What do you call yourself?

WARNING, the following post contains rather colourful language. In other words I swear A LOT!!!

A big thank you to everyone that got in touch with me after last week’s blog post. I was quite overwhelmed by how positive, open and honest the responses have been. It would seem that honesty provokes honesty and it is comforting to share my journey with so many strong and sympathetic people.

One particular message really made me think about the kind of language I use when talking about depression, particularly in terms of trying to “beat it”. I will share the piece of advice I was given because it prompted me to think about the language that I use when thinking of myself.

In essence the advice was: the more you fight something, the stronger it becomes. Rather than trying to fight depression, you should learn to accept it. It is once you learn to accept yourself and what you are going through, that you will find yourself able to move through it.

Wow, this really got the “little grey cells” in an uproar because it is true, the language I use when thinking about the journey ahead naturally tends to aggressive, action filled terms: “fighting”, “battling”, “tackling”, “beating”, “overcoming”, “taking on”, etc.

Now that I’m conscious of this, I’m stretching my brain to come up with other ways to describe my current state of flux. As a result you’ll see me using “journey” a lot, as that is my fall back word until I find more descriptors that I feel comfortable with. I suppose I should be expressing myself using words like “evolution”, “progression”, “development” and if I’m feeling really optimistic “adventure”.

Hopefully if I can radically change my mindset I won’t feel constantly exhausted anymore. Being “at war” with oneself takes up far too much energy that could be used much more productively. However, to be successful in this mission I quickly realised that it wasn’t just how I addressed depression that was the issue. My inner dialogue is riddled with negativity.

After suffering from a migraine on Tuesday I missed a day of work. Here are some snippets of the thoughts jumping through my mind before I reined them in: “shit you’re pathetic”, “not again you fucking useless bitch”, “what the fuck is wrong with you?” That is just a small handful of the thoughts I send my way once the migraine started to wear off and I realised that I’d missed a day of work to illness, at a time when I’m really busy at work (yes, yes I know I’m leaving but I wasn’t kidding in my last post when I said I have a pathological issue with letting people down).

Have you ever taken time to notice how you are speaking to yourself? Are you like me, do you berate yourself harshly every time you are less than perfect? Having noticed that I do it now, I realise just how often I do it (every time I’m running late earns me an internal “fuck you’re useless” and sadly that is most days). No wonder I’m depressed. While Sartre may have said that “hell is other people”, I would have to disagree with him as I’m perfectly capable of creating my own hell, with no need for other people to contribute.

So I hope you will join me in being mindful of the energy & words that you are directing at yourself. Remember to be generous and kind to yourselves. We aren’t supposed to be perfect. Let’s face it, if we ever came face to face with perfection it would probably scare the shit out of us. Words have a lot of power, they are almost magical. I want to harness that power to change my own inner critic into an ambassador for me. If I can enter into a healthy diplomatic relationship with myself, there is every chance that instead of battling depression I’ll be in the throes of an exciting new adventure. That’s the plan anyway.

Last week I set my self specific goals, so I want to take a quick look at how I’m doing against them:

(1) Kindness to self: I’m going to give myself a gold star here. For next week though I need to look after my physical & not just my mental well-being

(2) Personal development: another positive week here. I’ve even bought myself a guitar and am embracing my passion for music in a more active way

(3) Interaction with others: again a good week. Had friends round for lunch yesterday, went out to cinema with a friend & I went to see Rufus Wainwright in concert on Thursday (he was incredible by the way). So not just hiding out at home with Louis.

(4) Work: I’m still letting myself stress about it far too much but I’m not letting it take over my life so some positive movement here.

So in the spirit of personal kindness, I really need to pat myself on the back, I did alright this week. While I can still hear a cynical voice in my head saying “yeah, well it’s only week 1 you dopey bitch and you still haven’t managed to actually exercise”, at least I now know to tell that smug, opinionated little voice to shut the fuck up!

The Good, The Bad and The Fat

My blog has been a victim of my inability to balance work & life. It hasn’t been the only victim. Other areas of my life that have been hit are responses to the emails I’ve had from friends back home, around 90% of my non-work related social life, keeping up with my twitter network, my creative writing and my health. Admittedly, that last one is a major worry so something needs to give.

The good news is that I’ve taken positive action and will be starting a new job on 1st December. The bad news is that two consistent ingredients remain the same in my on-going diet of work, work and more work. Those are working in media and me. I love working in media and I can’t escape me, so those are two ingredients that I need to work with.

So moving forward I will be very much focusing on developing me. Many (but not all) of you will know that among the challenges that I face at the moment, I’m fighting an on-going battle with depression. This is no doubt having a major impact on my work/life balance as so much of my energy over the past couple of years has been focused on functioning within the workplace. I’m definitely in a much stronger and more self aware space now, thanks to some fabulous friends and a very wise analyst. So I’m ready to take the bull by the horns to realise that being great at my job (which I am unashamedly proud of given the emotional wars I’ve being fighting) is not enough for me. It isn’t my life goal. If I want to have a full and meaningful life that should be about 33.333333333333% of my life balance not 90%+ as it currently stands.

To make it even more frustrating I am armed with all the tools that I need but I don’t seem to use them. In the battle between wise and emotion mind (to steal terms that my analyst uses to work out what drives me to do the things I do), my emotion mind keeps winning and frankly my emotion mind is more than a little dysfunctional. So while I keep getting more and more stressed and fat (food is my drug of choice, when it comes to self medicating), there is a part of me that sees everything I’m doing wrong but it is bound and gagged, unable to stop me.

I’m officially setting that part of me free now and will be using this space to keep tabs on it. I’ll be scoring my efforts on the following aspects:

(1) Kindness to self
a. Am I eating right and getting exercise?
b. Am I doing things to help me manage my stress/depression e.g meditation, yoga, walking somewhere beautiful & simply enjoying the view?

(2) Personal development
a. Am I taking time out to do the things I’m passionate about?
b. Am I taking advantage of the opportunities around me?

(3) Interaction with others
a. Am I spending time with people that I love rather than hiding at home with the cat?
b. Am I taking advantage of opportunities me new and interesting people?

(4) Work
a. Am I working hard but not taking it home?
b. If the hours are crazy (reality is that is unavoidable at times) am I still taking time out to look after myself?

My analyst says that keeping a diary of triggers and what you do can really help in terms of development. The problem is that if I do write one, I’ll simply slack off after about 2 weeks because I’m the only one that reads it. However I have a pathological problem with letting other people down which I might as well take advantage of. So here is my pledge. I will update this blog weekly with brutally honest updates on how I’m doing at achieving my goals. All I ask is that you all think about how you could make yourselves happier and healthier people and let me know how you are going in that quest.

This is the inaugural post of what I hope will become a source of strength for those who want to lead better and more balanced lives. Remember, being selfless is unhealthy but society seems to encourage it. Just say no!! Take time to think about what you need for you. Otherwise all you will be doing is worrying about whether you are doing enough for everyone else and that is a road that leads straight to depression.

My first progress update will be posted 16th October. That is my commitment to me! That and the determination to have as much fun as possible along the way!