Anyway, it's a new year so I thought I'd write a little something about mental health at this time of year. It was a welcome sight to see just how many articles did the round over Christmas about the struggles of us unlucky sods who have to add mental illness to their list of gripes around Christmas. Nothing tires you out like having to pretend to be 'in the festive spirit' when you just don't feel like you can be. Add to that having to see family and the cost of Christmas, it's no surprise that so many people find it a hard time of year. Oh and if that wasn't enough, then of course practically all community provision for mental health disappears over the break. In all of this, it's places like Mind, Sane and the Samaritans that end up being such a vital point of support for so many people. I sometimes ponder just how much the people on the end of those helplines and posting on forums do at this time of year. Saints is the only word that comes to mind.
Anyway, enough ranting, I promise I've stopped this time, and a bit more about things in my world. As I said in my last post, things haven't been amazing for me of late. The storm in my mind has been rumbling along, slowly picking up speed. This probably wasn't helped by Christmas, and certainly wasn't helped by my coming back to Cambridge. The mix of expectation and lack of free time certainly doesn't help anything. But anyway, I'm holding on to optimism somewhere deep within me, and hopefully that will carry me through this term. This brings me nicely on to the title of my post. As many people do, I've made a resolution for the new year. Now I'm not deciding to stay off fast food (couldn't live without burritos) or anything exciting like that, but instead my resolution is simply:
Put Myself First
I know, how narcissistic of me... That is of course not what I mean. What I mean is to think about my mental health first, and not over-stretch myself; to listen to those storm clouds as they start to roll in and to get my raincoat ready (rather than drowning them out with 3 am Reddit sessions). It may not shock you, but it turns out getting a masters degree from Cambridge is not something you can't do with half-hearted effort. As such, this resolution is there to try to help me support myself on this journey. What's great about this resolution is that it requires so little effort and yet will probably have so many positive consequences.
Now, after all that about how great my resolution is, I'm going to pick apart exactly what's so awful about resolutions. And what they can teach all of us about mental health. How's that for a well structured piece of prose (hey there's a reason I did sciences at uni...). As far as I can tell, resolutions are a deal we make with ourselves, that we wouldn't normally trust ourselves to make and can only do at a special point in time. Oh and we're always told to aim big. And is it just me, or did we all just spend most of our money a week ago, gorging ourselves and generally just over-indulging. Yes, I know, you say 'but of course, what a perfect time to make a resolution to be better'. But bear with me, I promise we're going somewhere with this.
So, we're here on New years eve, with a sum total of about 2 moths and a piece of lint in the bank account, and also we're probably feeling the sluggish-ness that follows the indulgences of Christmas. Oh and also Christmas is over, and we have to go back to work and it's cold and dark and bleurgh. (Can you tell I'm bitter about my January birthday). Basically, even the happiest, sparkiest of us have good reason to feel a bit of a grump and generally not happy as we enter the new year. But no, apparently that's not enough for us. We feel the need to make a contract with ourselves. And it's probably one with a ludicrously ambitious goal, and not to mention one that will cost us money (how are gyms so expensive?!). It's no wonder most of us give up on our resolutions so quickly.
So there we are, it's the third week of January, we've probably given up on our fundamentally flawed contract to ourselves and now we're probably a bit upset by our inability to see it through and almost certainly disappointed in ourselves. I'm sure you can see why I think the idea of new years resolutions is ridiculous and why I think we'd all be better off if we just agreed not to bother and instead treat ourselves for somehow surviving the Christmas period and making it to another year. But maybe there is something in here to be learned (because consistency in arguments is so boring). Think about that feeling when you've given up on a resolution. I'm sure many of you can resonate with what I am about to say. There's that nagging feeling of 'I should have done better', that voice that says 'come on how could you only go 2 weeks without chocolate', our old friend 'god, you're useless, you actually disgust me'. I think many of you will know what I'm talking about, that inner critic we all have who comes to visit us and give us a boot up the backside. Just think about a time when you've felt like this, try to remember how it felt...
Why you ask, why are you making me think about how rubbish that feels? You have a fair point. But exactly that feeling, the one you are remembering right now, what if that was the only feeling you could remember. Wouldn't that be awful, if all you ever though to yourself was how much of a failure you are, how you deserve to be miserable? Well, the thing is, a lot of us can only think that. So many people experience their depression, their anxiety in this way. It's not fun, it's not something we can just chuckle about the fact it's 'Blue Monday' and choose to move on from, to 'pull ourselves together' These critics are part of the us we carry along with us everywhere we go. Maybe now it makes a bit more sense why we find achieving anything more than binge-watching netflix a task akin to climbing Everest, or running a marathon...
backwards...
hopping on one hand.
Now you can see why it easier for us to tell you we're fine, and put on our smile-mask. This is why I have an issue with the idea of Blue Monday. Not because I want to devalue everyone's unhappiness at this time of year (seriously can't we all just agree to have a national holiday month), but because so many people equate their temporary feelings of sadness with the daily living hell that those with mental ill-health carry with them, not just on one Monday a year, but 24/7 365. Rather than seeing this as a time to stand side-by-side with our depressed comrades, our battalions of anxious allies, it becomes a time to tell them they've got it no worse than everyone else. Which does no one any good.
backwards...
hopping on one hand.
Now you can see why it easier for us to tell you we're fine, and put on our smile-mask. This is why I have an issue with the idea of Blue Monday. Not because I want to devalue everyone's unhappiness at this time of year (seriously can't we all just agree to have a national holiday month), but because so many people equate their temporary feelings of sadness with the daily living hell that those with mental ill-health carry with them, not just on one Monday a year, but 24/7 365. Rather than seeing this as a time to stand side-by-side with our depressed comrades, our battalions of anxious allies, it becomes a time to tell them they've got it no worse than everyone else. Which does no one any good.
So this leads me on to finally explain the title of this post. As I ended last term, and the black dog barked at my heels, I honestly thought I was just being pathetic. Like I was somehow a fraud, who'd blagged their way on to this course. That of course I deserved to be unhappy, because I was a fraud and their were real people with real problems. But come new years eve, I resolved to recognise my illness for what it is, AN ILLNESS. So I rang my doctor, and now, as of this last week, I'm on even more medication. But hopefully this time it will help me kick free of the black dog's bite and get back on track. At least that is the hope, who knows, maybe in 2016 I'll finally manage to achieve a new years resolution.
I agree with you about new years' resolutions. I feel that if people have the ability to change something about themselves and they want to, then they should do so straight away. The very fact that they've waited until the pressure of "new year's resolution" to kick in, only implies that their motivation isn't sourced internally, and the resolution becomes much likelier to fall apart after the externally sourced motivation has dried up. However I do like the idea, as I think it causes people to introspect, which I think leads to self-awareness and on to the road of self-improvement/fulfilment.
ReplyDeleteIf I was in your situation, I wouldn't treat "put myself first" as a new year's resolution because I'd fear that it would fail. I would try to see it some sort of realisation that came to me at the turn of the year. Realisations can't fail, I can only ignore them. Remembering why I came to this realisation would help me to motivate myself in the future, rather than feeling like I ought to uphold my "new year's resolution".
Anyway that's how I approach things in my mind, and I wouldn't presume it necessarily helps you because (fortunately for me) I've so far not experienced what you are going through. That said, I thought your resolution was quite good so I thought I'd share my perspective in the hope that it might help make this "new year's resolution" a successful one :D!
Best of luck, and I'm supporting your trek!