my advice is to hide away from everyone in a box and say that you are celebrating the holiday in the “literal sense”).
So hooray for you mentally ill winter holiday fearing person! You don’t have to go through the celebratory stress anymore! You can pack the tinsel and paper hats away now, sit back and relax into your usual routine and …wait…I have just been told that celebrations are not actually over…apparently we still have New Year’s Eve to get through…the celebration with yet more social interaction, overt displays of happiness, buffets (albeit with slightly stale Christmas pudding by now) and crowds of people disrupting day to day life…ah…well this is awkward..sorry about that…seriously who put these two holidays so close together? This is just too much pressure for the already anxious around the world! Next year I am moving to Beijing to celebrate new year in late January/February with the Chinese…

Now, with New Year, we are all forced once again to face many of the fears we already had to deal with at Christmas (aka the aforementioned necessity to be jolly and crowds of strangers/family members). However there is also an added extra stress with New Years, that being the obsessive need to reflect upon the past twelve months whether we like it or not.
For some people, with or without mental health problems, this can be a pleasant experience and the stroll down memory lane can be a nostalgic jaunt lit by sunlight and rainbows. If that is the case then that is fantastic and jolly good on you if you are finding yourself in that situation. All too often though, memory lane can be a dirty back alley scattered with garbage bags of bad days and regret that you really wish the bin men would hurry up and remove. Everyone has bad days (even Mr Happy from the Mr Men books…they just didn’t publish that story), but at New Year for some reason we don’t just look back at those bad days feeling pleased that they are over, rather we look back feeling guilty and ashamed that they happened at all and all the things that we were unable to achieve because of them.

If you have a Facebook or Instagram account it is likely that the next week or so will see an onslaught of collages uploaded displaying all the happy times people want to remember of 2016 and that is great. I love seeing all the happiness the year has brought to my friends and all of the things they have achieved. Lord knows I would be unhappy were they to have had terrible years, yet the issue with these collages is the compulsion we feel to compare our lives to them and the collages in our heads.
Many of these collages for example will involve things like images of new high end jobs, new houses, weddings and holidays abroad. I think this is hard for anyone (I know a lot of “sane” people who find New Year difficult for this reason too), but the difficult thing when you are struggling with a mental health problem is that you are more likely not to have done these things not because you didn’t have the opportunities, but because your mental health physically prevented you from reaching them. I know being mentally ill is called having a “mental disability” when I have to fill out forms or applications, yet still I think it is easy to forget just how disabling these mental health problems can be, how dramatic the impact they have on lifestyle.

My mental health is so unpredictable and takes up so much of my time that I am unable to hold down a regular “serious” job. For this reason I do not have an income or any money to rent a room in someone’s shed let alone buy a house, and unfortunately in my life mental health problems have been the ruin of all previous romantic relationships (either that or my funny looking face of course) let alone marriages/weddings. In terms of the rigid nature of my OCD rituals, fear of contamination and my anorexia driven inability to eat outside of my house, I also cannot travel on holidays in my own country never mind abroad. There is probably a very lyrical way to express how this feels, but in summary, it sucks.
This year two of my best friends went to Greece and I would have loved to have gone with them, but it was simply out of the question if thinking realistically. Seeing photos of people on holiday or abroad building orphanages in faraway lands, happily married or running their own company then can make you feel inferior, a feeling that is often exacerbated by the common question of “how was your year?”

In comparison to many people, looking back at my year you could say that I have achieved nothing. I haven’t moved up the career ladder or taken a step onto the property ladder (the pressure to climb ladders these days is OVERWHELMING), and I haven’t found the love of my life or helped build a medical centre in Africa which will help save the lives of orphans in need of urgent treatment. If I look at it bleakly, I have simply carried out another 365 days of rituals that achieve nothing outside of the confines of my head, been hospitalised against my will again and basically carried out the same year in year out routine that I have rehearsed every year for the past decade. So what was the point? What did I achieve? Well, this is where I think all us marbleless folk need to give ourselves a bit of a break and not think about the things we didn’t do, but realise the value in all the little things we did do. If you are looking back at 2016 and are feeling that you have made no progress or step advancing you on your journey through life, I can guarantee you are wrong.
The word achievement is not limited to describing extravagant weddings, a three piece suite in your new lounge or a bungee jump across a beautiful landscape in New Zealand. An achievement can be anything.
Ask yourself, this year did you ever get out of bed even on a day you really didn’t feel able to face the world? WELL DONE YOU. Did you speak to a fellow human being even though your stomach was a mass of churning social anxiety? FANTASTIC. Did you put on clothes? Eat Breakfast? Open a door or do any little thing, despite fear in your heart and a head screaming all it could to prevent you from doing so. WHAT A CHAMPION YOU ARE. What a mental illness fighting warrior of epic proportions. What an achievement.

