Burn Out Versus Balance: The (Almost) Eternal Flame

I have had a wonderful week in so many respects, despite having an horrific cold. Seriously, this time I think it was man flu. I genuinely didn't get out of bed last Sunday. It was the real deal. Scary.

Last week was the week after Inclusion Week at work and some wonderful experiences speaking on a Women's Network panel, a Mental Health 101 panel and more. Little surprise then that I would perhaps get sick and need to do more self care than usual. I wrote a long post about taking care (both of ourselves and one another) when we think about our mental health. Not just our mental health, in fact, but our entire health. Every bit of it. But for me I do want to treat myself as being an ordinary person, for whom depression is just one part - one - of who I am. One of the questions I was asked was: "What are some things that you do to take care of yourself?"

I have never been good at this. I've been hopeless at it in fact. If I set myself a goal, I'll want to achieve it, even if it means studying for longer, training for that marathon just a little bit harder, working extra hours, skipping breaks, all to get those goals checked off.

In reality this is not sustainable. To use the same sports metaphor I tell my colleagues - particularly the graduates coming in - life is a marathon not a sprint, whether at work or away from work: we have a long way to go and if we're going to have the best chance of making it to the end we have to take care of ourselves and find that balance between being ambitious and stretching ourselves, and trying to make sure that we don't achieve that (too often named) condition that affects every bit of us: "burn out".

I hate this phrase because it suggests that there's nothing left; a blackened match with no fire power left, completely useless. In some very extreme cases of burn out I imagine that people would need months (years maybe) to recover, depending on the personal circumstances of whatever led you to be there.

I have probably only burned out during a project in the USA where the clients were challenging, the hours punishing and the goals almost unattainable (I say almost because I attained them, but at tremendous personal cost to my health and wellbeing.)

Even in the above circumstance however, it wasn't as if there was nothing left at all: I could still go out for a meal, go for a run, visit a museum, walk in the park. I could even write my blog and carry on working. This is why I am so adamant that even with a mental health condition I can still be 'resilient' and why I'm working to make sure we have those conversations to #RedefineResilience : and not equating the word 'resilient' with bouncing back better and stronger than ever and never ever again having a slight off moment. Ever.

I don't bounce. I think I established that last year when I broke my back.

but I. Come. Back. Eventually.

Now, had I been a lottery winner, I'd be the first to admit that given the choice I would have just left work and booked myself at least a year of recovery time. But unfortunately, knowing that the chances of winning the lottery 1 in 32,441,381,280. 32 Billion - thanks Lotto for adding those extra numbers - I think I'll focus on a little thing I like to call REALITY.

So here's my a view of what balance looks like for me:

1. I eat some fresh juices courtesy of my own recipes and those of +JuiceMaster Jason Vale and @Joethejuicer Joe Cross) because the juices give me the vitamins I so need as well as reducing my anxiety levels and helping me to maintain a healthy weight. I also eat burgers with fries, onion rings and coleslaw. Because. I. Love. Them. And no matter that I will never have the waist of Kate Moss (that ship has sailed so far out I can't even see it. In fact I can't even see the horizon. Because I'm in a town.) I love good tasting food and for me it makes me happy to eat nice food.

   

   Yes, not my usual ingredients for a glass shaped like this. But juices help

   . 

   

   And NOW we are talking.

2. I see friends and go into the office because seeing people and having a chance to be social is good for me. If I'm in a slump it gets me out of the house and if I'm not it's energising. This assumes that I surround myself with people who are nice, mostly positive (or at least realistic!) and who are caring, kind, generally lovely and smart. In these cases my life is made immeasurably better by spending a few hours in their company. If, on the other hand, the people are rude, negative, life-haters, like Stuart the Virgin Trains man on the train from Manchester to London who once gave me a ten minute lecture for asking for the sandwich which (as someone who had a first class ticket) I had already paid for, finishing with "You know you're wrong. You ask your mother if I'm right..." then no, I won't feel better, and I tend to avoid these people like I would the currently rutting stags in the park.

