Recovery -accept yourself with all your needs and failings

[jakers]

Recovery can be a lengthy process and can be helped in many ways. As most depressive illnesses differ in cause length and symptoms  there are obviously no set rules or cures. if there were, someone would be very rich selling them to people!

Some rules apply to all of us I think and the first one is to be less harsh on ourselves. Even though I have been a sufferer on and off for thirty years this has still the most difficult lesson to learn.

My latest attack has been as a result of a physical illness and a medical error with medication so that the drugs that i was taking to get the heart right and the antidepressant i was taking to help absorb the shock of the heart problem worked against one another and ended me up in hospital with a life threatening condition called hyponotraemia which caused a sudden loss of sodium from the system and a seizure and hallucinations. After this there came the withdrawal as i had to come off all my medication and start again. This was only in May this year and I am only now beginning to feel that i am recovering from the shock and I have to say it - the shame!! Why oh why feel shame when matters were completelt out of my hands? After discharge from  hospital I set off feeling that I had a strict timetable to get better on. I set myself physical  targets which I reached quite quickly and declared myself well .


  Very soon after I felt that tightnes and knotted feeling in my gut that the depression had not finished with me and went on to endure a very miseable August and not much better September. However during these monthes I clearly saw that i had expected too much from myself and was almost driving myself to a false recovery . I wanted peeople to see how well i was doing and how that major shock and trauma had really been no big deal. :vik:

The truth of the matter is that it was a huge incident in my life. it felt as if a rug had been pulled out from under my feet and that I had been hurled out to sea with no life jackets to hold onto. I retired from my job (Iwas 60 in amongst all of this) and also have a huge life change to deal with.

What's starting to workifor me know? I have accepted that I have not given myself enough time. I have listened very carefully to myself and what my new needs might be and one of them is writing which is why I have signed up to this site.
I have accepted that i have to take respobsibilty for my depression and for my recovery and am looking at the positives of no longer having a job in that I can address those issues that were not addressed the last time I made a huge movement towards living with my depression.

I have also started my training with a mental health charity called Re-Think who provide a buddy service for people who suffer from mental health issues. While I was there I felt calm and can't wait to get started . The work i did before I was taken ill involved workng with disaffected teenagers all of whom had mental health issues of one sort or another and my own depression always took a back seat during those years. ()( ()(

[bookletters]

What a fantastic post Jakers!
You are right about listening to your needs and learning to accept your failings etc.
I too need to do this!!

[hippychick49]

Jakers, thank you for a really useful post. Now that I am feeling a bit better, I am trying to accept myself and my needs. Pushing all my needs to the back of the queue played some part in me getting ill in the first place. It is something I will constantly have to work on.

[Catbrian]

I think taking time to listen to our selves is something we can all learn from

[craig84]

definitely Cat, I know this post is old but I have been questioning and learning the why's and whens of the reasons for my depression since I was diagnosed and it all leads to relationships with people that were not and are not productive in recovering from this illness for me.

If your surrounded by SH*T you feel like sh*t, may that be a messy room, or a body you clean because you don't feel worth it, or people that put you down or negate your positive outlook, a job that you don't enjoy or get fulfilment from or thoughts that make you feel like sh*t yourself ... they all play a part...

I feel I am taking the right steps to recover and only last week had an OD so this may be short lived but for me, RIGHT NOW, I believe that a lot of things need to change that are negative in my life, from people, career,  living circumstances, family members or so called friends who bring you down...

I haven't accepted a lot of what has made me bitter but.... I wouldn't rule out that I could!