Category Archive

I walked into therapy the other day with a horrible black cloud over my head. I’d had yet another shitty day at my should-be-great-but-is-really-shitty job, I’d missed the turn on a one-way street getting there, my shoulders were all tight and very sore, blah blah blah. I was just feeling really foul. I wanted this to be my last appointment because I knew I’d get there and she’d say “so, what’s on your agenda today?” and I knew I’d have nothing to say and I knew I’d have wasted an hour of my life, and $170.

The session started out slowly, and I was expecting it to head where I had expected it to head, but gah, you know what? It got better.

She talked me through my gloomy thoughts and I ended up leaving feeling lighter and bouncier and happier about the thing that, 50 minutes earlier, made me want to smash a pot-plant at the wall of her rooms (I didn’t, it’s ok).

I hate that I am dependant on my therapist to talk through the shitness of the things in my life that shit me and cause me to be shitty. Urgh. How horrible is that?

Aw!! I was rather hesitant about writing to Bossy, because she usually gives “no-holds-bared” responses that is “the sort of advice friends and relatives are too polite to give”. I was a bit worried I’d end up on “Fruitcake Friday” so in a way, I was, in a way, glad when her response to my email didn’t show up on those days.

Even her profile photo make her look kinda scary!

But then, when she did respond, she was really nice to me!!!

So were (most) of the commenters.  I had the urge to reply back to every single one, because they took the time to write to me, but there are over 100!! So I might write straight to Bossy with an update and thank everyone in that.

It’s amazing how nice I felt reading about not being the only one who’s gone through periods like this. Intellectually, I know I’m not that special, duh, but sometimes when you’re in the depths of a Doona Day, the intellectual part is so battered by the traumatized emo part that it retreats to higher ground, and it feels like it’s just you on the plain.

(Where did that wanky analogy come from? Shite, I need to get out more.)

I’ve emailed the link to the post to my psychologist so that I can talk about Bossy’s suggestions in more detail at my session tomorrow.

M read the post too, and we chatted about it over the weekend.  I wrote to her a while ago, the day after M and I were both in tears, and the situation has definitely calmed down since then, so that was probably a good thing — we were able to talk about it in a really rational way.

I’m really glad that I wrote to her, and started writing things in this blog.  It’s great to get things off my chest and as well as get feedback from an objective viewpoint.  Thank you Bossy, and Bossy Bloggers, I really appreciate your time.

It’s been a while since I posted.  Work has been busy, life has been busy, and I just generally have been trying to avoid thinking and talking about being depressed (my BFF calls it “cessing”, as in just sitting there in the cess pool of one’s mental crap not achieving anything), which is what I started this blog for.

Therapy’s been happening on and off, although for financial reasons it hasn’t been as regular as it should be. I’ve scribbled some points in my bedside notebook about a few therapy experiences and I’ll get around to posting them eventually.

However, I had an impetus to post today… because Bossy answered my question this morning.

I wrote to news.com.au’s “agony aunt” (essentially) months ago, and she finally got around to answering my quandary about feeling guilty for making my boyfriend deal with all the shit that’s involved with my depression. It’s long winded, so I won’t re-hash it; anyone who cares can read it themselves.

Bossy’s answer was, however, really amazing. She’s usually a bit snarky but she offered some great advice about “Changing my Narrative”.  I’m going to print her post and all the comments from her readers to digest at home tonight, but just wanted to mention that to check in here and do some dusting.

Network Ten newsreader Charmaine Dragun committed suicide late last year. It was just such a massive shock to everyone (seriously, everyone) because she was so bright and her career as a journalist was totally skyrocketing. I remember hearing her doing the newsbreaks on the fm radio station I listened to in highschool. Then she was doing the entertainment news from Ten in Perth, then ‘real’ news stories, then, when the news was run out of Sydney, flew over there to be the anchor.

I the sadness of her passing touched many people here, because deep down Perth really is a small town, but it was more so for me not only because I had known of her for so long, but because I knew exactly what she was going through.

This week’s Australian Story on the ABC was about her life and sudden death. So much of it rang true to me and there were tears; I’m very glad I watched it on my own.

LEWIS BEDFORD, GRANDFATHER: Charmaine’s perfectionism was one thing that worried her very much and yet she had nothing to worry about because what she produced and what she represented was so well done, but it was never good enough for Charmaine.

KIM FRASER, FRIEND: Charmaine was too shy to play the piano for us, even though we wanted her to. I guess it was part of her anxiety about not being good enough.

