Sharing time. Not sure if this is relevant to the thread but:
Some years ago in the RAF I was newly promoted to a senior rank and was working all hours to get a new section up and running, In time I started feeling ill. It began with dry heaving before going to work and then things got worse. I could not sleep, feeling sick and so on. Eventually, I went to see the base doctor. We had a long chat and at the end he told me to go home. I just told him I did not have the time to be sick. He just looked me straight in the in the face and said "If I told you you had cancer - would you do as I said?" That was an easy one. Then he said "The good news is you don't have cancer, but what you have killed my wife and it will kill you too if you do not do as I say" That sort of thing brings you up short. He explained what was going on in my brain (apparently it was a stress related chemical imbalance) and why I had to stop. So I crawled off home armed with some pills.
The first few days were the worst - mixed feels of paranoia and guilt. I just hid away. My wife said my personality changed and I wasn't the person she married, even though I felt the same inside. Eventually I thought I felt better, put my uniform on and set off to drive to work. About half way there, I just could not do it, so I turned round and drove home. I tried again a few days later with the same result. It was a really weird thing, I felt perfectly healthy physically but inside I was a wreck. We we were in quarters on the edge of the Chilterns at the time so I started to go for long walks. but they only helped a bit. There was no pleasure in it. I could not reconcile feeling physically well with the guilt of not being able to work.
Finally, it settled down and I went back but it was a long time before I could even talk about it. The abiding feeling was one of guilt at letting people down, shame and inadequacy. Military people, and officers especially. are not supposed to cave in under stress but it can happen.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
And this:
I suppose is there is a moral, it is that it can happen to anyone and it is not necessarily a weakness. If you feel it creeping up on you, do not be ashamed to talk about it. If I had been able to do that, perhaps it would have been different.
So true!
I'm guilty myself of (in the past) dismissing people who claimed to be depressed as posers who were just not used to some adversity in their lives anymore and should just man up (or woman up). Then, in my mid-20's, I hit a rough spot myself, triggered by something that happened in my life that on the surface was bad, but something that you should normally recover from in a few weeks or months time. But to me it felt like my life was over, while people around me couldn't really understand, because on the surface I was doing well and had everything going for me. I also denied to myself that the problem was largely in my own head. I didn't want to see myself as a "loser" with a psychological problem and kept telling myself that the reason for feeling this way was that I was experiencing a perfect storm of external circumstances that other people couldn't really understand.
Although I gradually recovered from it, it has really affected about 5 years of my (young) life in a negative way. Only when looking back at this period many years later in my mid 40's, I started to see it for what it was and now I regret not having taken it seriously at the time. A mental health professional holding up a mirror to me could have been a great help, but I never sought help because I didn't want to be "one of those people".
After many truly fantastic years, especially the last decade, just months ago this happy episode abruptly ended for me with a period of severe anxiety attacks (not my words, but from a professional assessment) and moderate-severe depression triggered indirectly by Covid-19. I thought: "Not this **** again!", so this time I
did look for help and I am happy I did! I would say I'm now 90% better than on the day I called my GP (anxiety attacks have disappeared and depression toned down). It's amazing what simple Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can do (I had never heard of that before).
I'm by no means a clinical case and normally a happy and stable person. But apparently I do have some character traits that make me prone to this in certain extraordinary circumstances. I guess this is why I responded so well to the CBT. There must be many people who, like me, are temporarily pushed out of balance but
in their head they are facing the abyss! The experience
is very real for them (us) and downright scary! Don't dismiss this (as I did myself in the past). If you have not been through this yourself, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Therefore, I encourage the recent increase in reporting about mental health issues and removal of the stigma. A great many people
can be helped with CBT. In my own case the sessions were done entirely online (apart from the 45 minutes assessment to see what treatment would benefit me) and then there were "homework" assignments, self study etc. Thanks our wonderful NHS for making this available to me and others!
And going back ontopic: activities like walking, birdwatching etc are actually part of a the large toolbox that CBT is! I needed little encouragement for this part (though obviously limited by the lockdown at the time).