Episode Summary
I can’t believe it has been 100 days since I started this podcast and 145 days since I sat opposite my GP explaining to them that I wanted to end my own life.
A lot of ground has been covered since then and in this episode I do a quick summary of the journey I have taken so far and reflect on what the next steps might be.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi and welcome to today’s episode of Hope, Help, Happiness.
So it’s the hundredth episode of this podcast and for the last hundred days, I have been podcasting daily about the challenges I’ve faced. I’ve shared how I’m dealing with them and looked at ways of dealing with them so I never find myself again feeling like I want to end my own life.
145 days ago, I was sat in my GP’s surgery explaining why I wanted to do just that. I then hung around for about six weeks waiting for the health service to kick in and help me and get me out of the funk I was in.
At the time I wasn’t capable of doing anything to move myself forward. I was staying in bed. I wasn’t looking after myself. I was struggling, life was really difficult and that’s why partly why I wanted to end it. But I got nothing back from the NHS and I decided then to take the D.I.M. Approach and Do It Myself.
I’ve gone back and looked at the first episode and it’s a bit of a bleak read. That’s actually an encouraging thing for me to say right now because by comparison to where I am now to where I was then, clearly I’ve moved on.
And so I’ve scanned through all hundred episodes to look at the highlights and to see how my journey has progressed. And it’s been interesting to look back.
So my second episode was about having committed to doing this podcast, I suddenly felt really overwhelmed by doing it every single day.
Then with the reading I was doing I discovered learned helplessness – a theme that’s run throughout these first hundred days.
Firstly, it’s been about me understanding what learned helplessness is and how that has affected me. Secondly it was about discovering the book by Martin Seligman (Learned Optimism) and looking at what’s going on in there, to trying out and understanding their approach (e.g. the adversity belief, consequence model of optimism).
So that’s been a running theme that will continue. This is because I don’t think I have fully explored it to really take advantage of what is in that book to deal with my challenges.
A favourite episode of mine is the fourth episode, (Episode 004) where I mapped out the progress I’d had from the moment I stepped in to my GP surgery, to getting the letter saying it would take another seven months to get treatment.
To see the amount of effort that’s gone into it with five different health practitioners, all the phone calls, the emails and face to face meetings letters. It’s a ridiculous amount of effort only to be told nothing’s coming for seven months. That is another reason why I started this podcast.
I started therapy at that time and I’d been having session roughly every week. I think a big step forward for me was finding James Altucher’s book, Choose Yourself. That book showed me I only had to take something small to start getting back on track because he’s been where I have been.
And I did that with some basic exercises and then moved on to walking. That really was the thin end of the wedge to allow me to break through the inertia I had encountered through the condition I was in and the state I was in at the time.
And so I started making progress there. It was interesting facing the early internal resistance to moving forward. In fact there was a huge inertia to actually making the progress and I think there’s still an element of that there.
The inertia was huge in the beginning, but I was able to come through that by just starting with something small and allowing the momentum of that to build up.
I discovered Wim Hof quite early as well, which is the cold showers and the breathing exercise. And again, that’s been a theme that’s run through and I have been doing that pretty much every day until this last week. I’ve had an interruption to my morning routine because of the efforts I’m now making to get back into the workplace.
I’ve got to get back into that. I had a cold shower this morning, which was quite a shock having been out of it for four or five days.
I did an episode on Rumination. I looked at the introduction of meditation to my morning routine. And then throughout these hundred days, I’ve been giving updates on what the NHS have done or said or communicated about when I am going to get the treatment they’ve promised.
The counselling is continuing and I’ve commented on or shared some stories that have come from that.
As I have started to face up to challenges I have, the realisation that this isn’t going to necessarily be an easy or painless journey has hit me hard. In order to deal with some of the challenges that have caused me to get into that state, I have to probably experience a little bit of emotional pain.
I’ve had a number of blips and relapses during these hundred days. I’ve recounted those and explained where I think I’ve caused them and explained how I’m feeling when those have happened.
Little things like the power of routine have really helped, but again, there seems to be this pattern of resistance appearing with the occasional blip.
I’ve also been getting insights such as needing to let go of my old story and the need to go deeper. And again, learned helplessness keeps coming up.
