Auntie Comes Round for Tea and Conversation...about My Experiences with Stress and Depression

Almost certain to be true in my case.

It's Friday night as I write this and I have to say it's been a strange day. I've made my second trip into the office since my accident - by taxi as I cannot use public transport.  This time, though, required me to be in the office for 9 am rather than sauntering casually into the place at 12, so I had rather a rude awakening for me, the worker-at-home and walking wounded.

Champagne soaked floozie? Never. Well, not a floozie. I have (some) dignity.

Today I have been filmed by the BBC - twice - for their BBC Breakfast show on BBC One. Once, to be in my office (and office garb), and a second time at home in my usual attire. [I asked them if a reindeer onesie was okay but apparently that's been done before. Darn it.]. This I was told by the producer I spoke to yesterday. The funny thing about TV (news) is that you have to believe it's not really going to happen. I can't remember how or where I picked up this notion, but it is absolutely true. If you ever wonder what a PR does for his / her company, look no further than spending hours on the phone trying to convince this or that paper, TV show or website to feature their cause, their celebrity, their largest cabbage in the Cotswolds. Whatever. As I said I don't know how I got to know this - I can hardly believe it to have come from my brief flirtation with student journalism, but I have now an innate sense of disbelief that any programme or feature I'm involved with will actually, well, happen.

Cute...scary...cute...scary...?

Still, after a 'possibly but probably not' email from Mind on Wednesday, that turned into a 'definitely' on Thursday afternoon with filming to take place the next day: the other thing to note is how fast these things are arranged. As you know I've been fairly vocal here and on TV / with Mind about my commitment to supporting mental illness advocacy, so now Mind has me on its books, as it were, as a case study they can roll out. "Jessica, yes, she's mad as a bag of snakes," is something that they are extremely unlikely to say when asked if they have someone to feature on this or that show, or in an article on whatever. On the other hand, I do have a string of mental illness symptoms to my name. Stress, tick, depression, yes, anxiety, oh definitely, loneliness (causing one or more of the former) for sure. On these grounds it does make me rather easy to ping to mind when wanting a willing spokesperson. And after all, I haven't invested in Botox stocks for nothing, you know.

Lovely Leah. I made her a cup of tea and she drank it. Win.

The beautiful and petite (ugh, I must remember this is a blog, not a personal ad) Leah Boleto is my interviewer. And fabulous, super nice Pete is our camera man. A compact but great team for the interview. We do a couple of shots at the office. One is of me typing with an incredibly close shot of my fingers as I submit the exciting message that is my weekly time sheet. I probably did it wrong because all I could think about was the fact that I hadn't painted my nails and in the words of Arsenio Hall in Coming to America, "I am badly in need of a manicure." You said it Arsenio.

"I am badly in need of a manicure."

At home, we do straight conversation style interview, with me talking to Leah and Pete filming, with just me in shot. We seem to talk for a long time so I certainly hope they got something to go on!

(Incidentally, friends and close blog reading amigos, let me be clear about what is required if someone comes to film at your house: cleaning and tidying. Neither of these are daily on my to do list, so it was with something reminiscent of a spinally injured, broken elbowed whirling dervish that I swept around the front room with help from the lovely Mat to make sure that we had vacuumed the rug and arranged the cushions properly. At the very least. And taken the recycling out. Let's just say that I felt I really deserved my dinner and glass of wine last night after whipping round. But I did my exercise for the day, sponsored by co-dydramol and Gabapentin. Why thank you.)

Leah and me, after filming. Jessica = relief

Leah was sensitive in asking whether it was difficult to talk about my past experiences. Reflecting on this, it gets easier the more that I do it, and honestly, it's not like a therapy session, so I don't end up crying all over her (I'm delighted to say, and I'm sure she's pretty pleased about that too!). I was saying to Mat this week that I don't want to become a broken record where depression is concerned. I do have other stuff going on. I'm most of the way through watching Lie To Me and contemplating The Good Wife and Scandal as the next box set-cum-Netflix-must-watch.

Bed bound and Netflix-addict. Thank you Tim Roth.