(Home movie footage of Charmaine as a child, playing piano)
ESTELLE DRAGUN, MOTHER: I would go up to her afterwards and say, “Charmaine that was beautiful, you really did play that well.” “No mum. I did this,” or, “I didn’t play that note correctly, I didn’t put the expression.” So all the time Charmaine was analysing what she did.

LEWIS BEDFORD, GRANDFATHER: We were all happy, you know, we use to congratulate her and think she’d done so well. But you could always tell by her little mannerisms that, I’m not happy about what I did, and yet I could never understand why.

The relationship stuff was even more tear-jerking.

ESTELLE DRAGUN, MOTHER: Charmaine made a decision to leave Simon and come home. Her attitude was always, Simon was going to have the best and that she wanted him to be happy and if she couldn’t give him that happiness then she didn’t want to be part of it.

MICHAEL DRAGUN, FATHER: She found out she was getting this job to read the news in New South Wales and that’s when she got back with Simon again.

…

ESTELLE DRAGUN, MOTHER: When Charmaine was overseas with Simon they spent some time in London and spent some time with Simon’s brother. And one night Charmaine, I think, was just out of the room or she might have gone to the bedroom, and she overheard Simon talking to his brother. And apparently Simon was expressing his frustration with Charmaine’s mood swings, and he didn’t know how long he would be able to live with it.

SIMON STRUTHERS, PARTNER: I don’t know if she’d relayed different things to her mum because she spoke to her mum about her mood a lot more than she’d indicate to me. But we came back from that holiday and it was an absolute high. We just had the time of our life on that trip.

SARAH BAMFORD, FRIEND: Her biggest fear I think was having Simon grow tired of her illness and grow tired of her constant daily battle with feeling good and feeling well and feeling capable of being able to do, you know, the most mundane of things and not feel so incredibly unwell.

There have been times, very recently, when those exact thoughts were pushing me deeper and deeper into my depression. I feel really, really lucky that those episodes passed, that I had a chance to look back on those moments and try to learn something from it … and try not to have any more.

It’s awfully sad that she didn’t have that chance.

Bless you, Charmaine. May you be well and happy now, wherever you are.

Yesterday was harder than I thought it was going to be.

After all the time I’ve spent thinking about my Issues,  I didn’t really have much to say actually.  I even kinda didn’t want to talk to her, but maybe I was just pissed off because I had to throw my plastic down before I was allowed to do the session?

I had to do a Suicide Contract because my psychoanalysis report said I was at “High Risk”.  When I tried to explain that was exaggerated cause the weekend before I did the testy thing hadn’t exactly been a high-point, she took a little while to remember the note in the report that warned some of the data might be skewed because I’m unhinged. 

Which seems to kinda defeat the purpose of this test as a diagnostic tool, but whatever.

I guess I also kinda lied about how far I went with my ’suicidal thoughts’ two weekends ago.  I took 3 sleeping pills cause I was totally stressed out over stuff and I wanted to do was sleep so I would stop crying and carrying on, and the regular “calming” dose (half a tablet) wasn’t working.   I told her that bit.  I didn’t tell her that I took the 22 pills I had left in the packet and looked at them and thought about taking all of them.  Obviously I didn’t take them, cause I’m not that clichéd, but I did have the blister sheets in my hand before I eventually drifted off. 

So yeah.  I semi-seriously thought about it.  I called M the moment I woke up and told him all about it, so it all passed blah blah blah.

Anyway, I agreed to not act on any further thoughts before my next appointment with her, to make an emergency appointment if I need to, and to get in touch with M or Little Brother.

The next part of the session was where I sat there fiddling with my hair lackies and couldn’t think of what to say.

Awkward.

It was easy with my last psychologist, Dr S, cause he treated Little Brother and he knew exactly what was up with my family and he Got me pretty quickly.  So I’m struggling trying to open up with Dr H.  M reminded me that since I’m in for like 2 years of counselling, it doesn’t matter that it’s going slow, and maybe he’s right.

Dr H made an interesting observation though.  That my voice gets all tight and throaty when I’m talking about stuff I don’t feel like talking about, and that I get all curt and polite, and I sort of hunch up on the couch.  She’s right.  I could feelmy throat being all tight and constricted.  I hadn’t noticed that before.   But I definitely do it, I know I’m all curt when I speak to Father now.  Cause I don’t want to let my guard down.  And because it’s a massive struggle for me to talk about something things without bursting into tears, and I guess I try to block the crying and weeping with my throat.

