I’ve moved…

I’m blogging now at DepressionInMen.net, where I talk about my own depression as well as depression in men in general.

Speaking of depressing…

How depressing is it that I started a blog and lamely let it fade? That makes me just another one of those millions who have done the same. Now that’s depressing. It’s a kind of failure: failure to follow-through, something I’m rather familiar with. (Yes, I know I’m not alone.)

I’ve been working from home all these months, except for Mondays and the occasional exception. Using the standard American grading scale where A is Excellent and F is failure, I’d give myself a C- on this experience so far. Definitely not bad enough to be a D, but not good. For one, I’m gaining weight, for another, I’m billing less hours and therefore making less money. In other words, the discipline is suffering.

But on the up side, I’ve managed to avoid any more “acute psychological crises” (I just had to put that in quotes, it sounds so pretentious) like those which occurred in September. I am, however, consistently on the unhappy side of the happy/unhappy scale. I would characterize the way I feel these days as “barely livin’”. And still a day does not go by wherein I do not a) consider quitting working; and b) picture, in my head, my suicide (usually by hanging.)

Back in the pre-medication days, I also pictured my suicide at least once every day. That went away for a long, long time, say about 10 years or so. It’s a disturbing thing for it to become so common again. I don’t know why I “bother” to have such thoughts, since they are not accompanied by even the slightest inclination to perform the act itself. The idea that I would actually then stand up, go find a rope or belt or whatever, go through the process of selecting a location that offered the height and stability to support my big fat self, loop the rope/belt through it, etc., etc., is completely ludicrous.  The “ideations” — if that’s what they can be called — are more like expressions of frustration — like, “man, this is so pathetic, you oughta just be swingin’ from a tree.”

Anyway, in sum, if I were the disciplined lad I’d like to be, I’d be exercising and working more.  But all in all I’m not doing too poorly!

The LONG road back to semi-normalcy

(Apropos my previous post.)

Panic, panic, panic. That’s what I feel — to varying degrees — everytime I think about work this week.

I often think, what if I were an accountant? An office manager? Somebody’s executive assistant? A store-front clerk? In other words, what if I were somebody who really has to go to the place of work in order to be employed? I am so incredibly fortunate that I am perfectly able to work from home. Way back when, I did not choose my field of work thinking, “Ok, I should do such-and-such for a living, because I am a depressed person subject to acute crises and, with such a skillset, I’ll probably be able to stay home and still work during periods of crisis.” But I may as well have chosen that way, because it turns out — fortunately — that this is the position I’m in. Lucky, lucky me.

Why don’t I always work from home during thick and thin? Because actually, down deep, I don’t like the idea of working from home when I’m “normal.” The reason is because I fear that lack of human contact can — quietly and behind-the-scenes — subvert me psychologically. Also, as I’ve indicated elsewhere, I already feel prone to agoraphobia, andI feel like I need to actively fight it.

Anyway, on Monday of this week I was ready to try going back into the office, as I indicated in my previous post. I made it within two subway stops of the office and got off and went back the other direction to home. Strike one. Lucky again for me, the guy I’m working for is very understanding and knows full well that I can work some from home. I’ve worked a few hours per day since then, gradually building up.

Boy, I’ll tell you what. It would just be a whole lot easier if the meds worked like they used to. But you know what? I’ve lost faith in my long term ability to count on that ever happening again. Man, when I think that I’ll probably need to be (and hope to be) working for another 35 years, I wonder — how the heck is that even possible? I mean it just seems incredible.

No sense dwelling now on those 35 years! One day at a time…

Anyway, now I’m seriously thinking about making work-from-home a full-time thing. Despite my fears of agoraphobia settling in, there is just so much I’ve been liking about working from home for these three days. First, the house is immaculately clean (by our standards). By killing the commute time, and by having freedom to take small breaks and use the time as I see fit, I’ve taken that time to make our house more liveable. And the nicer looking house certainly helps with moods. I hardly did any housework before. And my poor wife is really working longer hours than normal these days, so she hasn’t exactly been acting the house-keeper role lately.