If you have simply managed to keep yourself alive, survive and make it through another 365 days with a disability then THAT is something worth celebrating and something for which you should be incredibly proud, even if you can’t exactly take a photo of that achievement to whack up on Facebook.
If you are reading this it is literally impossible for you to claim that you have had another year wasted or another year of not doing anything. Even if you come back at me with “I haven’t kept myself alive, I am in hospital/being held against my will with staff who are doing that for me”, I can come back at you and say without any doubt that you have achieved something because you are reading these words. Somehow you have found the strength to go onto the internet, click a link and made the decision to read it, and in my eyes, that is pretty damn fantastic. Also, if you are reading this, you have achieved the task of making me smile by listening to my nonsense and make me feel less alone, so that is two brilliant things right there in the past five minutes.

New Year’s Eve is of course still going to be difficult and no matter what I say, the parties, the crowds and the reflection of the past 12 months is going to be a challenge. Nevertheless, if all you have done is wake up today, I would say you have at least one good thing to reflect on rather than feel ashamed or guilty. When those collages pop up on social media, remember that you have every right to be very proud of yourselves, as I know I certainly am. Take care fellow warriors, I will speak to you in 2017 and again we will get through that year together. Stay safe and take care,

All my love, best wishes, hugs and Happy New Year vibes

Katie – Born Without Marbles xxx

newyeartrophy

Mental Health Letter To Santa

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 11 Comments

So, as anyone with an advent calendar will be aware (or any kind of calendar to be fair…ooh…a rhyme), it is currently six days until Christmas, meaning that there are six days to submit any Christmas lists you have out there requesting specific presents for December 25th.

Ever one for being prepared, I have had my list written for some time, however unlike the ingratitude of children out there (that is genuinely the collective term for a group of children. Whoever came up with that term clearly wasn’t a big fan of the infant population…), I will not be sending my list to Santa in Lapland. It is 2016 for goodness sake, I am 24 years old and I am certainly not that stupid/deluded.
Of course Santa doesn’t receive these children’s letters! Do people really think that Santa’s magical workshop is in a location known to human beings and delivered to via the imminently striking postal service? Let’s not be silly. Obviously the real grotto is in a magical land unreachable by the Royal mail, and being the age of technology it is clear that Santa is only able to receive Christmas lists via emails/the internet (think it through kids. Bet you feel pretty daft right now. Yeah. You should do).

Annoyingly I cannot seem to find the actual email address for the real Santa this year (he changes it every few months for security purposes), so this week I wondered if any of you readers out there would mind me being a little selfish and posting my letter to Santa here on my blog ready for when he comes to check in as he does every Monday (he is a big fan). I promise it is appropriate for my blog too as it is a mental health related present that I am asking for, so feel free to read it yourselves even if you are not Santa Claus. All that being said, here goes…

Dear Santa/Mr Claus

Hello! It is Katie again (the extremely well behaved one with glasses), and I hope that whenever you are reading this you are having a good day and that all is well with you, the reindeer, the elves and of course Mrs Claus.

I realise it is a bit unconventional for me to be contacting you via blog, but I hope it will be Ok and an acceptable way for me to request the present I would like.
For Christmas this year, if it is not too much trouble, I would like to please have the gift of five minutes without any mental health problems whatsoever.

You may be wondering what exactly I intend to do with this five minutes, yet though I have been thinking about it a lot, I haven’t firmly made a decision as there are so many options to choose from.
One of my first thoughts was to spend the five minutes joining in with a meal with my family, but then I realised that such a thing would be difficult to manage in five minutes and changed it to having a hot chocolate or Christmas drink with my mum in one of those coffee shops with a sparkly festive menu and Christmas cups. I often see mothers and their offspring taking five minutes out of a Christmas shopping trip to refuel with a steaming mug of cream topped cocoa, and I think it looks like fun/is something my mum would appreciate me being able to do. She often looks at the mothers and their children we see in local coffee shops and sighs with a wistful “I wish we could do that” look in her eye, so I would like to give the experience a go for the both of us.
Speaking of beverages I also thought of using the mental illness free time to perhaps try my first cocktail as I feel that is an experience most 24 year olds have had by now (probably several times), and because of my anorexia I have always been too afraid to try one. I don’t know what kind of cocktail I would like to try exactly, but I am thinking one of those ones that comes in a tall glass and is orange with swirly red syrup at the bottom that spirals up through the surface of the drink like a liquid sunrise. With an umbrella (and a glacé cherry if that isn’t asking too much…)

