Tag: mental health

#oneaday Day 899: I’ll Be There For You

I have social anxiety. I may have mentioned this before once or twice.

What that means is that sometimes I get tongue-tied and don’t know what to say. Sometimes I let conversations run inside my head but worry about what the possible outcome of them will be, and end up saying nothing. Sometimes I quite literally have nothing to say whatsoever. And sometimes I do say something and don’t get the reaction I expected and consequently feel weird.

As you might expect, this makes the prospect of “making friends” a fairly terrifying one. Obviously I have made friends over the years, otherwise I wouldn’t have any right now, but I can never quite remember how it happened. In some cases, it was a simple matter of being thrown together in some context — living together, studying together, working together — but in others, it’s not quite so clear.

While I am more than happy with the friends I do have, I do sometimes wish I could have more. That may sound greedy, but the fact is that I don’t get to actually see the friends I have all that often. The vast majority of them live in the States (thank you, Internet) and the others live just far enough away for it to be A Big Effort to go and see them. And, you know, sometimes I just want people to play board games with. I bought a copy of Legend of Drizzt, one of the cooperative Dungeons & Dragons adventure games, this week and I’m hoping I get the chance to play it more than once or twice. If I had more friends (who liked board gaming) then I’d be able to play it more often — at the moment, however, it’s determined largely by mutual availability and whether at least one of us can be bothered to drive about 50 miles. I’m more than happy to for the prospect of board game fun, but it’s the former bit that can be tricky sometimes. Hopefully if and when Andie and I manage to move a bit closer to Southampton it’ll be a bit easier to be more spontaneous — as it stands, however, it’s a relatively rare treat to see people.

This is all rather self-pitying I know, but I direct you back to the first line of this post. Social anxiety makes the act of making new friends — even the prospect of just talking to strangers — a terrifying and difficult prospect. Even in an environment that should be “friendly” — I know there’s a local board game shop in Bristol that does games evenings, for example, but I don’t even feel especially confident about that. My mind gets caught in a cycle of “what ifs” and I just end up deciding not to go.

Perhaps one day I’ll get over this social anxiety and be more confident about making new friends and considering that people might actually want to spend time with me if they don’t have to. That day is not today, however, which means that I’m all the more grateful for the friends I do have and the time I do get to spend with them.

Anyone fancy a game of Legend of Drizzt?

#oneaday Day 898: Contemplating the Darkness

I’d like to share a couple of posts with you. First of all, this piece by Jeff Green, published today. (If you don’t know who Jeff Green is, he’s currently PopCap’s director of editorial and social media and used to work on U.S. games magazine Computer Gaming World, later Games for Windows Magazine.) Many people expressed surprise at Jeff posting this, because, to quote several commenters, “you wouldn’t know he had depression.” I’ve only met Jeff maybe once or twice, but it’s true; he “hides it well,” as it were. That doesn’t diminish his suffering in any way, of course — it simply means that he’s found ways (and help) to deal with it in a way that doesn’t affect his public persona.

Second of all, and related, this post from January of last year by me. I shan’t talk about that post too specifically right now since you can just go and read it, but I did want to contemplate the subject a little further today, as reading Jeff’s post shortly after he published it (and undoubtedly went back and forth on whether or not he should share it with the world) got me thinking.

I am a lot better than I was. I hit my lowest ebb just over two years ago when my wife and I decided to split. I won’t go into the specific details of that right now, but suffice to say that it was a mutual decision by the pair of us that was partly a consequence of, ironically, my own depression. I had left a job I hated, gone to PAX East for the first time (and had an amazing time) and then came back home to no job, no prospects and a thoroughly bleak outlook for the future. Depression at my situation (which was at least partially self-inflicted, I will freely admit — I could have stuck at the job I left, but it probably wouldn’t have been good for me at all) sapped my motivation and just made me want to curl up into my own private little world and not talk to anyone. It wasn’t the first time it had happened to me. It was a recurring pattern. And, realistically, there are times when it will likely happen again in the future.

The one thing that people don’t seem to mention about depression is that it can be addictive. Sometimes, when given the choice between 1) getting up to do something positive that you know will make yourself feel better and 2) slumping on the sofa staring at an interesting spot on the wall for several hours, all your brain wants to do is 2). It gets into the habit of doing 2) and it becomes a natural, conditioned response to anything that upsets you or frustrates you. Over time, it gets harder and harder to not do 2) even though there’s usually at least a small rational part of your brain saying “STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!” That rational part gets drowned out by the bit going “staring at the wall is comforting, safe, and you won’t have to talk to any people.”

