Are the voices in my head too loud for you?

Excavating Some More Sub-Personalities

The sadness continues to de-energise, but I was greatly encouraged by the hospital.  Hilarious really.  I spend a good portion of my life telling everyone I teach, and everyone who stays at The Sanctuary - to remember that almost always on retreat you may well feel exhausted as the days go by and find you need to sleep a lot more than usual because your spiritual, creative and healing self needs to work hard and has this 'chance' to speak to you from the heart.  Today I heard the message I have so often given.  I may not be doing very much yet, but the sleeping itself is productive. When I don't allow my mean-voice to take over describing me as some sort of self-pitying sloth; then I realise just how much the sleeping is a way of processing and when I don't wake up in a panic, sometimes I feel as though I have just been resting in a warm foam bath.

I am focusing my paintings this week on some sub-personalities.  I think I will look at the magical mother; the destructive mother and maybe the birth mother I wanted to be - a lot will depend on how much time I have with high enough energy levels.  But that's the grand plan.

I went shopping after my morning session.  This was a bold statement to celebrate a very valuable session which has thrown up some surprises about exactly what is important to me.  Don't know why yet - but we will get there.

Boots felt like entering an alternative reality.  I even went and picked up my own prescription - such is the power of Diazapam - while my partner picked up some Sandwiches and - now here's the real excitement - I chose some lavender shower gel.  Will my progress never end????

I shouldn't mock my own afflictions.  I should not minimise my progress.  I should not belittle myself.  Hard habits to change. 

Home, bed and asleep in seconds.  Lots to think about particularly around parenting - or really caring - or mother archetypes.  I can't wait to get going on the painting, but before then I need to buy another couple of canvases and some MORE paint.  I have a style which is not economical with acrylics and they are ten pounds a tube for the decent ones.

I have already found some powerful images - but I am thinking about painting all three at once rather than working a piece up to almost finished and then moving on to the next.  I want to see what happens; whether they mix , merge or even integrate at some level.

I am loving Vivienne Vyle on BBC 2 with Jennifer Saunders - probably wasted on you, unless you spend as much time as I do spaced out in front of daytime TV.

Loving too, the responses to the blogs which are so encouraging and affirming.  I always saw my depression as failure.  The love, encouragement of family and friends has helped me turn this vision of my condition around.

Being Who You Are is Better than Being a Cardboard Cut Out

I've just opened an e-card which has made me smile.  Really smile.  Feel Loved.  Appreciated.  I've needed a smile. I have had a really ify two days.  I slept in yesterday morning and woke from a nightmare where I was being strangled, in fact I thought I had died in the dream - I completely blacked out at the end of the dream but I woke up unable to catch my breath - I guess an anxiety attack.  I couldn't get my breath, I called my partner and the next thing I knew I had thrown up.  I was as scared as hell.

The dream had been so real.  The face I saw as I was being strangled was like a photofit - but I recognised some of the 'fits' - if you see what I mean.  It made me feel as though he was coming back for me.  I was jittery the rest of the day.  On the sofa; cocooned in a duvet.  I was shaking and kept remembering the strangulation.

At least I finished the rest of West Wing and slept.  I felt so sad for the rest of the day.  My partner interpreted the dream as I sign that I, deep down, have a huge energy and fight within me to claim life.  I am not so sure.

Today I have slept and slept.  I had a list of good intentions including going and buying some flowers to say thank you to a person who has helped me a lot, maybe even saved my life at one point.  I had also hoped to see my medical practice CPN to get the rest of the time I am with the hospital signed off.  I missed my appointment at the centre yesterday.  I am not back at square one but I am shaky.  There are some big questions entering our life decisions just now and I can't seem to get my head round them except by being very still and quiet and then the answers I get scare me.  Just how big are the changes I am prepared to make in my life - and how much have I the courage to change/transform?

I still feel founding a small religious community is in the plan and has never left, interestingly, although watching episodes of The Haven recorded at Findhorn some years ago is enough to put most people off community.

I am also nervous of making life-changing decisions when my mood swings can be hourly if not daily - and I am nervous that I have only another 7 weeks under the hospital.  Will I be well enough then?  I hope so.  I don't want any more co-dependency - I've enough to work through.

Good things today:

The sea and the sun.  I slept and slept and slept - and Mungo and Rainbow shared responsibility for when I needed a cuddle.  Even the cat took a shift.

