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Real Life Experience with permission from the individual who we’ll call ‘D’.
‘‘I knew things were shifting when I went to bed with a horrible headache and aches and pains.
Not the virus kind though, the type that rips at your very marrow and wants to keep kicking your brain.
I often have a nightly prayer before sleep and found that attempting it was futile. I just couldn’t collect my thoughts and there was a sickening numbness in my gut and chest. Closing my eyes, I tried some breathing exercises recalled from a yoga class years before, it made no difference.
I swapped pillows and turned the fan on because of the heat I felt, then, moments later lay shivering underneath a fleecy blanket. I knew it wasn’t a cold or flu or anything like that. I knew because it was something that felt truly off from the inside out, not something foreign from the outside in that my system was battling to take down.
When I tried closing my eyes again, the flickering images were of death and decay behind them like a reflection of the state of my emotions.
It was familiar despite its unwanted presence.
The black dog in for the swoop, the depression returned.”
Trying to balance your work / health life can be increasingly tricky and if the diagnosis of a depressive disorder arrives, it just got 10 x harder!
Years ago, there was a stigma surrounding depressive illness. I don’t refer to a bout of low mood because the guy you’ve been in love with for the last two years suddenly got married when you didn’t even know he was engaged. No, here we are talking about a chronic disorder of the brain.
Most people didn’t discuss mental illness and certainly never told their bosses they wanted a major reduction in hours to attempt to manage the other ‘major’ disrupting their lives.
It was viewed as a weakness, a failure in ways and as proof your private decisions must be catching up with you in real time.
So, what’s it all about?
Continue reading with part one (b.)
