Counselling

There’s a big reason why counselling doesn’t work for everybody.

You have to talk.

There’s no quick fix whereby you just walk in and within a session you feel more at ease and calmer within yourself, with a more clearer understanding of all of your problems.

You still have to talk!

There lies the biggest problem of all.

For me, do I think I need more counselling, probably.

However, I also know that I’m not ready to open up on old wounds to a brand new stranger and go over old ground once again.

Support groups are the same, you get out of them what you are prepared to put in.

You have to really open up and be honest, not necessarily to your counsellor, but to yourself.

Talking about yourself and your own difficulties are a lot harder said than done.

My own therapy is to write and construct my thoughts to release my emotions and that is often a challenge all in itself.

I would like nothing more to just get everything out, to let all of my emotions just pour out once and for all, however there has to be some sort of process to it all.

To understand your why’s.

Counselling for me worked 5 years ago, so I’m definitely not against it, but at the same time I fear it.

I made a conscious decision on my very first session to be completely open and honest, otherwise there was absolutely no reason why I was attending.

My counsellor was the first person I told about suicide, she was the first person I genuinely and vulnerably opened up to about lots of things.

I felt reassured as she was a professional figure, yet was there to listen, sometimes guide and support me.

Counselling isn’t what you expect, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

The fear, the heightened anxiety that builds and continues to build until you feel that you can no longer breath.

Wondering how much you should say or how much you should hold back on.

What if they don’t understand.

What if they don’t believe you.

What if they think you are a danger to yourself.

It wasn’t the case at all.

Just a professional person who sat in a room with you each week and listened.

Each session after, I would sleep for hours, the first session until the following day.

Each time trying to make sense of all my jumbled up thoughts; thoughts I was frustrated at myself that I couldn’t make sense of them.

With depression you feel as though you lose your mind and you do.

Everything that you once knew, temporarily gone.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, but no idea what the picture is supposed to look like.

Piece by piece you have to attempt to put yourself back together once again.

Patience is really the key and alongside it being patient and understanding with yourself.

It’s hard, unmeasurably hard.

From the outside nothing changes, maybe you appear more distant and a little lost, but nothing against the unnoticeable eye.

You withdraw and go in on yourself, as that is a coping mechanism to ward off noticeable action.

By doing what people perceive as nothing is sometimes better than doing what people perceive as something.

Support groups can help an individual but at the same time can aid your setbacks.

Listening to others either reminds you of where you’ve been, what may still face you or troubles you can sometimes get lost in.

You can’t be a support network for others whilst you yourself are struggling.

The only person who can get you out of your darkness is the same person who was dragged into it.

Yourself.

Everyone wants to help but not everyone can understand.

Not until it happens to you.

It takes more than listening.

Mental Health; no one wants to see you suffer, some people in your life are just too close to really open up and divulge your thoughts, emotions and deep down your raw and vulnerable state.

Some offer to listen but you know many won’t be able to handle your darkness.

It’s incredibly difficult to explain your thoughts when at many times you don’t understand them for yourself.

To feel the way you feel, constantly.

To see that look.

That look of it sounds awful but it can’t really be that bad.

That look or dropped silence in their voice of I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.

Sometimes it’s just easier to say nothing at all.

Counselling may help me again in the future, but I have to want to be open, truly open and I’m not ready for that.

I don’t want to explore old ground for what it might bring up a second time around.

I’ve been looking at and researching cognitive behaviour therapy, looking at the thoughts and behaviours of my life and how depression and mental health play an active and at times a controlling part in that.

CBT is my likely next new direction, to not visit the rawness of my past but focus on how it effects my current day to days and work on my whys to further understand them and learn to accept how my life has become.

Counselling only works if the person who is suffering finds the courage within them to share their own truths.

I won’t stop sharing my own.

Suicide

Even the word scares me and so it should.

Last Friday I wasn’t totally in control, to be honest I don’t think I was in any control at all.

I was already in self destruction mode and not just that night, I’ve been teetering on the brink for awhile now.

I have had depression before and if I’m honest with myself I’m probably in another cycle of it right now and as much as I hate it, it will always accompany me throughout my life.

The pandemic or whatever you want to call it has changed everyone’s lives, it has really turned them upside down.

It’s been challenging, I know I’ve already had an emotional breakdown throughout the last 5 months with the deaths of two friends.

Both amazing people and a huge loss to everyone who knew them.

For me, I had suffered with depression unknownly for a long time, possibly even back to 15 years ago.

During that time I experienced a breakdown although didn’t realise what it was or really acknowledge it either.

I wanted to forget it happened, it showed what I thought was a flaw in my character, a weakness, although now I recognise it to be a strength.

A stressful period of my life that I couldn’t contain any longer and broke down.

I wish I knew back then what it was as the waves of episodes just got stronger and stronger each and every time they took hold.

During this period of time in the last 5 months especially, these depressional episodes have come back and they are becoming more and more frequent.

It’s easy to convince yourself that if you can get to a certain point you’ll be alright again, only for the goalposts to continue to keep moving away from you.

Who knew back in March that we would still be where we are in August with no real end date in sight.

I’ve wrote a lot over the course of the last few months and with it some of what I have written has brought out so much emotion for me, and with it many hard to read articles for everyone else.

In the last few days I’ve written two pieces that will have been extremely upsetting for anyone that has seen them.

On Friday night I wasn’t in control and in a moment I was in trouble, mentally I had gone.

My biggest trigger has always been about escape and disappearing, those thoughts were prominent within my mind.

Alcohol played a part but not like you would think it would.

I drink because I enjoy it, but at times that enjoyment that maybe projected outwardly takes a sinister turn inwardly.

Drinking has been my vice which helps to take the pain away.

I’m not an alcoholic, I know what you are thinking, that’s what an alcoholic would say.

But I’m really not, I’m a social drinker and once I’m set I stay out because I don’t have anything or anyone to return back home for.

I never have, certainly not consistently or long-term.

If I’m at home, I won’t go out, I’ve found my home to become a safe place where I can close the door on the world and just breathe, no pretense of how I should be.

Many people think they know what’s best for me, they tell me so often that’s what I think or how I should behave, but your not me, I’m the only one who has that privilege.

I’ve mentioned a few times before that I have only had one suicidal episode, that is true.

It would have taken place almost 9 years ago in my home that I now call somewhere safe.

Right at the start I said even the word suicide scares me and because of it something scared me on Friday night.

Quite a few things did.

The fact that I wasn’t in control and the fact I woke up in my own bed unaware of how I got home and from opening my eyes not knowing where I was.

I said as easy as that was on that evening it could have been just as easy as being discovered too.

The post I shared on Saturday especially may have been a hard read for many, but it could have easily been a heartfelt and emotional message from family that I sadly passed away.

I wasn’t in any sort of control on Friday and that scares me, even if I was found everyone would make an assumption that it would be suicide and that scares me too.

I’m not suicidal regardless of whether you believe me or not.

Rewind back almost 4 years ago.

In late October that’s when I was first diagnosed with depression, despite suffering in an unknowning silence long before it.

I was completely gone, in the last couple of weeks before it, I was probably averaging around 2 hours of broken sleep per night.

Constantly on edge, paranoid that someone may spot a sign that would unravel my life and spot a weakness that I had no idea why I constantly felt the way I did.

I had lost my mind, my ambition, my determined nature had dried up, I had no purpose, every day enjoyment had long disappeared for everything that I once did.

I was a shell of a human being and I couldn’t trust what my mind was telling me.

I often say how do you even comprehend how to explain something to someone else when you don’t understand it yourself.

I was lost, a lot like I am now.

Within those 4 years I had to learn to trust myself again, to build myself back up from what many associate as rock bottom but being down there it feels a lot worse.

Gradually with an incredible amount of patience and a constant feel of frustration I started to believe in myself once again.

The passions and loves that I had for the life I had created started to return.

I learnt how to enjoy life again and with it had an appreciation and love for myself once again.

This pandemic taking away the necessity for it all, it’s ruined my life.

Back in March and more so the turn of the year I had plans and goals and a determination to succeed like none other.

The last 5 months have placed a lot of things on hold, all you really had was hope, but as each week passed by and then each month, here we are, still no further forward.

What dawned on me this weekend was that 4 years ago I rebuilt my life and each challenge that turned into a passion played its part as a coping mechanism to fight off my mental health and help to level me out.

5 months is a long time without the things that help to level you out, but as time passes you still had hope.

Last week I received news on one of my passions being placed on hold for the foreseeable future, certainly until this virus was more controlled.

That undoubtably started this particular trigger of events, however the next time it will be something else.

Triggers for me is a strange one, the only recurring one I have is disappearing, clothes in a bag and gone in the night, on Friday that was the first time I’ve really had that thought come to the forefront of my mind and stay there for a moment of time.

With triggers I can recognise them afterwards and adjust accordingly but in this uncertain time I can’t adjust to something that doesn’t have an end date.

And with it nothing to look forward too.

Going into work is my saving grace at the moment, it brings some level of structure and routine, but work doesn’t level me off.

