Resetting. Resting. Not Writing. A First Blog Post After a Month of Work... And Rest

It's Friday night, when I usually write my blogs, and you may or may not have noticed that I haven't written here for a while. Give that I am a mental health advocate, I have to remember that I can't (or shouldn't) over stretch myself. If I do I can't write blogs anymore, or campaign, or go out for walks or whatever. It becomes too hard. Unfortunately it is the blogging and the walking and the 'whatever' that I need. I could replace it with the words 'work life balance'.

Instead of writing this I could be working still, but there has now come a time after four days back at work when I needed a break. And that's what I've been doing, by the way: working... And taking a break. Ever since I finished the whirlwind of Thoroughly Modern Millie I've been working and then recovering, and actually a month or so before that too. Some of what I have done at work recently has been particularly exacting on my energy levels, and I was out of the country working too. I don't know if you've ever worked away from home for long, but it gets easy to let working hours leech into what is usually non-working time. It gets even easier when you are in another country. Other people, people that you know and love, are thousands of miles away, for one thing, but for another thing, they're not on the same time zone as you.

I find myself working beyond my working hours sometimes, then, yes I admit it. I also admit that I can't then do other things always, like writing this blog. I don't want to give up on talking about my mental health and sharing what it's like to work and live at eat and sleep with it, while it's with me. But I have to tell the truth, and this is the truth: sometimes I am too tired and not well enough to do everything that I want to. I have to sacrifice something. And what can I sacrifice? I need to pay the bills. I need to keep my job, therefore. I need to complete my job and then I need to rest so that I can do it again.

It's not an interesting or a fun story, but it's the truth. I can sacrifice my blogging which takes time away from those two things - working and resting. It means I keep my job and that is one less thing to worry about, along with the ability to pay my bills.

But it does mean that I can't do this thing that I absolutely love the most. I love, love, love writing and writing about this. It's me time at the end of the week and it's not just 'me' time, it's reflection, it's creative, and it is active rest. It's frustrating not to be able to do this. I have felt angry at myself, these past four weeks while I haven't blogged. I didn't even write a blog to explain - because I was either resting or working. I didn't even say 'hello'.

Actually that's not true, I tried to blog a few times and wrote a few paragraphs here and there on this and that. I did that four weeks ago, and two weeks ago, and I'm determined that this one will be finished. Today, never mind if I don't fit in the pictures at the end - which is enjoyable but time-consuming. I will write.

I've been in India working and then in the USA 'playing'... actually resting and playing. Yep, I've been doing the Mars Bar thing. And now I'm back to work, and back to blogging and campaigning. I'm in the country. I am feeling a bit stressed at the end of the week, feeling like I've done quite a bit, which is just the tip of an iceberg of oncoming work, campaigning and other activities coming up. This is why sometimes I have to step away from it all and rest totally.

Pressing "reset" is sometimes the only thing I can try to do to keep going.

I am sorry that I haven't been blogging, but authentically, I had to not. I had to stop everything else because otherwise I would have been ill. I wouldn't have been able to rest (facing facts I've always been completely dreadful at resting and it is still a huge effort, and an accomplishment if I manage to relax). If I kept blogging all the time and never admitted that I was feeling the strain this wouldn't be a true blog about what living with mental health challenges is really like. So I stopped.

I started campaigning this week again, speaking yesterday evening and early this morning at Harvey Nichols to their head office and London store staff about what it is like to have depression and to say it out loud, and why the help that Mind charity provides is so vital - literally - to sustaining people through hard times, from the moment when they realise they or someone else is struggling through everything that comes after it.

Harvey Nichols has established a corporate partnership with Mind and will support them for the next two years. What makes me especially proud is that this super cool, classy customer service and consumer goods supplier par excellence asked its people which charity they wanted to support, and they chose Mind. Good choice! Thanks to them for having me to speak to them about my story and why it's important for us all to support ourselves and everyone around us facing mental health difficulties. It was inspiring to see the enthusiasm for getting involved and making a difference on people's faces today.

