Blog review Feb 2019

I have been reading my older blog posts and thought of writing down some reflections.

When I started this blog I envisaged a description of a journey. Something that would capture what I was going through, and also describe treatments, state of mind and progress (if any). Reading back, I don't feel like I hit the mark. The sad thing is that I was never going to be able to. A big problem with bipolar disorder is that the flashes of inspiration, and the moments when one can write descriptively and eloquently are brief, and for the last few years in my case, far between. Most of the time that I have sat down at the computer to write, my brain has been mush.

It make the whole thing seem somewhat pointless. But, second guessing myself (as I constantly do), maybe this is just a particularly bad moment with my disorder, and I should just persevere.

There are many positives in my life right now. I have stopped all prescription medications since October 2018, and don't feel too bad. My head feels more clear than messed up, and the prevailing sadness has withdrawn a little. While this may sound like it's not such a big deal, I can assure you that it is. Considering that I don't have a job, and hence no income and I get constantly rejected when I apply for jobs, and my children hardly ever take my calls, to be in the mildly ok state that I am currently in is tremendous progress.

I guess that I'll keep going with this blog and try to determine some better ways to add value to the lives of fellow sufferers. Because, ultimately, that is what I wanted this to be.

Reflecting on inflammation 09/01/2019

I have noticed a lot more articles that bring the topic of inflammation into discussions on mental disorders.

This article is an example:

https://www.sciencealert.com/bad-moods-may-signal-much-more-than-just-a-negative-state-of-mind-study-finds

So, I guess that the mission is to understand more about inflammation and figure out whether I have it. If so, how do I reduce it? My initial impression is that the people posting on this are punting their own very expensive drugs or supplements as cures. I will have to do a lot more research before committing to any of them since I am broke and unemployed.

Often I do feel trapped in a cycle of not having a job because I am unwell, and therefore not having any money. Therefore not being able to get better, negatively affecting my job hunting. Just to make things even worse, this trapped feeling probably makes recovering from mental illness even more difficult.

Rearview mirror 2018

Admittedly, 2018 started on a bad note for me. I was unemployed, rapidly running out of cash, and medicated to the hilt for bipolar disorder. My wife was facing retrenchment, and on some instinctive level must have known that she was lined up for the cut. The medication that I was taking was certainly not helping me mentally.

I knew that this year would call for some drastic measures. Aside from frantically hunting for a job, scouring all the job-sites and hitting up all my contacts for leads, there were a whole plethora of other things that I would have to get done.

In addition to the job hunting, I looked at trying to bring in some business on my own. I advertised Archery coaching lessons, and management and leadership consulting services.

To bring down monthly costs I cancelled all the subscriptions that I had which saved me some money. I stopped any unnecessary spending, and I also stopped all the bipolar disorder medication that was not covered by my medical aid.

The medication cuts were a setback. Immediately my head and brain became worse, but I decided to ride it out for two reasons. Firstly, I couldn’t afford them, and secondly I didn’t think that the medication was helping that much either. I had started working on the theory that I should never have gone onto medication in the first place.

It all started a few years before when I went through some serious retrenchment fears at work. Prior to that I had divorced, moved house, remarried and a whole bunch of life-altering experiences. I believe that I was in need to some wholesome counselling, nurturing and empathy, but all I got what SSRIs. That was the beginning of the end. In the beginning of 2018 I was on five different mental health drugs. In the meantime, I had found a really good counsellor and felt like I finally had some support that would bring me back to ‘normal’.

In terms of financial cuts, I approached the ex-wife to ask if I could reduce the monthly maintenance amount a bit in order to ride out the predicament that I was in. Her response was no, and if I tried anything she would take me to court.  At the time it seemed a good idea to me to pre-empt running out of money and ending up on the wrong side of the law by initiating a maintenance dispute and taking her to court instead. I started that in April and immediately felt some relief as I was able to stop paying the maintenance. Before that I had been paying her maintenance for my 17 year old son and an allowance for my 26 year old daughter. That’s also a long story, but I signed a really bad maintenance contract. The monthly amount for my son alone had compounded growth to an amount that was more than double what it would cost and adult to rent a room and feed themselves in the cash component alone. Along with that I was paying school fees and medical aid, as well as quite a lot of sundry expenses. Because I had the time, I did a little digging as established that it would have been cheaper for him to attend boarding school (at the same school that he was at).