The difference in talking this time was that this was a recorded interview, rather than live. It was also a lot longer, so that my words can be chopped up into bite-sized segments describing my life experiences. I wonder how it will come out. I'm guessing about 20-30 seconds of content, so will be amazed if anything more is featured. That's TV, folks. They also took some footage of me 'doing something normal' for potential use in the segment.

Pete - awesome. Me - trying to look relaxed = not really relaxed!

Luckily the suggestion of me making tea was ditched in favour of me reading a book. I did make them tea - the poor two had travelled all the way from east London to Teddington and it took them nearly three hours. Perhaps a neat Scotch would have been more appropriate! But I don't drink it, or coffee. (I know, English, you're ENGLISH. Must drink tea...but I'm sorry to say that I'm letting the nation down, one de-caffeinated diet coke and orange squash, or glass of Veuve, at a time.)

 So we opted for me reading a book. I couldn't undertake this exercise in our personal gargantuan library without choosing my very favourite book, Possession, by A.S. Byatt. This is worth a blog in itself, or a book, or more, but suffice to say that I felt almost relaxed (almost) with a camera being poked in my face as I turned the page on cue and made sure I quickly moved on from a page where the (surely pre-watershed embargoed) word 'penis' appeared!

Time for a relaxing read. Just me and my camera crew.

 After all that time to get over here it was all worth it in terms of the tidying and cleaning. Everyone who sent me a get well card - look out for your cards in the background, and thanks again! You know what my favourite book is now, you can tell I need a manicure (possibly, if they use that shot) and I got to meet two great professionals - presenter and film expert - in the process. It just goes to say that depression can lead you to new and positive things. I really hope that the end product - to be broadcast on Tuesday 25th November to coincide with the Economist's "Global Crisis of Depression" conference. I believe we have to keep talking about this. But for now, I'll take a rest and wish you all a very healthy weekend. Get some rest and get out there if it's not raining...take care, most of all.

Camera lighting is very cool. Just saying.

National Stress Awareness Day: My Tango with TV

Imagine waking up to a stress-free week day. What would the first few minutes look like? Perhaps you roll over and cuddle up to your other half for a few more blissful minutes (or hours, hey, it's your imagination) of sleep with no alarm to wake you up; perhaps it's breakfast in bed made by your children (just watch out for any stray eggshell!). It might be opening the window to the sound of the sea and the salty brine smell undulating on the breeze into your room.

National Stress Awareness Day 2014. I was aware. I was very aware.

And now imagine the start to my day today, on #NationalStressAwarenessDay NSAD. It started at 4am, 30 minutes before my alarm was due to go off, but, I realised, probably a good thing, as I tried to haul my creaking back and arm out of bed. I thought somewhere their sleepy voices were murmuring at me: "Surely it can't be time to get up yet? We were having a nice dream about penguins hopping around. Can't you leave us to sleep?"
"No. I can't. It's 4am and I have to manage to get dressed with only an hour and a half to do it in because yesterday I agreed to go on morning television to talk about being stressed at work!" I'm definitely feeling some stress right now.

Live. Live at 4am, 5am, 6am, etc. You name it, they're live.

The programme I was to appear on is called London Live (never hear of it, apparently linked to the Evening Standard etc.) and asked me on in connection with Mind as a 'case study' of someone who has suffered stress at work, along with a representative from Mind who would talk about a new study that shows that 56% of people surveyed (and 64% in the UK) agree that work is very or fairly stressful.

Studies in America show similar results: it's clear that wherever we are (and yes, this is a first world problem in my case and in many of our cases) stress is a major problem. We can (mostly) afford to eat and (some of the time, most of the time) pay our bills, but work is stressful, family is stressful, and life is stressful.

Source: Voip Stress Epidemic Study 2014

I also asked my Twitter followers and friends for their experiences. This is what they told me. (Okay, so only eleven people responded to my survey, but still, that is better than none!)

Jessica's Twitter Stress Survey. 11 responses. Thanks to #MarianKeyes for the retweet!

As my more regular readers will know, I'm trying to be more open about speaking out on my mental health problems (in which I would include excessive stress) so I was delighted to be asked despite the early start to the day. I also wrote a blog for Mind themselves, published today, which you can read here.

Last night I thought about what I might say, fully aware that TV breakfast segments tend to be at most 5-6 minutes long, and worrying (stressing?!) that I might go on a bit and cause time troubles...However, I thought through a few things and felt fairly relaxed. Until I received the email from the producer.

