My blog is about my on-going realizations as I recover from depression, well the saner sounding ones, which I think are worth sharing. I chose the name because the cherry blossom was just coming into bloom as I lifted out of the awful fog of anxiety and depression.
Decided that now that I am no longer depressed I would start a new blog on the next stage of my journey. Maintaining my sanity ;-). not sure how that will go hmmmmmmmmm . Was told today that I will not have a relapse if I stick with my recovery plan, feck it will have to go back to work soon so and just as I was starting to enjoy my insanity. So even though I am to go back to work I hope to carry on blogging. Thinking in ink is so fun and such a joy to be able to express all those thoughts finally and not just in images.
The music that inspired my recovery, my favourite as a child.
The art that inspired my recovery, my favourite artist as a teenager. Loooove the wrapped landscape.
The film of the making of the gates is beyond inspirational. I hope to participate in the over the river project if I can afford to travel there. Lets hope it gets approval. I was inspired by this as so many aspects of my job are similar to the officials Jean Claude and Christo encountered and I could feel the angst of the poor officials who had to find ways of facilitating or not facilitating their project.
The Tv show that aided it
Powerful female professional role model. Albeit fictional lol
The books are on my embarrassing book collection page. I may perhaps return to cherry blossom for advise for time to time. And thanks to the joys of modern medicine.
Remember to treat your mental health like your dental health ( I have beautiful straight white teeth)
Be kind to yourself and the others you meet on your way.
Take time out of your busy day to blow bubbles and spin on the spinner in the park.
Stop to identify the flowers, moths and butterflies.
My love of bubbles comes form this song, sung to me by me Great Aunt Janey. So here I am finally all joined up and ready to move on.
I thought that I was a tough strong person. Many things are tough and strong in tension but not in compression. This is the basis of all structural design. The fundamental properties of materials cannot be changed but they can be mixed with other things to create new materials and give the new one some of the properties of the old. I have started re-reading some of my text books from when I was working in structures many many years ago, mostly to see if my memory and intellect were working again but also because I find it interesting. I got to thinking on the application of the practicalities of engineering and how it applies to mental health. I hate that term and really really don't like to use it. It is the stigmatisation of the disharmony of the mind (mental health) kept me from going to the doctor and getting medical help for my condition, referred to many as my episode. Seechange is a wonderful organisation trying to change that. If it was less of a stigma then people like me and many others would get the medical help they needed before they got to crisis stages. but enough of that . I looked at the way the concept of stress is explained in JE Gordons wonderful book Structures or why things don't fall down.
Stress/strain =E (youngs modulus) for a particular material. This is a measure of a materials rigidity. The key to understanding how a material behaves is by knowing its properties and that is the same for a person. Resilience is a measure of a persons ability to bounce back and is similar to the principal of elasticity but not exactly. I make a significant improvement in my progress when I came across the concept of neuro plasticity , which considered the plastic nature of the brain. Although it was a very long buried memory I recalled lectures on plasticity and particularly the plasticity of clays, from my college days. Plasticity I could understand, medical mumbo jumbo about neurons I could not. So I worked from there and read the lovely book the Brain that changes itself. It is to mental health what gordons book is to engineering( well maybe not) but it was so simple for me to understand. The resilience of the human spirit mind and soul is more akin to ductility than elasticity. I had the metaphor all wrong. I could never get better if I could not understand the problem and the causes of it. I just needed my motto, my metaphor to work with and then I could understand. I think in pictures alot and got so bad mentally that I could not read so I had to think entirely in images for a little while. I suppose that was very interesting in some ways as it opened up a world without writing for me.