Ultimately my approach in terms of the maintenance was not wise. It cost me money that I did not have to pay for lawyers’ fees. The maintenance court refused to hear my case at all because I have assets. I was ordered to pay the backlog as well as 2019 in advance. None of it makes sense to me. On top of all of that my children now do not communicate with me. My feeling is that they have no use for a father who has mental issues and no money, but I’m probably misreading all of this.

Advertising for Archery lessons was costing me more money than I was making, so I had to stop that. In the meantime, I signed up for a couple of online tutoring websites and did some work tutoring. In 2018 I earned USD30. I continually applied for jobs, and by the end of the year had received invitations to four job interviews. In one instance I worked at a brewery for 3 days, but in the end the guy decided not to hire me.

In terms of family and support, I had the most enlightening year ever. Certainly my two older children have made it clear that they have no time for a father with no income regardless how diligent and supportive I have been in the past. My sister has clustered in support of my ex-wife through all this, and my mother is so distraught about everything that she just wishes it would all go away. I have never felt so alone.

In the midst of all of this I decided to cut out all of the other medication that I was on too. This happened because I became suicidal and the psychiatrist wanted to send me for electro shock therapy. I drew up a weaning plan to finally come off all mental health drugs over the course of three months. I signed up for Transcendental Meditation lessons and introduced a regiment. By November I was clean. For that period, and up until today my head feel like shit. However, I am determined to ride it out and never go back on those drugs. I don’t believe that they really helped.

I think that it is probably quite normal to be in the mental state that I’m in considering the life situation that I am in. I’m looking into a jobless and moneyless 2019 with a feeling of absolute dread and despair. Why would my mental health be OK? I do sometimes feel that if my mental health was stronger, I would be better equipped to dig myself out of this hole that I am in, but because I’m in this hole, my mental health is messed up. So I guess that I could be stuck in a loop. Even worse, maybe interviewers can smell this illness on me when I try to get a job and on a sub-conscious level know to walk away from me.

So, that was 2018. Something needs to give. I don’t know what my options are, and I am so scared and worried I have become stuck like a rabbit in a car’s headlights. I don’t understand how I got here. I have a B.Sc.Engineering degree, a Masters in Business Leadership and have always done my very best at the jobs that I’ve had. I have achieved great things.

As I sit staring into 2019, I know that I have run out of any savings that I had. I don’t have funds for my son’s school fees, and after 2019 his tertiary education. I may lose my house and my car. I can’t feed my family. I know that that will lead to me ending up in maintenance court again. How do I go on?

I can't do this

Forget meditation
Forget banting
Forget exercise
Forget medication
Forget keto
Forget walking
Forget talking
Forget old friends
Forget new friends
Forget family
Forget jobs
Forget earning
Forget maintaining
Forget coping
Forget improving
Forget getting better, because I can't
Nothing works or helps or matters

Black Dog

There has been a black dog following me my entire life. At first I did not know that it was there. Eventually I came to recognise it, and, at a stage even thought that I had beaten it. But it came back, again and again and again. When it is gone, I am chemically gone.

Recent years

This happened in my forties:

I got divorced,
I remarried,
I faced retrenchment at work twice,

I didn't realise that my depression had sneaked back.

Divorce:
After nearly 20 years of marriage, with two beautiful children as a result, I just could not do it anymore. I felt like we were both caught up in some type of downward spiral. We were not able to help each other, and most likely, making things worse for each other. The bad things that happened became the only things that I could see (depression sneaking in and laying it's traps). How it all effected the children, and knowing that I made the decision to do this was weighing extremely heavily on me.

Remarry:
There are many beautiful people in the world, but it is not always easy to find them. I remarried when I found that beautiful person who seemed perfect to me. Ultimately though, I was wracked with guilt. Guilt for leaving my children (even though they were living close by, and I saw them pretty regularly), guilt for dragging someone new into my black-clouded world, guilt for not being able to give everyone who loved me enough attention. Depression works in insidious ways.

