My Journey With Depression

So, I have found myself in a very strange state of mind lately. And that is, the fact that for the first time in forever my mental health is very well managed these days. That's not to say that I don't have any struggles anymore, just that I have a handle on the situation most of the time. 

I am going to make this a little series where I talk about my various mental health struggles and how I have coped with them over the years. As you almost certainly already know, in this situation, we are talking about depression. I wish I was able to give a specific age or date when I first started struggling with depression. But the sad truth is, I don't remember a time when I didn't struggle with depression. 

In many of my earliest memories, the main thing that sticks in my mind is the way I felt. Often feeling isolated, lonely, sad... Basically the usual depression-type things. I spent most of my teen years struggling greatly with depression. But the truth is it only really got worse as time went on. When I was younger I really struggled with explaining the way I was feeling, I found it difficult to articulate what was going on in my own mind. 

My mum noticed I was depressed at a young age, probably around the age of 10 or so, and when she talked to the doctor about it the doctor's response was quite frankly, shit. He told my mum that she was worrying too much because 'Children don't get depressed'. The doctor was already very old and may I say "behind the times" when it comes to mental health. Now the general doctor's view on mental health 16 years ago was still not the best. Even less so in regards to children with mental health struggles. 

that is really how it went for the next couple of years, my dad was just aware of the whole situation. I'm sure I will post about my dad someday, he was never terrible. There was never any massive abuse or such, but he was just never emotionally available. He didn't understand mental health then, and I don't think he really understands it today. He has, however over the years tried to be more understanding of my issues, and he does deserve some respect for that. 

It was when I was 13 that I was first referred to CAMHS, which is the NHS mental health service that is aimed at children and adolescents.  I'm sure anyone who is reading this that has had to deal with this specific service will agree with me that they are, for the most part, truly useless. So, after my mum tried to get me the help that I needed for the next couple of years, we eventually gave up on the service. The sad thing is, this is not an uncommon experience of the service across Britain.

Throughout all of this time, I was struggling with my depression, I first started to self-harm to any significant degree around the age of 14. The truth is, I continued to struggle with self-harming for the majority of my life going forward. I would often find things to cut myself with, in other situations I would hit things or burn myself. But, for the most part, it was always cutting that was my go-to method of causing myself harm. 

It was actually when I was 16 that I was diagnosed with depression. It was a real shocker honestly to say I was self-harming for two years by this point. But, finally we got there, unfortunately for me, antidepressants and CBT didn't really work for me. Part of the reason for this was the stress that I put on myself. I excelled in school and expected nothing less of myself in college. Unfortunately by this point, my mental health had started to affect my ability to perform and my motivation. This in turn led to my mental health continuing to deteriorate. 

It really became a cycle of lacking motivation and drive, leading to furthering my struggles with mental health as I became further and further displaced from the view of myself that I had. I know that I am not unique in this mindset, and many high achievers end up in the same predicament. Despite this mindset, I ended up achieving highly in my course at college, but in many ways, it took all I had to get there. There was a massive push towards the end of the course that I had to play catch-up and it really burned me out in many ways. 

I ended up needing to take a year's break from pretty much everything after college. During this year I mostly fell apart in many ways. I cared for my mum, which was challenging and I spent much of my free time on gaming, cooking, watching things, and doing pleasure activities. I would like to say that this helped my mental health but it became obvious to me that it was in fact harming my mental health over time. So I started to look into employment and education. 

In the end, I decided I wanted to go forward with my IT education, starting a degree in Large scale networking and systems architecture. Looking back, in many ways this was exactly what I needed, and it was also exactly what I didn't in equal measure. Although the education wasn't what I needed IU started to volunteer in youth work. This would be my first entrance to the social care type sector and would turn into a love and passion as time went on. 

But this isn't a post about my employment history. Juggling working on a degree and working as a youth worker at the same time really took its toll. I went back to the doctor but for the first time I would be seen by the adult mental health services. In many ways, this was not that large of an improvement, but what was an improvement was the fact that my GP can adjust my medication. Instead of having to wait months to see a specialist, I could simply go to my GP to have meds changed, adjusted or generally managed. 

My depression was generally... managed over the next few years. We never really got to a point where I would say my depression was fully treated, I was still self-harming on a semi-regular basis and often struggled when hard things happened. Things like the death of a family member, the break-up of a relationship, loss of a friend, all hit me very hard. Much harder than they really should have done. 

During this time there were many friendships made and lost, relationships came and went, mood went up and down. But it wasn't until I found myself in an abusive relationship that my mental health really started to be a bother again. I found being in an abusive relationship very hard, especially towards the end. I won't be going into detail about that today but it was a very challenging time in my life and the reason I have PTSD today. 

When that relationship ended I felt like I died. I did all these things to make them happy and yet, they left. Shortly after the end of that relationship, I tried to take my own life. It wasn't the first time I'd done something that could have ended my life, but it was the first time that I was intending to end my life. This is the first, and so far only time that I ended up in a mental health hospital. 

The mental health hospital wasn't really much help to me overall. I think one good thing that came from it was for the first time my whole family understood quite where I was at with my mental health. After I came out of the hospital I had much more support and care from those around me and I have to say that was very much appreciated. For the next year or so I got quite a fair amount of support and help from friends and family and with that I established, but I wouldn't really say massively improved. 

It would be hard to talk about mental health, and not be talking about the COVID-19 situation. Lockdowns were hard on many people, and honestly, I didn't find lockdowns particularly difficult myself. I spend much of my time alone anyway. In many ways, I was more social during the lockdowns than not due to people going online. I enjoyed seeing my family and friends through zoom and honestly I was more comfortable socialising through zoom than in person even with my own family. 

But alas this was not to last, after what somehow felt like both a lifetime and a blink of an eye in one, the lockdowns came and went. Many people wanted to go get back out there and as is typical of me, I once again went back to mostly being alone. Although I do have many friends, most of them are online. The truth is this really doesn't bother me 99% of the time and I'm pretty happy with things the way they are. 

It was not long after the end of lockdowns that I struggled with my mental health again, and for the first time in my life, I found a doctor that seemed to really want to help. Over the next few months, it was realised that I actually struggle with intrusive thoughts and borderline psychosis. It has to be said that starting antipsychotics was the best thing I've ever done. I felt calm, clear, in charge of my own mind for the first time in my life. 

It turns out that the way my mind worked, with the intrusive thoughts and psychosis, it fed my depression. It limited my ability to really work on myself in a way that could improve my mental well-being in the long term. I started to try a couple of different antipsychotics and finally settled on the one that I am now taking. 

I have to say that my depression massively improved after I got my intrusive thoughts in check. I managed to work on myself, became more productive and as you can see I have even restarted blogging. In many ways I am in the best place I have been with my mental health than I have ever been in my entire life. I can get on with things, and control my own actions and what I say, I have relative control over my emotions. 

I think it is massively interesting that all this time all I needed was for one doctor to spend time and listen to my struggles. My psychiatrist is the most Chinese person I have ever met, the kind of person that drinks herbal tea while treating patients. I love him. He was the first person to actually listen to me and the first person to realise what I was struggling with. In ways that I didn't even realise myself. I will forever be massively thankful for the fact that I met this doctor. 

Thanks for reading,

Spec.