This is why I needed to rest. So that I can continue to use my voice. To speak aloud to one person or a room or a television camera, or tap my fingers on the keys and tap louder, to talk about mental health.

It's now twenty five minutes since I started typing and my heart and mind and body feel more relaxed and gladder, twenty five times more so. Next week I plan to write more - though some blog posts, if I finish the ones that are unfinished right now, will be out of sync with the timeline. I do have more to say, of course... But now it's time to rest again.

Stay in touch, and take care of yourselves. x

Out of the Blue and In The Pink

It comes, it goes, it stays, it leaves...

My last weekend's post is fragmented with ups and downs, and therefore late because my mental health has been fluctuating, but knowing that writing helps, here it is.

Monday 18th January.

I'm feeling so so about the day ahead. Neither good nor bad, neither despairing or excited, at least right now. Right now I'm concentrating on the essentials: getting out of bed. Making the bed. Showering. Drying my hair. Dressing for the day and packing up my rucksack. Then there's the rush or swift pacing towards the train. And on the platform beside me are hundreds of others who have just gone through all those same things and probably more. They might have children to rouse and cajole and chastise through all of those steps above, parents or other relatives to care for, or perhaps they have already been up for hours exercising. (It is, after all, still January.)

Last week I wrote a blog post for Mind on the so-called and fictitious Blue Monday, explaining as clearly as I could that anyone with with depression could be #blueanyday.

There's No Such Thing As A Depression Day

So here's a look at my week.

Monday last, I performed all of the above. With a new year goal to try to be healthy and fit, with a hope that as a side effect I would lose some of the two stone I've gained since breaking my back and being on a cocktail of drugs, at least one of which appears to have beaten down with a stick my ability to eat well, exercise regularly and manage (to a better extent, at least) my weight.

I was extremely busy all day with a number of meetings with team members, colleagues leading projects I'm involved with, my boss and with others. On these days I know I won't have created a document (or 'deliverable', the word my business seems - inexplicably - to prefer) in my hand at the end of the day, the management consultant's equivalent of a painting to take home to mummy and daddy to put on the fridge with proud faces. I rush around the building, knowing that I will certainly meet my daily target of 10,000 steps as my meetings are randomly situated over the fourteen-storey two-building expanse that is my office.

Working my brain into an oiled machine...it gets a little rusty over the weekends at time

There is a reason that I schedule all these meetings together though. One after the other the meetings happen, and I take "a mindful breath" before each one, and get through them. during the first I might feel my gears or cognitive cogs creaking into life after the weekend of luxurious lie-ins (till 7:45!). But as the first meets progresses my clanking cranium starts to move more steadily and stronger, the oil of my breathing and breakfast silently slithering around inside me so I start functioning properly. My point is: once the wheels are turning, I want to keep going as much as I can. 

It's worth it to get my brain in gear and be productive

My mind is whirring eventually and I can actually think about each topic on the agenda and bring something valuable into what we discuss. And my second point is, that, I can't get any detailed work document compiled in a snatched half hour where I should also try to grab my lunch. So, at the end of Monday I feel surprised that it has arrived. I don't have anything in my hand to show for it, to prove I've done anything worthwhile, except a notebook of actions and considerations; but I did get through the day, which I always try to see as something positive these days, and attending so many meetings in a way makes the most of my mental and physical energy reserves to speak and contribute and to be in front of people.

My day can end with notes on a piece of paper, 

but those notes lead to decisions and - finally - to 'deliverables'

I go home and eat something for dinner. Something healthy, and watch television and then to bed. I didn't sleep properly on Sunday night so today, I hope, things will be different.

Tuesday 19th January

Just keep going. Get dressed, and do the things that come after that. 

Tuesday is usually the same, but last week a combination of needing to spend a large amount of time on teleconferences with colleagues in other locations meant I decided to stay at home. Without a three-hour round trip commute I can just get so much more done. Unfortunately I didn't sleep well again, so I indulged in an additional 45 minutes in bed. Some attempt that when I rose, finally, I would be able to push my mind into a state where I could work. I had more listening to do rather than talking, more notes to take, then, but also more time to be quiet even while listening to others talking.

