Podcast Summary
- How recording and publishing my first podcast episode has taken me much longer than I expected
- How it has triggered the same cycle of destructive thought patterns that got me depressed in the first place
- The flip flop swinging between positive and negative emotions in the space of just 24 hours
- My avoidance strategies – things I do to side step taking back control of my thoughts
- The realisation of the need to be more self-compassionate
- My frustration with how slow things are moving forward vs how quickly I need them to progress
- The overwhelming amount of information available to me on just in books sold on Amazon
- Which topic has more written about it on Amazon – Depression or Happiness?
- My 2 step draft plan for moving forward in spite of being overwhelmed
- Why I will be looking into the role of antidepressants even though I refuse to take them
Podcast Transcription (Edited)
So welcome to this second episode of my podcast where I’m looking to find hope, help and ultimately maybe even happiness. So the first episode has gone live. I recorded it, I transcribed it, I put it up on my blog that I’ve started and things are underway.
I think I mentioned in the first episode the reason I’m doing this is because it’s a way of me getting out of my head a little bit and to start looking at what I can do to move forward from the place I find myself in.
It’s going to be a way of tracking my progress, keeping me on top of things. It’s going to give me accountability. And ultimately it might even help other people who may be suffering similarly and might need some sort of guidance and some encouragement of what they can do to move forward.
So it’s out in the world now though I’m still keeping my identity to myself because of the stigma attached to it. I might explore that in a future episode.
I’ve published a podcast. My intention was to do that daily. It’s now Monday when I’m recording this and I recorded the first episode on Friday. I published it on Friday, so I’ve got it out there on Friday. But it’s an audio podcast, and so I needed to get it transcribed so that I could put it in a written form as well.
And the reason for that is it allows me to look at what I’ve said in written form – I can process that quite quickly and it allows me to keep track of things easier.
But what I found is that that took much longer than I expected. It took some of Saturday and some of Sunday before it was finally done.
And what was really interesting is I started to notice a frustration – well I was definitely frustrated because it took longer than I thought. But it also gave me an insight into the mental and emotional challenges I am facing.
To record a podcast, I’ve got to obviously make the recording. I’ve then got to get it transcribed. I’ve got to get loaded up onto the internet. I’ve got to write a title for it because I’m creating a blog. So I had to set up a blog. I had to choose a domain name. I had to get it all sorted out. I had to work out how to put that altogether.
I had to do a whole list of things just to get a simple blog post up and running. And what I found is that it triggered all sorts of feelings because all of a sudden things became too difficult for me.
They seem complicated – There’s a lot to be done. And that triggered feeling straight away of:
“This is too difficult and probably maybe I can’t do it”
That in itself triggered feelings of not feeling good enough, which triggered feelings of not feeling worthy and that I don’t deserve. And it sent me into a helpless state, which wasn’t a constructive state to be in.
And so I found it really difficult to put all the work together to do that. And it’s taken me a couple of days to do it. And of course, because my expectation was that I record the podcast, it would go out and then I can move on and start using it as I’ve intended.
But it just took so much time. Now rationally I can probably see that it’s going to be like that when I first start things off and I’ve got to get into the swing of things.
So I need to build up a routine of working out what I’m going to say, recording it. And there’s getting in to a process of doing it. Logically, I can see that, but there’s a part of me now that’s thinking:
“it’s just too much work. Too much bother. Why should I bother?”
And that seems typical of just how everything has gone for me, whether it be this or whether the other stuff I tried. And so I realise now I’ve got to keep doing this to push through this. Because otherwise I’m going to have the same things if I try and do anything else to move my life forward and it’s not going to happen.
I have to push through this. So these feelings of helplessness have been quite debilitating I suppose. So just to give you a flavour of my life over these last three days, I want you to know it’s not all doom and gloom.
There’s a thing about having and struggling with these feelings of low self-esteem and low self worth. It’s like there is this duality. There’s the inner things that are going on that no one sees and then there’s what’s happening outside – the public face and persona you present to the world.
So I went out on Friday night and I went out on Saturday night as a way of distracting myself from these challenges. Of course inside I am hurting and struggling to cope but to the rest of the world I present a face of positivity and being in control.
One of the things I did about 18 months ago was I started to learn to dance salsa. At the time, it was a thing I chose because it was on my bucket list. I thought I’ll try it and I got completely hooked. I think it’s probably one of the main reasons why I am still alive now. This Is because learning to dance got me of my head and into my body distracting me from the thoughts that created my low mood and feelings of despair.
Dancing has become one of my very few positive habits. I’ve now created social connections which I wouldn’t otherwise have had. It’s been a real lifesaver for me. But conversely, it’s also been a bit of a distraction I use it to avoid actually dealing with my issues.
It’s quite fun meeting people who have become friends and doing things with music to get out of my head. But it’s definitely a form of distraction.
So Friday was a Salsa night. During the day on Saturday, I spent a couple of hours working on the podcast and I managed to make some progress with it. But then I ended up watching rugby online all afternoon because it’s the Six Nations International tournament here in the UK at the moment. And so that distracted me from getting on with what I’d intended to do.
I went out dancing again on Saturday night with a lie in on Sunday morning after my late night. Then I went to see some friends for lunch. When I got back home later on Sunday afternoon, I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I’d set myself up to do and found myself with massive feelings of helplessness and hopelessness because I couldn’t do anything.
