Prozac dreams

The side effects of Prozac have been interesting, the most startling one is the dreams.  Does anyone else have Prozac dreams?  They are very vivid, very intricate and I wake up shattered. 

I'm sure dreams mean things, but no idea what mine mean.  They all seem to involve travelling, planes, trains and automobiles, but I never get where I'm going.  One of the big problems, is that I wake up shattered, I'm exhausted before the day has started.  I'm already halving my dose of prozac and the dreams haven't subsided.  Anyone know how long it will be before they disappear?

Seeing depression in others

I'm feeling a lot better now.  I'm stronger, happier and looking foward to the future.

But now I'm struggling to support others with depression, and in the worst possible scenario, when they won't admit it.  It is always dangerous to try and diagnose it in others, I worry that I'm projecting. However, when I can see others exhibiting the same behaviours that I did, then I worry.  I can see someone who is lethargic, eating too much, drinking too much, no interest in the people around them and their self confidence has disappeared.  I've tried being supportive, I've tried being sympathetic, but it's not worked.   I could try tough love, but it feels like a dangerous strategy.  I don't want to see what rock bottom looks like, it scares me.

I'm also getting angry, I put so much work and effort into getting better, I got help, I took tablets, I went to counselling.  I'm starting to feel that if they won't do that, then it's being selfish, they don't care enough about me to take the same actions. 

Any bright ideas on what to do for the best?

What is a good mother?

I'm continually wondering if I'm a good mum, and I guess a lot of mothers do.  Today I heard some very sad news that a friend of a friend's little girl died in accident, she was 4.  It's so sad and gets you thinking.  I love my daughter more than life itself, and I want to make sure she knows it.  At the same time I don't want her to be spoilt, but it's hard to find the balance.  Then at the same time, I want to make her happy, but I get few up, tired, resentful of the constant demands.

I'm trying to teach my daughter that if she needs a drink, she won't always get it immediately, as I might be busy.  If she hasn't eaten her tea, she doesn't get a biscuit.  When it's down to me, I'm good at keeping things under control, what is harder is when I need her to do things.  Getting dressed, brushing teeth can be a battle.  I don't want to be the bossy mum, I want to be the fun mum.  I want her memories of me to good, but then I don't want her to be spoilt, demanding and not have unreasonable expectations of what life will deliver. 

Help, how do I make motherhood any easier?

Goodbye to the terrible twos and the evil 11

I guess this is the time to reflect on the last year.  It was a fairly rubbish year, the highlights being

• sitting in my GP's surgery waiting for her to say I told you so when I told her I was depressed;
• Lying in on my daugher's bedroom floor waiting for her to go to sleep, sobbing because I knew I was going to be working beyond midnight and up again at 5.30
• being signed off with depression and that feeling i was letting everyone down.

But there have been highlights

• my daughter is amazing, wonderful, frustrating, beautifully illogical and very funny, she makes me laugh like no-one else.  She grows and develops everyday, we have proper conversations, but she does have a lively conversation, so you never quite know what's true.   I'm not sure she and her best friend went into space while at nursery.
• I've made some good friends, somehow, through this mess I've made friends, some on twitter and some in real life, I like having friends and never seem to have many.
• I've worked out what's important and what's not, I don't always stick by it, but I'm more concious of it.

Obviously I've made the usual new year's resolutions about eating less and exercising more, but the other ones are:

• Be more open with people
• Be yourself, don't try to be what you think other people want you to be
• Do what you enjoy sometime.

Wonder how I will get on

Going round in circles

Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever learn.  My spiral into my most recent depression was accelerated by having a lot on at work, feeling stressed and just taking on more and more work in order to prove to people I could do it.   In the end I just couldn’t do everything, I worried about letting people down, I worried that they would think less of me, they would realise I was as rubbish as I knew I was.  So I just had to keep working to hide the fact that underneath I was rubbish.   In the end I would work all day and all evening.  I had to take an hour out to put my daughter to bed, I would then lie on her bedroom floor crying because I couldn’t work out what to do next and how to get out of the hole I was in.   In the end I got out as when I got signed off work, and finally quit my job and took what is meant to be a less stressful role.  Severe depression called for some drastic steps.

So now to the present day, I’m in the new job.   I can see the cycle repeating, I am volunteering to take on lots of work, I want to show everyone I can do well.   However, I’m starting to reach that point where I have too much to, I’m not quite sure how it’s going to get done in the time I have available.   But this time I am conscious of the cycle and I can see the way its heading, so I can try and stop it before the problem beyond repair.   I’ve been reading about mindfulness, so I try to stop and think about what I am doing and how I can get out of the circle.  Unlike last time, I now ask for help.  Other people want to be involved and are happy to help, so it might not be a negative mark against me to ask.   I beginning to realise I don’t have to do it all on my own.  Maybe at times I can learn.

Judge, jury and executioner

I never used to think I was a judgmental person.  I like to think I’m a nice, liberal, open-minded, Guardian reader.  But I worry continually that people are judging me, they judge me on my weight, on my hair, clothes, what I say, how I sit, what car I drive…………………  Do I think they are judging me because I am judging them?