Then when I was talking about something I was reasonably ok with (my academic achievements), my voice got deeper, more relaxed, less restricted, and I was more animated with hand gestures etc.

Discovery re self: I blather a lot, but I never actually say what I want or needto say.  Like in this blog.  I’ve been doing posts on superficial shit like organisation and sleep and money but I have yet to talk about my childhood, I didn’t even mention what happened the weekend before last when I considered suicide and nor did I comment on the weird sad/guilty/messed-up feelings I got when Father emailed me last week, trying to be helpful and it ended with me saying “Please don’t start this. I don’t have the time.”

I do want to talk about these things, I’ve hinted at the dodgy childhood thing a few times, but yeah, I find excuses to not write about them.

Homework for week: Read online therapy article on “Mindfulness” and observe the way my voice is when I’m talking and keep a note of what I’m talking about when I notice these voice changes.

Some of the ‘emotional turmoil’ (for want of a better, less stuck-up term) I’ve been going through in the last few months has been about my job and, more generally, about where I am going with my life.

At the end of law school, I applied for (and was eventually successful in obtaining) employment as a graduate lawyer in a top-tier commercial law firm.  It should have been all pretty amazing.  My fellow graduands were in quite a tizz about applications and interviews and blah dee blah.  Most were wined and dined by top firms hoping to recruit the best.

But I basically pulled myself out of the process the year before, when I didn’t bother applying for the usual 3-5 vacation clerkships, and when I took the one clerkship I did get and ran with them, as a 1-day-a-week Research Assistant in my final year.  I was basically part of the family by the time it came to applying for graduate jobs, and I didn’t bother applying for some places because I knew they would look at me as ‘taken’, and one of the two other places where I did apply did just that.

The other place?  I pulled out.  I was so scared about having to make a decision between two places that I just went, nope. I’m here now, I’ll stick with it.  I just didn’t feel as if I had the capacity to make such a big decision.

I’ve done this before.  At the end of high school, after working my tiny little arse off for 5 years, I could have had the choice between law school and med school.  But I ran away from the choice, by just leaving myself with the choice of which law school to go to.  I suppose, by doing that, I really did make a choice, i.e. Go To Law School, but what I’m trying to say is that I hate making choices.  I freak out at them.  Because somehow I feel incapable of respecting my ability to make the right choice.

Probably because I often wondered if I made the right choice in regards to which law school to go to.

But I now wonder if I chose the wrong fork in the Med/Law intersection.

A study last year found that lawyering is the most depressed professional field in Australia, so it looks like I’m about to add to that little statistic.

Not that I’m saying that by choosing med school, I wouldn’t be depressed.  Because that choice wouldn’t change my genetics, or my family, or any of the other causes of my current state of emotional-being.  I guess I’m just wondering if I should have done law.

In my first session last week, Dr H asked me why I chose law.  Blank look.  “I don’t know.  I’ve always wanted to do law.”  “But why have you always wanted to do law?”  Shrug. 

I could never answer that question truthfully in interviews, either.  Here’s one I prepared earlier: “I love solving problems and being challenged.  I know, obviously, that there are many fields in which I could be challenged and solve problems, but I like the idea that as a lawyer, you solve problems that people have in the day to day life in Real World.  Those problems might be about their business or a relationship or about their actions, depending on which field of law you’re in, but they are still everyday, real problems, and I think that helping to solve them through the law is an interesting and fulfilling career path.”

What a load of cock.  Anyway, they fell for it.

I am clearly conflicted by all these lies and deceptions.

I used to want to save the world when I was younger, and I think that was a reason I put in my law school application letter.  There’s a group of Facebook called “Law School: Where Idealism Goes to Die”, and I couldn’t concur with the accuracy of that statement more. 

Sometimes I still want to do that (save the world) but I don’t think I’m strong enough to do that anymore.  (Like my psychological analysis said, I don’t have delusions.)  But there’re all these thoughts I have about the fact that I have proved myself to be being a very capable person, and from values that have been instilled in me from my family, I feel as if I should do something with that capacity, for other people, for the world.  But, back to the top of this paragraph: I don’t think I can do anything.  And I freak.

This quote from Professor Geoff Gallop pretty much sums up my problem (at least on this issue):

The guilt that depressives feel in the face of their and the world’s many imperfections also works against their own liberation. They want to please and isn’t everything that happens their responsibility and theirs alone? The more they do, the more they have to do. It is for others that they act and it is to achieve at the highest levels that they work beyond reason. To do otherwise - and to put themselves and their well-being first — is to fail the test of life that has been created in their own minds. Herein lies the problem for many of our professionals and high achievers — they have lost control. 

