Have Yourselves A Merry - Mindful - Christmas. #12DaysOfXmasMH

It's the night before Christmas and all through the flat...we're just about tidy, thank goodness for that.
Luckily for you, dear reader, I won't continue to write in rhyme for this post about the lead up to Christmas.

This year I've had to be more 'mindful' than in previous Christmasses of how I've felt every day. The idea behind the #12DaysOfXmasMH was to show what it is really like to manage a mental health condition every day.

Day 10 #12DaysOfXmasMH

As it turns out, it has been particularly educational for me because from being tired out and stressed at the end of the year's work, to absolutely calm and content a couple of days later, just from having the right amount of sleep, to it being the day before Christmas Day and waking up feeling the usual anxieties associated with the pressures of the season.

Mindfulness. Father Christmas Style... 

(Thanks to Raymond Briggs for lending me Santa)

I've heard a lot of negative opinions on mindfulness from people, especially in the city environment where I work. They've said that mindfulness is 'fluffy', 'pointless', 'embarrassing', 'strange', 'not my kind of thing' and 'something I tried but couldn't get into'. I would have to agree with some of these statements. Firstly, I'm really bad at relaxing.(I'm actually a lot better at it now, but that means I've gone from someone who needed to sit watching a film whilst washing was on while playing angry birds while writing my blog and twitching my toes in regular patterns, to someone who's writing her blog while watching a film. And the washing is on. But that's it, I promise.) Secondly, the first time I realised that I had been really stressed was last year, when for the first time in about twenty-something years, I was actually relaxed for the first time. It was definitely the biggest 'AHA' moment ever!

When I was in hospital last summer I attended mindfulness groups, which were part of the treatment plan to develop better ways to manage our mental health and improve our mood and self-care. I had to stop lying down for the exercises as I was totally unable to stay awake during the sessions, and now when I listen to my Headspace app (which I should do more as it's really helpful) I follow its guidelines when the soothing voice tells me that it's better to sit up straight rather than lie down. Plus, the videos at the beginning of the exercises are really cute. There are long exercises to learn for mindfulness practitioners eventually, but even an exercise of ten minutes in length is quite tricky to follow.

Gender stereotyping aside. This is me.

But the point isn't to 'do an exercise' or 'complete' a fixed length of meditation (unless I've totally missed the point, that is). The point is for each of us to ask ourselves, "How are you doing right now?" "What's going on in your head?" "How well are you feeling?".

Day 7 #12DaysOfXmasMH

This could last 10 seconds or even 5 if you can answer it in that time. So, for the last eleven days, each time I've made a short video of myself out and about, waking up, exercising, walking, making juices, playing computer games or watching Netflix... Or all of them, I've had to tell my iphone video camera how I felt. And it has actually helped me to take better care of myself.

Thanks again Raymond Briggs.

I think the Snowman could teach me a few things about mindfulness

I was shaking with anxiety on day two so even though I felt like a big body-shaped bowl of jelly on a powerplate I made myself go to one of the bootcamp classes I'd signed up for for this month, and the jog there, the many squats and circuits, and finally the run back exhausted some of that nervous energy and made me feel better just one hour later.

Me. This. Definitely this.

(I should add that I could hardly sit or stand the next day, the day after, or the day after that because of the squats. So, whilst lurching around on days 3-5 attempting but failing to walk, but hey, at least I was distracting myself!) The learning: I needed to treat my anxiety there and then to prevent it from getting worse. And I did what I could.

Other days I felt exceptionally rested and relaxed after having a proper night of sleep. Having to notice that feeling first thing in the morning because of the video diaries was actually really helpful, because I was grateful for it. It's not just the bad times or the bad moments I want to notice throughout a life managing a mental health problem (and, of course, life, love, work and everything else... you know, the small stuff) but the times when I'm feeling happy, still, energised, rested, at peace and all of those wonderful other feelings that I bet I take for granted most of the time. The learning here - it's actually lovely to notice myself feeling good, and just stay with that feeling of contentment for a little while. It meant I stayed in bed a little longer than usual, but it felt good to do it, and it was the holiday, so why not?

Thanks Piglet and Pooh for reminding 

me to take each day at a time.