The structure of Monday (with all its meetings stacked up) works for me, but I need both company and solitude to balance my mental health, and time away from the office is a great way to be fully involved in my work but not exposed to the anxieties of travel, dressing up, all the above "start the day" activities. Plus, no one can see my face or any part of me; I could be wearing my pyjamas or my jeans. (If I'm at home as I was for most of Tuesday, I'll likely be wearing jeans, thick socks, a woollen t shirt, two jumpers, a woolly snood, a rug-like scarf and a hat. Our central heating is either on and not very hot or off. Either way sitting still for hours is not the best if you want to stay warm.) the point of this alone time is to be able to carry on working on terms that help my mental health not get in the way of progress.

I ended the day with a treat to see a film - Room - at the cinema, alone. I love solo cinema trips, since it was always too late to organise spontaneous visits with friends most weekends. Alone in the cinema I can think whatever I want and it doesn't matter if others disagree. I won't need to be polite and listen and broker my way through the discussion; it's just me on my own in the dark watching a story unfold, and my review is in my head, not open for discussion or critique.

Wednesday 20th January

Wednesday was similar in form to Tuesday. I spent my working hours at home on calls and producing some documents in the time in between. I can't remember whether I slept well on Tuesday night or not, but I suspect I didn't. Somewhere along the way through Wednesday morning a combination of feeling numb and feeling desperate seep in and I notice by lunchtime that I feel like going to bed and not getting up for the rest of the day. 

I wasn't overworked, I was overwhelmed by depression.

Not the same thing. It can happen through over work,

but I'm still working on understanding this skittish illness

Where does it come from? I had therapy coming up later and so, so wanted to stay at home and slip under the duvet away from everything and everyone in the world until Mat finally got home. But the practical part of me somehow wrestled me into boots and out of the door. I didn't enjoy the fresh air on the walk as I felt the despair of myself - the self I cannot love - in spades. But I know that the exercise and air are natural remedies for better mental health. And luckily for me, it was beautiful. Rationally and unobjectionably beautiful.

The only thing I can think of ito explain what has become a regular mood dip is that the middle of the week is when I have involved myself in the work equivalent of a mess of wool and knitting needles of activity, and if I stop every stitch will perhaps unravel, or if I continue I must be unrelenting in my commitment to progress. You can't make an omelette, etc. Perhaps that is it. It's the second Wednesday in a row when I have felt like this. I can't remember if it came on at the same time, but by the time I'm through with crying in therapy and back at home in the evening, still crying, I did remember how it feels to feel desperate and that things won't get better.

TV. Food. Sleep. I think the sleep worked this time. I didn't have anxiety in my stomach and tingling all over me the next day. That's all I've got. So that has to be good enough.

Thursday 21st January

Thursday was unusual. I had to go to Tooting for a hospital appointment and walked all the way there from home, rising very early, to try to use the walking and fresh air I know - rationally - that I have to include in my life for better mental health. My feet hurt by the time I arrived but I focussed more on hope that my brain would be flooded with positive endorphins of the exercise rather than the dull, murky and lumpy vessels of whatever chemicals are causing my depression to come back and dip my mood again. I also wondered whether two days at home consecutively had made me lonely, so I` don't know. I'm just trying a lot of things I know are good for me and hoping for a better day tomorrow if today is rubbish.

 

I had a reason to feel somewhat abnormal. I was nervous about seeing my neuro-spinal surgeon a whole year after our last meeting. He is both a brilliant surgeon and a thoroughly nice man but I was terrified that I wouldn't be deemed fit and well to have the screws taken out of my spine and afraid in equal measure that I would. I had to call my health insurer to gain an authorisation code for the surgery which is another worry for me, as the representatives are trained to the precise words that come from their mouths to offer a balance of sympathy and firmness, the latter in particular when one of them tells you that you aren't covered for that and that there is nothing that they can do, even if you might find your life at risk because of that seemingly irrational and quite silly conclusion. (To be fair this has only happened once, for suspected sleep apnoea.)