Blue and white hat is on again, but I am determined to make my session at the hospital tomorrow.

I had a good dream this afternoon.  I arrived in the dream in a large hangar and I was welcomed with open arms by a staff who were busy unpacking and putting together flat-pack screens and desks etc...  In the centre of the hangar was a huge coach.  Apparently the reason everyone was so pleased to see me was that I was their new boss.  We had a short meeting - introductions - including some people I have worked with in the past - and then I said OK everyone is busy - what can I do to facilitate this opening this afternoon?  Could I start painting the coach - a forty-eight seater!  So I did.  Just before the opening, someone drove the coach into the playground place.  I went in and began supervising, supporting and moving from group to group.  The staff were interesting.  One was a guide dog user - with a collie.  My now dead Newfie was my guide dog and was playing with the children in the playground.  Another helper was a wheelchair user, and another was deafened.  Some had hidden disabilities.  The children were a rag, tag mix too - and the parents who had come for the grand opening.  One child appeared and flung his arms round me - about four I would guess - no clothes on - but had poured the chocolate fountain over himself.  I can remember being desperately alert to child protection and two of us covering him up and running a huge bubble bath for him.  The last smell before I woke up was the unusual mix of hot chocolate and Lavender bubble bath.

Tomorrow I take my paintings and collage in to the hospital and on we go.  I feel such a twit needing all this support and then stopping dead and getting stuck again - but at least I am staying with the sadness; the grief.

Asking and Letting Go

I am much less overtly physically agitated than I was - I have moved from the numb, disassociated, muted stage of a few weeks ago to a new state.  More physically relaxed, at least some of the time.  It was a massive breakthrough to realise the extent of my own self-sabotaging techniques - and that has lifted a weight off my mind and so I have had, literally, more time and mental space to play with.

Yesterday's lack of blog was because I went into an extreme of quite frenzied, excited, enthused, creative energy and spent the whole day working.  I felt turbo driven.  No I haven't fiddled with my medication.  So tired at the end  of the day that after a good cry at West Wing, I was out like a light.  I am trying to work creatively with the idea of destructiveness; destruction.  A lot of the pain of the day's work came later as I tried to sleep on and then woke. 

I thought I had sorted where I wanted to go creatively with this challenging theme when I spotted an In Loving Memory pot for flowers to put at a grave side, reduced to clear at the local Garden Centre.

I was caught and tickled by the idea that it was reduced to clear.  I wondered how I would feel if I'd walked past a week ago and bought it full price???  I guess there will always be people who will purchase a bargain and put it in the back of the cupboard for that special moment.  It also caught me that it was brittle plastic.  It reminded me of Barbie accessories.  I thought I could smash it up and then stick it back together in an edgy, sharp way - like a spikey, odd 'installation'.  Pretentious, moi?  It spoke to me of the pain of destruction but felt as though it would relieve nothing of my personal anger and anguish as it had no direct, personal connectedness as an object from my life.  I am a green burial woman at heart.

Then I hit on taking a toy from the loft, already partially destroyed and smashing that up.  No.  That aircraft carrier was purchased with love. 

I resorted to painting and managed two canvases on Saturday - that still feel real when I look at them.  I can feel the emotion within them and through them.  I felt I painted at a deep level, not worrying what others would think.

Yesterday I hit it, if you pardon the pun.  I worked on a mosaic which used all the bits and pieces I have salvaged over the years for mosaics from crockery thrown (occasionally dropped), toys destroyed, tiles scratched, beads broken etc.. What I couldn't recycle I had long since thrown away.  (The aircraft carrier at some point I will do a peace mosaic with.)  It meant that as I created the mosaic on destruction, I could mourn and remember; the partially forgotten happenings; the hissy fits; the attempts to control or hurt.  It has taken me to a different level - phase.  Deep sadness and grief.

I can't touch me protesting about me and for me yet.  I just feel like a sad kid.  Funnily enough just like those first weeks after a death when you wake up and in those first seconds of coming to, you remember the reality; the person has died.  I wonder if a part of me has died.  Maybe I am having the space to get real and make decisions about how I want to live my life in the future.  Inevitably some part of that will have to involve re-balancing.  Whatever - some things have to go - the things that make me angry and frustrated and those that exacerbate self-sabotage; and I have to give much more time to my vocation and not just nurturing everyone else's.  I have to build the fire in my belly once again.

