Nigel 
September 25th, 2009
Stop all this rubbish about cats and music. Just tell me how to cope when my wife is suicidal.
It is. That’s the point.
The blog is mainly about being alive at the same time as either suffering depression or living/working with someone who gets depression.
In my final year at University I had a major breakdown. It was the first I realised there was something seriously wrong, though I’d no idea then it would remain chronic right through life. In those days (it was 1970) Durham University didn’t have a specialist health centre, and my GP there was more used to dealing with normal people (normal as opposed to student).
Fortunately one local medic had become worried by the large number of students with mental health problems. I don’t think he was a psychiatrist but he did shift his work towards helping students in a bad state. Mind you if he’d tried to help all the depressed ones he’d have been totally overwhelmed. For some reason I was lucky and he not only agreed to help but continued seeing me over a long period.
One time early on he commented that outside my degree I seemed to only have one interest: running. When I became depressed I couldn’t run properly so I lost that single life-line. Stupid, he said. Find at least one other pastime you could become interested in and start doing it. Have this sorted within a week so you can tell me at our next appointment.
Where could I start? How? My head was fuzzy, confused and frightened. I didn’t understand what was going on. I couldn’t handle lectures, couldn’t solve any Maths problems. Almost all the time I was feeling seriously sad. Life seemed pointless. I kept wanting to cry. And now I had to find a new pastime.
They had a good bookshop in Durham. It’s now a branch of Waterstone’s, so still good. I dragged myself out of the scruffy accommodation we were renting above an antique shop and walked slowly a few hundred yards to the bookshop. Checking every single shelf in some detail took some time, but it did introduce me to a wide range of options. I cannot remember what I picked. The task was to pick something and commit to doing it for a few weeks at least. I presumably did that.
What I can remember is realising that doing something easy enough to handle had made me feel better. Not well you understand, but not so bad. It also felt good to be doing something with a view to getting myself recovered. It was an important lesson. I remained crippled with depression for almost a year and still quite badly depressed for nearly a year after that, but I was learning some coping strategies.
Don’t laugh: I did come away with one unexpected lifelong interest: browsing bookshops. Fortunately Jenny has the same passion. Soon there won’t be room for us in the house.
My aim is to make about 40% of the posts here directly to do with depression. Look in the column to the right under the heading topics. These depression posts are filed under monochrome and blue. Click on that phrase in the right hand column and you are into the ‘living with depression’ archives. There’s a post here explaining why the topic has that name.
Originally I’d planned to have almost all the posts on that topic, but two things struck me. My life is far from just about depression. And a blog about just that could be rather, well, depressing. Part of living with depression is training yourself to do some normal living, whether you feel like it or not.
Let me give some examples of what I’ve found it helpful to do:
- If there’s a nice sunset I make myself pause and look at it. Enjoy it, at least a little bit. Focus my attention on the sunset rather than on how I might be feeling.
- Look around wherever I am. See what is there. Be varied: notice the bus in the distance and pick up the coin someone left on the pavement where I’m walking.
- Be curious. When walking beside a road I consciously notice the cars. How old or new are they? How are they being driven? What expression is on each driver’s face? Warning: you’ll be shocked when you start noticing normal drivers. They’re doing the weirdest things behind that wheel.
- Try new things which might be appealing. I don’t paint any more but I did complete a course of evening classes, and could go back to (rather amateurish) oil painting very easily now. It is another escape route.
- Try new kinds of music. I didn’t like jazz or blues. With help from friends I experimented with listening to both. There’s still some I don’t like, but there’s a lot I do and if I can’t get my head round someone with a good reputation I assume I just haven’t understood their music yet. Currently I’m getting into Roxy Music for some reason. It’s mainly new to me and it’s great.
- Notice people, particularly people worse off than myself. The other Sunday walking across the bridge to church we passed someone I imagine is homeless (we have a centre that works with homeless people underneath the church). I made eye contact and smiled. He said something. I stopped and asked him to repeat it. He was totally out of cash and asked if I could spare any change. He looked like he needed it. I apologised I didn’t have any money on me, which was true. He smiled and reached out his hand. We shook. I felt different after our meeting, somehow blessed by our brief conversation. He was a human being, every bit as important as me. We’d communicated, touched in far more than just a physical sense.
When down find something you can cope with doing and do it. It can be anything. It can be walking down the road to that cafe and having a cup of tea. It might be selecting one small area of the garden and weeding it. Maybe just go window shopping (but be sure not to take any money or cards!).
Whatever you do, unless your depression is very severe you’ll find it becomes easier to do simple stuff. There is a post about this here. The photo was taken while we were recording a Roxy Music track 
There’s another post here you may find helpful.
And this is kind of why there’s so much other stuff on this blog, why monochrome and blue only gets 40%.
Roughly another 30% is about the weird ways our human minds work. It’s fun, and some of it can help if you live with depression. I’ve called the topic wet super computer .
The rest is to lighten things up, because it’s interesting, because I enjoy it. I’m putting into this blog some of the stuff that enables me to have a life at the same time as having chronic depression. There’s more on my web site here.
What I’d really like is to get some feedback, either by comments or by e-mail. I won’t quote e-mails without permission. Click on the CONTACT tab above. I’d love to hear from everyone about everything, but especially from people trying to live with depression. And it doesn’t have to be your depression.