When I've got a lot on my mind, my thoughts

weight twice as much as my body

The rest of Thursday was part triumph and part disappointment. There are so many days like that, where hour to hour I feel elated one moment, but the next in a slough of despond. I had a couple of great meetings but also several where no one showed up. If this happens once, great, I can use the time to get things updated for one project or another, find the resources to fee fulfilled. Three or four cancellations, though, and I'm slightly panicked that I won't be able to achieve the things I was meant to, feeling sick. These things happen; I have to tell myself that, and that there's no reason that it's me. 

This sometimes worries me... 

I am, after all a control freak... so I can control scheduling the meeting,

but not who attends them!

Sunday 23rd January

I'm skipping forward to Sunday as its getting late and I'm very tired. Even blogging, which I love, takes energy, and I need some reserves for Monday. Continuing to try exercise for health, I  had run on Saturday morning and struggled but running on Sunday was easier. Reading through the above makes me feel sad, because it really wasn't a bad week at all, but I hate how a small thing can make me feel really dragged down. Meeting up with two lovely women from the In The Pink a cappella group to discuss International Women's Day and their performance at my work was a delight and so much fun. We laughed and shared our love of music and its powerful means to make me (and everyone) feel good. and walking around beautiful Oxford with Mat lifted me up again. Not necessarily forever, but the inspiration of music and beautiful buildings, happy memories and fantastic people are always going to be magical medication, and make me feel well again. 

Doing what I can to stay in the pink and out of the blue

So here's to another week of ups and downs that leave me somewhere along the narrow road to tomorrow. Take care. x

I Got That Summertime, Summertime Sadness: Fragments of Two Weeks of Severe Depression

This blog post is a fragmentary group of paragraphs that don't hang together. That's because I'm not 
hanging together very well. I could use a number of similes or metaphors to describe it.

Oh my God, I feel it in the air, telephone wires above, are sizzling...

I am a bag of marbles (I haven't lost them) that are clacking against each other noisily and awkwardly and painfully. I am a collection of smiles and tears and laughter and sleeping and wakefulness. I am lost. I am feeling nothing. I am feeling too much. I still am...but what I am I cannot say...

Here are some fragments. This is what I wrote last week, and below that what I wrote before.

Last week - Friday 14th August, 6:38 pm

This week was one of the worst that I've had over the last two years - nearly two years since I have been back in the UK and supposedly back to normality. It makes me sad to write that sentence, knowing that just over a year ago I came out of hospital and was filled with being rested, re-educated about the things I can do to support myself, and understanding what my 'rights' were as an individual, even if I couldn't define them for myself, and found it impossible to say what I needed at any level.

This week my husband went back to work and we gave up our enjoyable daily routine of working in our two different bedrooms/studies and 'not talking' but 'being' together in our one dwelling. I still work from home quite a bit, but have to try and find a balance between being in the office to feel connected to my colleagues and like I have a place in the world outside, and being at home so I don't have to see anyone, to feel disconnected from the world outside.

While I'm at home I stay with all of the usual trappings that entails: running (maybe, if I can get up and make myself do it), juicing, (on a good day, and if I hadn't broken my juicer like I did yesterday), making a list for the day (so that I can compartmentalise the tasks into small, manageable chunks and prevent myself from feeling overwhelmed by the entire picture by tackling one thing at a time) and then working through that list and postponing decisions on anything else until I reach the end of the day so that I can ensure that I reach the end of the day and then can do whatever I need to to feel safe, protected, and free from worry.