It feels as though there is so much to think about and my partner need to begin to talk - we both know that just like Moley in The Wind in the Willows our noses and whiskers are above ground, sniffing and twitching - and there are new possibilities to consider and chronic difficulties to re-balance.  We are both keen that I journey as deep as possible.  So loads of painting.  Time to talk and connect.  Still not answering phone - doing any work - and I have another 7 weeks work at the centre - so I have to be signed off until the New Year.  It isn't easy. 

I hate letting people down.

This afternoon I slept like a log but woke up ready to do. I think I may make a small cairn on the shore and write all the things I feel sad about and then gradually remove them again and throwing them into the sea - not to get rid of the problem - if it was that easy... But to give me a sense of the fact this can be shared and is.  I can try and sit lighter and physically throw some of the weight off my shoulders.

I am hoping if we both work together writing  stones, we can see what we need to start transforming.

I was assertive today.

I realised I wanted to spend more time at the centre.  I asked and it was given.

Maybe if I get used to saying what I need rather than facilitating everyone else's view and helping to find consensus, I will be making a start.

I am so humbled by what I am learning and have no sense why or what is next just now.  I am sure an offer will come at the right time.  Community will be a big part of my life - but I will also want to work because I enjoy the social side that goes with that.  What could you imagine me doing which doesn't involve giving out to others all the time?  I haven't a picture in my head.

I am buying a treadmill.  I am almost phobic now about walking out particularly in unfamiliar territory.  I think poor old Rainbow's concentration isn't all it was.  I've had weeks of little physical exercise.  Time to use those endorphines to release more positive energy.

Might not have all the sub-personalities back - but I am now recovering and feel I am.  Ups, downs, whatever.  I understand more about why.

Next stage is to grieve.  Sadness should be taken seriously.

Slainte - Rt Rev. Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross and Cromarty

Today we have as a Province consecrated our new Bishop, Mark Strange.

My prayer for him:

May you be touched with the gentle whisper of the Spirit;

Anointed to your vocation in ways that will continue to guide your giftedness and pastoral oversight.

And may you never forget  you have been called because you are you - and because this is the will of God.

Every blessing to you Mark, in the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of all.

Amen

I've thought alot about Mark and his family today and we prayed during the time of the service - holding a respectful silence for a person in transition and for all who will support and challenge - but to whom he has become our Father in God.

I wish I had felt well enough to be there, if only to reassure people that I am not just virtual.

I really knackered myself yesterday.  I've been physically shaky all day and so I've been gentle with myself.  Panicking a bit at the thought of  making my first meal for the family tomorrow.  Sounds so weird from someone who loves cooking usually - and would cook for 10 without much of a second thought.  I love the whole prep' thing.

Still I think there is some progress inside somewhere - a loosening is how I would best describe it.

Painted two abstracts today - one this morning - then sleeping to West Wing - although I made it through one whole episode before I dropped off.  Then another canvas this evening which came to me in my sleep.  They seem to be more about what I can't say just now - like a rehearsal for having to find some words at some point to work through all the baggage.

Otherwise I have been reflecting further on my capacity to self-sabotage.  My partner and I both do it - so we have decided we are going to have to work really hard on finding a list of things that we want to do for me - not us - or them.  Amazing how difficult INFPs find this.  Actually own it, woman, I am amazed how blank I am about what I want to do - what turns me on as a unique individual.

Agitation has been contained today by staying in the comfort zone of painting.  I felt most of the day it was either that or curl up with Mungo on the bed.  I felt this was more positive as a choice than just snuggling down, admitting into a muffled hat that I was hibernating for the day.

I don't know whether that's in line with the received wisdom, but it certainly feels instinctively right.

The hard part is knowing when I am 'choosing' at some deep level not to try something because it's easier to stay stuck and when I am actually needing to be gentle on myself.  There is no doubt anxiety/depression is reduced by distraction - especially painting which I wish I was better at, but I enjoy so that's all that counts.  But, I don't seem to have the energy/desire to go back to how things were and I want to go deeper before I spend too much time learning how to conform again.  I want to discover what my expectations of myself are -and then see how and if I can negotiate this with family and friends and work colleagues.

When I feel like one of those cardboard cut-out figures - two dimensional - it's easy to grab at things that get 'strokes' just because expectations are that you will get back to your usual way of being.  I know my depression is because my way of being isn't viable.  I can hang the two dimensional clothes, tasks and look on the cardboard cut out Jane - but it will be as authentic as a silk flower planted in a garden.  Authenticity has been the saving grace through all this.  When things aren't right deep inside there is no point in pretension.

