All this stopping drinking, doing my bloody relaxation exercises and generally trying to be less stressed was actually pretty stressful. Sometimes I felt like I was getting worse, not better. I was trying so hard to do all of these things but I kept failing: running out of time, forgetting to do them, getting down anyway. So I decided I had to do more.
Being a bookish type, I went to the library and looked at the books on depression. Even doing that felt like a big step: admitting I had a problem, but also acknowledging that there might be a solution. The first book I looked at was this one:
The Depression Cure by Steve Ilardi.
Dr Steve's basic idea about depression is really interesting. He thinks our modern, 21st century lifestyles are fundamentally at odds with the needs of our primal, physical selves. We live increasingly isolated lives, we're indoors a lot, we don't eat very well and we don't move about a lot. So his approach to beating depression is to try and get back to a more natural way of living. He doesn't mean full-on Neanderthal cave-dwelling and woolly-mammoth-hunting but he does recommend:
Dr Steve's basic idea about depression is really interesting. He thinks our modern, 21st century lifestyles are fundamentally at odds with the needs of our primal, physical selves. We live increasingly isolated lives, we're indoors a lot, we don't eat very well and we don't move about a lot. So his approach to beating depression is to try and get back to a more natural way of living. He doesn't mean full-on Neanderthal cave-dwelling and woolly-mammoth-hunting but he does recommend:
- Getting enough omega-3 in your diet.
- Engaging in meaningful activity
- Doing some exercise
- Getting some sunlight
- Spending time with other people
- Getting better sleep.
There's a chapter per item and I worked my way through. Some things are easier than others - I found a vegetarian omega-3 online, did a bit more reading about it, discussed it with my GP and thought: what harm can it do? The big ones for me were meaningful activity, exercise and being more social. I do lead a pretty isolated life - I write for a living, and spend most of my days alone. So I made more effort to contact friends and schedule 2-3 dates a week with them. It definitely helped. And I kind of hate exercise - underlying the depression are some classic body-image problems and a lack of desire to get up and do anything - but I knew that exercising more could only be A Good Thing. (you get bonus points from Dr Steve if you exercise outside, in the sun - not always possible in Scotland, but I started dragging my miserable arse round a hill in central Edinburgh where I lived and once the stitch had subsided, it did make me feel more alive than I'd felt in a long time.) As for 'meaningful activity' - he means "do something, anything, that stops you thinking about how shit you are". (That's my interpretation, not his actual words.) Sudoku, salsa, screenprinting... anything you like doing that stops you sitting and getting deeper into a slump. There's evidence that depressed people get more depressed if they sit around thinking about why they're depressed. Maybe that sounds logical to you, but I had often thought: "if I can just work out WHY I'm such a failure, then I'll be able to fix myself." Dr Steve says: stop thinking. Start doing. You're basically trying to distract yourself from your own brain reminding you that you're depressed.
I had to work at all these things. There's a chart in the book that lets you track your progress and I used to assess myself every week, write up how I'd got on and schedule my depression-busting activities for the week ahead. My scores started getting better and better, which motivated me to keep going.
The second thing I did was get into mindfulness. This is the single best thing I've done for my health. It's the thing that makes most sense to me, and what works best in my life. I know some other people who've tried it and just find it pointless, but it works for me.
There's a guy called Jon Kabat-Zinn who's done a lot to develop mindfulness in the West. He defines it as"paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgementally."
I know, I know, it sounds really basic and really easy. You just sit there, breathing, thinking about how you're in this moment and not another one. Whatever.
But for me, and I'm thinking probably for a lot of other depressed people, that kind of thing is basically impossible. When I sit there, I think about the past: "why did you say that? Why did you act that way? You're such a dick, no wonder no one likes you..."
or I worry about the future: "how am I going to cope at that party? Everyone will be there, all talking and laughing and drinking and happy, and I'll be the freak, and I'll get all panicked..."
And there's quite a lot of judging of myself going on there too.
Actually sitting and being OK with what's happening, and not judging myself for it, is enormously tough for me. It's got easier with the mindfulness practice, but I have to keep at it.
I did a online course, for free.
It took me two attempts to get through it, and then I basically did it all again a third time using this book on the right, which is what the online course is based on. It was a huge struggle at first, because the approach is so different to how I'd been living my life. I was extremely critical of myself and found it very hard to accept myself just the way I was. Sitting and just being was almost unbearable for me. It's still incredibly hard, but I'm getting better at it, getting better at allowing myself to be the way I am.
A key part of mindfulness is meditation. That's right, I now sit and meditate pretty much every day. Sometimes I let it go, but I tend to notice that the longer I go without it, the more tense and snappy and stressed I get.
There's a guy called Jon Kabat-Zinn who's done a lot to develop mindfulness in the West. He defines it as"paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgementally."
I know, I know, it sounds really basic and really easy. You just sit there, breathing, thinking about how you're in this moment and not another one. Whatever.
But for me, and I'm thinking probably for a lot of other depressed people, that kind of thing is basically impossible. When I sit there, I think about the past: "why did you say that? Why did you act that way? You're such a dick, no wonder no one likes you..."
or I worry about the future: "how am I going to cope at that party? Everyone will be there, all talking and laughing and drinking and happy, and I'll be the freak, and I'll get all panicked..."
And there's quite a lot of judging of myself going on there too.
Actually sitting and being OK with what's happening, and not judging myself for it, is enormously tough for me. It's got easier with the mindfulness practice, but I have to keep at it.
I did a online course, for free.
It took me two attempts to get through it, and then I basically did it all again a third time using this book on the right, which is what the online course is based on. It was a huge struggle at first, because the approach is so different to how I'd been living my life. I was extremely critical of myself and found it very hard to accept myself just the way I was. Sitting and just being was almost unbearable for me. It's still incredibly hard, but I'm getting better at it, getting better at allowing myself to be the way I am.
A key part of mindfulness is meditation. That's right, I now sit and meditate pretty much every day. Sometimes I let it go, but I tend to notice that the longer I go without it, the more tense and snappy and stressed I get.
I should also say that I've had a bucket load of therapy in the past: CBT, proper dream-analysis therapy, group therapy, counselling... Each kind has helped in a different way. I love therapy. I love talking about myself. But at this stage in my life, I was also sick of it and wanted to DO something.
And finally, I have an amazing husband, who has listened to me talk about this stuff at enormous length for years now, and has always encouraged me to take steps to get better, always mentions the positives when I can only see the negatives, and who deserves a happy and fulfilled wife. Although getting married triggered this episode of depression, the fact that I now had a husband to think about also gave me the push I needed to make some lasting changes.
So there I was, one year after our wedding. Not drinking. Exercising regularly. Meditating. Taking care to see my friends. Trying to be kinder to myself. You're like a different person, Jim said. I see you coping with things that you never could have a year ago.
I was really pleased that I'd got so much better without taking the pills. It was a lot of work, and it's still very much work in progress, but at least it meant that now we could start trying to make a baby, me and my nice medicine-free, alcohol-free body.
Oh, the irony.
You can read about how we failed to make a baby for a year here.
Maybe I should just have taken the pills. And had a gin.