   

   Yep. I'm not keen on these types of people.

   I might not die, but I'll certainly feel worse. On the other hand, I can't have too much contact with people because it is very tiring to be face-to-face all the time, so I have a couple of days at home each week at least, go to bed early and don't socialise too much, and spend a lot of the weekend having 'quiet time': hello Netflix and Kindle.
3. I exercise - for me it's running - a few times a week. I channel my inner Paula Radcliffe (the non-peeing-outside-part-of-Paula-Radcliffe, just to be clear)

   

   Did she or didn't she?

   and take to the streets or park for fresh air and fitness that will provide natural endorphins to boost my medication. I also walk up the escalators on tubes and walk around as much as I can. But I do not do too much. So I'm not currently running every day - more like 4 days a week (although clearly, see above, not with a cold...man flu no less!). And on those rest days I do, really, rest.
   
4. I work and love to work, but I don't work much outside of my 40 hour week.

   

   I also 'don't work'. I.e. I have a life outside of work. And I'm not just talking about writing this blog or talking about mental health. I'm talking real life outside of work stuff - whatever that is. Rest, painting, drawing, talking to people, watching Grand Designs and Bake Off and so on. I might make an exception to this, (the work, not Bake Off)

   

   Do. Not. Mess. With. My. Bake Off.

   but if I do, then I compensate for it. E.g. I recently went to a two day training course which completely shattered me. I therefore (suspecting this would be the case) took the day off the next day and spent it recovering. Eating, meeting my mum, sleeping. Feeling a bit better. I do make myself write a blog post every week because it makes me feel so good to be writing and - especially if I reach just one person and help them know that other people like me are also feeling a bit, frankly, rubbish, and that they deserve help, then that just makes me so happy. (Crying happy, smiley happy. The whole thing.)

Selfie fun with @Dawnoporter and @NimcoAli

For the last one - I should add that fun is in the mix. So with this in mind I went to Stylist Live on Thursday. I practically tackled Nimco Ali to the floor when I saw she was there, I pouted while taking selfies with Nimco and Dawn O'Porter (who I confirmed to that I didn't know who she was - or at least I didn't recognise her by sight!) and I told Stella I didn't know who she was, and then found out that Stella was Stella Creasy. And of course I knew! Surrrlightly embarrassed.

Dannie and Stella Creasy. 

But I did talk to all of them about mental health. I managed somehow to stand up in a room full of people and simultaneously 'come out' about my mental health (again, but this time...) to Caitlin Moran while I asked her what the last taboo was (that we could talk about) and she said she said 'everything' was still taboo - so a lot more work to be done! But the best thing about the day was talking to all of the great people there: Mosama, Zoe, Nancy, Fareeda, Linda, to @ThisWorks sleep and other beauty products) and to @YullShoes,

to Katie at Stylist Magazine and all the other amazing women (it was all women on this occasion) I met and who shared their mental health stories with me. Their brothers with anxiety, their husbands whom they call at lunch to help him get through the day, the antidepressants we've taken, the therapists we've seen, the bereavements we've had...everything. I always feel honoured by every person who shares a story about themselves or someone they know with me - it's like getting a present - and I hope that by talking about it myself I'm making this easier to talk about, and that we will make it easier for others too, and enable people to get help and feel that they deserve it.

This stuff really works by the way. Ahhh, a good night's sleep. 

A real rarity for me now less rate thanks to this!

I'm really tired now so signing off but please take care of yourself, and whatever you've got lined up for the week ahead, maybe consider a little balance. It can help.

Love xxxx Jessica

Thirty Five Candles. Celebrating, Not My Life, But Being Alive

Yes, THAT many candles

A year ago to the day I decided it might be a good idea for me to go into hospital for a while, because of my depression. I realised that my ability to cope with the day-to-day had become severely impaired, and that I had been more stressed than ecstatic to have my friends over to ‘celebrate’ my birthday (which is today, by the way.)