Then again aside from eating disorder related things I also thought about using my potential gift to do some things that I struggle with for OCD reasons. I have always wanted to hold open a door or open a door for someone struggling with too many shopping bags. I really do hate having to be rude and stand back as I watch them stumble under the weight of their 5p carriers because I am too frightened of a door handle. More importantly though, I would really like the opportunity to hug my Mum, Dad or any of my friends and family without having a panic. I know that sometimes I am able to hug certain people in certain situations if I have prepared/have a shower or change of clothes nearby, but I would like to be able to hug my loved ones not when it is deemed as “safe” or “allowed” by my OCD. I want to be able to fling my arms around a friend or family member just because I want them to know that I love them, and for this I feel I would need the requested five minutes of sanity to ensure I could do this without the screaming in my head that I know would occur were I to do this on any other day. Maybe as an extra “stocking filler” you could help me round up all the people I want to hug in one place so that I can use the five minutes effectively and not leave anyone out of my sudden ability to cuddle.

Actually no…wait…I think I have decided what I would like to do with my present should it be possible to be delivered this year (you don’t need to dress it up or anything as I know “time” is notoriously difficult to get wrapping paper around). Okay so were I to be given my five minutes without mental health problems, I would like to spend it doing absolutely nothing. I just want to sit there and know what it is like to experience silence.
I don’t want to have my brain yelling at me about calories, germs or potential suicide plans, I would just like it to shut up for once and allow me the privilege of thinking nothing at all. I know that after the five minutes all the noise would have to return and I would go back to the constant screaming voices in my mind, but still I think it would be nice just to see what life would be like without them. Who knows, maybe not being terrified all the time isn’t all it is cracked up to be and maybe I will be disappointed, but I would still like to experience it just so I could know for myself.

So yeah…that is what I would like for Christmas this year, simply five minutes of life without mental illness. Obviously I understand this is quite a difficult present to construct and not something the elves can whack up in a few hours with a hammer and few bits of plywood, so if it really isn’t possible then I would like to please ask for a penguin instead. I don’t mind which species, just as long as it is a happy penguin who likes spending time with me (and who can waddle. The ability to waddle is imperative).

Anyway I think I have taken up enough of your time making my demands so I will leave you to get on with your December preparations. As always I promise a mince pie, glass of almond milk, carrots for the reindeer and cookies for the elves will be left on my doorstep come December 24th in anticipation of your arrival. Send my love to all the family and have a Merry Christmas.

Yours gratefully,

Katie Simon Phillips (again, the extremely well behaved one with glasses) xxxx
There we go! Christmas present all ready and requested for the year! Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that my wish will be granted but I suppose that even if it isn’t I will potentially be getting a penguin in six days which is pretty cool too. I really hope that everyone out there is having as good/manageable a festive season as possible and that your heads are kind to you over the next week. Kind heads is the present I would give all of you reading this if I could, as lord knows you all deserve them. I promise I will be thinking of each and every one of you next Sunday. Remember you are never alone and that together we can get through this.

Take care everyone and Merry Christmas x

santaletter

Managing Christmas With Depression

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 4 Comments

In day to day life, I think there is a certain pressure to be happy.
People are always singing about looking on the “bright side of life”, and whenever it is time to celebrate the anniversary of someone’s birth we tunelessly make our way through the all too familiar song that usually comes prior to the blowing out of some candles on a cake, a song that urges the person to feel joy that they are no longer entrapped by the walls of a womb. Even at Easter or New Year the pressure to have a “Happy” time is plastered into the holiday by cards and pictures willing joy at that time of year (this is why I like Lent. There is no pressure to be happy at Lent. Good for you Lent.)
Obviously, this is all makes a lot of sense as people want other people to be happy during celebratory times or indeed all year round. It would be a pretty miserable world if every birthday we received cards that said things like “I hope you have a horrendous day and that everyone forgets to buy you a cake” or “I hope you spend the day wishing you were back in the womb as I have since the day you were born”, and it certainly would make party hats and balloons look a little out of place.
Nevertheless, of all the times we are told to be happy, there is no holiday with a greater pressure for merriment than the month long December festival of Christmas. If you can be happy then that is great, but when you have depression this pressure for jovial smiles and antler hats can be incredibly difficult and is one of the reasons I think people with mental illnesses often find Christmas to be one of the most difficult times of the year.