More to work through - sure - but I have found one part of the jigsaw - I have more energy to look for some of the other pieces.

Jane Goes Shopping - could this be the New Me?

Days like today make me wonder if I am bi-polar.  I was up - and about by 9am-ish - which has been unheard of for quite a few weeks (understatement - but I have been told to be gentle on myself) and I had some energy.  Still all a bit of an effort to remember the order for personal hygiene and had to go back to brush my hair.  But after yesterday's psychological forensics at the centre and with my partner afterwards - combined with making everyone a cup of tea when I got home - I felt I was making genuine progress in a way that I could actually comprehend rather than block at the deepest levels.  It's still feeling as though it is worth exploring further and as and when I am able, I am trying to reflect further.

So, after a deep discussion yesterday until we were both knackered about balance in life etc... we decided we do need to get cracking on creating community as soon as I am signed off as fit again.  This gives a new project and something to hold on to when I feel so very desolate.  This was the motivation for a window shopping trip and lunch at Simpson's.  I tried to persuade my partner that as Simpson's Garden Centre is next door to SSPCA (the same as the RSPCA in England) that we could slip next door and visit the cattery as I would love two kittens.  He very gently rehearsed me through just how easy it is to distract myself from the primary task of nurturing and discovering the depths of myself.  After all there can be no better excuse at the centre than the kittens have eaten my homework.  But we have agreed to think again.  In reality probably after we move.  In the meantime I've to sort out when my new guide dog will be coming on line.  It doesn't seem possible that Rainbow is 9.

As our gentle lunch progressed we both had to smile; we had done virtually no window shopping or very little for tiles and kitchen makeovers - all the usual ...sells houses rubbish.  Instead we had known that my mum wanted a new lamp and an new office chair - and with me not being well enough the task had gone further and further down the waiting list.  In a way it is quite funny that when we set out to do something that fires us (getting the community from virtual to reality and beginning to cost and choose for the work we will do before we sell) we end up still putting our best foot forward for my mum.  There's no doubt that at some deep level both my partner and I have a default position of being there for others and are quite unclear what being there for ourselves means. 

I was absolutely pooped very suddenly and just needed to get home and climb into bed.  My head was racing, but mostly with how stupid we had been not to realise what we were doing.  I felt really shaky once I got home - but I had visited three shops and spoke to customer services in two of them.  SERIOUS PROGRESS PRACTICALLY.

The plan is to get me well and then get the house ready for sale.  We need an acre or seven and a smallish house with outbuildings in a beautiful location.  Possible community members will talk when we meet after Easter where our search will be with our now blank sheet of paper - so start praying.  But whatever, we will have to have sold to buy, if you see what I mean - particularly under the Scottish system.  Still we have a tent, caravan and awning and some understanding friends with fields!!!

The darkest part of the day was as my energy levels dropped and I began to panic again that this was a sign I wasn't coping.  I think I was pooped.  I did not speak or act inappropriately apparently, apart from insisting in one bathroom store that I pretended the circular perspex shower cubicle with sliding door was like a capsule on the Star Ship Enterprise and we made "Swishing" noises as we synchronized the opening and closing of the doors.  A small girl shopping with her mum gave us strange looks - but I suspect the sales people had seen it all before.  It would have been great if you just waved your hand and it swished open or shut.

Spent the rest of the day in bed.  Het up and anxious.  Physically shaking.  Probably over did it a bit.  But I have tried.

I am trying to claim some destructive way of expressing my anger.  I am struggling with this and may need to resort to painting - although at one point I wondered whether one of my son's partly destroyed toys stored in the loft would do as a bash-up object.  I almost cried at the thought becaue those toys and remaining bits were bought at the time with such great hopes and high, well meant intentions.  They were expressions of love and nurture.  He has destroyed them.  I can't.  Maybe a mosaic might work?  I'll just have to think on.

Agitated and anxious tonight - but I know this is par for the course.  I am accepting my illness and its limitations and releasing some energy which I have been using up to now to fight the fact that I'm really very ill and can't just paper over the cracks enough to carry on.  If the new Jane ends up into fashion and bling I really will go for voluntary euthanasia - and I'll go to the vet because the rates are better.