To make working at home function with as little downside as possible requires discipline.  First, because of my worry about agoraphobia (am I spelling that right?), I need to be disciplined to get out of the house at least to go across the street to the mall and rub shoulders with the masses a bit and say a few words out loud beyond talking to myself.  Next, I need to discipline myself out of a natural laziness.  When I don’t have to get up, shower and run to the subway, it’s pretty darn tempting to … not get up at all.  Or to get up and then not shower, just go sleepy-eyed over to my computer and start “working” while being an eye-rubbing, unshowered stinker.  So discipline is required to get up on time, shower, shave, dress and be prepared to “make the most of the day,” be it on the inside or the outside of this house.

If you are “one of us”, I bet you know what I mean when I say this: it’s awfully, awfully tempting in our psycho-pathetic lives to equate our laziness with our depression.  “Na, I don’t feel well enough to get out of bed.  I need to be sure I keep my anxiety in check. I’m ’suffering’ right now.  It’s okay if I sleep some more.”  Yeah, right, buddy.

Anyway, I’ll be working from home for at least a while.  We’ll see how it goes.

The road back to semi-normalcy

I’ve had to take three and one-half days off from working because of, shall we say, an “acute” episode. I’m happy to report that such time off work happens very very rarely for me, which I guess is an indication that — all in all — things have been going pretty well for me over the past several years. I remember when I wasn’t able to do anything, let alone work.

My ability to disappear from work on short notice is augmented by the fact that I am technically self-employed. I say “technically” because I work day-to-day in an office with other people, almost as though I were a true employee. Except I deliberately stay self-employed for the very reason that I know I am unpredictable. My arrangement with my “employer” is basically this: I will do really great work for you, but I will not be “part” of the company, I will not manage other people, I will not take on any office administrative roles, and I will be much less predictable when it comes to what time I arrive at the office. In turn, you don’t pay any payroll tax for me, you need not contribute to my social insurance, you do not pay me for holidays or vacations — you pay me only for the hours I work. This has the added benefit that I am absent less frequently than your employees throughout the year because, since I don’t get paid for vacation, I take less time off than everybody else.

It works out rather nicely. Of course for a depressed person it is also dangerous: I have little to fall back on and any “recuperative” periods I take off from work are at my own expense, so I have to make sure they don’t happen often. That’s a source of pressure, which one might say is a bad thing for someone whose stress threshhold is already lower than, say, your average person. Nevertheless, I would never give up this freedom. In the midst of a depression, one of the worst things that can happen to you is a feeling of guilt. I already feel guilty for taking time off from work so quickly and without advanced warning. If I were truly employed and getting paid for my time off, I would feel even more guilty. I would always feel like I am taking advantage of my employer and that he/she must really regret having me on the team. But as a self-employed person working at someone’s office, there is a kind of understanding that I am a bit “quirky” and that, all in all, I’m a net plus.

Anyway, back to the present circumstances.

On Tuesday I left work after only a few hours. I had that familiar fight-or-flight problem, big time. I could not concentrate on anything and I was positively afraid that someone would come up and talk to me. So I announced that I wasn’t feeling well, then I left. On the streets of the city I was in full zombie mode. If you are “one of us” you know what I mean — walking around (more like shuffling around) slowly, looking at nothing but sometimes looking at everything without seeing anything. By that I mean sometimes I keep my head down as I shuffle about the town, but other times I’m looking around as I walk, fixing my eyes on something for a few seconds, then switching to something else for a few seconds… but never really seeing what it is that I’m fixing on.

What to do? I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t want to sit anywhere and have a coffee, read a book, or anything like that. But I didn’t particularly want to keep walking either. I needed motion but didn’t want to move. That meant trains!

For about four hours I road trains. I have a monthly pass, and as long as I stay within a particular region, there is no added cost. I road the inner-city subways for a while, then switched to the suburban commute trains, which I could ride for free (with my pass) as long as I didn’t cross the city’s limits and make my way into a suburb. It has several stops inside the city, so that wasn’t so tough, as long as I was paying attention. Trains are great: motion without moving. And, unlike driving your own auto, someone else is in control of a train so you don’t have to worry about making mistakes. City buses are too crowded, noisy and make too many stops. Trains — especially those suburban commute trains — are more comfortable.

I rode around without looking at anybody, just staring out the window or closing my eyes. I got hungry at one point and got off at a station that I know has a Burger King. Nothing like eatin’ healthy when you’re feelin’ down!

