I really can't be bothered (part of a 'Uses for a maths teacher' cartoon by Miriam Slechter

Do you ever have days when nothing feels worth starting and everything is shades of grey? Days when the sun doesn’t shine, and getting out of bed is the hardest thing you’ve ever done? Periods when the smallest chore becomes an impossible task?

Well of course you do. You’re human.

I remember someone telling me that as a youngster he worried he’d inherited chronic depression from his Mum. Later at university he discovered that everyone feels down for a few days at a time, now and then. It’s normal.

Actually feeling like this in adolescence (call that ages 12-25 ) is common. The hormones are rampantly badly mixed, the challenges of life are to be faced without as yet the desired rewards. Who am I? What do I believe? What will I do with my life? How do I succeed? Am I happy? Do people like me? Does she love me?

I get this feeling of lethargy and inertia far more often, and sometimes far more severely, than people without clinical depression. But it’s basically the same feeling. Over forty five years I’ve had many tricks suggested to me. I’ve tried them out, and discovered other possibilities too. This series will be the things I have found work. For me. Often enough to be worth trying.

I’ll be including a mixture of quick, medium, and long term tricks. They won’t all suit you, but some will.

Imagine you are at the top of a hill and the enemy approaches. You need to roll that boulder down onto them. But at first it won’t shift. These will be tricks you can try that might get the boulder started rolling.

Miriam’s picture? Yes we know verticals should look vertical even in a cartoon, but it makes sense when you see the whole picture.

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Relax. I'll be bouncing around again in a few minutes.

There are moments when suicide makes sense.

That is, it feels like it makes sense.

In the moment.

Especially if that moment drags on for days or weeks.

Today we heard of the death of influential fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Someone very close to him had just died. It’s not known at this stage if he committed suicide, but the possibility has been mooted.

That got me thinking.

If my wife Jenny dies before me then I’m sure I will be devastated, and I’ll not be at all surprised if I feel there’s no longer any point in staying alive myself. Living with chronic depression is tough, and such thoughts can flitter though my mind. Usually they are weak and comfortably brief. But I have nearly lost Jenny several times so I have a sense of how I may feel.

What I’ve done is promise myself I will allow time to recover from the immediate grief before making any critical decisions such as whether to move house. I guess suicide also counts as a critical decision.

You see when emotions are strong or depression is deep we don’t think straight. During depression is exactly the time NOT to make important decisions. I’m lucky. I know my depression will ease, so I just postpone following through on any ideas till I’m feeling better. It works. Some of the ideas then make sense, and some I realise are just plain silly.

When depression first hit in 1970 and I had no idea what was wrong with me I felt a bit suicidal. I talked to friends and that helped. My Doctor referred me to a specialist and that started me on the road to understanding, learning to cope, and realising depression was only temporary. Mind you that temporary episode lasted over eighteen months, but I survived. And I’m glad I did.

Many years later one depressive episode brought extended thoughts of suicide, and a friend (Peter Jolly) helped me through the suicidal stage.

If you are feeling like death could be an option then please talk it through with a good friend, and if you’re not already receiving treatment for depression then please go and see a Doctor as soon as possible. There are medicines that can probably help you, although some take several weeks before you feel the effects.

Above all else, be patient. If you want to kill yourself now, it will pass. Life will get better. There will be times worth experiencing again.

Afterthought

When I suggest chatting with a friend I’m not suggesting you text everyone in your address book. Some depressed people contact all their friends saying where they are and that they are about to kill themselves. If that’s what you’re doing then you are in a rough state and you do need professional help, but maybe what you’re really doing is trying to attract attention. You may be trying to shout ‘HELP!’ or you may just like the fuss. The trouble is that friends rapidly become fed up with you if you try this more than once. And let’s face it, friends shouldn’t be abused like that. Or to put it from a selfish viewpoint (which is much easier to grasp when depressed) you need your friends to still be there if it ever gets really serious.

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I’m going to be rich. But your parents are rich and they’re not happy. Ah, but I’m going to make far more money than my parents.

I’m going to be famous. For what? Does it matter?

I’m going to be a doctor. Why? You don’t like people and dissections in biology make you feel sick. Because that’s what my parents want me to be.

I’m going to become a life coach. Shouldn’t you do some living first?

I’m going to be Prime Minister. Is that so you can be the most powerful person in the country? Of course. And everyone else runs the country badly but I know how it should be done.

 And here’s the saddest thing: some of these young people grow up to achieve their dreams.

Later the fire would die down to glowing embers and we'd maybe chat while gazing at the sunset

 Recently I mentioned Jack Higgins who sold millions of thriller novels. I’m guessing he was successful in achieving what he set out to do. He found his dream. It did not satisfy.

I don’t think any of the goals listed above can on their own bring satisfaction.

You make your first million and then realise it doesn’t buy as much as you thought. You start to feel jealous of people with ten million, a hundred million, a billion. Research indicates there is almost no link between money and happiness. The exception is that it helps to have enough money to live without worrying about true necessities like food, clothing and shelter. In UK terms that’s maybe about £15,000 a year before tax. Probably less.

Joanne Harris, author of a string of best-selling novels including Chocolat, comments that when she started writing there was no shortage of people warning her about failure, but not one who helped prepare her for success. Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones comments that some people cannot handle fame; he says Mick Jones, an early band member, probably died young because of it. What is fame anyway? It’s the person behind you at the supermarket checkout ignoring you (the celebrity) and saying to someone else, “Hey, isn’t that <fill in name>”.

Some people become doctors because it is a respected and reasonably well-paid profession and that’s what their parents wanted. It can work out. If not then please please please can I have someone else treating me. There are teachers who chose the career because of long summer holidays. I don’t want them teaching my grandchildren thank you.

If we think of success in these traditional terms of fame, money, position, power, conquest, or an easy life then we also need to recognise that it includes the following:

• you’ll still catch colds and feel miserable,
• your top of the range SUV, BMW or Jag will still get stuck in traffic jams,
• it may prove very hard to make real friends and hold a loving marriage together,
• everything you looked forward to enjoying will probly turn out to be transient, and frustrating in its emptiness,
• later, unless you die early, you’ll get old and none of this stuff will matter anymore,
• one day you’ll die. What will they say at your funeral? Will anyone be there because they love you?

At which point you ask, hey, what’s the picture of a campfire got to do with success not working?

Actually it’s to do with what I think of as ‘real’ success. Tell you about it in the next post.

This article is # 2 in the effective goal-setting series.

If you’d like more articles like this one please click the Thank you button just below.

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I've had a good day but tonight I may end it

(Friends please start at the end.)

There are times when I wish I was dead.

Life just seems to be so hard I wish I didn’t have to carry on. Death feels attractive.

What I am not considering though is actually killing myself.

I did once. It was the summer U2 came to Leeds with their Pop tour. Good concert – the music was much better live than on the album, but that’s often true with U2. Like Kaiser Chiefs they’re a live band. I was beginning to get somewhere with how I felt, thanks to a lot of help from Jenny, and our sons, and an incredible guy called Pete Jolly. A month earlier I’d been sitting in my tent at the school Scout camp. The day had been good, instructing climbing down on Shepherd’s Crag. Now I was staring at a bottle of tranquillisers thinking I really really wanted to take the lot. It got worse before it got better.

Would I have gone ahead with a suicide attempt without all the support? I have no idea. Since then I’ve worked with a number of school students who seemed quite serious about topping themselves. Might they have done? I don’t know. You see it’s not that simple.

I’m going to have to oversimplify here, and I need to warn you I’m not a qualified psychologist. I have experiences and I have read a certain amount on the topic. But there is much I don’t know. Actually that last is true of qualified psychologists. There’s much we don’t know about human minds. Minds are complex organisms, and can be unpredictable. If you are feeling suicidal then please talk to someone. If your friend is feeling suicidal please do your best to get them to contact a medical doctor.

I’ve come across three basic types of feeling suicidal. Beware. They blur into each other.

There is the person who wants to get attention. One version I’ve come across is the person who texts a friend giving their location and saying they’re going to kill themselves. This usually gets a quick response with several friends arriving fast. It works. It gets attention. But it is a stupid short-term fix. After a while friends suss out what is happening and take the messages less seriously. Maybe one day you’re seriously down and can feel the push towards suicide getting stronger and stronger. You’re terrified you’ll give in. You contact friends. No one responds. Heard of Peter and the wolf?

Now for where this blurs into the next basic type. Depression can feel so bad, make you feel so desperate, that you’ll do almost anything to shake people up and get them taking you seriously. This can include doing an attempted suicide with little real intent to actually die – though part of you may be serious, which increases the danger. This can work in either of two ways. It can succeed in getting needed medical help fast. It can also succeed in either causing permanent physical damage or death. Not good. Given the risk involved in this approach it’s very much worth looking for safer alternatives even though they may be slower.

Then there is the person who toys with the idea of suicide. That was probably me. When I got home I gave the bottle of tranquilisers to our friends next door for safe keeping. Just in case. I kept enough to last a week. They knew the maximum number I should take in a week. This worked. But some people toy with slitting their wrists or hanging themselves. They may cut the skin at their wrists repeatedly without (they hope) ever going deep enough to rupture an artery. They may make a noose, attach it, stand on a chair with their neck in the noose, try putting pressure on. They may make a mistake, slip, apply enough pressure to accidently cause unconsciousness. I can understand people touching the idea of suicide in this way. I would strongly advise against it. If life is so bad you’re risking death in order to try to cope then contact a medical doctor as soon as possible. You need to be able to see there is a way out.

That blurs into the final type.

Some people are genuinely determined to actually kill themselves. They may delay doing it for days or weeks, and they may appear normal and happy to those around them, but inside they may only be able to keep going like that because they know they’ll soon be able to stop pushing themselves. They may have become psychotic and believe that for some reason that doesn’t make sense to the rest of us they have to kill themselves. They may have planned the method in detail, gathered everything they need, and set the exact time. Does it need to be said? This is very dangerous. And it may be the hardest to detect. If you feel like this then please tell someone. You may have something extra in your mental anguish which is separating you from reality, twisting the way you think. This is temporary. There is help available. Why not try the help and see if you can feel differently. You clearly have not always felt like this. You can feel better once more. Tell someone how you feel. Check out with someone whether or not you just have a temporary madness.

Final thoughts

Is feeling suicidal dangerous? Yes. Should it be taken seriously? Yes. What can you do? Talk to someone. Tell them exactly how you feel and what you’re thinking of doing about it. Make contact with a local medic (in the UK ring your GP). There is other contact information below.

If your friend tells you they’re feeling suicidal then I’d recommend taking them seriously. Enter to some extent into their world by listening carefully. Ask questions if there’s anything you don’t understand. Try not to pass any kind of judgement. Aim to show them that you accept them just as they are, that you care, that you are really trying to understand. Spend time with them, and be sensitive about how much you say. They may need company but not conversation. There’s a post here that explains this a bit more.

Should you get help? Hard one that. First make sure you’ve understood as much as possible. While you’re there they’ll be coping better. Make sure they know you have genuinely understood at least some of what they are feeling. Then do your best to persuade them to let you involve someone with more expertise. You could suggest you make the contact for them and seek the advice without giving their name. You could help them use one of the contact links below.

If they refuse to allow anyone else to be consulted you have the agonising decision to make. Are they at risk of actually killing themselves? If the answer is ‘yes’ then in my view you have no choice. More likely the answer will be ‘perhaps’. If they have taken thinking about suicide as far as making detailed plans then they need medical help. If they haven’t, do they have the means to kill themselves readily available? Ultimately you must weigh the risk to their life against the possible loss of a friendship. If you’re a real friend….

Sorry, I can’t make the decision for you. I have been in this situation a number of times. I have read up on it. I am no expert. You have to decide. But if they’re in any sense serious about suicide as an option and there is no logical reason (such as an incurable illness causing great pain despite medical intervention) they need expert help.

Some contact information

At the moment this information applies to England, and probably the rest of the UK. We will add to it.

If you live elsewhere and can provide contact suggestions for your country, or if you have contacts worth adding to this list, then please let us know. You can e-mail me or add a comment to this post.

United Kingdom

Contact NHS direct:  http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/ or 0845 4647

The Samaritans: http://www.samaritans.org/ or 08457 90 90 90

Childline: http://www.childline.org.uk/Pages/Home.aspx or 0800 11 11

Note to friends

It’s okay, I’m not feeling suicidal at the moment, and for me it’s both rare and unlikely to be dangerous. Right, now you can read the post.

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I used to enjoy playing the drums but now I can't even pick up the drum sticks

Some year’s back a student came to see me in quite a state. He was sixteen and a few weeks away from taking the most important exams in his life so far (GCSEs).

“I don’t know what’s happening to me. I need to revise but I can’t open the books. I sit on my bed and stare at my drum kit. I know I used to really enjoy playing it. I know it used to cheer me up. But I can’t even pick up the drum sticks. I just sit there for a long time staring at them.”

Let’s just take a look at his situation and how he described it.

Firstly: at sixteen he was a prime candidate for teenage depression.

Secondly: he was at a high-stress time, and that also makes depression more likely.

Okay, so it makes sense he could become depressed. Now how does he describe life?

He spends a lot of time doing nothing. He knows what he should do (revise a bit) and would like to do (play the drums) but can’t get himself doing them.

Many people feel like that sometimes and it can be alarming. You feel powerless. You feel as if your personality’s been stolen, probably forever. Who are you? Are you kidding yourself that yesterday you could do these things?

When I’ve had flu there’s been no option but to take paracetomol, lie down and wait. Some days later I can get up and start doing things, but it hurts. One day I’m well enough to return to work. Once there I’ll feel like death warmed up but also know I am recovering and the weakness will go.

Depression can be like that. Sometimes you just have to pause and wait. It will ease up, although if it’s serious then medication may be needed to kick-start the recovery. After a while it’s possible to do bits and pieces, but your head keeps telling you not to. If you can’t return to a completely normal life at once then don’t do anything; except our bodies and minds don’t work like that. Once a little strength returns we need to use it. If we do we recover faster and become stronger.

