Climbing Out of Depression (eBook)

Foreword to new edition

It has been so thrilling to meet and talk to depressed people and their carers since Climbing out of Depression was first published twelve years ago. People from all over the world have written to me and I’ve made some good friends through those letters. I have asked some of these people to make suggestions as to how the book could be improved.

I’ve tried to incorporate a number of those suggestions into this new edition but some information is better found elsewhere. For example, I didn’t think I should focus on medication. Such information gets out of date and it is best to talk to a doctor or look at the Depression Alliance website.

What has changed?

I have seen such dramatic change in some depressed people (including myself) and that is something for all of us to hold on to.

We can and do change!

Some people I have met resist that change with great energy and vigour. Others have steadily improved to the point where they can completely turn their lives around.

Some go back to work.

Some make much better relationships.

Some start up a new self-help group for other depressed people.

Some say how much they enjoy being fit enough to laugh and play with their children or go out with their friends.

What’s new in this edition?

In this second edition of the book, I have made some changes to the text, either where I felt it important to add to my new understanding of depression – or where I have changed my mind!

Now that I run workshops with depressed people, carers and counsellors (as a sufferer, not a trained professional), I’ve learned much from brave and struggling people, and from those who care for them. Thank you so much to those people who have helped me make this new edition clearer and more up-to-date.

I’ve added much more about coping strategies to manage our depression better. This was one of the main requested topics at sessions I’ve run for self-help groups and I have started working on these strategies also with groups of counsellors.

There is more about forgiveness because this is something so many of us need to keep working at.

There is some more about our carers – these dear people who try so hard to care. What an undervalued group they are – some of them just children, who give their all, trying to make life a bit better for us.

I’ve updated the resources at the back of the book, including references to the web where we can all get up-to-date information – but we can also get misled so do take care. Definitely don’t buy medication from the web.

Stages of depression?

Some people are convinced that there are stages to depression. At one very obvious level, there are three stages.

• Being so utterly depressed that normal life is impossible. (This is when we need to rest and hide.)
• Getting a bit better. (This is when we sometimes need to rest but at other times we must do something!)
• Feeling much better – cheerful, positive and able to get on with life – and with a determination to learn from what we have been through.

People who have massive ‘highs’ and devastating ‘lows’ might want to say they have two very clear stages and seem to veer between them – sometimes within days – much to the confusion of those around them.

• Very ‘high’, planning far too much to do (without being even vaguely realistic) or spending too much money, or being massively creative – composing a symphony or doing some completely new scheme; or
• So depressed that death seems quite inviting.

And without much in between!

The problem with stages

The problem I see in putting too much emphasis on stages is that it is so common to think we have slumped down to the very depths of depression again when actually we may find that it was just a blip and we are really still on the way up – not back at the bottom of the cliff.

So we need to be careful. If we insist we are at the bottom of the cliff, we might be quite wrong and be limiting our recovery. It is all too easy to get so stuck in our depression that we start to lose hope and we may develop the habit of being ‘centre stage’ at home with everyone running round us! We insist that we are still unable to do anything. This is very dangerous thinking!

Being creative

Of course, depression has many causes, but over the years, watching friends, family and acquaintances going in and out of depressed phases, I see creativity in their lives as one of the most significant aspects of their climb up from depression.

If we don’t use our creative self, we are in danger of stagnating. We can become restless, fed up, edgy, irritable and unhappy. Maybe for some people that is the beginning of their depression.

This creativity can be there in the most ordinary of things:

• preparing food
• sharing and listening at a self-help group
• the intense pleasure of reading a good novel and talking about it to a friend
• our own thoughts and day dreams after listening to the radio

All of these things get our right-brain creativity out there and exercised, instead of being trapped and ignored because of our complaining or our preoccupations with earning money or keeping our house so clean and tidy that our neighbours will admire us – or whatever else we do to cramp our creative life.

Get a hold of the facts

Depressed people often ask me if they are going mad and this was something that worried me for years. Depression feels like madness but it isn’t. Depression is a recognizable medical condition. It is not something that we have invented to skive off work! It is not something to feel guilty about.

The chemical factor

In chapter 6 I wrote about how some depression is about our body chemistry being out of balance. Knowing this can be a great relief to a sufferer because it can lessen the sense of us it being ‘all my fault’. But some psychologists insist that depression is all about getting our head straight – and we don’t need antidepressants. This view has tended to make me feel a bit feeble and guilty but last week I went through rather a dramatic example demonstrating how important the chemical factor can be.

I had to take two courses of antibiotics to get over a horrid urinary infection and I became utterly depressed. I found it hard to get out of bed, I was weepy and felt so bad I could hardly believe I could change so drastically in a few days.

Many pots of yogurt and a few days later I was better so I’m totally with those doctors who say that we need to see some depression as an illness (rather like having thyroid problems or diabetes) where there is a chemical imbalance in the body.

Remember that next time you are told to pull yourself together and get over it. There is no need for our huge guilt that we tend to feel and our mood will change when the body chemistry is back to where it should be.

Do something

More and more, I have come to see that the key to getting better from depression is to do something – even if it is only one small thing such as recycling junk mail as soon as it comes through the letter box, rather than finding the kitchen table so full of papers there is no space to eat.

The most important thing I have done to help myself get better is to write in my journal. I’ve been encouraged to discover that some psychologists see the start of change as:

• monitoring what is going on (as we jot down things we are thinking and feeling)
• starting to analyse and see patterns in what we write (such as ‘I always panic when that relative phones me’)
• seeing for ourselves through this process how we might change our lives for the better and doing something to make that change happen.

Again, the things we change can be tiny things.

One thing at a time

It’s hopeless to think that we can change our lives quickly and easily. We need lots of time. I found that I was trying to change too much and too quickly, so I now just focus on one thing at a time. I write this thing on my ‘word wall’.

I got so anxious about things that I realized my quality of life was poor. I wanted to be able to be more at peace.

So ‘peace’ is on my ‘word wall’. I look at it. I think about it. I try to work towards feeling more peaceful by relaxing and so on.

The principle here is to choose one thing at a time and work on that until you can see some change – or until something more important comes to mind.

A friend gave me a beautiful tiny notebook and now I keep a copy of my word wall words in that. I take the tiny notebook with me when I go on journeys or on holiday when I have plenty of time to think and might be able to add related words to other bricks, or start a new page with a new key word.

Too introspective?

When I’m leading workshops for depressed people, I talk about keeping a journal. Often someone says, ‘Isn’t that too introspective?’

Well, only in the sense that anything you do to try to make your depression better might be seen as...