How I’m Overcoming My Depression, One Step at a Time
By: Jessie London
Tags: Depression, Mental Health Awareness, Stress And Anxiety, Mental Illness, Mental Health

Depression was certainly something I’d never understood before. Worse, I’m not even sure I believed it was something more than a ‘bad day’ until it happened to me. At the time of writing, I’m only a few months into my recovery — I’m very much ‘still in this.’ But I wanted to share the steps I’ve taken so far (and still take every day) in my recovery in the hope that this might help others beginning their recovery, help people feel less alone or help grow our understanding of this terrible disease.

In the beginning, following my diagnosis, I spent a month barely able to function. I felt things I never believed possible, dreamed dreams that shook my world and thought thoughts that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Once the medication levelled me out a bit (that’s a whole other tale), I began to focus on a recovery plan. Having a business background and a love of planning, I took the approach most familiar to me; strategy.

How am I going to get myself through this?

Whether or not my former self was someone I could get back to, whether or not I wanted to get back to her or reinvent myself completely were thoughts that I tried to push aside. I focussed only on taking the below steps to facing the problem at hand; severe depression and anxiety.

So what am I doing to try and move towards recovery? Here are the key steps from my recovery ‘strategy’ that I’m working through on my rocky road to recovery.

1. Engagement With Services

By services, I mean the medical and psychology professionals. It took a lot to place my faith in the expertise of others. Indeed, having been a career woman & single Mom most of my adult life, I was used to fighting my corner and accepting that I was clueless and completely out of my depth, was the first barrier. Luckily (doh!), I was such a mess by the time that I reached out for help, it really wasn’t too tough in the end to resign myself to the fact that I was dealing with something I had zero clues about.

The first call I made was the toughest.

I called and hung up across several days before I finally got through to Judi, the local practitioner in my Doctor’s surgery. Despite having rehearsed a coherent speech, which basically told the Doctor what was up and how I intended to be treated, I simply broke down. Babbling incoherently, crying and hyperventilating. Tragically, this was something Judi told me later that she experienced most frequently in her job. Talking me down with calm reassurance and beginning to explain to me in surprisingly technical and medical terms precisely what was happening to me, Judi put a plan in place for me immediately. That night, my partner picked up my prescription for Zoloft and sedatives and I completed the online form to self-refer for talking therapy.

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Engaging with professionals was definitely the number one thing I did right after neglecting my mental health so long, and it’s certainly been my first step to recovery. Not only did I get the medication I desperately needed, but they helped me understand what was happening to me and the regular appointments and reviews gave me a structure too. Fully embracing and coming to trust these professionals wasn’t easy, but looking back from a better place, I’m so pleased that I did.

These days, I speak with Judi fortnightly and have had my introductory call with my therapist, Bill. I’m on a waiting list, but will soon begin a CBT course and am working through an online version in the meantime. I still struggle a little to have faith in others, to believe that they know what’s happening to me when it feels so personal but I do think that taking their advice will keep me moving forward and that’s what I intend to do.

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2. Taking The Time Out

Being a rebel certainly didn’t help me with my depression. In fact, in spite of Judi’s advice, I was determined to keep going to work in my highly stressful and demanding job. It took a complete break down one week after my first call to the Doctor to hammer home the fact that I wasn’t in control anymore and needed to do as I was told if I hoped to get better. Having been a career orientated person for 15 years, the very notion of taking time out was alien. I’d never had a day off sick, I’d rarely even used my full holiday allocation in a year but moreover, I’d come to attach my personal worth to my career. This was a battle that I needed to fight later down the line, but in the beginning, it was clear to those around me that time out was critical. By the day I made the call to my HR Director, I could barely get out of bed, so time out wasn’t really a wise choice I made, more a result of having no other way forward.

I’ll never forget the message I sent across the company chat board:

Hi Linda, I’m really sorry I need to talk to you asap. I’m really really sick and need to sort some time out.

She called me immediately.

I can’t talk about the nature of this call nor the call I had afterwards with our CEO. But I can say that because of the seniority of my position, reallocation of work proved difficult but within a few hours, my out of office was on and I was curled up in a ball under a blanket.

A ball that I stayed in for several days.

How I wish I’d arranged time out sooner, more constructively and with more opportunity to reallocate my workload properly. There were many reasons I hadn’t, that I won’t go into today but suffice it to say, that if I had gotten some time out sooner, it’s possible I wouldn’t have plunged so deeply into my depression. Trying to persevere, even after my diagnosis, was foolhardy and I was simply inflicting more damage on myself.