When my youngest got ill first I read many medical papers on it. All very confusing at first, it was like trying to learn a new language, but by persevering I learned. I learned all about the different treatments tried and the chances of their success. Some of the junior doctors patiently explained things to me and answered my questions. Now although I could not reason very well by the middle of the episode, when I was able to get out of bed, get dressed and believe in my future wellness, I knew that I had to find some way of regaining my previous mental capacity. When I discovered the concept of neuroplasticity I knew I could get better. There were so many stories of brains evolving to compensate for losses within them. I might not get back all my functioning I thought but I would give it one hell of a try. So I started, meditation, colour therapy, visualisation, exercise, eating particular foods, brain training, art,( a minor addiction to sky arts followed that bit) crochet, all sorts of things to stimulate my brain. Music really really helped as I understand music memory is stored in a different part of your brain than other memories. I gave brain training a go despite my misgiving as I thought it was a load of old s**te before my episode. When I found I could no longer multiply my friend advised me to re-learn my times tables and after 5 times tables it all came back. I found it hard to estimate quantities so baking and measuring helped that. Sometimes you just need one little thing, one small key to unlock the doors of thought. So plasticity was it. However I found that neuro plasticity was not exactly like engineering plasticity and that was enough to set me on the road to regaining my mental agility.
So now I am once again fascinated by things that fascinated me in the past. I have reconnected with many things. My counsellor's constant refrain about connecting hit home, I am more than the sum of my parts. I think it may be time to bit the bullet and actually try out some of the designs I have been working on. Most recently I have been sketching dog clothes, yes seriously I have, am sketching designs for wind powered bubble machine, not a big leap from kinetic art to bubble producing kinetic art. Today I saw a yeast powered co2 bubble maker in action in a fish tank a thing of beauty , one perfect bubble a second and a half. so I will be taking a break from blogging for a while to make some things. I hope that taking simple designs and turning them into real things will be the final piece in the puzzle of reconnecting myself. I feel the creative urge returning and hopefully this time I can move on from expressing myself through my baking and crochet to more things. So bye for now all you lovely people out there in blogger land. I am taking a break from blogging as therapy. I will return when my house is clean, I have made Luas pirate outfit for the pirate party next week and I have at least one section of the wind catching element of the bubble machine in operation.
So I am off to view more houses,hopefully woodworm free ones, to make that fez, to build a windcatcher, and to get some more miracle berry fruit. Truly a weird and wonderful experience. Something that will alter your view of the perception of reality so much: lemons that taste sweet as rock candy. Bye for a little while. Go get yourself some miracle berries, lemons, really really bitter apples crunch away and enjoy, possible best done in the presence of friends to add to the fun. Good night all.
My poor brain in a tizzie. I had a plan for my return to work, move closer to work thereby cutting down on my travel time and have access to more interesting things as I would be living in a city. Then I was sitting on the beach wrapped in a blanket reading while my daughter swam and bodyboarding. A man stopped to remark on the weather and we got chatting. (I have a thing for the weather, comparing it to previous years, looking at predictions to see if they are even vaguely accurate.) He shared his favourite weather prediction website with me and I invited him to sit and chat. It was one of those chilly summer evenings, warm enough if you were in the water but breezy on the sand. The sun was going down. I recently started to listen to the advice and life stories of others, since I found out I did not have all the answers. He had recently moved to the town, after making a decision to significantly change his life. I was surprised and a little shocked as he told me his story, he seemed to be of an age where it was time for the pipe and slippers and grandchildren. I had been telling him of my day looking at houses and planning my move and how nice it was to take time out. It was his turn to be shocked, he wondered how I could leave such a beautiful place. He only spoke aloud what I had been thinking. I loved the area, the flowers, the beach , the sea, the cafes, but I had not seen that for years while I had been descending to the abyss of despair. I am so scared of the future as I have not planned it. For my whole life I planned my future, what I would be doing, how things would turn out, I set career goals and worked thought them. Then life had the cheek to thwart my goals and plans. I had not planned my first child, she was a gift from god, a happy accident who has brought me much joy and the inevitable pain, I planned my second child but I did not plan for her illness, I worked hard to help her get over it but I did not plan for it to come back, I worked hard to get promoted but I did not plan to be assigned to a job 30 miles away. I made plans and life decided to keep interfering.
