Wednesday's Weekly Write Down; Lessons of Depression

Depression, what's that I thought, as I was looking down the symptoms of it ticking off over half of them. It was early 2014 and I had officially cracked. It had started a bit before then but I was not willing to accept that I had a problem "I'll get over it" I said. But ticking off the symptoms off it was clear I had a problem.

                University was the dream, ever since I went to my interview and fell in love with it. I am based in Carlisle, with a home town in Sunderland so I was plonked in a house with 11 different people with a few familiar items and just had to adjust. There is a lot of pressure to succeed at university in terms of grades and when you reach below what you feel your potential is you do get down.  But when you set the bar so unreasonably high and have done your entire educational career you are destined to be disappointed. Everything I was doing was a perceived failure because that bar was too high.

                There is also a big big pressure to socialize and go out (clubbing/pub crawling). This was the second problem, I could get on with people but felt the opposite of comfortable about the idea of going out so when I didn't I apologized for my "failing" of not going out. I didn't want to go in a place where I would be uncomfortable but staying in the halls just drove me insane and occasionally to self harm because of the anger I had against myself.

                There is not a pressure as such at university for relationships but I was driven to think there was. All of my actual friends (half of the 11 I was put in a house with) were in long term relationships which gave me the feeling of inadequacy as I had no one. They were my friends and they were happy and I should have been happy for them & not jealous of what they had. I was driven down, thinking I need to get a girlfriend and then I will be happy.

                These are the things that brought me down at university and lead to my depression taking over my life. My mother helped me find the local NHS run mental health service after a close university friend said that the provision of Mental Health Service at the uni wasn’t helpful for her friend.  So I enrolled in classes, 30 minutes a week or two at the local medical practice. After a few months, I was prepared to give up, just remove CBT therapy and put up with it. Nothing was working in these classes. The next session I went to call the whole thing off.  I addressed it wasn’t working and they said “you can move up to the next level if you want?” ”Try that”.  These sessions were hour long and more intensive.

                The next week came, skeptical and open minded, I went in and after a few months it still felt like it wasn’t working but persistence paid off. Every week was talking about problems, then tracking my mood and the problems linked to its decline. We worked out a plan and I was discharged with a weight off my shoulders. I still get the occasional day/ few days of low mood but that’s normal.

                It is hard, really hard when you are stuck in the low mood rut. It is hard to get up in the morning, concentrate on your work & even get to sleep at night because you are worrying bad things are going to happen. But if you are reading this, you are not alone, there is help out there. I am now using my experience to design promotional posters, to raise awareness of mental health problems because there is not enough out there at the minute.