Me last year

The worst symptoms of my depression and anxiety were in full flow: I was trying to do everything possible to make everyone at my party have a good time. It had been a miserable failure of a plan, since the bouncy castle I’d organised for the fun of it and trip to the park with friends and their children all had to be called off on account of rain (just like most sports days I remember) and I was rushing around our flat instead, frantically getting drinks, food, conversations going and feeling my heart beat quicken and quicken in my chest.

Enough. Time to talk. Time to act. Time for the truth.

The final straw was when I had a wobbly moment with a good friend I thought I had offended. To a people pleaser like me, to please is the goal (a short term goal, because I believe I’m only as good as my next act of goodwill towards others) and to displease is catastrophe, causing internal combustion.

Ugh. Hate displeasing people. 

So, the next day, sitting on the sofa and tidying after the night of many drinks, laughter, conversation and lovely people, I quietly called the hospital where I see my psychiatrist and enquired about in patient care for the first time. I wasn’t a suicide risk, and I knew from past experience that my mental illness was not (is not, has never been) bad enough for me to be admitted under the NHS. I learned that there are usually beds available at the hospital. I learned I needed to speak to my insurer. I

learned that I could arrange the whole thing with relative ease. (Thank goodness. I was not well enough to do anything difficult.)

It was the first step towards admitting to myself that my depression (and anxiety, which I hadn’t even realised I had, despite running around like a headless chicken and running (literally) myself into a skinny nervous wreck of a person) had become so debilitating that work was becoming impossible, and social gatherings also a major challenge.

It’s pretty bad when you see your best friends around you and you feel utterly disconnected from them, and from the world you’re living in. Yes, I was smiling and laughing and passing around drinks, making conversations happen and passing the canapés, but all at top speed, almost as if to slow down and drink in how I genuinely felt would be as calamitous as a car smashing into me at top speed, obliterating my whole being into the mess of blood and cells and harmful thoughts that I was subconsciously aware were what made up ‘me’ at the time.

I didn’t know anyone who had ever been in hospital for mental illness, except a distant cousin’s mother of my mother, years ago, when that sort of condition meant a long term stay in the type of institution that can rarely be found anymore. I made that phone call to hospital because, practical as always, I wanted to know what my options were. I realised I couldn’t go on. It’s not ‘just the way life is’ to cry at spilled milk, spilled anything in fact, all the time, or at a lost book, a broken pencil, at the thought of getting off the sofa and walking to Marks and Spencer just across the road. It’s not normal, i.e. healthy, to dread going to work and to cry every morning about it because of the untouchable contractors who are ignoring you or bullying you with snide comments and belittling at every opportunity (well, it would be normal to dread going to work, but I would certainly say to anyone, don’t put up with it if it’s happening). I am a planner, I am practical, I am resourceful even in the face of damnable, draining and dreadful depression, and I suddenly realised that perhaps there was an option not to feel so terrible every day; not to wake up and wish that I had actually not woken up at all.

The steps on from there have been mostly documented in my posts over the last nine months or so. I have morphed into someone who not only accepts her depression as something acute and (currently) looking like it may be with me forever, despite best efforts to relieve the symptoms through medication, rest and cognitive behavioural therapy. I have also, in the last year, spoken out about it, and with every conversation (and I don’t have that many, I’m not one of those people who, when asked “How are you?” gives you a twenty minute account of the minutiae of having depression) I have felt a little more self-accepting, which is the biggie. Everyone else has been lovely. I have been hard on myself, as I always am. Do better. Do more. Do everything. Do it now.

Okay, okay, depression, I'll do it, I'll do it. Now please sod off out of here.

I’m still that person who wants to do it all, now, to perfection. I have my manic phases where my brain goes into overdrive trying to predict every possible outcome from every upcoming conversation or exchange to ensure that I have planned my behaviour to be ‘correct’ (and, really, what the hell does that mean?). If I am on a non-sedative night my legs will shake and shuffle around with restless leg syndrome that stops me from sleeping and my brain will kick in to that mode of restlessness, endless opening and closing its many filing cabinets to pull out all the items on my various to-do lists, work to be completed, meetings to be held, weight to lose, events to organise, friends to see. It’s exhausting. It’s impossible to maintain.

Take that, Depression (and, naturally, David Bowie)

That ‘me’ can’t last, so I’ve allowed some other characteristics to enter my personality: the ability to relax (okay only sometimes, but sometimes is a lot better than never); the ability to be honest about how I’m feeling, even at the risk (in my mind) that people will judge me for it and that I may never get promoted at work because I have an acute problem complicated by a catalogue of physical injuries.

You said it Cher.

But it’s worth accepting those risks, those potential, may never happen but possibly might risks, because I can’t live without changing into the ‘me’ that is sitting here, typing this on her thirty fifth birthday. I don’t know that I’d be typing anything, doing anything, if I hadn’t taken that risk and started being honest to myself and others about the fact that I do not have an unbreakable exterior shell. In fact I’m all eggshell, to be broken again and again and again.

Just because it's an awesome song. Nothing's gonna stop us!

When I blow out my candles today (and yes, of course there will be candles, because I do love birthdays even though celebrating the fact that I’m alive seems like a bad idea to me (sometimes) because I (sometimes) wish I were not) I will sit and acknowledge the past year. I’ve said ‘Here I am’ and then jumped off a cliff into the rocky seas of honest living. It’s terrifying and tricky and hard to stay afloat, and I will keep being bashed around by depression a while longer. But I made it, and if that doesn’t deserve a hot dog with all the trimmings, Champagne and a day where I celebrate being still here at all, then I don’t know what does. Happy birthday to me. Jessica, you made it. One foot in front of the other and maybe you’ll make it to 36. 

Me this year. Well, not quite, but time to dance!

Take Good Care. Being Cared For and Caring for Myself.

Caring in practice. A friendly hug is a wonderful thing

(Image copyright Jessica Florence)

I’m off on my travels again, this time to New York for a wedding and then after a brief stopover at home, on to Poland. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, much of what I am trying to apply against my type is to be able to recognise when I need care and take whatever steps are necessary to provide it.

Find out more and pledge to contribute to caring in your own neighbourhood, here

This week is Carers' Week, so I've been thinking a lot about this topic. I'd like to honour all of my carers, the mental health professionals. Without all of these people and my beloved husband, family and friends I might not be here today to write this. I'm grateful to all who have taught new things about how to recognise negative thought patterns and how to try to apply these skills to troublesome times where all my unhelpful skills at over thinking, rumination and comparisonitis come into play with a fervour which could win awards. The fact is, we can't survive unless we care for each other.

However, for this blog, I would like to focus on two people – one I value above all others: my husband, and one I value much less and should probably attempt to value more: myself.

I’ve nearly been with my husband for ten years, and plan to post more about the fantastic ten years we have spent together. As with all relationships, we do of course have the occasional argument, about whether he should really be touching the kitchen knives given his propensity to cut himself badly by scarcely grazing the blade, or whether it’s really necessary to buy another book to add to our currently building-foundations-endangering collection…(No.)

Mat and me. Just two hamsters taking care of each other. In pots.

When we began to go out many years ago it was clear to me that this was a relationship unlike any other in my previous experience. We agreed since the start of principles of sharing bills and building a partnership. We both earned a similar amount when we started to see one another and wanted to build a relationship based on equality in sharing the restaurant bills, the cinema tickets, and over time, our living space from rented accommodation to our first bought house.

True love. Except Mat didn't have to wear the hat.

Probably for the best, he would have sat on it or something.

And even in our wedding (under sufferance!) my poor love forced himself through about a billion conversations with me about how our perfect day would truly be ours. He isn’t interested in clothes or shopping of any kind so to become involved in things such as wedding planning or even buying a new pair of jeans could not be farther from his interest level. A good book (or even a mediocre one), a nice cup of tea and a lovely piece of fudge would be his preference over any shopping-related activity.

I suppose our romance was something of a whirlwind after the initial total non-start (to be explained at length in another post to celebrate our 10 years together). We moved in together after 6 months and have been firmly by one another’s side ever since.