There are periods when I can cope with little beyond sleeping (a lot), eating, and playing a computer game to pass time till I next sleep. This is not a life but it is sometimes necessary, and it works. It’s like the not-able-to-get-out-of-bed phase of flu. Accept it. Be patient. Things do improve.

Then again there are days I wake up, get up, have breakfast, skim e-mail, check out Amazon’s latest recommendations, and feel incapable of doing anything significant. It’s like I’m that student sitting on his bed staring at his drum kit unable to pick up the sticks, Maybe I’m so depressed that nothing I try to do will work, but maybe not. I’ve learned that it is almost always worth ‘picking up the drum sticks’. That on it’s own is easy, and it’s a start. Then I could thump the odd drum or cymbal. That’s easy too, because I’m not trying to actually perform, just to make a sound. Maybe that will lead to something slightly nearer music.

Actually I don’t drum. In my case I open a word processor and type something. Maybe I’ll read what got done yesterday and think yes, actually that’s not bad. Not great but not bad. Then I’ll come up with just one sentence and type it in. Doesn’t matter if it fits. Doesn’t matter about spelling or grammar or saying anything good. Just get the words down. If I don’t like it tomorrow it’ll be easy to change.

The odd thing is that although each step is trivial, insignificant, easy, nine time out of ten I will then have an idea for a second sentence. That’s how our minds work.

So have a list of dead easy things to do when you’ve been down. Instead of getting dressed and going for a walk just go to the bathroom and put paste on the toothbrush. Instead of preparing breakfast just put the kettle on.

Everything worthwhile that we do starts with something really simple. In effect it starts with beginning to turn from a destructive pattern to a useful one by making one tiny change.

How do we achieve significant things? We just start, and then if we still have strength we do a little more. The chances are the more we do the easier it will get.

You may not be able to chill the world with your achievements today, but you can start something. The trick is to make that start. Open the address book to details of that person you ought to phone. Put some clothes out in case. Lay out revision books ready for someone else. Pick up the drum sticks.

Just start.

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What's happening to me? Where am I? Who am I?

When a friend was at university the mood swings he’d been having for some years became worse. When I met him he was clearly very depressed and had been for months. Yes he had been to see the doctor, and he’d been told it wasn’t real depression because people his age didn’t get clinically depressed; he’d received no help.

I passed this information on to my own consultant who at the time was a very senior member of the Royal College of Psychiatry. He was astonished and explained that if any kind of major mental illness is going to surface, then if you go to university that is the most likely time. You’re 18, may be away from home for the longest time ever, in a strange environment, trying to learn new social skills, getting started on a major academic course, and at that age very much still trying to sort out who you are. I had my first breakdown early in my third year of doing a Maths degree.

Actually I’d been noticing weird changes in my mood since I was 15. We had exams each summer at my school, but this was the first time since puberty we’d had external exams to tackle. In those days they were called O-levels (O for Ordinary as opposed to A for Advanced. Nowadays in England they’re called GCSEs). I was bright, typically third in my year at a good grammar school. I was very late maturing in many ways and showed some of the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome, but I did understand these exams were the most important so far.

I have no recollection of my state of mind that year, although I do remember finding our History teacher incredibly boring (and you avoided asking him questions at the end unless you could stand well away – his breath was foul poor chap). I do remember finding the work quite hard, and when the results arrived they were astonishingly weak. I had passed in every subject, but only just. What had gone wrong?

Even in those days I had plenty of interests, and most involved mixing with other people. I was an enthusiastic Scout, and also a competitive runner belonging to a local club. I did not feel lonely. Except that one day I found myself staring listlessly out of my bedroom window unable to get on with anything and aware of the family next door having a good time in their garden.  I felt sad. I felt jealous that the kids next door had people to have fun with whereas I had no friends and was completely alone. You’ll note my thoughts were untrue, but I believed them. I started to believe this was me, someone incapable of finding anything I could cope with doing, someone with no friends who would always be lonely and unhappy.

A few years later when a variety of stress factors came together at once and I could no longer attend lectures I just did not know what was happening. I’d never felt like this before, and it seemed I’d never be normal again. I couldn’t even go running because I didn’t have the energy – though I tried and probably made myself more depressed in the process.

I spent the rest of that term trying to stay afloat, just treading water with the occasional frantic burst of trying to sort myself out. When I got home for Christmas I thought my troubles were over, but now I found I couldn’t relate to my parents. I couldn’t cope with life, thought maybe I was suicidal, and had no one to talk to. Moods came and went and I was thoroughly confused and frightened.

If you’re going through something like that then in one sense it’s okay, there are many of us who understand how you feel because we’ve been there. Seek medical help. Seek out friends you can talk to. You will get through it. With any luck it vwill never happen again, but if it does then be confident there are many people who can help you. Hopefully something in this blog, past or to come, will give guidance you can apply to yourself. I hope so. A lot of people helped me to learn how to live with depression. There are many there for you.

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