It's All In The Message

I've had a downish day today - which we all know happens from time to time, but I have been aware of the causes and that is a huge help. 

I was dozing and getting over an unfortunate concoction of drugs I indulged in during the night - more later - when the dogs had a hissy fit and there was a knock at the front door.  A most beautiful bouquet was delivered to me in my bed with a card from my students at the Theological Institute. 

We are all thinking of you and hoping that you will be feeling better soon.  You are in our thoughts and prayers.  Love from all the students at TISEC.

I was so touched I really could have cried.  Whenever I have focused on not being able to be with them, teaching at our weekend residentials this year - all I could 'hear' in my head was how much I had let them down and how much my brush with my mental health must be such a disappointment and poor 'witness' to them - particulalrly of so much of what I advocate in spitituality terms. 

It was a joy to receive the flowers at a moment when I was beginning to beat myself up a little (more later) - it reminded me that I was missed and thought about; remembered.  I certainly miss them a great deal, but I am far from ready to resume teaching.

I think my first not so good day focused on my over-reaction to yesterday.  I had a great start to yestrday; targets met and I went to my CPN appointment - alone - walked in - anounced I had arrived and waited in the waiting room without hiding in the car or the loo or behind my partner or in my coat.  Excellent progreess. 

The session was really good - wide-ranging but helping me to keep working on the positive strategies for well-being.  It is just like seeing a personal trainer in a sense.  The CPN can take a good, forensic look at how I am approaching and interpreting things and help with the re-framing if I am losing a positive focus. 

I then took the big step of beginning to tell family a little more about the type of depression and the causes of it - also  the prognosis.  This feels personally important and a healing step - owning the problem as it were.  I have got as far as telling one branch of the family - but have had no reaction to speak of as yet back - it will have been a lot to take in and these things are hard to know how to respond to.  There is a lot of truth in something I read on a mental health website recently which said, expect flowers when you are in hospital with a appendicitis and silence - when you are in with mental health issues.  I must have very enlightened friends.   

More later via the blogs and personal conversations as I practicise describing what the future holds and how I am likely to feel in the longer term.  I am having to get used to seeing myself as a person with a mental health issue!  I am still me though.

The rest of the day wasn't so good.  I came home to my respite care support person.  The person comes each week to sit with me and give my partner a break.  My partner can then go out and have some personal in-fill time.  For some reason as the afternoon went on I just wound myself up and up like a tightening spring.  I have no real sense of why at the deepest level. 

The care-giver is calm, gets on with her own work and will do anything for me - cups of tea to order!  But I was in the wrong mental state at the wrong time.  I semed to regress into a fearful child-like lump.  I told myself I couldn't even get up and leave the room for the loo.  I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.  It had nothing to do with the carer - it was entirely to do with the inner emotional energy I was projecting into the situation;  I was seizing up - and I don't really know why. 

I am still uncomfortable in a wide variety of situations and particularly around strangers - and this may have been the starting point.  I think it was also that I had wanted to talk to my partner about the session with the CPN and I was resentful that he was out and I couldn't talk to him.  I projected my negativity elsewhere.

What came out of the afternoon was that having a CPN session followed by respite isn't brilliant for any of us.  My partner hadn't really settled to an afternoon off because he also wanted to hear how things had gone.  My partner is now seeing if the respite can be changed.  That would be fantastic - the best of both worlds.  However, the knock-on effects were that I blamed myself for not making healthier choices in the afternoon; for 'allowing' myself to in some way be less than I wanted to be; for having negative thoughts about the care I was receiving etc...

I tried a new drug combi to get to sleep last night and woke every hour and felt awful.  At one point I had palpitations and was sweating.  I've had a pent up irrational fear since - the urge for flight - but I can't pin it down to any cause.  Odd.  I am less reflective on the new drug regime.  An elastoplast on the worst of my anxiety and agitation.  Time for the psyche to heal itself.

In desperation I took a sleeping pill at about 4pm and went out like a light - I woke briefly at about 11am - for flowers and breakfast and then again at about 3pm.  Not a very routinised day.  I have felt alot better since I have woken up.  But I still have this underlying anxiety about something - as yet undeciphered.  The feeling something awful is going to happen - but no one has told me what.

Apparently the phone rang at some point and Art Therapy is cancelled tomorrow.  A shame. I can finish my review and re-claim my routine though. All is not lost.

I am learning so much about so many things.

Thank you to everyone who keeps a watching eye and a thoughtful engagement with me.  It makes such a difference.

J.

Comments

[carolynn]

My dear Jane
Keeping a watchful eye and love, but not able to offer much from myself at present.
"Enlightened friends" walking with you are often friends who have been on their own journeys and have a smattering of empathy.
Much love C

[Moira]

Dear Jane,

It sounds like the flowers came at the right time. Please do not ever think that you have let the students down, exactly the opposite. You have been a great support to us and now you need support from others. Just know that you are in our thoughts and we care about you. We know that recovering your health will take time and will have its ups and downs, but we also know that God will be with you every step of the way.
Shalom and our love,
Moira

[Gwen]

My dear friend, As friends it is a privilege to be able to support you, a small thing for all the love and support you have given us over the years. You should never feel you have "let" anyone down, we all know you and are learning from you even now. Your strength of charactor is still there and those who are walking this road with you can see that even if you can't at the moment. Please take one step at a time and be more gentle on yourself. You are an amazingly speacial person. Much love. Gwen