(Don't worry, I'm the one holding the flower in case 

Mat drops it and the poor butterfly gets hurt!)

At the beginning of our relationship I had just signed up to a tough intensive teaching and leadership programme which caused me a lot of stress, fatigue and money worries, as well as all of the amazing things that I experienced while working with some of the most brilliant students and excellent teachers and leaders. After only three months of dating, I was at the GP broken with tiredness and physical as well as mental symptoms across the board, such was my extreme struggle to keep going and maintain my job, do it well, maintain my (new, London) personal life and fit in some time now and again to live my new life in London.

Mat didn’t initially seem to understand (fully, at least) that I needed to take medication to continue to be able to function, work. He said he didn’t really agree with taking medication for depression, and initially had a hard time accepting it as something that required anything more than (every depressive’s least favourite phrase) “Pulling yourself together”. It was a real struggle at the time. I myself never wanted to be on medication for my depression. I preferred to not pollute my body with medication that had no guarantee of working, was still in the process of being developed. I also hated the fact that every single one did (and still does) give me ridiculous side effects that mean I take more pills to cope with them just to be able to keep taking the depression medicine. Ridiculous!

All that, and the fact that we were in the first stages of being together, where we hadn’t known with the wisdom of hindsight, but only in the first flush of true love – that he wouldn’t leave me realising that I was a difficult case…someone with difficult, heavy, unwieldy emotional baggage connected to (at times) acute mental illness. I think it would be fair to say that Mat didn’t understand depression the way that I did, because he had never experienced it to such a long degree, with so many bursts of down periods and my inability to get myself out of bed, take an interest in seeing museums or going on walks. I am so lucky that neither of us gave up on one another. I (as insecure as I was) knew how much I loved him and wanted to keep him at all costs; but the other part of me wanted to be honest In our relationship, and I knew that It was ever going to work out between us than I needed to be honest about an illness which I expected (and have been proved right) never really goes away forever, at least not in the last two decades.

Here we are, ten years (just a few days short) and counting. My lovely Mat has now had nearly ten years of experience living with me in my highs my lows, my delights and despairs, and my sloughs of despond. Many, many, sloughs of despond. (Which you would think would be attractive and interesting given the onomatopoeia of this phrase. It’s not. At all.) Because he understands depression and anxiety – at least from my point of view – he accepts that depression is a multi-faceted and complex illness; it doesn’t mean I can't get through a full week of work, see friends, run, walk, socialise (a bit, only at the moment but still…). He can make me laugh seconds after I’ve been in tears, and I can go and have a perfectly nice afternoon only to come home and need to retire because the whole social activity or the very act of going out has left me feeling totally defeated and exhausted.

So how does it work for us? I cannot express here in a single post how much Mat does for me. He makes every effort, in every area of our lives, to try to make my (at times) unbearable life worth carrying on. He loves doing things for me, and – I guess – that when he doesn’t love doing them, when he is actually wishing I could just be better or that this whole, boring and difficult stage of our lives could be over and I could be content, reading, writing, painting…shopping even…But he does carry on. He tells me here’s there and always will be.

Well all right then. I think I can make that work.

He emails me, tweets me, messages me pretty much every day while we’re both working, or if I’m at hospital appointments, to ask how I’m doing and send me things that cheers me up. When I can’t get out of bed he comes to see me, to kiss me and hug me and tell me, as I rest in bed shutting the rest of the world out, that there will be a better day to come and that I should accept that there are bad days, but they are not all bad.

In my darkest periods over my last few months I’ve stayed in bed many, many times all day. I’ve got up, showered, dressed and eaten, but just barely, from bed. I’ve cried after he has come home because I’ve been lonely and sick of myself. I’ve cried during social functions and we’ve had to beat a retreat or try to let Mat hold my hand and help me get through it. He notices. He holds my hand and looks at me without talking. He has told me again and again that he loves me and even though I find it hard to believe myself to be worthy of love quite often he persists. He seems to think I’m work it. And I am so grateful for this love which seems boundless.

I still quite believe it but I work on telling myself what he tells me, and get a little bit closer to believing in it, and recognising how amazing our life together is – despite the challenges I bring with my depression. He cooks, cleans the kitchen when I can’t, brings me flowers, buys me glasses of Prosecco and mini burgers or hot dogs because I adore them. HE truly is the most wonderful person in the word, and the fact that I spend every single day unsure of how I will feel is a massive burden on him to cope with all my mood changes, free-flowing tears without warning. (Especially in restaurants lately. Yes, I've become a restaurant crier.) And repetition of how bloody hopeless the whole thing is, and how I can’t go on (or don’t want to) and more.

Beware friends. I now do this ALL THE TIME. 

Don't say I didn't warn you when I start blubbing over the bruschetta.

Now in return I do things for Mat – because we are still very much a partnership. I’ll buy takeaway for us and take us out regularly to say thank you to him; I’ll paint and write him little cards, give him the sugary treats I know he loves (M&S ginger men and any kind of hand-made fudge are particular favourites), And I tell him that I love him but I would understand if he would leave. And he stays. It’s a miracle to me that he does.

The second topic I wanted to cover here is caring for myself (or self-care as we in the mental health area often call it). When it comes to this my ability to provide appropriate self-care for myself, for someone who has unrelenting high standards I’d say I perform pretty awfully in this respect. The fact is, that we are all responsible (as far as we can) for looking after ourselves and making sure that we can exist and survive adequately, and – if we’re lucky – happily.  

"Who me? I need to care about myself too? I totally forgot about that."

The fundamentals of what I should be doing for my self-care are to keep myself fed, clothed, clean and get enough sleep to function. Largely I manage to do these things, simple as they may appear. On terrible days I will often (now, as I become more self-accepting) call an achievement something like getting up, showering, washing and drying my hair. Those small acts on terrible days where I am drained, tearful, and devoid of hope might exhaust me, so the right thing to do for myself at that point might go to bed and rest some more – distract myself from my wretched thoughts with sleep, reading, watching Netflix box sets (particular ones…probably another post to come about what I can and can’t watch at these times).

Eat and sleep as well as you can. 

I find drinking fresh juices helps to reduce my anxieties.

If I can do it I care for myself by creating a nice space to be in – fresh bedclothes, fresh air, walks, cleaning the house (which is good exercise and good for the process of seeing things become clean and tidy when I long for order from my disordered, hectic and unrelenting mind.

There are other more complicated steps I know I have to keep practising (in both senses of the word) to take care of myself. I’ve learned (and continued to learn) to be more honest about my health on a day to day basis both with my husband, whose care and love I cherish above all else, with my work colleagues, with my mental health support professionals, and to a degree (using the assertiveness techniques I’ve learned) with everyone I meet.

For me, working towards self-care is not trying to make everyone like me (which I usually do). Not trying to make it my role to be the heart and soul of the party, exhausting myself (and probably everyone else) in the process so that everyone ‘has a good time) and I’ve clearly made an effort to be a good party attendee. It’s also about not telling myself off every second, well, second about something I’ve done that’s not been right in the past – like the time I shouted at Mat when I shouldn’t have, or the time I drank too much wine and fell asleep on the sofa at a guest’s house, drunk. If an elephant never forgets then I sure hope that particular species of pachyderm doesn’t have a propensity for depression, because my memory is never as razor sharp in its accuracy when I’m remember and flagellating myself for past wrongs. If there were awards for self-loathing and self-reproach, I feel sure I’d be a contender for the top spot.

Every day I just care for myself as best as I can, and some days I’m better at it than others. Mat helps me – every day - and I am so lucky to have him in my life in the first place, on top of which he is the most loving and giving soul to this mixed up, messy woman. And I want to care for myself because I’m working towards feeling like I deserve it – because I know I would always tell a friend or loved one that they were. You are worth caring about. You are worth caring for. You are special and even if it’s hard to see it, you have a place in this world. I will try to read this post again so I can remind myself that what I would tell others probably applies to me to. Till next time, please all take CARE. x