And yesterday I was hugely frustrated, angry, tired, worried, anxious, and totally restless. Making the #12DaysOfXmasMH meant that I noticed that too. I was cheerful and smiley with the sunshine and off to do the recycling (I know, the glamour) but on return home with our Christmas food and cheese we were locked out of our building and had to wait for a locksmith to charge us the delightful sum of £250+ for a new lock, new set of building keys for all the residents, only to find out later that they've given us a key that can only be re-made at a locksmith miles away for much more money. We didn't manage the walk we had planned and I was exhausted by the annoyance of it all. Low frustration tolerance stuck again.

My head. yesterday at about 15:15

This was truly not a big deal; a minor detail in a great week, and we'll even get the money refunded to us. But the point for suffering with depression has never been that 'there are people starving in Africa who are much worse off'... we all know that (I think, anyway), but it doesn't stop us from being ill just because someone else is worse off. We're just ill anyway. It might even make us feel worse that we can't feel better because we know our lives our good and we should.

My just-awake-hair in this video is particularly *special*

At the end of these fourteen days of Christmas, for mental health, what mindfulness has really meant is being aware of the good, the bad and the ugly feelings and handling them as needed. Noticing negative thoughts, restlessness, anxiety flutters, insomnia and disinterest in things as early as possible means I can (hopefully) take some steps to treat these nasty visitors before they become permanent house guests.

If noticing that means I am well more often, for longer, or that I avoid having to take time off from work because the niggling feelings have festered and grown, then good. That is the sort of mindfulness I can support fully, and advocate for others. And if I do feel like standing on one leg, completing a ten minute meditative exercise involving a raisin or whatever else, well, then, each to one's own...

Staying balanced is a balancing act in itself. 

(credit: Mindfulness Exchange)

To all of you, remember to take a breather whenever you need to this holiday, and have a Christmas that is as calm, contented and charming (in the best sense), and as you do, I'll be remembering the same thing and taking it one breath at a time. Love and peace to all. x

With credit to Disney, I think Olaf is pretty mindful of love

A Change is No Good Without a Rest: Seeking Balance Through Sleep.

It's been a few weeks since I wrote, I know. I've started two or three posts but haven't been able to follow through and finish one, largely because I've had to prioritise work over everything else because I've been on business in India. More on that in the (finished) future posts.

The fact is, that I had to address serious 'balance' challenges in my life to keep going.

I was supporting the launch of a completely new process, including creating a suite of documents to be used, sessions explaining the process to Indian colleagues so they could deliver it, and making improvements to the materials as they were tried and tested in different ways so that the whole process could be run successfully

And it did run successfully. I should probably add, though, that creating new ways of doing things in big companies is not a small thing.

It's hard for me to explain adequately what my work comprises, because 'management consultant' is a meaningless title unless (and even, sometimes, when) the company you work for has decided to change something and they've asked in consultants to help them with it, whatever it is.

I admit that it's hard to explain what I do, but the easiest way to explain it is that it's about helping people (sometimes a few people, sometimes hundreds of thousands) go through a change that is being made by the organisation that they work for.

For example, imagine if in your company the head of technology decided it was time to upgrade to a newer version of a system. The old one is out of date and has lots of glitches and bugs. It doesn't really allow the business to keep up with the world of 2015. The people you work with, including you, have used it for the last twenty years. You don't particularly want to change because your job is pretty straightforward the way that it is.

Here's where I come in. It's my job to work with others - hopefully a team made up of people from your work and colleagues from mine to help make the change happen. Together we figure out how we need to make everyone understand why the change is happening (in whatever way works best - information sessions, emails, webinars, videos and so on). We also take a look at training requirements and figure out what training is needed to make the new system understandable and a success.

Gradually you move the employees - the people going through this change - through the 'change curve' from not even being aware that something is happening, to the point where everyone has been through the training, has started to use the new system and eventually it's as if nothing ever changed.

Helping people change inspires me with hope that the world can be positive and worthwhile. I hope I use the skills I've learned as a teacher and in business when I speak up about mental health, when I write about it, in my campaign, so that people do change their negative attitudes to mental health. Also, I should note, I hate change. I'm terrible at going through changes myself, and this makes me a sympathetic and empathetic ally when it comes to supporting changes. I 'feel your pain'.

What comes alongside this, though, is that even the decision makers from the business have to reconfigure themselves to accept and adapt to the change. So change affects everyone. Everyone has to understand what the change (whatever it is) really means so that everyone can play their part and explain why it is needed help others 'get it' as well.

Anyway, the upshot of all the above is that I spent the last month trying to make a change happen starting on the inside of a part of my business and then using all the documents in the process in anger.

We did it, working all together in our different roles. However, a success like this comes at a cost: work life balance; anything like it.. I got up at 5 most days to get in two-three hours of work before taking a taxi to the office from the hotel, where after another nine or so hours I'd come home and keep working for at least another couple of hours before or after dinner (or during) and then crashing down for a sleep. I chose it. I wanted to do this. But if Mrs. Robinson taught me anything during Economics GCSE lessons, it was that everything you choose has an 'opportunity cost'. You have to give up something else for every choice you make. I had to give up something.

I don't advocate working like this. I decided to do it because it was a challenge I wanted to see through, and I don't see why I shouldn't accept challenges like these if I want to even if I have depression. However, I have to focus on keeping me healthy outside of work, and nothing else. It's a little bit like training for an athletic event. You put everything into your physical exertion, and you have to make sure that you are eating and sleeping appropriately to be successful.

Work - Eat - Sleep. That's it.

The French say it best

This is the only way that I could operate to have a chance of carrying on. No mental health advocacy, no preparing for the launch of my campaign next week, no blogging, not much reading, no TV or film-watching. Just a few hours out for dinner with my colleagues once in a while.

I couldn't and wouldn't compromise on sleep. At the weekends or any other day when my work schedule permitted, I slept early and long, going to bed at seven or eight and waking at seven. Without nightmares (which are a different challenge) sleep totally rejuvenates me. Decent sleep matters so much. It's sleep I notice going wrong when I'm ill - and I do have to take medication to sleep, because my depression interrupts my sleep (and so do my anti-depressants, ha).

So sleep,

Macbeth knew a thing or two about insomnia.

And murder, but that's another story.

Sleep made it possible for me to get through the time away and its intensity.

It was worth focusing on sleep to see the process through.  I made it through the 15 hour days and at the weekends without flagging too much (although I admit that I had to down a few diet cokes on Friday and Saturday last week to keep going...and now I'm handling some 'interesting' caffeine withdrawal symptoms).

I drank all but one of these. Ouch!

I'm now back and back to normal. Normal working hours again, a nightly long sleep and back to blogging, reading, watching and finally speaking up about mental health. I'm still wearing a little makeup to cover up the tiredness.

I may possibly look like a poor impression of Joan Cusack in Working Girl...in drag...but other than that, I'm fine.

Or maybe, if I'm being honest, I look a little bit more like this...

Yeah. This is definitely me right now. 

Tomorrow is my friend Lucy's funeral so I'll continue to reflect on loss and what life means. What is worth living for. I have one answer: mental health advocacy, so that people have a chance at gaining confidence to be themselves, getting help, finding respect for themselves and requiring it of others. Next week is a big week for me and mental health. Thursday is the launch event for my campaign Redefining Resilience,

I'm also launching the Twelve days of Christmas: a video diary per day which you can look at on the campaign Facebook page if you so wish.

 I find Christmas wonderful and difficult in equal measure, so the video diaries will document the different ways I'm feeling and what I'm doing (or trying to do) to take care during that time.

Music helps, friends help...love and kindness help. Whatever you're doing, I hope you are finding balance somewhere, and I hope that you and your loved ones are taking care. Till soon. x

A Fat Lot of Good: January Drear and Diets

I made the catastrophic mistake of weighing myself on Monday. First day back at work and I added to that joy with a painful arm and a horrific number on the scale. And as the writer of this blog, dear reader, I choose to abstain from printing it here. Just know that I'm currently limited to a wardrobe selection of pyjama bottoms that have no elastic left in them, and a reindeer onesie I am supposed to put away after today according to Twelfth night traditions. Oh and some leggings. I am a wearer of leggings now. And giant sweaters.

Yes it's been a stellar week so far. I'm officially on a diet and I know that ahead of me I have weeks of it to come if I have a hope of shifting all the stuffing I have oh so casually stuffed myself with. And I'm delighted that the gabapentin I'm taking as well as the other pain medication and the antidepressants are such a tonic to this diet, for their potential to make people like me, who are, quite frankly, depressed enough without their help, thanks, able to help us to gain weight. It's an overused word, I know, but, frankly, and not without my classic British sarcasm: awesome. And now we add to it the fact I mentioned in my last blog: that another operation on my elbow is needed, meaning more time without being able to swim (it's not the right kind of physio) and only walking as the exercise option. Or cleaning. And let's face it, I'm not writing a blog about being a domestic goddess here. The house is tidy because I'm living mostly in bed.