My passions help to level me off and without them not only do I feel lost, I feel all hope has gone with it.

My future is to breathe, work on even smaller steps and try and find a new passion that helps me to level out.

The word suicide should scare everyone but this is happening more than you care to think about.

I’ve said in the last few weeks especially that I don’t want to be alive, that I feel as though I’m punishing myself for being alive in a life I have no control over, and in a life that simply isn’t getting any better.

My life generally is difficult and can be hard and tough at times, depression looks for any weakness so it can strike and take hold, and once it does take hold there’s no shaking it off.

Yes you can recover but it will always be there with you too.

I respect it as much as I hate it, I wish it didn’t affect me, but it does.

I just need to try and find another way.

27th December 2011

Here I am once again in bed, covers pulled right over my head blocking out all the light as I write this.

Whenever I feel subdued there’s a period of time whereby I’m collecting my thoughts before I contemplate writing.

Once I do, I feel like I can breathe again.

It’s a good thing when I write, but today and certainly once I press the publish button or share it, it definitely won’t be.

In the last few days, maybe a week or subconsciously even longer I’ve been thinking of the title of this article.

It’s a date that I won’t ever forget, no different to a birthday just for completely different reasons.

It’s a date that is life changing for me, but it could have been life changing for many more.

My life as I know it to be is hard and difficult, from the outside as with everyone you see what you choose to see.

I shared today snippets of what many people I know probably don’t see nor recognise, that flatness feeling is there every single morning of every single day.

No let up.

Each and every day I wake up flat and have to adjust my internal settings to be able to go about my day.

Sometimes all it takes is listening to music, sometimes it’s planning out my day, sometimes nothing works and I stay in bed all day.

2020 has been a challenge in itself for everyone, whether they care to admit it or not.

You often hear the phrase ‘money makes the world go round’ but through my experiences what you miss most will always be routine.

Every time I post, I do it for me as my own release, but so many offer me their advice.

Have you phoned a helpline?

Are you on medication?

Why not go for a walk or a run.

You’ll feel better.

Mental health is a complex illness, you certainly wouldn’t want to be in my head for a day.

I wish I didn’t have to either.

27th December 2011 was a day that could have been oh so different.

It lives with me as a painful reminder but it could have easily been a painful anniversary to family especially.

I have previously said I have this constant feeling of not wanting to be here, as I do feel it’s easier for me not to exist.

Instead I have to live with all of this pain that is inside of me, that constantly reminds me of how lucky I am to still be here.

In the last few days I’ve thought what would life be like now had those events taken the other turn.

8 years on, approaching a 9th anniversary.

Many of the people I know now wouldn’t even know who I was.

Some would have seen a name in a paper or a mutual friend asking if they knew me.

Some friends would had never even heard my name and the friendships we have and the way we have altered each others lives would be lost, with so many different outcomes.

Family, at that time, I would never have met 3 of my 4 nephews and nieces.

I would never have seen them grow up and develop their individual characteristics.

Two brothers and loving parents heartbroken with an uncertainty on why I felt that was my only choice.

8 years on would you still remember me?

I can’t even remember much of myself 8 years ago, but I can remember every single detail of that night.

It was too close.

The aftermath I would have left behind and the open scars that may have never self healed.

With death the pain stops for the individual, but the pain then starts for those you leave behind.

I live with so much pain, with so much guilt, I try to help people as much as I can to make their lives a little easier and try to redeem myself from those thoughts and preventable actions.

I don’t want anyone else to have to live the life I live and feelings I endure.

My family especially feel helpless as I’m sure many of you who read this feel too.

There’s no instant cure, I doubt that there is even a cure at all.

Talking about it won’t help, going for a walk won’t help, the gym, yoga, support groups won’t help.

What helps me is the passions I have discovered, these help me to level out.

I still have these thoughts, but I have routine and things to focus on and become passionate about.

Work gives me routine and throughout the week I have something to focus on, a reason to get out of bed at a certain time and go to my destination.

Weekends I’ve drifted, if I’m out I stay out and if I’m in, I stay in.

Very much how my life is regardless of the events that have taken place this year.

This is a quote I have shared before at some point, although right now I can’t remember when.

“Make peace with your broken pieces”

I can say that I have done just that but possibly not without regret.

I know when I first likely developed depression but I don’t know when life first went wrong for me, or maybe I was just destined for it to be this way.

I say this a lot as if I need to constantly prove it, but I’m not going to do anything and when I say I’m alright, as now, I am alright.

But until life settles down, I’m going to be constantly up and down with no real control.

I just have to keep going…