Getting over that stage is the difficult part. Fighting against the desire to do nothing and wallow in your own self-pity is one of the hardest things anyone suffering from depression has to do. Only then can you figure out exactly what to do when you pull yourself up off the floor/bed/sofa and make a conscious decision to do… something. Whether that’s simply trying to “get on with your life” or actively seeking help to if not “cure” your condition then at least improve it.

Sometimes even the most straightforward tasks can be made to feel like insurmountable obstacles to those suffering a depressive episode. That in itself can cause people to feel ashamed of their condition and not want to talk about it. Thankfully, I’ve seen a heartening trend recently: people overcoming the stigma attached to talking about mental health issues and publicly baring their souls about these important topics. Jeff Green’s post is just the latest example of people with higher profiles than me publicly “coming out”, as it were, and talking about this aspect of themselves that, however unpleasant it may be, helps define the person that they are.

Feeling able to write about it publicly and talk about it face-to-face are two very different things, however. I know that personally speaking, I still find it difficult to talk about depression with anyone except my very closest friends, but I’ll happily (perhaps the wrong word, there) post things like this to an (admittedly small) audience the world over.

The important thing to remember if you have ever suffered from depression, though, is that you most certainly are not alone and that there is nothing to be ashamed of. You may hate the condition and what it does to you, but that doesn’t mean you should hate yourself or feel you should lock yourself away in isolation. On the contrary, you should seek out people you feel able to talk about it with and then get some things off your chest. And you should seek help if you need it.

#oneaday Day 868: Enforced Merriment

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The Queen has been on the throne for 60 years. Yay The Queen.

In Britain, despite the fact that we spend roughly 98% of our time being completely oblivious to the continued existence of the royal family (apart from those few members who regularly appear in OK Magazine and have subsequently developed obnoxious and probably quite disrespectful nicknames), it is actually the law that anything vaguely celebration-worthy that involves said group of royals must be celebrated with a Street Party, with non-participants being taken to the Tower of London to be pecked to death by ravens.

As such, there was a Street Party today on our street. I was coming back from my evening of board game and curry depravity and I had work to do, so I really wasn’t feeling it anyway, but then my social anxiety kicked in and I was reminded of why I hate this sort of thing quite so much.

I loathe, despise and detest enforced merriment — the feeling that you “should” be somewhere and that you “should” be having more fun than you actually are. Enforcement could be unspoken (a simple feeling that you “should show your face”) or explicit (someone outright saying “oh come on, come and see these people!” in such a way that to say “well, no actually, the very prospect fills me with a crippling sense of outright panic” would make you look like A Right Bastard rather than someone suffering from an actual problem). The effects are the same though — a feeling of dread, the thought “I don’t want to do this” rattling around your head and, while the socialisation is actually going on, a constant and intense desire to find an excuse to leave or, in extreme cases, to simply bolt as quickly as possible.

The reason I don’t want to be in that situation is generally nothing personal to the people I’m supposed to be socialising with — our neighbours seem like a perfectly nice little family, for example — but it is simply part of the whole social phobia. I feel pressured to put myself in that situation, and then once I’m in there, there isn’t an easy escape route to get out of it, which makes me panic.

I think the main problem I have with occasions like this is the fact that they centre around small talk, which is something I can’t do very well. I tend to think about things a lot before I say them — to a fault, sometimes — and small talk just doesn’t work if you’re contemplating and considering every single thing that you say. “Should I mention the weather?” I think. “Or does that make me sound like the most clichéd twat ever? Should I crack a joke? What if it falls flat? That’s the worst feeling in the world. Everyone’s looking at me. Say something.”

Oddly enough if I’m in a professional situation where I have a reason to be interacting with strangers, I’m absolutely fine. If I’m running an event, or meeting and greeting customers, or standing up on stage and presenting to lots of people, I have no problem whatsoever in talking, making jokes, being charismatic and charming the pants off people. (Not literally. To my knowledge, anyway.) But take away that sense of context and purpose and I’m fucked. I feel panicked, and all I really want to do is run away and do something — anything — rather than talk to these people I feel I have nothing in common with. I build up resentment, and then I feel guilty about resenting these people for simply being more social than I am, and the whole vicious cycle goes around and around and around until I find some convenient excuse to extract myself and leave, never to return. (Today, I had work to do, so I was able to go and hide for a bit while I did that.)