Mission Possible

I have so much to cogitate on at the moment that it feels odd doing it with three sub-personalities - humourful Jane; mean-voice Jane; and itsi-bitsie tiny mitsie creative Jane in place most of the time but none of the other mouthy ones about, offering insight, counter argument or playfulness.  I am making connections though. Today is a good day.  It may prove pivotal; - but I am ready for the downs and the ups. More downs over the next weeks as we have agreed to go deeper.

At the moment I'm as tender as an open wound - doesn't take much to send me scampering into the undergrowth.

I have realised today in a deep way that I can actually feel a release in my diaphragm/solar plexus as though some tension has been lifted.  My revelation is that a huge amount of what I do is serial attempted and actual self-sabotage.  The thought hit me with full force as we were driving away from the centre. 

Therapists have told me in the past that my fatness is because I'm a control freak and that I need to work on being vulnerable and through that will lose my protective armour -  my blubber.  I worked on my vulnerability, but discovered I was comfy in my skin - so that was a win - win. 

Another therapist was sure my problems stemmed from a partially absent father as a child and a mother I had not broken the 'umbilical cord',  even though I was in my early twenties and preparing for ministry.  My mother was furious.  I got a life.  She had been right that I worried too much what my parents thought of me - and I guess in that sense I was still drawing energy from their affirmation or disapproval - so that grew the me-ness of me on a little.

I don't think I have ever confronted my desire to self-destruct before or recognised it quite as that- whether by avoidance - "I can't" or by shutting myself in our bedrom and pulling the duvet over my head and sleeping for as long as I possibly can; or by eating in ways that discourage healthy respect for my physical being.  The moments of truth came when I was chatting with my partner in our favourite coffee shop after the session - when I suddenly said after a long preamble about how knackered I was and how I could sleep for a week - how weird it was that this depression came at a time when yes, things were tight and there was little room to manoeuvre emotionally and physically - but a lot had come right.  A chapter coming out in a book; a publisher taking on my first novel ( actually my fifth - but commercial not creative is the name of the game), we had a summer of some of my mum's oldest friends and mine coming to stay - not to mention my step son, his partner Angie and my step-grandchildren.  Then, quite slowly, after my fall at work and the broken and bruised period of my life, I felt more and more as though I was watching a slow-motion picture show of me pretending to be good old me.  Then one day I knew I was too angry and my thoughts too dark - and my loss of enjoyment in life  so powerfully manifest in depression that the 'rabbit' was finally caught in her own headlights and had to stop.

I don't think my depression is about me saying F*** o** to the people I love and my brothers and sisters in humanity; it's my turn to be ill and pampered and given space.  It felt good when it first presented as a thought but it hasn't held on reflection.  What has caught me like a life dart right in my heart  is that this is about the me - deep in the pile of do-do's - who attacks herself rather than addresses issues that affect her in detrimental ways.  She is, when well, in her element supporting other people.  But when I am ill -  I've exposed 99% of the pain, anxiety and sabotage, which I feel is about me being not worth the paper this blog is written on.  I now have a handle.  A step on the ladder if you like - something to try on for a bit and see if it fits.  I'll keep you posted on that.

So today there has been a breakthrough and that has given me a glimmer of hope and encouragement.  I am still hour to hour.  It takes a whisper of a mishap still to send a usually resilient Jane into a fast downward spiral - but I want to make the connections now that an important link in my thinking has been made.

Good things today:

Connection - but no answers as to why I want to self-destruct as yet - well not ones that are plausible - I know now most of what's in my head is the illness.

Fed Nutmeg our rabbit pear twigs and pears and she looks a bit too stuffed from yesterday but happy.

Mungo is coming off Diaz and has the DTs.  Constant need for reassurance.  Flatulence unbelievable - my hypothesis that Diaz causes the smelliest flat's in the world is now, I think, a full-blown (if you'll pardon the pun) theory.

Cappuccino and coffee cake at Simpsons.

A new t-shirt arrived: I live in my own little world... but it's OK, they know me here!

Hard Things:

Emotional exhaustion and fear when the phone rings etc...  Worrying in the night.

Believing that even getting well will just mean I start the countdown to the next episode.

Wanting my head to stop beating me up.

Living with the constant anxiety that sometimes it really does feel bleak enough to give up - but I get checked regularly at the centre and we are going deeper emotionally to look at what this ultimate act of avoidance or non-confrontation is actually about.

I thought I might paint this afternoon - and maybe I will - but for now I feel like it is legitimately snooze time.  So I will snooze legitimately.