This week I couldn't cope. One of the things that I am most susceptible to with depression is the fact that I have developed over my entire life an inability to cope with separation from others. My subconscious (i.e. the bit of me that makes the decisions about how I'll feel about anything, which the rational me doesn't get a say in) smashes the alarm glass and sets off the sirens when I'm left alone by people who are a supportive presence in my life. Whether for this or for other reasons, I crashed back into full scale depressive symptoms:

• Waking up at 4 am without a hope of getting back to sleep because the 'On' button in my brain is stuck down permanently
• Loss of interest in doing anything other than making it through the day, in a haze of numbness where I can't feel anything
• Loss of appetite, so that even the nicest freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie might as well be cardboard going into my mouth
• Short term memory: I'm writing absolutely everything down because I can't remember what I'm saying. I frequently lose my thread mid sentence and can't get to the end of it without having to be reminded what I was saying in the first place.
• Low frustration tolerance. I cried in anger when I couldn't get the zip done up on one of my dresses. I was enraged when I dropped a plastic food box on the floor which meant I had to clean it. I felt inexplicably irritated when I realised we had run out of loo roll. 

And, for the last one, I cried and cried and cried about the fact that I was back down the rabbit hole of depression, with the medication and therapies that have been helping me to recover feeling like worthless placebos (which rationally I know they're not) and I cried because I was still alive feeling like this and there might never be an end to it.

Thursday 20^th August, 4:27pm.

I suppose I’m still alive, but …ugh what cost? At the cost of feeling absolutely crap most of the time at the moment. I hate to say that but the next thirty years don’t feel so great. Is there really any point?

I went to hospital last week and confessed I spent at least four days out of seven wanting to be dead. They worried about me and offered admission, which I didn't want, advised me to take extra sedatives, which I felt wasn't that helpful- feeling like "Let's keep her alive by making her even more numb to the world outside". That's not living in my book.

Yes, there is a point, I know, rationally, that it must be so. But I am still all of the above, numb, frustrated, short tempered, sick of it all. I might be useful at work and get through each day with projects on track and employees supported, but I come home or leave work and I feel empty. I have nothing much left for the evening except to feed myself and then sleep. I can manage to eat (although I don’t have an appetite). I can manage to talk a little with Mat (though I lose track of what I’m saying and don’t feel I have a good grip on what’s going on in the world or that I have anything interesting to say). I can perhaps write a few tweets, respond to a couple of texts, and try to stay connected to the outside world.

Unraveling and trying to keep it together at the same time

Saturday 2nd August, 07:28am

I'm up and ready in my running gear for the park run. I've carried on doing what I can through this - I've kept going to work (from home a few days and in the office some days). This is to combine the need to hide my tear-stained face from the world at times and my need to get out there and show myself to jog myself a little back into the norms of the day and try and feel something other than nothing as I do it. I've kept running every day, and although I cried (again. So much crying these last two weeks) in anger because I managed to fall on a rainy morning and injure my elbow again, as well as develop impressive bruises all over and not be able to run the 5 miles I was planning, I didn't actually break it x-ray confirmed) so I can go and do the park run this morning. 

I've put my makeup on and met friends a couple of times, which was a struggle but probably did me a lot of good. And I have rested with books, with my beloved Netflix, and eaten sandwiches at 5pm to close the day, heading to bed to read at 6 and shutting out the world so I can draw that day to a close and rest before the next one. 

And I have done other things: I've recorded another interview for the BBC, written an article for Metro online (watch this space for that) and applied to go on Campaign Bootcamp, in spite of not being accepted last time. 

#spoonie 

I'm recognising that my depression makes me a #spoonie and I need to select what to do and not to do when I'm really poorly. Unfortunately my social life usually is the first to go as I want to make it through work as a semblance of a normal existence. It's my choice though, and I choose how to allocate whatever energy or mixture of numbness and feeling comes to me on any of those days.

So, yes, I am alive, and I'm carrying on. I have seen from Twitter that a lot of my Twitter friends with mental illness are also having a really bad time. I'm hoping the summertime sadness will pass. As always I recognise how lucky I am to have supportive family and friends around me, and medical professionals who want to help me get better, not get (even more) lost. I hope I can write a more together post for next week. But I'll just settle for what I can manage today for now.

Life's A Beach: Baking, Bathing, Just Being. But Not in a Bikini

Not like this, I'm not. Now sod off. 

