livingwithablackdog

sit. stay. good boy.

The Jealous Dog 22/07/2011

Filed under: Depression,Managing Depression,Monitoring early warning signs, triggers & Wellness action Planning,My Black Dog,Social Supports & Networks,Socialisation,Talking About Depression — jillnottelten @ 1:02 pm
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If there’s one thing that discourages a jealous dog, it’s competition.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Of course like everything that sounds simple there’s a journey involved in getting to the bit that’s simple.  And at times the times the ‘simple’ bit is anything but easy.

If you were to tell me in the depths of my depression that competition was all that was needed to discourage the dog – that having other, more enjoyable things around me would make life easier to manage I would probably knock you flat.  And I hit ‘like a girl’.  When I am unwell they probably do knock the edges off things, but enjoy … ? Perhaps.  I certainly need help to initiate the diversion and the routine.  Ah … the old ‘r’ word.  Yes, I must admit – it does help.  I just hate it.  I never feel like it and it’s damn hard to do.  Especially when I still lack the sense of enjoyment of anything.

But further on – about eight months ago I gritted my teeth and reestablished contact with a long-lost world.  The friend.  The ones I lost contact with during a couple of years of withdrawing from – well – life in general.  Initially it was very tentative.  After all – who would really want to be friends with me, right?  But no, contrary to my very localised opinion friends welcomed me back with enthusiasm … on-line, phone calls, coffees, visits and finally a trip to see someone who lived a long way away for a few days (I was very nervous about this one) which was lots of fun.  I now have friends who I talk to again regularly and see when our schedules allow it, an old school friend I catch up with regularly, friends kids who are excited when I come to visit and people who miss me if I’m not around.  I never thought I’d see the day.  I’m still not sure I believe it.  By rights I should have black and blue spots up and down my arms from where I have been pinching myself but if it’s not true, I’m not planning to end the dream any time soon.

Today is my first day at home after a couple of weeks on holidays – staying with the same friends that I visited earlier in the year.  I was originally going for a few days, but the family with whom I was staying voted unanimously that I should stay longer – so I did.  I visited with other friends and their families on the way home, including one family not far from home where I stopped in filthy weather with an hour’s notice to drop onto their couch for a night.

Amidst all of this my dog stayed at heel without challenge.  This is amidst ongoing bungles with a return to work plan that has been drawn out for months.

My dog is shy around people who value me.

I need to remember this next time he pulls me in close to home.

A black dog needs a little competition from people who care.  He just wants me to believe that there aren’t any.  I did once and it turned out to be a lie.  I must remember this for another day.

My dog lies.

 

The Stranger 04/07/2011

Filed under: Clinical Depression,Depression,Function,Managing Depression,Monitoring early warning signs, triggers & Wellness action Planning,My Black Dog,self-management strategies — jillnottelten @ 5:19 pm
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I sat down to do my WRAP a few months ago.  My Wellness Recovery Action Plan.

The idea is that you describe what you’re like when you’re well, what helps you stay that way, what your triggers are and what you plan to do when you encounter triggers to prevent spin-off effects; then what your early warning signs with an action plan for what to do if you notice them emerging; also what happens when you’re feeling much worse and again what helps in those instances.  You also make a crisis plan, identify supporters and how you agree that they will support you/what you would like them to do for you, identify people who you don’t want involved in your care/treatment and people who need to be notified, your current meds etc.  There are a whole bunch of different ways of a similar process.  Mary Ellen Copeland’s Wellness Recovery Action Plan is the one that I have been using – and hence describing (see link to website).  The point is then to read it regularly – she recommends daily and to stay on top of your management plan and to know yourself, to recognise when you are not yourself; to be watchful and vigilant for triggers, warning signs and symptoms and to act immediately, instinctively.  Also she recommends to have a couple of others who check in with you regularly to help out and give you their perspective or who will tell you if they notice that things don’t seem right.

I think that almost the hardest part of the process to complete was the first question.

“What am I like when I’m well?”