That which drives them also has the potential to destroy them and, tragically, all too often it does. As Dr Mamta Gautam said of the legal profession in her Tristan Jepson Memorial Lecture last year: “These personality traits are all very socially and professionally valuable, but personally very expensive”. [link]

So  I went to law school, and then I finished it.  Mind you, I took as long as possible to finish it, because I think I knew I didn’t want to actually Do Law, but then when I did, I was faced with another horrible crisis of confusion.

The big step towards the Big Bad Legal Jungle is not an easy one to take.  Which is why I have actually pussy-footed around in front of it.  I haven’t taken the leap yet.  I dipped my toe in, waved to the people on the other side, and then said, “just wait a sec, I’ll be rightback,” as I walked along on the edg.   I deferred my graduate position and took a 12-month job, which is still in law but not as a law grad.   The Firm were totally fine with it, because it’s a fancy-schmancy job, and it makes me an even better graduate to have in their troop.

This job is my way of justifying going to law school without having to be a lawyer, because I wasn’t ready for that at the end of last year.  I thought the holiday M and I took would refresh me and prepare me but I’m still not ready.  I hate this job.  It is so boring.  I am not being challenged, I do not like it.  Plus. My boss scares the hell out of me (he’s a male Miranda Preistly, I am not kidding, and sometimes he calls out to my co-worker and all I can think of is Merryl Steep going “Emmilyyy” in that deep, low, scary voice).

I should be going to work for another fellow soon, and I know I will suck it up and not just quit, but what I am now wondering about is whether I should go to The Firm next year.  Because it will probably be worse. 

I don’t know.  Obviously I should cross that bridge when I come to it, but I’d really like to be prepared for dealing with the Troll.

There’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about for the last few weeks, which I think is probably pretty stupid, but this post is way too long so I’ll look into it later.

Whoa.

So last week my psychologist Dr H tells me that she thinks there’s more to my problems than just depression, right, so she got me to do a psychological assessment, which is basically 300+ questions which are either “false”, “somewhat true”, “mostly true” or “very true” about yourself.

We went through the results and while some of it was exaggerated, most of it was spot on and there was much shoulder-sagging and a few tears.

The Good: I don’t have any problems with drug and alcohol abuse (although the computer-generated diagnosis said my responses on that were so strong that I might be lying, hah), delusions, multiple personality issues, etc.

The Bad: I have a highly inflated ego (duh) but it is probably just to compensation for my horrible self-esteem.  I think this is pretty accurate.  I can once remember describing myself as a megalomanic with an inferiority complex.

The Ugly: I have lots of depression (duh x 2).  And I feel I have no support network. 

Which I really do feel, even though I have M, I know, but I have always felt that I (or more acurately, my ‘problem’, which has taken over my life in the last 12+ months) was just a burden on him.  And I can’t use him as a therapist; he’s meant to be my partner.  And I’m doing a lousy job at partnering him back (more on that later).  But I have never had a really close friend who I shared everything with.  Well, maybe there was L, but I have just lost the same contact we used to have and I feel like I can’t just dump this on her now.

In the end, the my diagnosis is Major Depression (duh x 3) with kinda isolated moments of mania (which explains the ‘drive’ to achieve crazy things like double-honours etc, cause what normal person would even consider something like that) and Somatization Disorder which is a

condition of many physical complaints (including four pain symptoms, two gastrointestinal symptoms, one sexual symptom, and one pseudoneurological symptom) which cannot be fully explained by a known general medical condition. [ref]

Fair. Very fair.

Hrm, according to The Bible Wikipedia, this particular condition was is antiquatedly known as hysteria.

Roight.

Humph. So have Mondayistis and SAD on one day.  How unfortunate!  Suppose it’s not surprising to feel miserable when it starts raining outside when one feels miserable when it’s sunny outside, but whatever.

But I have decided not to let the arrival of autumn get to me.  I put on my new AA wrap dressand made the effort to put makeup on.   It made me late for the bus (well, the early bus, since I was trying to get to work early to do work I was not motivated enough to do last week) but it felt good to preen.  I’ve really gotten into beauty stuff these days, from reading beauty blogs and magazines to playing with all the craploads of makeup I’ve collected over the years, and more recently, on my Retail Therapy binges.

