There has been a lot of talk lately on radio and tv and a lot of written articles on mental health issues. I heard Tony Bates yesterday http://www.rte.ie/radio1/marianfinucane/tonybates.html talking to Marian Finucane about our attitude to depression and mental health issues. I love listening to Dr Bates - he is intelligent and empathetic and I always read his piece in the Irish Times medical supplement on Tuesdays. I have found myself in much of Dr Bates' work - he has an uncanny knack for making me see myself, accept myself and move on. His new book is called 'Depression:A Common Sense Approach' and I highly recommend it to anyone who either suffers from depression or lives with someone who is a sufferer.
Those of you who know me well know I have battled with depression and mental health issues for decades. I'm now thankfully at the stage where I manage my illness well, recognise it coming and I haven't had any serious bouts for a number of years. I used my own experiences in writing 'The Heron's Flood' and living with depression is a thread running through the book. Ironic that that most awful of feelings rewarded me creatively in the end - mind you I'd prefer a no depression no writing life - or would I? Are we ever fully content and accepting of ourselves?
In recent years I have used both meditation and mindfulness as a way to keep myself in the present moment - trying not to worry about the future as I can't influence it or dwelling on the past which I cannot change. My mother's' favourite prayer was the alcoholic's one (she used to say 'why do they get all the good ones!)
'God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
To change the things I can change
And the wisdom to know the difference'
Whether one believes in a God or Higher Power is irrelevant. It is really a prayer to self - a promise to at least try to be peaceful, loving and wise, to walk away from inner turmoil and accept what comes our way. Surely something we all could strive for on a daily basis. Combine that prayer with half an hour's meditation or mindfulness - daily if possible - try Jon Kabat-Zin You tube link here to get a flavour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc.
Dr Kabat-Zin's work is fantastic. When I discovered mindfulness it gave me back myself. After twenty years of medication and psychiatrists I finally found the answer, the 'why' of my depression. There is no why - it just is and it is within me and only I can lift myself out of it. And that can only be done if I accept myself as I am, acknowledge my bad points and try to let my good self win, and breathe.
Above all mindfulness can be done at any time and in any place. If you are feeling stressed or anxious -or even if it is only people getting on your nerves-just stop. Stop for half a minute, breathe, in out in out,breathe, be in the moment; befriend your mind and let it work unflurried by anything other than what it has to do in that moment.
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Monday, May 24, 2010
Fireflies........
Someone whom I love very deeply suffered a bit of a wobbly over the last week. This prompted me to contemplate yet again how powerful and delicate an organ the brain is, how easily the balance of it can be disturbed and how distressing such disturbances are for both the person who is suffering and that person’s friends and family.
I suppose I understand it a little myself because I have sunk into some terrifying pits over a twenty year period. I get the very odd high-very, very, odd and not enough to warrant either medication or psychotherapy. I quite like the highs, I always write my best work when I’m in that head, the big ideas come and I try to hold them, write them down, record them for use in some piece at a future date. The worst I do is stay awake too long and talk too much. After the last episode I mentioned these warning signs to the beloved other, he is in general able to spot the dark clouds glowering before I do, but he’s not so tuned to the slight highs and his reaction was
‘But you talk so much anyway, how am I to know you’re going high?’
It’s hard on him and on my family but they’re great. They never ever condemn me, tell me to pull up my socks or to get on with it and stop feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn’t blame them if they did, living with mental illness is haard on everyone in the family. Sometimes I feel self-indulgent, letting the high or low get the better of me – particularly a bad low day, a day I cannot, physically cannot get out of bed, a day I want to die, count the paracetamol or contemplate the branches of trees pondering would they take my weight in a noose. I hope I never get to that space again where I actually do something with the thoughts that lurk in the recesses of my mind. But sometimes these very thoughts are the only things that calm me. Planning my death, my funeral – incredibly morbid, dark dark thoughts.
But then the doorbell might go and a freckle-faced boy comes home, and how could I leave him yet? How could I abandon him when he still needs me. He and his brother, my step daughters, my husband, family and friends. They are my ‘will-to-meaning’ (Viktor Frankyl). I draw breath for them. I be. For them. And as long as they are I too will be.
Why am I blogging about it? Why pour my soul, the fireflies in my brain onto the page? Because I have to. We have to. As a society we have to drag mental health centre stage, it is an area of medicine where prevention pays off. With the slow decline of religion in the Western World something must replace that spirituality, the comfort the contemplation of the divine gave to generations. Whatever the Divine might be. For we all need a ‘will-to-meaning’, something to make sense of it all, make living worthwhile. For some it is Art – painting, music, reading, writing – all the disciplines. For others sport or yoga or something non-chemical for which one has a passion. That, and one good teacher, is all any human being needs after all basic physical needs are met to live a contented life. Live, love and be safe in the moment.
Amn’t I horrid deep?
I suppose I understand it a little myself because I have sunk into some terrifying pits over a twenty year period. I get the very odd high-very, very, odd and not enough to warrant either medication or psychotherapy. I quite like the highs, I always write my best work when I’m in that head, the big ideas come and I try to hold them, write them down, record them for use in some piece at a future date. The worst I do is stay awake too long and talk too much. After the last episode I mentioned these warning signs to the beloved other, he is in general able to spot the dark clouds glowering before I do, but he’s not so tuned to the slight highs and his reaction was
‘But you talk so much anyway, how am I to know you’re going high?’
It’s hard on him and on my family but they’re great. They never ever condemn me, tell me to pull up my socks or to get on with it and stop feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn’t blame them if they did, living with mental illness is haard on everyone in the family. Sometimes I feel self-indulgent, letting the high or low get the better of me – particularly a bad low day, a day I cannot, physically cannot get out of bed, a day I want to die, count the paracetamol or contemplate the branches of trees pondering would they take my weight in a noose. I hope I never get to that space again where I actually do something with the thoughts that lurk in the recesses of my mind. But sometimes these very thoughts are the only things that calm me. Planning my death, my funeral – incredibly morbid, dark dark thoughts.
But then the doorbell might go and a freckle-faced boy comes home, and how could I leave him yet? How could I abandon him when he still needs me. He and his brother, my step daughters, my husband, family and friends. They are my ‘will-to-meaning’ (Viktor Frankyl). I draw breath for them. I be. For them. And as long as they are I too will be.
Why am I blogging about it? Why pour my soul, the fireflies in my brain onto the page? Because I have to. We have to. As a society we have to drag mental health centre stage, it is an area of medicine where prevention pays off. With the slow decline of religion in the Western World something must replace that spirituality, the comfort the contemplation of the divine gave to generations. Whatever the Divine might be. For we all need a ‘will-to-meaning’, something to make sense of it all, make living worthwhile. For some it is Art – painting, music, reading, writing – all the disciplines. For others sport or yoga or something non-chemical for which one has a passion. That, and one good teacher, is all any human being needs after all basic physical needs are met to live a contented life. Live, love and be safe in the moment.
Amn’t I horrid deep?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)