All I did was just open up Amazon prime and binge watched some episodes of an American football team and their progress through a season as a way of distracting myself from what I needed to do.
I find it’s really frustrating that logically I know I should’ve got down and just cracked on and done things, but there was this massive reluctance to do so. I’ve recognised that my ability to focus on getting things done and being disciplined and doing what’s needs to be done has evaporated.
I’ve got to the point where if it’s even remotely difficult or poses any sort of challenge, I plunge back into the cycle of too difficult, not good enough, not worthy, don’t deserve and feeling completely helpless.
I suppose it’s a positive that I’ve spotted that and realised it exists. I’ve got to fight through that. I’ve got to work through that. But that’s one of the things that’s getting in the way.
So this has been an interesting couple of days. I’ve had moments when I felt quite good about myself. I can remember on Saturday morning on waking up I felt positive with a sense of purpose in my life.
And I sort of mulled on that in the morning and before I got up and I felt quite good about that. When I got up it was easy for me to get into doing some of the things.
But then yesterday morning I felt the opposite about the very same thing. I worried that it was too difficult, that it’s too hard and questioned what I’d set myself up. I thought am I going to be able to do this. Is it just me over complicating things again?
There’s been a real flip flop of emotions over the last few days. There’s quite a few problems I’ve got that I can see. I’m really hard on myself. I’m really self critical. I’m driven by what I feel I should be doing rather than perhaps what really needs to be done.
I’m trying to make things perfect so that people will like me and accept me. And I’m back in the same cycle again. That’s what’s really frustrating and it’s very difficult trying to break that cycle and that’s what I’ve got to do. But I’m overwhelmed by what needs to happen.
I’m very frustrated that my mind just seems to be on ultra, ultra slow. I’m struggling to move things forward. The frustrating thing, the worrying thing about that is the completely pedestrian rate at which I appeared to be making progress (or not as the case may be).
It’s far slower than what I need it to do for me to be able to fix the problems I find myself with. Ones that I’ve created for myself because of my inactivity and lack of attention and my avoidance of anything demanding of myself – however small those demands might be.
I’m under no illusion. This is my fault. I’ve done this and I’ve got to change it myself. But it is really quite frustrating as there’s lots of things I’ve got to do now.
I’ve got to arrest the decline in my mental and emotional state. I think I’ve done that because the ultimate decline was me taking my own life and as I am still breathing I can tick that one off as my first success.
That decline’s been arrested, but now I’ve got to reverse the decline in my physical, mental and emotional health. It’s been happening the last couple of years. First I’ve got to stabilise and then once I’ve turned that corner and I’ve got to start coming up from the bottom of the curve.
It’s frustrating because I don’t know where to start. I’m overwhelmed by the numerous options open to me. I just did a search on Amazon to see what’s available. If I do a search for depression, there’s over 60,000 titles in the book section alone. A search on happiness books reveals there are over 100,000 titles. So it’s encouraging there are more titles related to happiness than depression. So there’s a lot of stuff out there.
I think there are two things I think I need to do. I’ve probably got to start with one book because I don’t need any more information. I’ve read lots of books but never done much with that information (otherwise I wouldn’t be here now).
There’s a whole load of stuff on YouTube and I could probably spend hours watching videos on how to deal with my issues. There are lots and lots of blog posts I could read about how to “fix myself”.
But I’ve got to do stuff. I can’t just keep gathering information. So I think I’m going to pick one book, digest it and take the best from that, try it out in the real world and see what happens.
I think the other thing I need to do is understand what antidepressants do. So far I have flatly refused to take antidepressants because I believe that my problem is a behavioural one, not a chemical one. I know that my brain chemistry is probably not at its best at the moment and that needs to change.
Many years ago I was given antidepressants and I didn’t like the side effects. And so I’m averse to doing that. When you read all the problems about the side effects some of these drugs have, they are just horrific. I took myself off them after just a couple of weeks.
When you read all the problems with people being dependent on these things it is frightening and I don’t want that. I know maybe it’s a harder choice, but I think I need to explore what an antidepressant might do for me and seek alternative ways of achieving the same things.
I know it’s about brain chemistry. I know that there are things you can do to positively impact your brain chemistry. I know exercise for example is good for you. There are other things, maybe herbal equivalents that might help as well.
So I think I probably need to explore what’s going on with antidepressants and see if I can find an alternative way of creating the same impact but chemically free.
The two ideas I’ve got at the moment to move forward are finding a book, doing something simple, (I think it has to start with simple stuff) and researching alternatives to antidepressants.
I don’t think I can do a whole load of things to make a big impact. It’s got to be simple things at the moment. I’m just so overwhelmed and struggling to deal with even the basic activities that it can’t be complicated.
I have to do this because I think as I mentioned earlier, I haven’t been doing anything since going to the doctors and that was eight weeks ago. I’m now not going to get any direct help from the health service for 15 to 20 weeks. It’s up to me to take control of this, otherwise it won’t happen.
This episode has been a bit of a rant today. I’m more frustrated at myself about the way I’ve been dealing with this. But actually that’s part of the reason why I’ve got these challenges because that tends to be how I tend to operate anyway. And I’ve got to break free of that cycle.
Let’s see if I can create momentum and start doing these recordings regularly so that I can actually fulfil on my commitment to myself to do this and see where that journey takes me.
So until next time.