Seriously, the pressure is everywhere, both from fellow humans and even foods that pop up in the bakery aisle at the supermarket, grinning at you from their cellophane packets like it is the easiest thing in the world (yes gingerbread men. I am talking about you. Smug bastards…On another note can someone please tell me why gingerbread men have buttons…as far as I can see they are naked little creatures and without clothes I cannot see the necessity for holding those non existent garments together with bright Smartie buttons…are their clothes invisible? In which case why can I see their buttons…or is the gingerbread man actually a biscuit version of a normal man in a gingerbread suit of which the buttons are a part…Oh my goodness I bet that is it…the outside of a gingerbread man is actually a costume to disguise the nature of the fact we are all eating standard biscuit men instead of these fictional gingerbread creatures…we have all been lied to…TRUST NOBODY THIS FESTIVE SEASON).

There is even pressure to laugh at meal times what with the compulsory paper hats and jokes fluttering from the folds of exploding crackers, although I do have to admit, I rather like the prizes you get in crackers. I swear every box contains at least one cracker with a bag of marbles in, which is odd considering nobody plays marbles these days…suffice it to say I have not won a stash myself yet (I do however have a life time supply of tiny playing cards and mini screwdrivers.)
Nevertheless, all this forced joy makes it seem as if people see December as a time we can all put aside our difficulties for the month just so we don’t ruin carol singing around the tree, or setting fire to a Christmas pudding with our miserable faces in the background of every photograph.

Indeed the difficulty of Christmas with mental health problems is evidenced by the fact that suicide rates go up around this time of year. I don’t know why exactly this is, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that it is this pressure to be happy that is the cause.
Having depression and admitting to having spent three days crying into a pillow is hard all year round, but at least all year round it is more acceptable. At Christmas any sign of negativity is immediately rebuked with the instruction “cheer up! It is Christmas”, as if a bit of tinsel and a few fairy lights should be enough to cure any depression. You can’t even cancel plans at Christmas if you are too unwell or anxious to leave the house, without being charged with the accusation that you are a “party pooper” (when really it is your mental illness that has been doing all the pooping on the party rather than something you have decided to do for laughs).

At Christmas then, the pressure to be happy means that people feel more unable to talk about the negative things going on for fear of bringing everyone down. Every time you are greeted by a family member you haven’t seen in a while for one of the annual gatherings they will ask things like “how have you been?”, a difficult topic to discuss when “Pretty suicidal and this is the first time I have got out of my duvet fort all week” is not deemed an acceptable answer. For this reason, many people feel the need to lie about how they truly feel and have to grit their teeth, lying about how they are “not too bad” whilst simultaneously having to swallow the lonely truth that they wish they could reach out to someone with for comfort rather than suffer in silence, and If there is one thing guaranteed to make a mental health problem worse, it is suffering in silence. Maybe suicide rates go up then not just because of the stress and debt as postulated in the papers, but because this pressure to be happy leaves people more ashamed than usual and unable to ask for help.

Perhaps another reason as to the rise in number of those who feel there is no escape from their pain other than to end their existence, is that everyone else in the world always looks especially happy. Of course there is a good chance that they aren’t happy and we are all hiding the truth behind toothy grins together, but seeing everyone around you feeling something and being caught up in a merriment your brain will not allow, can make you feel just as lonely and isolated as the inability to speak out honestly.

Obviously I am not criticising the general population for being happy at Christmas, nor am I blaming the rise in suicide rates on the smiley faces of ginger spiced baked goods (those would be some pretty powerful biscuits), but I guess I just want people to know that if it were possible for the mentally ill to set aside our aching emptiness of depression for the festive period, every sufferer would do just that. When we are miserable at Christmas it is not because we haven’t got into the Christmas spirit or because we want to ruin cutting the Christmas cake. I personally wish I could buck up and ensure my family have a “happy Christmas” but I can’t, and it is hard to feel guilty about it every year.

Similarly, if you yourself are a sufferer and struggling with the need to be merry and bright this winter, I wanted to write this post to let you know that not being happy and able to throw caution and anxiety into the wind so you can enjoy yourself, doesn’t mean you are a bad person nor does it mean that you are alone. As you sit there grinning at the dinner table holding back tears you know rationally have no right to be there, as lonely as it feels, you are not alone. If you are struggling please do not feel such a pressure to be silent that things end up getting worse. More people need to speak about living with depression as Christmas if the problem is ever going to be solved, so admitting that you need help is not a sign of weakness or shame. Instead it is admitting that things are not as simple as checking the date on the calendar to see how happy you should be for the day, and that depression is not easily solved by a bit of festive ribbon.

If you are reading this with or without mental health problems I of course wish you a fabulous Christmas, but then again do not feel any pressure. Maybe this year is just about having an “alright” Christmas or simply getting through Christmas at all, and it is a bucket full of “have an OK Christmas” wishes that I am sending to you now. However you feel, it is ok, you have every right to feel it, and you are certainly not alone. Take care everyone. x

depressedchristmas