Choices - This Is My Body Broken For You

I'm in a funny place just now.  I am in the process of making my peace with a person I have learnt from, admired, respected and honoured for years.  This feels healing and positive.

It is amazing the difference a day can make.  I don't feel abandoned, judged or hurt just now by recent events - perspective is all and I dealt with my anger in the moment.  I should feel proud of that, one day I will.  One day if the person wants to see it, I will show him the painting I produced in the pain - Broken. 

After all the Diazapam Mungo inadvertently downed yesterday I have the sense he has the mother and father of a fuzzy head. He looks as though he has been hit by a truck!

In the process of doing my journal for the centre even I can see I am still a bit nuts - but I am surprised how clearly a pattern is emerging about what makes me anxious, dislocated or reduces my capacity to function at my best.  Even I can see there's quite a lot of work to be done.

I have been trying to think back to a time when I wasn't anxious and as anxiety and depression shouldn't be separated, that raises some important questions about my early behaviours and patterns.  My earliest memories are around 3 and I can remember feeling lonely but not anxious.  4, much the same - I was the clown of nursery and one of the brighter ones.  I guess it began to become a problem when I went to primary school and was quickly designated by the other children as different.  Edge of playground - pretending not to mind being alone; too frightened to go into the girls loo in case I was bullied.  The favoured place out of the sight of teachers.  Where does a 5 or 6 year old learn this from? 

Thalidomide had left me with bilateral ptosis (heavy eyelids - I could only see by leaning my head right back) deformed optic nerves, odd, slightly malformed toes - unusually small back teeth and a tiny tongue - difficult to believe that someone who is as gobby as I am when I am well has a very small tongue.  I have heard dentists shriek - mind you he was Australian - and my Italian singing teacher at Drama School held my tongue like a tiny performing eel and said "Youn must immediately go and 'ave theze side bitz cut off so you can at least move the thing a little or you vill never sing - and I need a mezzo.  Tell me, how do you speak wiv' such clarity wiv such a uselez tonger".  I had the requested check with my doctor who said "OK - if you want to be an opera singer, sure.  I thought you were training as a theatre director?"

"Mmmm" I slurred as he removed the metal from my mouth.  "Leave well alone".   That should have been my motto I reckon ever since.  Singing class was compulsory for directors to help us warm up actors more than anything.

Now I've got to get back into training for returning to being me.  I'm holding on to the idea today that I must believe there are still choices to be made by me and for me.  I am holding on...

Lamentations

What a day.  I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that I had set rather more of my heart on the job and community posssibilities that got away at the end of last week.  At least I know now it wasn't just me that was the problem.  It is money.  A huge relief.  But I will need a job which takes me into new and stimulating situations for sanity's sake.  I will need to earn and I will need to do what I can to get to being me - I won't say again - because each depression brings different insights.  Different me-s emerge and dominate.

I write better when other things are happening around me; I use time like it matters and I am better house-trained.  Appreciated by the family.  Jane, well, and frustrated, was once described by a now retired Archdeacon in East Anglia as a " caged lionness".  Very true.

I know these things with the top 10% of my head - the other 90% is pretty much dead as a Dodo.  The only thing I can settle to is sleep.  I have been filling in a timetable looking at what I actually do in the day, when and what anxiety rating I give the activity/interruptions. 

Amazing the things that just now send me up to 8 or 9/10.  Answering e-mails - but not writing blogs. Unexpected events of any kind.  (Mungo ate my Diazapam this morning and I ended up taking one old tablet and one new before realising the old pill I had taken was 5mg and not 2mg - so I took 7mg of Diaz this morning - but then had the panic while my partner phoned the vet who said we should have a quiet day - dog-wise.  (Mungo - our usual 'trumpeter' and warner of approaching people and cars - has been a bit like a pyjama case, spending most of the day on my partner's pillow or in the dog bed with Delia his dinosaur - but no further medical action needed.)  Expecting myself to do something and then realising I can't manage it has been the toughest part of the day.  My new mantra is "I know I am very ill but I trust the staff at the centre to get me better".  I am working on it.

"I know I am very ill but..."