It had been a long time since I had been well for longer than a few months at a time.  What’s more, I have changed.  I am not the same as I once was.  This battle – this relationship with my dog has changed me.  What am I like?

I was in my mid twenties when I had surgery for a massive aneurysm.  Somewhere over the period of the next five years came the prodromal and early symptoms of Depression without being diagnosed until I was almost 30.  I have been wrestling to learn self-management skills until reasonably recently.  It has been a long time since I was truly healthy, although between brief periods of mood change or minor undiagnosed episodes in my twenties until my eventual breakdown with depression I’m sure I was fine.

My point?  What am I like when I’m well?  I don’t know anymore.  What’s more, it always feels like such a silly question to ask other people.  I mean – asking people to help me to identify what I’m are like when I’m not well … that makes sense because I know that my insight is not at its sharpest.  But well?  Shouldn’t I already know that?

Not that I was ever good at describing myself.  Always self-critical, I was never particularly sure why people wanted to be friends with me after leaving school when I had hadn’t had many friends at school.  But that’s school for you – start school somewhere awkwardly and the perception sticks with you til you leave.  Even as an adult I struggle to have a clear picture of what I am like.

What am I like when I am unwell?  What helps when I am unwell?  These questions I can answer reasonably these days.  I have even thought to discuss some of this with others or take notice of comments that they make.

But to know myself well.  To know the self that has been changed by this dog of an illness, by periods of chronic pain, by a swollen blood vessel in my brain waiting as a time bomb for its final burst – but found before it could; the self that has been altered by periods of self-imposed hermit style living apart from the workplace.  This is a person that I must relearn.  This is a person whom I have lost and who has changed while she has been away.  She is a stranger.

I need help to know this person.  Friends.  Family.  Memories.  Time to explore the things that interest me again, to develop new ones.  To reflect.  To do.  To explore.  To discover. To learn.  To grow.  To live.

 

The Phantom 02/07/2011

Filed under: Clinical Depression,Depression,Experiencing Depression,Managing Depression,Monitoring early warning signs, triggers & Wellness action Planning,self-management strategies,Social Supports & Networks,Talking About Depression — jillnottelten @ 5:20 pm
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I have a secret identity.  Not just a pseudonym.

She appears when the black dog prowls.  But she’s not a superhero.

Her superpower? She melts into the weave of the sheets and the very mattress on my bed like 3 day old macaroni cheese sauce on the lounge of a bachelor pad in summertime.  She can barely roll over and will do anything not to.  Almost anything.  She won’t wet the bed.  She will tell you the most atrocious lies in the universe.  Anything to make you go away and leave her alone there.  She barely eats or drinks – far too much effort.  She stinks – goes for days at a time without a shower or cleaning her teeth.  The thing she does do is sleep.  She excels at that … except when she needs to.

And she can never tell you how she got to that state.

I am pleased to say that she has only taken a firm hold on my space a couple of times, but cleaning up after she has even attempted to gain entrance is a nightmare.   It’s hard work chasing her out when she’s just passing through and catches me out.  Next thing I know, there she is sitting there.  She’s not looking like moving anywhere.  She looks like she knows she’s not welcome, but can’t bring herself to move.  A lazy visitor.  In the way.  Impeding the things that need to be done.  And looking like she’s stay the year out given the opportunity.  She has no sense of time.  Little sense of purpose.  And little sense of the ‘other’.

And then I look over my shoulder and see my dog pacing.  He’s never still when she’s around.  They feed off each other.  Stalker and sidekick.

I am learning that the secret identity has more pitfalls than safeguards.

Superman.  Batman (without Robin).  Spiderman had pretty lonely existences – and they were the good guys.   Secrecy is isolating.

