If such as the below effects you, please go and talk to someone, there’s light above the clouds...
2010-ish was a roller coaster of a year - think stomach in mouth, blood rush to head, stomach through the floor, hold on for ‘dear life’, consider letting go... etc (for the lack of a fitting description).
2011 I am at last coming back to a surface after many months floundering in a mist.
June 2010 my GP diagnosed me as “with depression”; Em booked my appointment (thankfully) due to my refusal to accept there was an issue, “it’ll go away”. It had been many months through which I was just not coping with ‘stuff’.
So, my GP signed me onto an NHS counselling course. The waiting list was far to long and after nothing happening, in September I started going weekly to an independent CBT private counsellor.
This was expensive (helped by a large five year rebate from the water board) , but ultimately after 4 months it had stirred around a lot of ‘baggage’ and helped me start to repackage things and see things from different perspectives. This was not a conscious logical process and I can’t explain it - it was a deeper stirring and repositioning of long held notions and instincts. The period was not without ‘incident’ - as you might expect when you stir up sediments.
It has been a serious roller-coaster and Em deserves a medal for putting up with my doom-laden lows and intense highs. Unless you’ve been there it’s possibly hard to know exactly what it was like and I would not wish it on anyone. I can’t explain it, it was not something that I could ‘snap out of’; it was an overwhelming mist, a overwhelming constitution, an inability to see out of a ubiquitous downward looking spiral. Sometimes even my fantastic wife, a great home and two marvel-ful daughters could not clear my moods.
In January 2011 I eventually started the NHS “rethink” counselling programme and was advised after a few more quite unexpected incidents to see my GP again. My GP suspected a chemical imbalance and eventually prescribed me a daily anti-depressant because the physical depression was just not abating... and bingo!
The tablets (Citalopram) act by inhibiting the re-uptake of naturally produced serotonin, raising my ongoing levels of serotonin. After a week it truly made all the difference. I am ‘on this’ now until the autumn but, it’s a different world (just ask Emma). It really has been an experience.
As someone who considers, creates and cogitates too much - I value the period of CBT, as I feel it helped me overtime to reposition myself in a sometimes confusing changing world, before the medication was introduced.
I am now cycling to work and every weekend - and I aim to keep regular ‘sessions’ up. I have to keep my eye on my perspective and not let certain things ‘get to me’. As a fellow ally said to me - [if you feel it coming] “let it world go by while you rest”. I say again, not wanting to be premature but my world is a different world now to what it was 8 months ago.
Onwards and upwards.
This in no way describes the utter doom and lack of feeling... that was experienced and the above was not dealt with lightly it was a very traumatic time.
If such as the above effects you, please go and talk to someone and don’t be afraid of simple medication if advised - without meaning to be trite there’s light above the clouds...
Jules - April 2011