Just as the many articles have said, in contrast to those ridiculous adverts, we are actually all bikini and beach body ready all the time! All we women will get unattractive amounts of sand in every item of our clothing, and if we're really lucky we'll get exfoliated by the sand, by which I mean not the luscious smooth and bright skin promised by Just Seventeen or whatever the magazine I should be reading to ensure that I don't commit a total faux pas sur la plage, but the kind that leaves red welts on your shoulders where your swimsuit strap lines were rubbed too much. 

No one. Repeat no one. Uses sand like this. 

Oh, and this photo's credit goes to the Daily Mail.

Of course it does.

Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why I will not be going to a beach this year. Even though I don't want to feel embarrassed by my body, I detest the fact that I am not in control of it, because of the medication and the mashed up muscles or whatever the rest of me is doing.

#EveryBodysReady

Not at all. I like being in control. Other reasons: I have skin as white as snow, and although I wouldn't say I looked like a fairy tale princess, let's just say there are good reasons why we meet Snow White in a forest and not sipping one of those umbrella drinks on a lilo in a pool she's just scrubbed clean.

Sing it Snow.

 I also have a husband who is averse to all things 'beach'. He can't swim. Check. He hates hot weather. Double check. He has a phobia of crabs and lobsters. Check. Seriously. It is a thing. He did try to swim once, in a lake in the USA (no crustaceans in the lake, just, you know, leeches. He tried to get on a lilo. "It was like trying to shag a mermaid."

And this woman looks photoshopped onto her lilo.

So clearly no one gets on one of those things without serious effort.

WARNING TO MY HUSBAND - LOBSTER ALERT

>

>

>

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This is the most inappropriate lilo for our household. Ever.

Therefore, instead of an island in the sea, this weekend we will be heading off to the Emerald Isle for a little walk in the irish hills (as long as my feet hold out). The Emerald Isle is where I really come from, not just because of my married name, but because of my true colours, white skin, blue eyes, dark brown hair. It's really a much more suitable place for me to go than golden sands. I'm kind of hoping it will rain to be honest. When it rains, as Lucy once said in Marian Keyes' book "Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married", "my insides match my outsides". Can't keep an emerald isle emerald without enough water to keep things lush. 

My kind of destination holiday

When I had my accident last year I lost weight initially through eating a very simple diet of normal breakfast followed by a sandwich for lunch and another for dinner. And between I slept. I wasn't going out for the delicious dinners and wine I loved (still love), but snoozing through morphine-induced stupor and eventually on preparation to leave hospital and then at home, just a massive number of over the counter pain killers instead. I was the most attractive I had ever been, if you like drooling  Like clockwork. Just enough to keep me asleep when I slept, until my next dose that is; just enough food to help get hem down and give me some enjoyment while I was literally flat out recovering.

When I'm comparing myself to Homer Simpson, I know things are bad

Unfortunately, the one side effect I was okay with (and it was short term) was never going to last. I had a good metabolism because I was always running and then walking everywhere I could to top up my exercise, so then I put on weight and couldn't swim because of the mess of my arm, or run (in fact not could I walk) because of the tendonitis my leg and arm, so as my metabolism slowed to a crawl, my actual activity didn't even make it to that. Bed. Log roll out of bed. Shuffle to kitchen. Open fridge. Take out M&S sandwich. (Would I, in fact, be alive at all if it were not for those national treasures of two slices of bread plus filling? I really wonder!) slide into sofa. Ouch. Eat on sofa. Get up. Ouch. Back to bed. Ouch again. Snooze. Unconscious drool. Euch. 

Worshiping at the Altar of M&S

It's all so incredibly shallow isn't it? This all sounds a bit like I'm sorry for myself and I suppose I am, really, because as I write this in sitting with my right ankle resting uncomfortably in icy water to try to reduce the swelling on the underside of my heel which has inexplicably flared up. I was still depressed two weeks ago, sure, but I felt like my body was finally getting back to normal. Running = more eating. Walking up escalators = my skinny jeans still fit. Walking at all = all over fitness regime those lucky enough to be able to walk have. So it was quite frankly frustrating in the extreme to be sitting here in this position, after thinking it was all going to be fine. 