Maybe just one or two people need to know about my secret identity.  Need to know now while she’s not around – so that they know to come looking before too long if I disappear; so that they know what to do with my secret identity before she takes over again completely.  So that they know when to say “Bulldust!” and when to be gentle.  So that they know that I am also vulnerable to her bullying ways for short bursts while I am physically sick.  Not everyone – just a couple of people.  Perhaps then one or two will know to come not call.  To peek in the fridge.  To offer a lift rather than remind me.  To ring just that little while after I say I’m planning to be up in the morning for a chat – til I sound like I’m awake and alert and up for the day (and to try again in ten minutes if I don’t answer in case I was in the shower or just missed the phone).

It’s hard to disappear when there are a carefully selected few making constant contact and stripping away the secret identity.

Soothing the dog.

Because everyone needs someone who will come looking.  The biggest question is – is there anyone I trust enough for that task?

Do I want to share the ugly signs that show that my black dog is starting to pace?  That the secret identity is moving into play?  How do I decide who to share with?  How much can I ask of people who put up with so much from me anyway?

But if it means avoiding the black dog at his worst …

If it means I can keep a job ….

If it means keeping a friend …

If it means not exhausting my family through another painful and exhausting regathering process …

If it means keeping some perspective on life …

Perhaps I am asking less of people than I am by struggling on alone.  If only I can bear to share the secrets with those close to me …

… in exchange for those that they have already discovered that I have been too blind to see.

 

Who Walks Whom? 29/06/2011

Filed under: Depression,Managing Depression,Monitoring early warning signs, triggers & Wellness action Planning,My Black Dog,self-management strategies — jillnottelten @ 3:56 pm
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I was talking with a friend yesterday who commented on the extraordinary difficulty of the last few years.  She asked about how I’d coped with my depression at different times, what kind of treatments I’d had, the other health problems that had intruded – because there have been significant episodes of those also – just to poke bruises into bruises and how I felt that all of this had affected me.  None of these things are new topics.  They are things that I have had a lot of time to reflect on over the past eight months in particular and to use to build into my Wellness Recovery Action Plan.  But here’s a question it raises for different periods of my life over the last eight – no, realistically the last thirteen years – if I count back to my surgery:

Who walks whom? Was I walking my black dog? … or was he walking me?

For large proportions of that time, my black dog walked me.  How I responded to that varied.  Sometimes I trundled aimlessly along behind him without the energy or fight to do anything else.  Sometimes I would simply sit down and refuse to be moved anywhere and let him pull and tug away at me or haul me along as I sat.  Other times we would do battle – although the amount of energy I had to put into the fight would at times be outweighed by the dog’s.

For example, I injured my back and had chronic pain for months.  Months I fought the pain and the black dog became just another thing to fight, but my fight was strong.  However by the time the back was better, my fight was gone.  My energy was gone.  Before I knew it, my black dog was taking the lead as we walked and I had simply fallen in step with him without the wherewithal to reclaim authority.

Exhaustion does that.

Walking does that.  Especially uphill battles.

How does one keep on walking day by day without getting exhausted?  By walking.  By familiarity.  By over-familiarity with the scenery.  Boredom.  Work.  Idiots.  Medications.  Side effects.  Doctors.  The same stuff as everybody else.  The bloody dog.

I don’t know how to answer that.  All I know is that I can’t afford to let the dog lead when I am exhausted.  I need to stay the one who is the walker and the dog needs to stay at heel.

I think the answer is more related to ‘how do I know how far I can walk?’

I think the answer is related to ‘how do I know when my dog is getting ready to challenge my authority?’

Perhaps the answer is more about pace than distance.  More about awareness than knowledge.

You take a puppy to puppy school and you learn nothing – your puppy doesn’t get trained.  I think that this is also true of depression.  You don’t train black dogs, you teach their custodians how to keep them in check.  Some are easier to keep in check than others.  Mine’s resistant – a mongrel of a thing – but others have worse.  At least I can work with mine.

My black dog needs a leash.  It should not have a halter.  It is not a guide dog.

It must walk at heel.

I must keep my black dog at heel.  I must be alert to his movements.  Too often I have let him have his head and too often I have paid the price.

Heel dog.  Heel!  Good boy.

 

 
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