I timed my trip home so that it would pretty much coincide with my wife’s arrival home from work. Poor girl, she knows right away when things are bad. She was very supportive. Generally, she is always very supportive. Sometimes she gets angry, and this is something that I completely understand. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: there is no more selfish and self-absorbed being than a depressed person! It’s all about me, me, me. We can’t do this, we can’t do that, because I don’t feel good. I don’t feel comfortable doing such and such right now, I’m too depressed. No, I don’t want to go out, I’m depressed and I don’t want to talk to other people. I hate your friend so-and-so, she is too happy for me right now. You go over there without me.

Anywho, that was Tuesday, now it’s Friday. I let myself relax on Wednesday, then I decided yesterday that since I really need to go back to work Monday, I don’t want to get too comfortable laying around relaxing and reading. So yesterday and today I started what I like to call my “rehab”. It’s a little program to get back on the road to semi-normalcy. It involves getting up and shaving and showering just as if I were going to go to work. I also leave the house at normal work times, ride the subway, rub shoulders with the masses rather than hide at home. In other words, I’m re-proving to myself that I am able to get out of the house and be one of them.

After doing a few things out of the house, I then come back home. It’s sure tempting to fall in bed, but that’s not part of rehab! So yesterday I cleaned like mad (no I’m not OCD), but I did so slowly and with headphones — generally it was a “comfortable” yet busy kind of cleaning. Today I am going to finally do my U.S. tax return, which is overdue by one month (I don’t owe anything, so hopefully they won’t ding me — last year they didn’t and I was also late.) That will take several hours of thought and effort. Then back out again for a few hours, because my biggest fear about these periods of crisis and rest is that I get too addicted to staying home and sleeping. So sleep is out of the question until nighty-nights, and leaving the house now and again is a priority.

One of the manifestations of my depression/anxiety has always been a near-agoraphobia. I am completely and totally capable of blissfully staying at home for days on end. Then, when I finally must leave the house for whatever reason, I get scared that I’ll be unable to prove to myself that I am capable of existing without panic in the outside world. This is why even during periods of deep depression I really try to discipline myself to leave the house at regular intervals. So today I will go out again and do something that involves at least one or two words spoken to a fellow human, even if that means just ordering a coffee, sitting alone and reading the paper.

So that’s kinda my little tip for when you’re on a hiatus due to depression: work yourself slowly back into a routine that includes shaving (if you’re a man), showering, dressing and leaving the house as if you were back in your normal life. Also, while you are at home, stay dressed in your “public” clothing, not in comfy clothes. Gotta get used to that beltline again!

Look, all this fakery is definitely not the same thing as going to work, I’ll admit that. But it’s a start and — if you’re anything like me — it requires discipline. And I’m not saying you have to do this everyday during a hiatus — you should spend the first couple of days relaxing and doing whatever the hell you want. But when you start feeling that tinge of anxiety reminding you that someday soon you need to go back to the real world, that’s when it’s a good time to get yourself into a rehap routine.

Prozac Nation Indeed!

I live outside the United States. For many years I’ve been on Prozac (40mg) and for the last year or so it definitely has pooped-out, as we say. I’m not as bad as I was before, but I’m getting there.

When I moved to my new country of residence, I took along a note from my doc back home and went to a doctor here (an internist), who has been nice enough to keep the Prozac flowing, no questions asked. But now that I need to consider alternatives — or at least consider increasing the dosage — I decided it was time to finally get a shrink here.

So I did a little research, found a psych who speaks fluent English and setup an appointment. I was pretty excited and relieved to finally be doing something to make things better again. That was, for me, a first “big step” to finally get around to contacting a new doctor. I went to his office with a lot of hope.

Well I was, shall we say, shot down! Gutted! The shortest appointment of my life.

We introduced ourselves and I explained my situation. “So what do you want from me?” he asked, a little off-putting, if you ask me. I responded that I’d like to consider changing my medication or adding to it or increasing the dosage or whatever. That I failed to ask him to psychoanalyze me seems to have been a real affront to him, because his response was…

“Why don’t you just fly back to the States and have your doctor change your prescription and then just get your drugs by mail?”

And you had to hear him and see him when he said this. He was mocking me, basically being a jerk. It’s my impression (though of course I can’t know really know this for certain) that he saw me as a typical American pill popper. He loathes our type, believe you me.

“Good idea,” says I. “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

And I left without saying another word. Neither did he say goodbye behind me.

Four minutes, tops.

The search continues…