I also put on the mimco scarf I bought after my first counselling session last year. Dr S asked me to imagine a little girl, sitting alone on a set of swings in a park. She was crying, but won’t respond when I try to talk to her. What would I give her to comfort her? My answer was a scarf. 

Dr S said that was an interesting choice. Why did I give it to her? Because I thought she might be cold (it was cold and windy on the day in question), and scarves are good when it’s cold.  Apparently the little girl was supposed to be me (obviously), and my imputation of coldness was supposed to show how I felt… ie unprotected from the elements of life. The

My project for the week was to go and get myself a scarf. Not any scarf, not the first one I saw, but one that I was drawn to and just really wanted. So I got a pretty trendy, lambswool/chashmere pink and grey number that had little silver thread knitted through. It’s hot. I love it. And was my little security blanket last winter; I’m bringing it out for battle again this year.

I struggled to get out of bed this morning.  I eventually hauled ass to work, but was, of course, late.  My un-used muscles are screeching and whining after the fitness assessment I went to yesterday (so that I can compare the results after bootcamp), but I had a distinct feeling that my reluctance to crawl out from under the covers had little to do with being tired.

I slept fine, and for 8+ hours at that. I do not have any (obvious, to the outside viewer) stress in my life right now. I had a lovely Chinese-takeaway-and-DVD-cuddled-up-in-bed date with M last night.

But I didn’t want to get up.

And this is a very familiar feeling.  It feels just like when I didn’t want to get out of bed in the first half of last year, before I went to see a doctor (other than my mother).  Those doona days when it felt like the only way you could be happy was not to let yourself out of the safe coccoon of your sheets and have to interact with the world.

I got up to turn the snooze off, but jumped back in bed and checked my mobile gmail.  I had an email from my cousin asking if my mother was ok, because cousin hadn’t heard from mother and when that happened it meant that something was up with my mother.  So I rang home and got the typical, guarded, ”yes of course, everything is fine” response, which, I have only just realised in the last few weeks, my mother has been giving me for over 20 years, during which time everything has not been fine in our family.  I will try to get out all my family issues here eventually, but oh, where do I start?

Anyhow, I was (eventually) on the bus and started doing my Facebook status update via my phone.  I had typed out “is stumbling around in the dark and about to fall into old holes, but feels like she cannot do anything about it” in the status field, but I couldn’t let myself hit the ‘update’ button.  So I changed it, to “is sore and regretting ever signing up for bootcamp”. Update.

I don’t know why I couldn’t say what I really felt.  The whole reason I’m writing this blog is to talk about what’s going on with me, but I am clearly having trouble doing that.  I haven’t told anyone about this, not even my lovely, sweet, caring boyfriend who has been my rock through thick and thin.

Maybe it’s ’cause I’ve always ignored emo status updates from my ‘friends’, and even un-friended someone I barely knew cause I was bored with reading about her whining, and knew I’d being a hypocrite if I whined myself.  Or because I have Facebook ‘friends’ who are merely just acquaintances and probably don’t care nor need to know.

So. I’m tired for no reason.  I’m avoiding people.  I also haven’t felt like eating, am finding no pleasure whatsoever in my glamorous job, blah blah blah, yada yada yada. 

It’s scaring me. But I don’t know what to do.

I guess I should make an appointment to go see my shrink again. I was supposed to see him this month, but it’s such a pain in the ass to get to appointments and stuff now that I’m working full-time. And I’ve got my first appointment with a new psychologist next week, so I feel as if it’d be overkill to go see the first guy. But maybe I do need it, though. I dunno.

The Black Dog Insitute is doing a study on how writing affects people’s mood:

Over the centuries, many people have been naturally drawn to writing about their life and their experiences, through journals, creative writing, and other forms of written expression.   Day to day life can be stressful as people strive for balance between family, friends and work.  We are interested in whether certain kinds of expressive writing can be helpful for people in managing their moods, stress levels and general health. The ‘Writing and Mood’ study is investigating whether particular ways of writing about our lives and our experiences can offer benefits for our moods, emotional and physical health.  We are also interested in whether people with certain personality styles find writing in certain ways to be more helpful than others.

I thought it was quite fortuitous that I found about this research the week I decided to start blogging in an attempt to work though my depression treatment. I’ve signed up for the study, and I’m looking forward to going through the exercises. It’ll probably help to do more structured writing tasks than me just blathering away about random stuff.

There was a pretty intense questionnaire that I had to do, which left me with some thought-fodder to work with later.  But it involved lots of thinking-about-myself and I think that’s enough for now.