This particular aspect of social phobia/social anxiety/shyness/whatever you want to call it is why I never really got on with the concept of “going out” for the sake of going out, or going “on the pull”, or indeed in speaking to anyone I didn’t already know somehow. I count the few occasions that I have successfully managed to initiate and carry on a non-essential or non-professional conversation with a stranger as huge personal victories — justifiably so, in some cases, as some have led to long-term friendships, such as my utterly nerve-wracking first words to my now-friend Cat while trapped in a lift (well, not “trapped” as such… we were both riding it, and it was in full working order) with her on my first day of a pre-term music course at university.

I won’t lie, this particular phobia is a real pain to deal with at times, and I really wish I could be free of it. That won’t happen without hard work over a long period, however, and I’m sometimes not sure I’m ready to confront this particular problem head on.

#oneaday, Day 34: #whatstigma?

Comedienne Rebecca Front posted the following tweet yesterday, and was somewhat surprised at the level of response it got:

It was a bold move, particularly for a public figure, but in doing so she inspired a veritable plethora of people to “come out of the closet”, as it were, and admit that they had suffered mental health issues, be they depression, anxiety, panic attacks, OCD or any number of others.

Front’s aim with the original tweet was to encourage people to talk openly about the things they felt without feeling a stigma attached to it—hence the hashtag. And it was genuinely touching to see the number of people who latched on to this topic, confessing how they suffered from numerous “hidden” ailments in their mind whilst going about what otherwise seemed to be perfectly “normal” lives.

In fact, Front conjectured that some form of mental illness affected almost everyone. That may appear to be an exaggeration, but the number of people responding to her original tweet, coupled with the fact that #whatstigma became the top non-promoted trending topic in the UK for a good few hours yesterday, made it clear that there were plenty of people out there who do suffer from these things and perhaps haven’t had the opportunity to talk about them, or don’t feel comfortable talking about them.

It’s no surprise, really, that there’s a perceived stigma surrounding mental illness, however. Back in last May, Janet Street-Porter made some ill-advised comments suggesting that depression was being used as a fashion accessory—that people were just saying they were suffering because it was the “in” ailment to have.

There may well be some people who deliberately exaggerate their feelings of “being down” into “depression”—if there are, then they really should find better things to do with their lives. But these people aside, people do genuinely suffer. And it’s not just a case of “snapping out of it”, of “cheering up”, of saying “chin up” enough times. It doesn’t just go away; it sticks around, for years sometimes. Like anything, there are peaks and troughs; the peaks can feel like you’ve escaped it, finally, that you’re in the clear, that you can get on with enjoying your life. But then a trough comes along, plunges you deep into the darkness and the long climb back out begins again.

I’ve felt this way—I still do. And I know many, many other people—some in person, some via the Internet—who also do. I didn’t recognise my depression for what it was until I spent some time with someone who explained it to me at university. I recognised the feelings she described and knew that I’d felt them myself, too. It wasn’t just a case of feeling “a bit sad”. It was a variety of factors piling up in such a way that made it very difficult to deal with life’s trials, whatever they might be.

And I hate it. The feeling of helplessness that comes with it; of having days when you just don’t want to get out of bed; of times when nothing can stop you from feeling regrets, anger, fear, shame; of wondering if it’ll ever end. For some people, it becomes just something about you—something you deal with. For others, it’s an acute condition which can be treated. But for most people, there are underlying causes that need to be dealt with rather than attacked with “quick fixes”.

In my case, these underlying causes are well-documented, and I’m doing what I can to fix them. This makes me feel a little better most of the time—knowing that I’m making the effort to do something about these underlying causes is good motivation to keep doing what I do. But there are still days when I find myself wondering if it’s worth it, if anything is ever going to come of all these efforts that I’m making.

I won’t know unless I keep trying, I guess.

My feelings on this made clear, now, here’s the shameless plugging. In May, I’ll be running the BUPA 10K with a couple of very lovely friends I’ve met via the One A Day Project. All three of us will be running in aid of the mental health charity “Mind”. I’d certainly appreciate it a great deal if you can spare a bit of virtual loose change to fling my way via my fundraising page. Every little bit will help people to get the help they need to overcome these difficulties.

Thanks for reading this; thanks for your help; and thanks for your support.