Retrenchment at work:
In what, I guess with hindsight, was a perfect storm, events conspired to make my world even worse. With all the events going on in my personal life, I was struggling to cope at work. Unfortunately, the timing was abysmal. At roughly the same time, there were restructures and management shake-ups. This meant that there were very few people left who had witnessed the incredible work that I had done in the past, and could attest to this. All that the new eyes could see was some subdued, withdrawn individual with an irregular productivity profile.

Ultimately, the work-place is not a convalescence home, and my managers had had enough. Over the course of the next few years, I was asked to reapply for my job at least five time, and in one of those occasions I was pushed out of it. Fortunately for me, another manager saw something in me and brought me into his team. I think that I then proceeded to let him down. Only to be reinstated into my previous job roughly one year later. I do believe, however, if I had had a better manager, I would have been much more productive. I am a strong believer in the fact that your leaders can either diminish you, or multiply you. In my case, in the perfect storm, my manager was an extreme diminisher. The hole that I falling down was just getting deeper and deeper. In the end, I took the initiative and left. I had no new job or real way of supporting myself and my family.

Depression sneaked back:
Reading this, and thinking back, it is obvious to me that depression was playing a larger part in my life all this time than I realised, and was most probably responsible for a lot of the outcomes. I had been treated for depression in my twenties with medication, and had somehow believed that I had shaken it off. I had stopped the medication after a few years, and had been coping just fine since. I will never be able to pinpoint when exactly it came back, if it was a gradual process, or if I was even any better. I was going to General Practitioners with all sorts of ailments, and on more than one occasion was asked whether I was depressed. I didn't think that I was, how wrong I was. It had been there for a long time intertwining with all events in my life making it impossible for me to determine whether I was depressed because of the various life events I had been experiencing, or whether I had brought all this into my life because I was depressed.

I still don't know. I just know that the most important thing is to keep moving forward. I am surrounded but people who love me, all my children, my wife and my family. I am a lucky guy - I just can't cope.

Now at 50

It sometimes feels like depression sneaked up on me. Then in a moment of calm and insight I realise that I have been in this battle for most of my life. I'm 50 now and still struggling. This is what I am going through right now.

I have a well paid job which I guess that people have faith in me and my abilities. Yet I live in constant fear of being found out. On many days at work I can't seem to do anything, fortunately when I do do something I seem to make up for it. Still, this way is going to catch me out sooner rather than later because I cannot match the pace of well people.

In my journey getting to 50, I have tried many things to try to overcome this black dog. I read a lot, which may actually be me hiding away from the world inside a book or article. Reading about depression is depressing. From my understanding, it is not an exact science, with no clear understanding of cause and effect. There also seems to be no clear understanding as to how anti-depressants and other depression related drugs work. The approach that I have experienced is that it is trial and error. In my case, sometimes the error has nearly cost me my life.

Holding down a job and dealing with depression don't seem to be mutually compatible to me. Trying to treat depression and work at the same time is extremely difficult. Taking time out to see a psychologist or any other type of doctor is stressful because I need to take the time off work. This stresses me out completely. I used to go to one psychologist who was consistently running more than an hour late - I used to leave there feeling worse than when I arrived. How do you explain to your boss where you have been when depression is still a very difficult thing to declare to you employer. Also, medical treatments are sometimes pretty much touch-and-go. Some side-effects can be debilitating, sometimes there is a type of 'break-in' period that can leave me feeling very disorientated, and even more, if the actual drug is not producing the desired result, sometimes even exacerbating the problem. All this while trying to deal with the fast moving, results oriented, work environment.

I realise that people who do not suffer can not understand what depression is about. It's not about being sad, it's about being incapable of getting up and going. I know that it is frustrating to them when they ask 'what is bothering you' and my answer in general is 'nothing and everything'. I have been accused of being lazy, a long slab of misery, and useless. It is testament to my strength and sheer will to survive that I can sit here and write this at 50 years of age.

In the next few weeks and months, I would like to expand on my experiences. I will write about my medical experiences, earlier phases in my life, parenthood, and how I try to cope at work to start, and then see what else inspires me.

In my experience, depression is a very lonely disease. It closes out the world at exactly the time when I need positivity and joy around me. With this writing I hope to bring the world back in, and save myself. Hopefully somewhere in all of this, other people can get some insight into what is going on with someone who is depressed, or even identify depression in someone who has been acting unusually.