I've also had fun - yes (the word does enter my vocabulary even when I am mentally working out how many paracetamol and codeine might be in reach) filling in an interest checklist supplied by the centre.  I realised it would have very little filled in if I based it on now (sleep, eat and think and not thinking aren't really hobbies) so I have tried to think back and remember some of the things I would have loved.  You are supposed to use 1 for not interested; 2 for a little interest and 3 for a lot.  I had to introduce 0 for ironing which I want defended as an interest. It is male oppression and for some females an obsession but it is not an interest.

It's easy to be flippant just because that's one of my finest lines of defence - and I guess some would argue - attack.  But the truth of the matter is I look like death warmed up - at least still warmed up (stay positive).  I live with dark, dark thoughts of a happier world without me and torment myself with guilt and shame about things which I am sure in the clear light of day - the part of me which has gone walk about again after the calamity of having to reassesss what my future now can't be in a few months time - I will look back on and assess as the hubris of a ridiculous Tragedy Queen over-reacting to the kindness and affirmation of others (still be all my fault though, I expect).

For now I am struggling with the call to pull me out of my stupor and move on.  But I have promised to trust and I will.  Dear friends wrote that I should hang on because there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.  I can't find the tunnel just now and lights aren't much use if you are myopic.  Stay positive.

The toughest part is that I feel I have run out of the energy to keep fighting.  I am still thinking and working hour by hour just now to try and keep the anxiety under control.  I feel it's a losing battle.  It's just after 8pm now.  It may be better by 9pm.  Who knows.

No painting today.  Failed.

But I have done my homework for the centre.

I've probably spent far too much time with my own thoughts - which is not considered good.  I wonder if CPNs are generally ENFJs?  But I have little to say out loud and no energy to engage.  I have to use that energy to block the incessant child-like tantrum screaming in my head: "Just give me my life back - any life - just life back NOW!"

I wish I could write more positively and conventionally - but I know I am in the heart of the writers of The Psalms, Lamentations and Job.

Homework: Are Therapists Aliens? Discuss.

I haven't felt like doing much today if I'm honest.  A bit of an effort to get up and get to the centre, but I realise I have to, at some much deeper level, than I am at the moment allowing and recognise for now that however well-intentioned my own urging and that of friends to make a speedy recovery, it just ain't gonna happen.  I have to allow myself to go deeper.  I could murder my partner at times but his motto comes to mind - I have to trust the process.

The Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is now beginning to try and kick start me.  I've had a few dark days and I've needed extra appointments to pull me back on message as it were. The hardest thing is always to believe that I will actually get better, and that better doesn't have to automatically mean I am then living anxiously in preparation for the next depressive episode.  I am not frightened of being a depressive.  I am not frightened of the process I am going through although I genuinely fear what being known as flakey, a woman and a guide dog user is going to do to my longer term employment prospects.  If only I were lesbian and from a minority ethnic group too this would be less of a potential difficulty.

The last few days, words have been thin.  I am grieving for the dream of working for the Church again but using the skills and abilities I feel I can bring rather than fit into a 'let's be nice and affirming to each other all the time' and keep the negativity behind closed doors because that isn't very Christian.  That's how it feels, when I am ill at least, an attitude that besets the Church like an institutional sin.  We claim divine perfection; our need of nourishment, healing and forgiveness - but we brush reality under the carpet.  It reminds me a little of Chicken Run  - an inspired animation based on The Great Escape.

So for now I haven't replaced my motivator and light at the end of the tunnel - the job and community base - with anything else - but I know between those of us committed to community we will sort something out.

For now I am spending such a fortune on paint, canvas and framing - not to mention episodes of West Wing that we are officially bankrupt. I've thought about working the harbour quarter of an evening in stilettos and a cerise sequinned boob tube - but I haven't got the energy - and there might be something better on TV. 

I cannot and must not re-open The Sanctuary until I am fully well - and as I know I am slipping deeper into the parts of my psyche which need this space if genuine connection and healing is to take place, I now own I am officially really ill - and I can't kick start or bully myself out of it.  Bugger.

What I can do is find the things that will give me new life when the healing is underway - and I am well - enough to function without anxiety.

I know the vision of community is from God and is a vocation.  I have no idea as yet how it will come together - but those already interested will meet after Easter.  As many of you are based in England I am wondering about an East Anglian retreat.  You can e-mail me to let me know if that it doesn't feel much of a holiday /retreat etc...  Or we could use here and I book the cottage at Alturlie Point and we bunk up a bit - more about that later when I am functioning - but pitch your preferred options now as you will get everything you desire - I am back up on the Diazapam!

