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What do you do with the Shockers? 25/11/2011

Filed under: Depression,Experiencing Depression,Function,Goals & Purpose,Managing Depression,Medication,Monitoring early warning signs, triggers & Wellness action Planning,self-management strategies,Social Supports & Networks — jillnottelten @ 12:34 pm
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Yes, I am still here.  Still living, breathing and blogging.  Just fell victim to a couple of very shocking weeks (interspersed with some lovely moments, but very few and far between).

This week I’ve barely been able to tolerate daylight, let alone the computer screen – migraine like I have not had in a long time since my medication includes migraine voodoo concoctions … but … amidst my Barry Crocker of a week the week before and the ensuing weekend I became a bit disoriented and missed a couple of doses of my meds, hence the hole in the firewall (just to mix some more metaphors).  Yesterday I went to the GP to get a medical certificate for work and stopped at the shopping centre on the way home.  Talk about sensory overload!  My world had not yet totally stopped spinning so I had this strange spacey kind of sensation as I was walking, the noises were louder and more jarring, lights and colours still bright, smells still sharp.  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough!

Work has been crazy and exhausting trying to manage the politics and dynamics within the office.  Don’t get me wrong – I like my job.  If only work could just be about going and doing your job and coming home again, what a relief it would be!  But there are systems and other people that one has to navigate to do one’s job.  Equipment that one and space one has to somehow get adequate access to do it.  Preferably in a way that lets you stay well without creating more stress than is necessary – which is where the battle lies at present for me.  At present it seems that I am destined to bang my head against a brick wall and progress nowhere and to endure life in the office that gets claimed by miscellaneous team members to serve as their staff room – while my office buddy and I are trying to work in it!!!

But alas!  These are not healthy things to dwell upon.  The goal is to work out how to attack and push through.  I had thought that we had had a strategy for the work one, but it is back to the drawing board on that one next week as it looks like this is rapidly fading into embers.

At present I am struggling not to dwell on the difficulties of the last few weeks.  I grew frustrated that my usual seasonal dip in mood was dragging on longer than usual, but didn’t really look beyond it for other triggers until much too late.  Sitting down with a friend a couple of weeks ago to go over what had been happening clarified things a lot more for me.  One of the reasons that I am so focussed on work issues over the past couple of weeks has come about because through sitting down and working through my usual triggers and warning signs with my friend revealed that my workplace is simply loaded with triggers.  There is little wonder that I have been struggling to emerge from my usual brief decline and regathering of mood.

It’s so easy to forget to go back to the basics when one gets busy.  I can sort of see why Mary Ellen Copeland, the woman who designed the WRAP suggested that going over triggers and warning signs should be something that someone should do daily to prevent relapse.  I’m not sure that I would ever go to daily, but I do know that I need to be going over my WRAP a lot more frequently than I do.  The whole point of knowing one’s triggers and warning signs is so that you can be alert to them.  It’s one thing to know them – but so easy to miss them unless you’re really watching.

So – What do you do with the shockers?  Do you beat yourself up over them?  There’s no point in that.  To me, it seems you need to do is stand back and detach a little.  Stand in the moment.  Not the future.  Not the past.  Just the moment.  Examine – and for me, it helps if I can find someone to help me stay in perspective … at least to get me going – and learn.  This helps me to see cause and effect relationships; it helps me to learn and relearn trip hazards; it helps me see things specifically rather than looming ghouls and it leaves room to remember that there were a couple of good moments in the last fortnight too.

From there I can start with a plan.  If the plan needs adjusting, then so-be-it, but perhaps – just, perhaps … next week can be a bit better …

Please.

 

Attishoo! Attishoo! We All Fall Down 31/08/2011

Filed under: Depression,Function,Managing Depression,Monitoring early warning signs, triggers & Wellness action Planning,Physical health & wellbeing,Routine,self-management strategies,Work — jillnottelten @ 9:42 pm
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What’s going on?

I’ve got a headache that I’ve had on and off for a few days now.  I’m so tired so much of the time.  I’m disorganised.  My house is a mess and getting less clean than I’d like it to be – it’s not grotty, but without action it could get there without a lot of effort … I’ve spent the last couple of days off loafing in my ever comfy PJs and while I’ve gotten up and done stuff, I’m sure I said ages ago that I was going to stop doing that…

Hang on.  These things are all among my early warning signs.  I’m off my game.  Nothing serious yet – but now is the time to act.  I’ve been going really well for ages.  It’s not even my Depression that’s knocked me off my game – it’s the damn cold that I’ve been fighting.  Yet this I do know.  In the past relapse has often followed physical illness.  The dog acts when he knows I’m not at my best.  He takes advantage of weakness.

So what do I do now?  Give in? Panic?  Book an extra doctor’s appointment?  Nope.  Now is the time to reach for my WRAP – my Wellness Recovery Action Plan – something that I should probably be going over more regularly to remind myself of the daily and weekly/regular things that keep me well.  In my WRAP I found that I’ve been neglecting a lot of these over the last couple of weeks and that I have gotten sloppy with a couple of my routine maintenance markers over the past couple of months.  My work WRAP (my own experiment) shows me that I’ve not been sticking to my wellness goals about leaving on time and planning my day either – no wonder I’ve been feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck.

Now is the time to restart the action plans.  I need to tell someone that I’ve noticed that I’m off my game and that I’m acting on it – that way they can ask me how I am going with my action plan in a couple of days to see if I need some help to get things moving again or if I’ve been able to self-start again solo (often harder than I think it’s going to be).  I’ll wait to see how things progress and talk it over with my friend before I rush into moving any appointments forward.  I think I’m okay if I get reorganised at this point.

So its back to setting alarms and keeping them for going to bed and lights out at night.  I’ve been letting the sleep run thin.

I need to plan my meals rather than look in the fridge and hope that there’s something I feel like eating in there.  And I probably need to start putting more attention towards the balance of what I eat because I don’t think I’m eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables (that’s a new strand to the plan for me).

I need to put away the things that are lying around and creating clutter.

I need to clean the house.  When that goes to my list though it will read room by room and the floors will be separate.  That way I can do it in parts and feel like I’m making headway when I cross things off on my list.

I need to set up a routine for maintaining my housework.

I need to set aside time for doing things that I like to do.

I need to work out how I want to prioritise a couple of things that I have going at the moment so that I can put away what I am not going to finish in the immediate future and finish off what I am doing in my ‘projects’ department.

I need to set aside time for some meditation and prayer.

I need to make sure I leave work on time.

I need to make better use of my diary and go back to keeping a list of things that I need to do to mark off and prioritise – this works well for me

I also really need to put some effort into starting to exercise and to spending more time outdoors.

If I need help with anything, I can and will ask.

I’ve been good with most of my other stuff but things involving routine, and doing things that I’m not instinctively motivated by (like exercise and cooking for anything other than guests) are difficult.  It may get easier.  Who knows?  My goal is to find something that I enjoy in the things that I find difficult to do at some point – but not now.  Now the need is to just do it.

We all fall down.  We all need to know the best way to get up again too.  Take the time to be prepared.  I use the WRAP (http://www.mentalhealthrecovery.com/wrap/ .  You can now download an old edition of this from “Recovery X-Change” http://www.recoveryxchange.org/downloads/RxChange%20WRAP%20WorkBook.pdf  if you want to check it out a bit more closely).  There are a number of different systems people have.  The most important thing is to be ready to be ready.

All I have is a cold.  It does not have to become a relapse.

Right now though it’s approaching bed time.  So rather than editing anything else.  I’m going to post this and head for the sack.  Good night.

 

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.

 

 
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