Now I am making plans again. I am scared, in fact I am petrified. I thought about this and wondered how I have lived my whole life being so scared and anxious and yet pushed myself to keep going. I remembered chatting to a chap I ended up working for about that. About 5 years previously he interviewed me for my first job in Ireland, I came first out of 80 others and always wondered why, I was so surprised as my work experience was so different to the job I was interviewed for. I ended up taking a job closer to home. Anyway to the point of all this. On my first day at that new job he shot into my office and introduced himself. He said "I was wondering if you really were the girl in the skip", I was taken aback , Himself and the other guy used to occasionally chat about the week they spent interviewing us all; all shiny and hopeful, they had been very impressed by me, not because of my work experience but because of my ability to work through my fear. At interviews they always asked about your previous jobs and I had worked on piling. Part of my job was to get into a skip/tube, and descend 35 meters into the soil of London to check the bearing capacity of the base of the pile under-ream. It was quite a hazardous thing to do and there were many safety precautions. I am also claustrophobic, which complicated things.
They listened to the description, the safety precautions, the properties of London clay, the use of the hand penetromoter, and then he asked me was I sacred. I had forgotten my answer , he reminded me :Scared, I said, I WAS PETRIFIED, they were so amused by me and my ability to just get on with it I was hired. Single minded determination is what they looked for in the northwest, not a place for the faint hearted. Knowledge could be thought but that level of determination is born and bred into you. The ability to just do it is what kept me going for so long. Driving 90 mile per hour in first gear just because I thought I had to. He was the best boss I ever had as he knew I was pretty much permanently petrified but willing to work through it. He knew how to handle with care. I was spoiled rotten by him and hopelessly indulged, my ideas were listened to and I felt that I contributed. I suppose the main reason I found this current job so difficult as I had nobody there who knew that I was pretty much permanently petrified and when I told them how overwhelming the difficult things were and how i needed a little help they just thought I was shirking. Previously if I wanted to built a castle in the air they would have helped me design the correct foundations and found an expert on air castles , we would have found the money and built the best castle in the air ever, and then gone on lecture tours on how to do it. :-) I might be projecting but somehow I think not. So now I am thinking about going back. I have worked through the other 3.5 things that caused me the crippling stress that led to my collapse. I have put measures in place to reduce those stresses and now I need to work on that which makes me permanently petrified. The awful anxiety that crawls into my soul, sucks the life out of me and paralysis me. I am scared I wonder if second time around it will all be the same. I contemplated the second time around of many things. Going out with my xhusband the second time around (ended in divorce) not a good ideas, going back to the same place twice on holidays, not as good as the first time, numerous second dates, some were good some bad, the second helping of cake, yes that is sometimes as good as the first but mostly even better, my second child, again good. My daughters second time around with her illness. That was a second time around that I thought I could not cope with at all, but in the end it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be. That second time and what it might hold buzzed around in my brain like a whirling dervish on speed, dancing with the other thought; another whirling dervish on E , the thought of how would I be able to do all the travel and get the time off my present job as they did not want to make the concessions I thought would be so necessary. In the end my brain gave up, my daughter was ok , trips to be every three months not every two weeks, but I was not ok. I worried myself into collapse.
So what will this bring, second time around. I have grown so much over the last 6 months I am so scared that I will slip back into the despair and try to drive 90 miles per hour in first gear again. So today I was given the day off. One daughter is staying with her friend. The younger got up herself for the first time ever and took herself off to school. She planned it so that I could have a rest. I have been on the go for weeks now sorting stuff for the girls and dealing with the outfall from the assault on the eldest. I needed a rest and told everyone that I did. They listened and so here I am today listening to lyric fm and turning down offers of visits from my most recent x. Pat on the back to me. I am still a scardey cat but I am surrounded by other scardey cats too I think. I used to pretend that I was a tiger and many people believed that, lol, now I have taken off the tiger suit and shown myself for the scared kitten I really am.
I dont want to live in fear anymore, and mostly I dont. I need to go back to the basics that got me to let go of the fear of some any other things and get over the fear that going back to work will be too overwhelming for me. My mind is better, I can think again. My memory is good but not excellent, my nerves are good, but what more do I need to be ok with the return. I suppose I need to let go of a few things, and consider it was not my abilities that my favourite bosses liked but perhaps my exuberance, positivity and energy. Perhaps it was the loss of that which caused the work collapse. The prospect of being stuck listening to people complain about potholes forever. I suppose I did not see all the other wonderful things I was doing, and all the things I could do in the future.