Taking time out was the second step I took and in my opinion, the most crucial.

I’m still on sick leave at the moment. I worry a lot about work, what’s happening there, how I’ll face going back, what colleagues think about me now, if this will affect my career progression, how long I can afford to be off for and sooooo much more. These concerns reel around my mind and I’m trying to use my CBT to keep them in check.

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3. Mini Challenges

The first two steps I’ve mentioned were less part of my strategy and more a result of the dreadful place I was in. Mini challenges were the first real strategic step that I decided to take to move forward. It is as simple as it sounds.

I decided to set myself a daily, mini challenge.

I set the mini-challenge the day before because a week’s worth of challenges laid out in advance would have seemed unconquerable. My first challenge came about a week after I’d taken time out for work when I was able to get out of bed and shower — far from mini-challenges! So — I chose walking. My first mini-challenge was to walk 1 mile around my local countryside. My second challenge was to go to a local shop. My third mini-challenge was to call my Grandfather and talk to him about his day.

I built my challenges with certain criteria in mind. It had to be something that I didn’t ‘want’ to do but something that I used to do regularly and enjoy. It had to be difficult, but achievable in my current condition and it had to gradually increase in terms of the level of challenge.

I set only one challenge per day, with weekends off. I tried not to give myself a hard time if I failed, which I did.

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I tried not to compare myself to the woman that flew around the world alone, and now couldn’t walk into Walmart.

I tried, most of all, to fully experience the sense of accomplishment when I completed a challenge.

My Doctor had explained to me that ‘joy’ wasn’t something I was likely to feel for a while, but a ‘sense of accomplishment’ was what I needed to aim for in the short term.

Setting these mini-challenges definitely gave me a solid path to improvement, giving me something to focus on that I was completely in control of.

Now, my challenges are growing in scope and size. Things that felt impossible just a few weeks ago are things I’m managing to do now. I still fail some days and hit the sofa with a blanket, but the next day I try again. Because I’ve seen this gradual approach work for me once, I know I’ll keep at it, even if I end up back on square one and have to work the steps again.

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4. Putting Aside The Long Term

I’ve always had a plan. I love the plan. Life plans, career plans — plans for everything. When I finally accepted that I had depression, all of my plans were compromised in some way. From small plans, like an evening out with friends, to huge plans like a new business venture or major purchasing decision. Because all of my plans were called into question, I immediately began trying to replan. A terrible idea when you’re struggling to do so much as a shower. I’d lay for hours thinking about my five-year plan, adjusting timelines and so on. I’d pour out this incoherent solution to my partner along with a string of poorly thought through ideas and he’d listen patiently, reassuring me that everything would be okay.

One day, I realised the futility of this approach. Not only that, this thinking was actively damaging me. I decided there and then that I needed to put aside the long term. I now actively combat thoughts about long term plans or dreams and focus on my single aim of improving each day. This sounds way simpler than it is. I have to keep convincing myself that any plans I make now won’t be as good as the plans I’ll make next week or the week after. I try to defer all planning to future me; trusting that she’ll have a better shot at it than I will right now.

I deal with everything in my present and, for now, that’s enough.

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5. Showcasing Self Expression

I’ve always found huge comfort in creativity. Whenever I’ve experienced times of strive, that’s where my soul has turned. Art, writing, poetry. Depression took away all desire for self-expression from me; the only thing I could (or couldn’t) feel was numb, helpless, useless, hopeless. I knew that I simply didn’t have the motivation to use my creativity to help me feel better; the barriers to an art session were too high and my mind was too dull for writing (and some days, it still is). On one of my better days, I decided to get out my paints. I didn’t use them. I just set them up and left them to wait for another better day. When that better day came, I primed a canvas and left it again. On the third better day, there were no barriers to trying an art session — and I did. For the first time in months, I managed to create.

And I sold my art to the National Gallery for $2.5million. The End.

…or maybe not. But I did feel something. Not happiness or joy, just something. I haven’t managed another art session since that one, but I have used similar approaches to writing a couple of poems, the first day jotting down ideas and so on. It’s really helped me.

So where am I now?

Still very much in it. But a lot farther along the road to recovery and I now get glimmers of hope. I spend my days writing, walking, focussing on my therapy, listening to others and sharing my experiences with those who may benefit from what I’ve learned so far: