My Story of Depression

1992/1993
 

The classic symptoms of depression began to emerge throughout 1992: weeping, not sleeping, anxiety and I was very frightened. Then the symptoms got worse. I suddenly had a panic attack in a friend’s car. I didn’t know what it was,  just that I had to get out of the car and run! Somehow I kept control but I felt terrible. Then, one day taking the children to school I had another panic attack whilst driving. Again I somehow got them to school but 

I have no idea how. All I know is when I left the playground to go home, I could not get back in the car.

The symptoms worsened: my hands began to shake, I felt awful all the time. I was tired, run down and cried 

a lot.  I couldn’t stand upright for more than a few minutes without wanting to curl up into a ball and 

hid myself away in my bedroom. I hated anyone touching me. I hated looking at myself and covered my arms with black clothing.  When asked what was wrong I just couldn’t say – I didn’t know. All I did know was I felt wretched, alone, isolated and very lonely. The children were also worried and frightened, but I didn’t care. All I was concerned about was myself and how ill I felt, but I still didn’t know what was wrong. I really thought I was going mad, totally out of control. All I could see was a long black tunnel leading to the bottom 

of a well from which I could not escape, I was trapped.

One night I couldn’t take any more and decided the only way out of this pain was to take my own life. 

I sat with the pills in my hand but something still nagged inside my head that this was wrong. I phoned the Samaritans in desperation and sat and talked for about 2 hours. It was now daylight – about 6 in the morning.

Talking to someone else had helped and I put the pills down, crawled into bed and curled myself into a ball

with the duvet over the top. My husband then took the initiative and phoned the doctor who suggested we 

meet at the surgery. I remember the journey well – I couldn’t get in the car unless I was curled in a ball 

on the floor behind the front seats. I just remember shaking all the time. I asked the doctor to fill 

his syringe with the deadliest poison and inject it into my arm – it was the cry for help!

With careful monitoring and antidepressants for about 2 years I was back to my old self. 

But it shocked me. I was so uneducated. I’d never heard of depression and thought like most other people 

that you should “just pull yourself together”.

So I decided to try and understand this thing called depression. I bought books on the subject and the usual one at that time that most people read was “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”. I became attached to this book – it was my ‘bible’ for a long time, and it did help me a lot.  About five years later I began to cope wonderfully on my own and never thought I would tread that path again.

How wrong I was!

2002/2003

The second time around took some eighteen months to two years before depression took hold.
Stress and anxiety were the biggest players towards my spiral into depression, both at work and at home.
Some of it was brought upon by myself but most of it was beyond my control. The major factors were:
 

• An undue amount of pressure, stress, tension and negative behaviour at work
• Feeling undermined and undervalued at work
• Job eroding away
• Masses of overtime at work with no breaks in between
• Studying for an A level in psychology plus the exam in June
• Stress, tension and changes of lifestyle at home
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to overcome a phobia to driving on motorways
• Threat of redundancy
• Doing a Basic Counselling Skills course for 10 weeks
• Resentments of past happenings

After nearly 14 months of stress and anxiety at work, the A level, the therapy, the overtime, no lunch breaks, the home situation and then the counselling course I was showing the classic symptoms of depression:

Weeping; not sleeping; taking odd days off as I couldn’t face the negative behaviour at work; anxiety, anger, hostility and blaming everyone else for how I felt.  I no longer wanted the company of others and lost my sense of humour. I was certainly not bubbly and my confidence was rock bottom. At the end of November I was almost out of control again. The shakes had begun and I was not sleeping. I just wanted to run away from it all. This all took its toll but I still needed someone to tell me what was wrong. I phoned my therapist and during this session I spoke about the stress and taking home to work and work to home. We discussed this and I suddenly saw the problem for myself – it had to stop but how? We both came up with a solution but it never got put into place. I said I thought I needed the week off before Christmas to get my head round things. I was mentally and physically exhausted and needed a rest. I asked the therapist if he thought it was a good idea for me to see my doctor and he said yes.

At last! Permission had been given!

I saw  my doctor on 12th December but still hadn’t twigged what was wrong, but when I started to explain the tears just flowed. “I feel so grey it’s painful”. You are depressed. That was it!
The label. I argued my case against antidepressants again but really by now I didn’t care. The doctor knew I would spiral back to the black hole again and suggested that perhaps I was charcoal, not grey! He advised me to take the antidepressants, but it was not until I’d phoned the therapist that I started taking them - Why?

Well I just needed his permission too!

So, there I was - twice now, and I still hadn’t recognised the symptoms.