As my optimism returns and my exuberance does too I am reminded that some people stay young at heart forever. My midlife crisis is finally coming to an end. So no more toyboys and dreams of yellow sports cars. I have reconnected with the things that lead me to this career in the first place. The desire to make things, the desire to have an impact on the environment. My love of land art has rekindled my desire to do large scale land art projects. A bit mad perhaps but we all need mad dreams to keep us sane. I started by drawing labyrinths on the beach, a project foiled by my daughters youthful exhuberance and desire to wipe out the paths as I was digging them , evil thing that she is. I am the quintessential, look at the stars and say why not kind of person. If someone said how will we get to the moon I would set about trying to find/build a rocket. I discovered my family motto the other day To rise again, optimism was bred into me as a child. I would always wonder why people did not help themselves more in life. If you just applied yourself you could solve it, if you failed you could try a new way. I suppose in essence you could rise again. High notions like the goats in Kerry, as Grandma said.
When I start out each post I wonder where it will lead me. I had a thought which I want to develop and I find writing helps me. A technique called think in ink. I am told. I have always kept some sort of a journal and written stuff down, my parents kept daily diaries. Short and hilarious entries like, Mary had a girl, weather fine, ( the day I was born) , hilarious to me only perhaps. On returning to the beginning of the post: that man had walked down the whole beach and probably seen me all serene and cosy reading and waving to my daughter(projecting on both our parts). He is still on the high of moving to such a beautiful environment, where you can walk to a blue flag beach from a town with some of the best resaturates in Ireland, where our native language is still spoken and where the weather is some of the best in the country. He was not with me when I brought my 14 year old daughter to A&E when she was beaten up by my neighbour's grandchild who was off her head on drugs and drink. He does not see the turmoil of my life, the commute, the stress of juggling the kids, work, relationships. He saw me in the distance, seemly happy content and at peace, in my tiger suit. I was all those things because I had made my mind up to make positive changes in my life. It was his fear that I was feeling. It is the fear of the unknown that I am feeling now not any regrets of leaving such a beautiful place. It is only a half hour from the city, I love the beach more than anything else here and I can always buy a mobile home in the local caravan park or even get a tent and camp there at weekends. It is not such a huge step. I need to move on. So I am off to ring the woodworm man and get a quote on how much it would cost to treat the house. So someone else is interested in buying it, when did I ever let others influence me. Hmmm yeah for about four years now, lol. When I was well I had self belief. I really really believed in myself. It was shaken all this years ago and never recovered. It is time to let go of that. My self belief is back but this time it is real. I believe in myself and not just because of what can I achieve but because I am. I will be careful in making my decision. I will not leap into any major change without careful consideration. I am trained in cost benifit analysis from a road design point of view. Can I apply the internal rate of return to my life? I think I can. I just need to develop the correct values to plug into the formulas. So I am off to tidy the house and continue with the packing and sorting. I have been cleaning out all the crap from my life and my house for a while now. I blamed the assault for my recent setback but it could have been anything, the wrong pants, a bad date, the local shop running out of lucosade, (my current addiction). It was just the thing that was there at the time to facilitate a test of my new found resilience
I am a closet Daniel fan , he is such a truly lovely person, not contrived just lovely . So this is for all of us who need to take it one day at a time.
I have finally worked out how to make my decision. I will take it one day at a time and work to making life easier for us all. I will take it one day at a time. I will trust my own intuition and now it is telling me be patient, let go of the feelings that came up last week and give yourself time to decide for yourself. I have a very developed sixth sense and right now it is saying be cautious and be aware of any changes you make, wait until you are at equilibrium and then decide.
I am off to balance my chackras, in peace and quite without the kids going oh god Mammy shut up about your chakras.
so balance your chakras, find your equilibrium and if you feel the need to whirl do so like those happy dervishes but remember they are trained how to do that are you?
I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost ... I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place. But, it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in ... it's a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.
Portia nelson's lovely poem and somthing I focused on so much for the last few years. Now I am looking for a new street. Hope I dont start falling down new holes too.
