The Beginning

 

I hope this is the start of something new, for me and for you. I want this to be a meeting place for people who are suffering, not just from depression, but from any kind of emotional difficulty. I think, too often, that we shut down, because we are ashamed or embarrassed or simply feel that nobody else will understand.

I used to think that way too.

We get so conditioned not to show our natural frailty that we forget that vulnerability is a precious thing. It's what makes us human. It is what heals us because it is connection and not separation that makes us whole. Life is about connection. There is nothing else.

The way that I deal with my depression these days is to talk about the way I truly feel, and not the way I think other people would like me to feel. I am rarely right about that anyway. And I have discovered that when I break the treaty of silence, I am amazed to find how many people will join me. I know that some people find such notions of honesty and vulnerability impossible, if not abhorrent. Most of us have never learned the vocabulary of intimacy. We simply don't know how to express our feelings. Perhaps some of us don't need to but it's more, I think, that most of us are frightened so we hide behind a carefully constructed social self. Much of that self is unhelpful; it is a brick wall behind which we find ourselves trapped, frightened of not being, as the therapeutic phrase goes, "good enough."

Curiously, the best antidote to the not good enough culture is to say it out loud. We live in an imperfect world. We are imperfect beings. The more we share that, the better we will feel.

Some Ideas...

I recently had a letter (thank you, Helen) asking me if I still took various vitamins etc and if I could put up details. Here they are, below, in my reply to her.

"Yes, I do still take vitamins and minerals - the most important of which are EPA (Omega 3). You need one g of EPA a day so it's important to check how much each capsule contains and you also want a decent pharmaceutical grade oil. You can either get them on the internet or from good health food shops. Then a B complex every day - as depressives are often low in B12.
A good site is First Vitality www.1stvitality.co.uk, which has a lot of info as well as selling Omega 3.

Recently I have also been trying 5 HTP, combined with St John's Wort. The reccomendation for depression is 100mg of each, taken three times a day. It's a bit early to know if it's truly working but my mood has been a lot
brighter recently (had a bad patch) so I'm wishing and hoping. There's a book that's quite useful called "Boost Your Serotonin Levels 5 HTP. The Natural Way to Overcome Depression, Obesity and Insomnia" by Michael Murray.
Quite a big claim but worth a try..."

I think what's important is to remember that these things are worth trying but that we are all individual (and depression is totally individual) so what works for one person may not work for another. I also think we should chuck everything and anything that may help at depression.

In that spirit I have been trying out hynotherapy as a way of countering negative thought patterns. It has helped a bit but I wanted to explore it more in depth, with a slant on helping depression in particular so I'm just about to try a new approach which is CBT hypnotherapy. Will report back if it's helpful.