Yep

I hope we get to walk because the fresh air and walks help to clear my mind. Dwelling on anything does not make for a healthy perspective; this is why mental health is a challenge when anyone chooses to open up about it. With a (complication-free) broken leg (that tried and true example of what we mentally ill people don't find parity of experience with when we converse about our illnesses) it's a short conversation. It's:
"Oh, poor you, your leg is broken. How long will the cast be on?" 
"Six weeks."
"Bummer."
"Yeah."
"Does it hurt?"
"Yes."

With mental illness we could carry on talking about it all day. I don't understand my own mental health. Every day is different. Every day is annoying and unpredictable, and that's why it's hard to talk about even in our inner circle of support group or fellow depressives. It's certainly not interesting everyday for me, that's for sure. It's just what it is. A mess.

When you break eggs with a big stick, you get:

cake mix.

So when in a mess, what to do? Mope? Nope. I am too good at moping. So this time I will win the to mope or not to mope fight with myself. I'll make a cake instead. A cake, like colouring, can be simple, distracting, productive and, unlike colouring (depending on how tasty you find crayons), delicious. All hail to Nigella, who taught me to try to bake again when I couldn't do anything in 2001. I am grateful for her continued, distant support through the cakes and bakes and butterfly buns she has designed for us all. Today I was productive at work, and I made a cake. 

Method and Mix

Method

Mix

Tin

Bake

I doubt I'll lose any weight through eating the cake. Little enough through making it. But really, what does it matter. I'm not bikini ready like Cara Delavigne. Then again, she wasn't quite deportment (or decorum)-ready on Good Morning Sacramento. I'm not bikini ready as myself either. I don't need to be. I'm not even ready for anything much. But I'm here. I'm still here. This is life. Life isn't always a bitch, or a beach. Sometimes it's a bake.

Food For Thought. Life (or Life With Mental Health) is Like a Box of Chocolates... #VictoriaLIVE

It’s been a busy week in the media for mental health, which is very positive as far as I’m concerned, but also gives me pause to, well, pause, because I’ve been involving myself in many of the discussions going on and probably need to take a break and make sure I’m taking care of myself.

Monday morning was a bit like Christmas in the world of mental health, and my present was a whole one hour and a half programme on BBC two dedicated to the discussion of many aspects of mental health. If you missed it, the Victoria Derbyshire programme featured both a panel of medical experts and celebrity-come-mindfulness-expert Ruby Wax, and is available on BBC iPlayer for the next month.

Victoria and me. Unfortunately this was the one shot I got.

I look happy. She...not so much

I knew what was coming when Mind contacted me about potentially appearing. An eye wateringly) (more like eye-rubbing-ly) early start and no make-up artists to make me look like I hadn’t been up since 5. Imagine for a moment if you arrived at the airport ahead of your long haul transatlantic flight, only to find that a film crew was waiting to catch your (eye) bags and pallid, pre-holiday complexion. Now imagine that being broadcast to thousands of viewers. And now imagine that you have anxiety and depression, which manifests itself as feeling hyper self-conscious of everything about you that is visible and invisible.

Me - in taxi at 6am and on set at 8am. 

Purple and Pink Hair meets Purple set and shiny forehead

(Plus, can you tell I'm depressed? See, I am, but you can't tell...)

I talk about my experience. And am shiny. You can watch the full show here:

Oh, the fun we had! 80 people with some kind of lived experience of mental health, lined up in the BBC café area (not open), drinking coffee, tea and eating chocolate biscuits. I like drinking juice as much as the next person, but there’s nothing like an instant shot of cheap chocolate covered refined sugar.

The master biscuit. I salute you.

Following that, I also contributed to a forthcoming Buzzfeed article – watch this space for that – and also then attended a workshop with @LatimerGroup to discuss ideas for a new advert for Time To Change. It’s so good to meet people who do and don’t have lived experiences of mental health and share our ideas for what would work as a concept to help people to seek help or just find out a bit about what mental health means.