Another standout episode for me was the one about time travel where I can go back and change what things mean, which I thought was a really powerful step. I think I’m going to go back and revisit that.
A lot of these things I pick up and podcast about are because they’ve passed through my consciousness that day and I think they’re relevant. So far, I haven’t really gone back before today to review and see what’s there that I might still do again. I’d almost forgotten about that episode and I’ll go back and look at that again.
Other things have come up too over these 100 days.
So one episode that was a sad episode for me to record was about the casualties of struggling with depression. Having isolated myself from my friends, particularly those who are at a distance, I’ve lost touch and lost the connection to the point where two pairs of friends are no longer responding to any of my communication.
It is my fault. It’s my loss. I’ve set that up, and it’s just sad that it’s a consequence of the way things have gone.
I still have a stigma attached to it. I’m still reluctant to admit I’ve had these problems. That’s probably the one of the biggest lessons I probably need to learn to deal with. But I know I’m not the only one who feels like that.
But I believe I can certainly heal myself to a certain extent and feel better without having to tell someone else. Whether I need to share this with other people and be completely open and vulnerable as a way of finalising that treatment – I don’t know. But I’m happy enough at the moment to go so far and not tell people.
Then there was a shift in me becoming more proactive as I started to realise I needed to understand more about what’s going on. So I did the research into antidepressants, what they were, what they did in the brain, what types there are, what the side effects are and what their success is.
I then realised I needed to start looking at alternatives to that. In doing so, I found a great resource at mentalhealth.net, which is probably the best resource I found online. It has impartial, well-written information written by neuroscientists and doctors.
I came across that brilliant video, Adam Grey Matters, which is a beautiful animation on someone’s head of what goes on in someone’s head when they’re both depressed and recovering from depression.
More recently I’ve had some insights, such a stunning insight where I realised if I change my thoughts, I can change the way I feel. I sort of knew that, but when you actually do it and experience it, you go, “Oh wow. It’s powerful!”
The challenge I have now, is being able to do that whenever I need to rather than whenever I feel like it because there is a difference.
As I’ve gone forward, I’ve started looking at whether I need to take anything to support my healing or shall I just focus on getting the cause sorted out?
Relationships have come up. Recently I’ve asked if this is a barrier to an intimate relationship and should I actually share this with someone else? Would it be fair to subject someone else to me right now? I still don’t know the answer to that.
More recently I did an episode on walking, which has played a big part in my recovery.
So that’s just a bit of a quick canter through what’s been happening over these hundred days. I have been using this podcast as a form of self therapy; as a form of accountability; as a form of maybe helping to educate others too.
I think it’s still a long way from where I want to go with this. That’s because I’m still a long way from where I want to go in terms of being able to manage my emotions and be able to deal with the challenges in life that previously have caused me to go into a low.
That’s about my confidence, my self esteem and my self worth together with the value I place on myself and how I do that. It’s also about having the emotional courage to be able to deal with some of the more challenging issues in life like dealing with rejection and things like that.
So there’s still a long way to go on that journey. But I think where I’m at now, 100 days since I started this, 145 days since I was on the verge of taking my own life, it’s a huge contrast. I’m pleased I’ve done this and I’m hoping that this will be of value to other people too – maybe you.
Perhaps you can take some snippet of an idea that might just help you. Or it might be the very idea that from where I was is that it’s possible to find your way out of something similar. Hopefully some of these points will help you do that if you find yourself struggling.
So that’s today’s episode.
It’s a bit of a ramble through. I just wanted to mark the hundredth episode with a quick canter through the things I think have been important.
I think now rather than just allow myself to flip from one idea to another, which has been almost out of desperation to find something to cling on to be able to move myself forward, I think now it’s a case of picking something and move on with it and go deeper. This is instead of just going from quick fix to quick fix; from one shiny object to another shiny object.
There are a number of options. There is the Wim Hof method, which I committed to again last week. There’s focusing on learned helplessness. There is finding things to put my brain in a more positive state other than antidepressants. And there’s even the CBT type model to start to explore some of the things beyond that, which I think is going to come when the NHS treatment finally kicks in.
So there’s a number of things that I can do and it’s about choosing one and going with it.
The next phase of the journey is probably going to be about more deliberate, more focused energy and more focused activity, dealing with the specific issues.
Until tomorrow.