So, "We get it," I hear you cry. "You're unhappy. It's January. Get over it. (Whatever the 'it' is you wanna focus on. Just get over it. Already." And okay, I should.) But really, this is the best time of year to embrace being miserable. We're all at it. I can scarcely rouse myself from my bed to turn on my laptop in the morning without my eyes moistening at the thought of work. They stayed like that all day today. Moist. Moist when I ate my Rice Krispies (being carefully calculated as part of my get-thinner-even-though-you're-on-weight-gain-meds diet by myFitnessPal). Moist as I went for my lunchtime walk listening to Hard Times (depressing month cause for depressing literature) and moist throughout the rest of the day. Moist now.

Ugh Pills. This is what mealtimes feel like.

Why is January so hard when I can hardly tolerate Christmas and find New Year's Eve stressful too? I would have thought I'd be happy to have it over with. Perhaps it's all those additives and the hangover (both booze and booze-free) from the partaking that has left me in this sorry state. But it is a pretty sorry state. Thankfully, everyone else is miserable too, or so it seems. If August is the silly season for news, January is the dreary destination for deadly dieting and depressingly downcast outlooks. People are giving up or cutting back on the booze (me too), cutting the calories (me too) and getting on the treadmill again (not me too, worse luck). I spent most of yesterday wondering how much of my medication I could forgo for the sake of my figure (I'm an idiot. My arm hurt a lot today.)

Now I'm just saying roll on April. Which is the cruellest month, but by which time I'm hoping I won't need some kind of fat sucking device for my normal jeans to fit, and my darned elbow should be screwed firmly together and actually behaving itself. (I'm giving my body my sternest teacher-like stare.)

The only odd thing I can say amidst this depression is that I can read the most sad and haunting things at my bleakest moments, because it's not the sadness or the despair which is the worst time, it's the feeling that this will never end, and since it may never end, and there's a numbness, why not try poking myself with something really tragic. At twenty one I watched The Ice Storm in such a state. It was the perfect film to get over with while so morose. Today I am going to read a new book on depression, and think about last year when I was travelling back to New York to erase my life there. Unfortunately I think the real life element of the latter is too close to actual trauma, so I will look for fictionalised versions instead. Safer. Distant.

Not an answer to the question: "What's a happy film we can watch?"

I did talk about New York though, and being lonely there while I lived there, recently, so if you want to join me in embarking on exploration of a topic that's important, though not perhaps one to get out with the Christmas crackers or happy birthday music, you can listen to me talking at about 22 minutes in about loneliness on Five Live. They put it on at 00:00 on Boxing Day. I.e. in the small hours when we were all stuffed with turkey, it was already time to stop being cheery (or fake cheery) and start being dreary.

A Life Less Lonely, Radio Five Live

What I think we need is a #joinin for January. In fact that's it: #joininjanuary. Who can come up with the most sardonic tweet for jaundiced January? I challenge you, reader, to join me and cheer me up by telling me that your tape measure doesn't go round your waist either, and that you've got your old step out from behind the wardrobe / from the greenhouse where you were using it as a shelf for pot plants. If you've managed to slice open your finger as my friend Lucy has whilst being middle class using a mandolin (it's a dangerous way to live, the middle class life) or similar, then #joininjanuary. And by the way, I'm still eating a few nice things on my diet hoping not to fall off the wagon before the pounds fall off first. So thanks, Marks and Spencer, for keeping your Extremely Chocolately Roll in stock. I may only have a sliver, but it's enough to make my eyes water. In a good way.

I'm Fine: A White Christmas Lie

It's the day after the day after Boxing day. We have now eaten so much I can barely make out the keys with my pudgy fingers as I type. We ate beef, Dauphinoise potatoes, stuffing made with sage, chestnuts and all manner of pig products, Yorkshire pudding and more. We had our blinis garnished with sour cream, lump fish caviar and smoked salmon with Champagne, ate Yule log, mince pies, pannetone, and more. And the only exercise was not mine - Mat ran the Park Run locally.

Probably a good job that I didn't try this given that I'm unable to move my back properly due to the rather large steel rod in my back, accompanied by its screws, and in my elbow several exceptionally irritating wires. Just quiet - this year we wanted to make sure that this Christmas was especially quiet, no one else than us invited and very minimal communications with others by text or online.