"Unfortunately we do not have a makeup artist and Jessica will have to do her own."

Now you might think that as someone who didn't exactly embrace the idea of a makeup-free selfie, that this wouldn't present a problem. But remember now, dear reader, that my skin tone is ivory. Not ivory, but alabaster. Not alabaster, but ghoul like in its paleness. And here's the rub: the TV lights just make one look paler still. Yikes.

This is me, except you don't need to paint the whiteness on. It's right there already.

YouTube came to the rescue as I remembered Lauren Luke's tips from some years ago, and imagined that if there was a video telling me how to get three stars on every. single. level. in Angry Birds, then surely there must be something on TV makeup. And I was right. So, folks, the next time you're asked to go on camera (whether male or female...hey, we can all learn something) this is a good video for you.

Of course, the beautiful star of this video seemed to me not to have the whiter-that-white bleached skin effect, so I had to adjust her tips just a little. And what I did was this: Get Tangoed. In the bathroom at 4.55 with three massive bags of makeup emptied out on to the bathroom floor and my laptop blaring at me how to do HD TV face, I gradually applied product after product to perfect my skin to extreme levels of orange. This was the after effect. I'm sure you'll agree it is a charming look.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Luckily, the satsuma skin didn't show on camera, and hopefully my nerves didn't either. Alex Beard, the presenter, was just lovely - warm, friendly and beautiful, and I truly felt that it was just us and no one else was watching. [Jessica, no one else WAS watching. This was 6.40am. Reality check. Even your mum wasn't watching because she doesn't live in London.] I was co-interviewed for the first segment of three with Tom from Mind, who then had to leave for other radio interviews.

Lovely London Live presenter Alex Beard.

Left alone for the last two segments at 7.30 and 8.20, It was actually easier doing the interview one on one - I worried less about not saying enough or hogging the slot, because I was the only one in the chair anyway. And thank goodness for the brevity of the slots: sitting on stools is not a comfortable idea for a spinal fusion patient. Hopefully I wasn't grimacing too much!

Me on TV! (Not looking orange at all - see!)

Watch my Interview Here (only available for a week but will try to get a copy!)

On a serious note, though, I was able to share the mental and physical impact on me of being under tremendous stress at work in the past, which led in part to my increasing depression - particularly not being able to talk about it, as I've said in an earlier blog. feeling sick, afraid, not sleeping, having appetite problems and more are all medical symptoms commonly linked to stress, although Mind's survey reported that some people would either often be too afraid to take a day off, or would pretend there was something else - physical - wrong, rather than name their reason as 'stress'.

I experienced many of the physical and all of the psychological effects above.

Source: Voip Stress Epidemic Study 2014

On the way home I decided to stop into Marks and Spencer for a bottle of milk. That's a pretty stress-free activity, and hopefully no one will notice that your face currently resembles an overripe pumpkin in a Sainsbury's carrier bag. In I went, and managed to move balletic-ally (or as near as I could manage with a wired arm and screwed back) to the dairy section, narrowly avoiding a collision with an M&S store worker who was carefully navigating her buns to the bakery section. Phew. Milk in hand, I headed for the checkouts.

This being mid-morning on a Wednesday, the full coterie of checkouts are not in service: too early for the lunch time rush; too late for the On-the-way-to-work crowd. An elderly woman with a threatening-looking Zimmer frame was unloading items from her trolley at a speed which challenged theories of forward-moving time; a father in the next aisle grappled with Percy Pig requests being howled at him by three small children. Another no. Hence, to the self-checkout queue, which I prefer as long as people know how to use the machines PROPERLY. That is: get in, scan, get out. Done.
Unfortunately here too lay disaster. The woman ahead of me wiped her snotty toddler's nose with a combination of her sleeve and her hand before selecting "Pay with card" on the screen. The outlook looked mucussy..

However, my luck turned! Another self-checkout machine opened up. I was just about to press "Finish and pay" when a sales assistant appeared from nowhere and asked politely: "Would you like any satsumas today madam, they're on special offer?"

"No, thank you," I replied slowly, with all the dignity I could muster on my clemetine-coloured complexion. "No."

From tangerine to squeaky clean.