It has been a great week for mental health, but I felt down as early as Tuesday and at that point I knew I had to make adjustments to make things work. I felt tired on Tuesday morning so benefited once again from my “reasonable adjustments” at work, choosing to work my full day from home instead of in the office, which helps me avoid a three hour roundtrip commute. I took a 1 hour thirty minute lunch break so I could have a midday nap.

(Note, this is against doctor’s orders, I’m not really meant to nap during the day.) I got to the end of the day. I got to my workshop, despite still feeling tired and starting to feel low because of the tiredness added to the things that make me sad from time to time – loneliness, stress, negative thoughts about friends, hating my body, hating my stupid illness, and so on. Love the thought process of depression. Really I do. I made it back in time for bed and slept. (And I had eaten four sliced of Domino’s for dinner. Carbs help with sleep. But if you’re reading this for health tips for eating, this is not the post for you!)

The pizza was healing.

I don't care what they say about additives.

These slices were just what I needed.

Sleep, enough medication and, yes, pizza, helped put paid to my anxiety and depressive mood in time for Wednesday, so I made it through the day with a run, full day of work, therapy, dinner and a movie (at home, though, I was pretty tired again!). And I ran again on Thursday and went into work (with cupcakes (see comment above. Not the healthiest week), had a (near) fight with a guy in IT who tried to order me around. (Note to all: this is never a good idea! Cue Jessica death stare con 5. That baby doesn’t usually emerge outside the classroom when year seven need to know to stop. To stop right now.) I had a series of good meetings (that’s because the team I work with are all so lovely) and then came home and rested again.

Mini oreo cookies. Small things come in beautiful 

(sometimes with gooey icing) packages

I have to try to take breaks even when my head is all over the place and when my body feels twitchy all over from the medication side effects or whatever else is going on. I don’t feel like doing it. I feel like stepping outside my body and outside my mind. How bad I feel changes from episode to episode, but this week I never reached the terrible place, not quite, because I was able to recognise enough in the calendar to see I really did have to stop frequently. Otherwise that terrible place might be here again. And it might come without my help, so I’ll do everything I can. And Forrest Gump’s mother was right about the box of chocolates, too, in case you’re wondering.

You said it Sally

It sounds so simple, take a break. (Have a KitKat. Oh, I don’t mind if I do!) If I’m honest, though, I’m just not good at taking breaks. I tell myself, go on, keep going, you can do it, just a bit more, just another hour, just another email, just another half a mile, just another phone call. All those “just anothers” add up to a whole lot of “too much” if I’m not careful.

Just another half a mile. Just another juice. Just another 'just'

On the flipside, I wrote an email to a good friend today where I expressed my frustrations at the things I can’t do:

“I remark on the things I still don’t do – like cooking for example – which I used to love and now find little energy left for after managing with work…”

Kind of ironic. I clearly haven't lost interest in food if this blog is anything to go by. But I reflect and I see that there are positives and negatives. Balance. It's about balance.

Details of this poem are here

I’ve said it before and I say it today: cognitive behavioural therapy is for me, in part, a constant process of trying to be more reflective and mindful of what I’m doing. It’s a double edged sword. I have to do this to get better; but doing it makes me feel terrible. If I can take joy in small things, I will. If I can notice that I got to the end of the day, feeling absolutely horrific, I still did get to the end of that day. (At this point I’d probably have buried my head in the duvet, into the pillow, having shut down the light in the room as much as I could, having cleaned all my makeup off, my mask, from my face, scrubbed my teeth so the mint taste distracts me, and having surrendered myself to bed and oblivion.)

Blurring into Oblivion

So here’s another end of the week. It was a great week for discussion on mental health. It was a terrible week for funding cuts. It was an alarming week for statistics on mental health and men’s suicide figures. It was a good week at work. It was an okay week for running. And it was a week. It was.

See you next week?