There are two 'spirits' of Christmas prevalent in my life's version of A Christmas Carol (non alcoholic ones I mean, though more on that later!): the ghost of depression and the ghost of anxiety. These two terrible twins love to get at me before Christmas and after it. This whole year I've spent time and money fighting these twins, who are perpetually in the 'terrible twos' phase, exploring and exploiting what they can do and causing nothing but trouble.

It was only earlier this year that I started to realise that I had anxiety as well as depression. Although I've always described myself as someone who couldn't relax at all and whose only hope of an afternoon of not fidgeting madly was to sit in front of the television with my phone to play a game on, a film to watch, and quite possible an enormous amount of leg fidgeting while all of this went on. I literally could not sit still, worrying and worrying about the things to come over and over again, mind reading, fortune telling, forecasting and predicting every possible outcome I could think of.

Now I connect this anxiety I recognise with childhood memories of a familiar sense of unease I now know they represent. I can remember as a child feeling a tremendous discomfort in my stomach, a sense of dread that at three years old I had no vocabulary to articulate. I used to pull in my stomach to try to make the feeling go away. Now it overcomes every part of me and I can finally sense it - I know that I'm anxious - whereas before it was so much a part of me; so stressed and over-sensitised was I at all times, even in sleep, that I didn't even notice it anymore. It's worse at family functions or holidays, work situations or places where I have to see people. So yes, generally quite bad when I get out of the house. Sometimes not even that.

And then we have depression, which is my more familiar of the terrible two. Depression has lived with me a long time and pops up to say hello too often. I think it's when I see the happiness of Christmas that sometimes I feel that that completely unrealistic world - whichever one I'm watching - will be completely out of reach. And let's not even talk about what was going on inside my brain. A whirring of at the very least a trio or quartet of thoughts would un-file themselves from the copious cabinets that somehow found the space to be stored within my brain. The thoughts would be picked at random from the past and begin to circulate slowly at first inside my head.

While White Christmas plays cheerfully in the background (well, okay, Die Hard, but that's hardly realistic in its happy ending amid the lovely bloodshed and broken glass) the after effects of Christmas kick in: excessive sugar, fat, additives, alcohol and the rest that equal a Christmas meal come out to play havoc with my synapses and my digestive system simultaneously.

As I lost my sense of smell almost entirely after the accident, and it hasn't come back yet, I'm finding it hard to taste things as well as I used to. What I can taste and smell are rarities I do really appreciate. I can just about smell Poême, my favourite perfume, and I can taste most of the flavours of the delicious stuffing Mat made for our Christmas dinner.

Even so, I've indulged as above with Christmas eats and Champagne etc. The come down from all of this unhealthy list might mean a higher than normal purchase rate on Pepto Bismol for some; for me it usually means that depression can kick in. I've noticed that if I drink only small amounts and allow plenty of space between days, the depression can hold off. But add to this sugary food, fatty snacks with all their additives? I may as well eat a triple super-sized Big Mac meal. So Christmas is not going to go 100% well since I allow myself to be put under food (and less so drink) assault.

I've changed my eating and my drinking - cutting down massively on the latter in particular (I never really overeat that much). In fact the only time I've drunk every day for a while this year was on a holiday I took earlier this year. Gone the excess, gone the quite often daily glass of wine; remaining the anxiety and depression when they come with only the prescribed medication and the sense that they will probably pass even if it doesn't feel that way, and eating as healthily as I can (apart from the odd sugary snack or crisp. Hey, I'm only human!) I'm now below the Government's weekly health recommendation for alcohol consumption. Now I just need to work on my addiction to crisps.

So there are my ghosts or spirits. They came back right after Christmas day as I came down from all the foods listed at the top of this page, added to which were a couple of glasses of Champagne and a nice glass of red. I noticed on Twitter my fellow sufferers from mental illness getting ill or antsy right after Christmas - or even on Christmas afternoon itself. We made it to Christmas Eve; then we needed to make it to Boxing day and beyond.

Beyond...yes. What is beyond? It's New Year's bloody eve. The least favourite night of the year for many; the most stressful for others, possibly because six nights after stuffing your face with all those blinis, turkey, stuffing (stuffing on stuffing) the television is telling you that the greatest night of your life is coming up and you'd better find some way to stuff yourself into your best dress and heels. I'm restricted to flats thank goodness, and with my restricted movement I think that I may also need to wear a tent to hide my Christmas pudding tummy. I'm not inviting Depression and Anxiety to come with me because I'm going to go to a party and try to have a good time - fewer drinks, less food and who knows, maybe they won't even come back the next day.