A quote from The Scotsman Magazine October 6 2007:

Elyn Saks, is an academic with scizophrenia she wrote a no holds barred account of her experiences:

I hardly ever missed sessions, except that time I thought my therapist had been taken over by aliens.

The Centre Cannot Hold: A Memoir of My Schizophrenia (2007) Little Brown £17.99

My response as a depressive:

12 step programme for depressives faced by Cognitive Behaviour Therapy:

1. Sleep a lot (this throws them off the scent of what you really like doing when you are well).

2. Cream cakes (comfort food is tolerated but there's the sense in the air  that if you are above a size 12, it may be obliterated from the get well plan).

3. If you are overly anxious and want to scream all the time.  Scream.  Ribena or honey and lemon are good when you feel hoarse.

4. You may think you are shuffling forward but sure as hell the second your energy starts to return something will off-balance you.  Work with the pain of that moment and try out the approaches to relaxation, acceptance and recovery you are being taught on that  present happening.  It will work - or does in my case for about a minute or two at a time - but that's a rest from the mean, beating up voice who usually rules my inner, depression roost.

5. When it gets really bad have someone sit with you and either read aloud or just sit. Do not stay alone for too long.  This is crucial.

6. When it gets really very bad.  Ask someone to look after all your drugs and celebrate this.  I am taking control and making a positive choice to choose to protect myself.

7. When things get really, really bad get emergency help.  It's there.  It's professional and they know you are ill even if you are fighting with yourself to get better quickly and paper over the cracks.

8. Accept you are ill and accept the guys who want you to do homework and talk about how you feel now - and who see you looking like death, in floods of tears, unable to sit still  or with a woolly hat pulled down over your eyes, they know  the territory and they can and DO help.

9. Hold on to anything that will get you out of bed in the morning.  Positives - no death threats or beatings up.  Sitting and painting helps for me.  Sometimes just sitting.

10. I am just starting making a list of my negative thoughts and trying to search for evidence that counters the tormented view of me. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it is important if re-balance is to occur.

11. Go to all sessions for therapy.  Yes, therapists are aliens, but like angels they have a distinct and wholly-life-giving and enhancing purpose.  I wonder if the celestial choir is really made up of CPNs and therapists?

12. When you cannot believe it is worth let alone possible to get better - live an hour or even half an hour at a time.  It doesn't have to be doing, just being - but it does need to involve a bit of hand to hand combat when necessary with the dark side.  The pain; the torment; the sadness and anger are all mine - but they are not all that is me.

Wind Out Of My Sails

I had some sad news yesterday which affects potential community members as much as it does us as a family.  You know I thought I might have located a community base and even, wonder of wonders - a job to go with it all - offered like some magical invitation by a fairy Godmother.  Well the whole darn thing has gone pear-shaped.  Usual Scottish Episcopal Church answer to everything - money - very happy to have something for nothing or next to nothing but not if it needs to be paid for.  I went into a downward spiral not just because the vision of what could be achieved in the location and with the added extras had fired my imagination, but also because it seemed to fit in with so much of what we and other community members were seeking.

I feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under me - and I can't help wondering whether my candidness and honesty over my depression has tempered the original  highly flattering proposal.  Ignorance of how well depression in particular can be managed with appropriate interventions must be bliss.  I just feel cheated out of a chance which looked as though we could have found our home base.  Now back to the drawing board and I guess the only good thing that can be said of the whole exercise is at least I have thought more about our process and needs as community and we have once again a clean sheet of paper.

I'm angry at the moment, but I'll get over it.  Sometimes people don't understand how much power they wield in our lives and how much hope and investment we place in their own aspirations, inspirations and offers.

I have painted a very dark painting today, full of black and red - much anger - sadness and disappointment.  I've called it Broken.  A very powerful and helpful way to exorcise my own deep sadness and negativity that what I very much hoped would be, will now not be my future.

Today has been tough.  Words don't make the feeling go away and I have started beating myself up.  If I hadn't been honest or sought help for my depression, people might have thought me odd, eccentric or even a bit unreliable - but let's face it - we're mostly wrapped up in our own stuff and keeping our own heads above water - so there isn't that much space to take notice of other people to that extent.  I feel foolish for believing that people can see past the immediate and see the person.  So sad.  A dark day, but I have been heard and had a good session at the centre - and my homework, which included the painting, and Googling for Newfies (nearly causing a domestic!).   I think I'll call the new dog Bishop.