Mostly I worry that people think I’m stupid and useless.   I’m pretty convinced that that because I’m fat, people automatically think I’m stupid and lazy.   If I’m dressed badly then I’m lazy and slovenly.  Everyone on the tube judges me, everyone at work judges me, my clients judge me.   Or at least I think they do.

But talking this through I might not be being completely rational.  I don’t judge everyone like this.  I’ll be honest, I make some snap judgments, but even when I do I’ve forgotten about them moments later and they are of no consequence.   Therefore maybe not everyone is judging me, they’ve probably got better things to think about.   People may not equate fat with stupid, badly dressed may not equal lay and if I’m really looking on the bright side, I may not even be badly dressed anyway.

I need to stop worrying about what other people think of me, and start focussing on what is more important and what I want to do.  But that can be easier said than done.

An open letter - bullying in the workplace

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  It’s because I’ve been busy and life is generally going well.   I’ve started a new job, which seems good so far.  However, it has made me reflect on a previous job that didn’t go so well.  I was bullied in the work place, I ended up in a very bad place, on Prozac and thoroughly destroyed internally; it took a lot to get back from that.  I have discussed this with my therapist, she suggested I write a letter to perpetrators to tell them how I felt, how they made me feel.  I’ve not been able to do this to date, but I’m feeling stronger now so here goes.

Dear M&M

You will never read this letter, you will never know how you made me feel.  I doubt I even cross your mind, and I’m sure you are not aware of how you destroyed me.  You both think you are good and decent people, and I was just a hysterical woman who was bad at her job.

It has taken me over 7 years to get over this.  Everyday I hated going into that job, I used to spend Sunday afternoon’s on my bed crying because I didn’t want to go in.  I seriously considered crashing my car so I could be signed off work for a few weeks and not have to face it.   The only reason I didn’t do it was that I couldn’t work out how to crash the car and break my legs, but not be more seriously injured.  I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t want to go to work.   That was a ridiculous way to work and live, especially when it got to the point that I used to cry in the toilets at work.

Looking back,  I think we all just entered into a vicious downward cycle.  You criticised me; you always told me what I was doing wrong; you treated me like an idiot and talked down to me when it wasn’t necessary; you disappeared off for meetings without telling me what was going on.   The more you undermined me, the more I lost confidence and then the worse I started to perform.   The criticisms you made started to become valid, I doubted myself, I worked more slowly, I questioned the work I did.  

And then you all stopped speaking to me, I found that to be the worse thing.  I was in work for days on end and no-one spoke to me.  Literally no-one on my team would even say good morning or goodbye, I had to ask why you didn’t like me, what I had done to turn you against me.  To this day I don’t know the answer to that.  You seemed like decent people, slightly geeky and awkward, but decent.

In the end I complained about the bullying and I got fired.  No-one ever believed me, I started to wonder if it was all in my head, I agreed that I must have been rubbish, which is why I was ignored and why I was fired.  You thoroughly destroyed my confidence, until that point there were many things I doubted about myself, but my intelligence and ability to do my job wasn’t one of them.   The one thing I thought I was good at was job.  I’d always thought I might not be sporty, I might not be good at art, I might not be thin, but I am clever.   You convinced me I wasn’t clever, therefore I was nothing, I had nothing, I had no positives. 

You ought to know that in the year after I was fired, it often took a lot of strength to get out of bed, to talk to people, to face friends and family, because I was a big fat failure.    I have to thank a friend to whom I am eternally grateful, after I collapsed in tears all over her in the pub one evening and she as good as frogmarched me into the doctors for a diagnosis of depression and subsequent treatment.   But I was no longer me, I lost my confidence, my sense of humour, I was even unable to order from a menu for fear of making the wrong decision.

But what I have now learnt is that you were wrong, I’m not stupid, I am good in my job.    In the last 7 years, I have been promoted, I have significantly increased my salary, I have had consistently good feedback and reviews from managers, peers and more recently from teams I have managed.    Sometimes I still don’t believe them, sometimes I still worry that secretly everyone still thinks I am rubbish.  If I get called into an unexpected meeting with my senior management I still break out into a cold sweat, start shaking and worry that I am going to get my marching orders.   But I really should look at the statistics, I’ve once been hauled into a room unexpectedly and fired, I’ve been in a room with a manager countless times and not been fired.

It has taken a long time to get me back, and there have been blips, but I am back, you have not beaten me.  I don’t think that was ever your intention, I’m not sure you ever had any deliberate intentions in any of this, but there were just a lot of unintended consequences of your behaviour, which was thoughtless, ignorant and at times cruel.

I’ve no idea where you are now, or what you are doing, but if I’m honest I don’t wish you luck, I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, but let’s be frank I don’t want you to have the most amazing life ever, just managing like the rest of us will do me fine.

In the mean time, I’m back, I’m stronger and it will take more than 2 weak men to break me this time.

Me