I am an engineer. I like to quantify things, but engineering is more than calculating things, for me it is about understanding the property of things and how they behave. Part of my disconnection from myself was my disconnection from my abilities and skills also. I have always considered natural materials as having desires, especially water, for example you always need to ask the question is that what the river wants to do , when you are trying to divert it. you need to make it happy in its new position for it to want to stay there. This of course I blame on the herbie movies and too much family influence on the desire of machines to be well. In order to fix something you need to understand how it wants to be in its natural state, very zen. My favourite author's mechanic character. Mr. JLK matakone is written very much in the style of someone what has a feeling for cars. Unfortunately they do not teach us how materials feel in college instead it is all about formulas and suchlike. the people who developed the formulas are the ones who want to know how to quantify the personality ie the property of the material. I was fortunate in my early career to work with a slightly odd, but brilliant engineer, who had a great feeling for how soils want to behave. He was amused by my interest and got me to do lots of the labrourous calculations on his favourite subject, back analysis of soils slips. He was trying to understand future behavior based on existing failures and trying to find a formula that would allow engineers to cut slopes into materials and built embankments at their optimum angle , potentially saving money and slope failure. Sometime I will get to the point here. I attended an occupational health doctor last week and he was very impressed by my GPs diagnosis of my episode, adjustment reaction. He explained that most doctors put down stress but that as stress is a concept you cannot suffer from a concept. I have analysed how I ended up in this state and concluded that I can only deal with 4.5 very stressful occurrences at any one time. Stress is a measurable thing and rather than go into a very long argunemtn with the man who was hopefully going to declare me fit for my job again I gave him my OK I will not argue with you look of confusion. He then said of course you would think like that you are an engineer. It was not an insult but rather a comment on how my mind works. I have always been annoyed by peoples labelling of me as I am more than the sum of my parts. I have many skills and interest and am not just one thing, engineer is what I do not what I am . Getting back to the point in hand stress is so much more than a concept in engineering. It is essential that we know how things behave under stress so that structure will not fail. Today I started to read one of my favourite books, Structures, or Why things don't fall down . I decided to look for a link between structural engineering and my limited knowledge of how the brain works. Since my encounters with surgeons through my daughters illness i have long thought how similar engineering and surgery are, surgeons work on liging structure while engineers work on inanimate structures, both need to understand the material and organism they are working so that they can make it work properly. So I am off to reconnect with my interest in my career, not the boring oul shite that drove me crazy, but the essence of why things are how they are, the fundamental philosophy of material, structures and machines. I am off to look at how engineering concepts can be applied to mental health issues so that I can finally fully integrate my new life.
Today I had a very odd day. The day I have been dreading for around three weeks finally arrived. I had to go to be assessed to see if I was fit to go back to work. I visualized what might happen, checked out the doctor involved, a pet by all accounts, and collected a list of possible questions and answers from various people. But it did not turn out at all like I imagined it would. I have been taking public transport on long journeys alot recently as I found driving difficult. I decided to drive today. The doctors place was a few streets away from one of the colleges i attended and it was like going back in time, me driving my little fiesta, windows down in the heat of summer, music blaring, zooming down a newly built section of motorway. My first driving experiences on newly built motorway was when the first of the motorway was opened at the strat of the boom. Mow the boom is over and the road network is almost complete. It was so weird being around trinity and browsing in bookshops. The city has changed so much. It was my first time on my own in Dublin since 1995 and I had forgotten how much I liked it there, I felt 25 again. The visit to the doctor was a little surreal as he was not at all like I expected and I opened up much more that I expected, I even cried as /i was overwhelmed by the memory of just how bad I felt and how far I have come since I stood on the cliff and contemplated if I would die or just get injured if I climbed over the edge and just let go. Clearly he has some kind of magic formula for getting information out of people. I spoke aloud about the how my episode began to a total stranger and it was very difficult and emotional for me. He read the referral letter to me and it generated a whole series of emotions in me. It made me realise that I have another whole stage in my return to wellness; how people will react to me when I return to work. I am now living a different life than I was 6 months ago and I like it. I love the woman that has emerged from the abyss of darkness. I am so happy that my poor sad and scared inner child is healing and I can name the emotions I feel. I am coming to accept my limitations and realiseing that I will have new challenges to overcome when I return to work. I will have to deal with all sorts of reactions from people. Many people will be kind and accepting of my flaws and others will just be their mean old selves. I need to work on my projections and remember the lessons learned. I need to work on my wellness every day. For me it may never become automatic. I lived for so long anxious and scared it became a way of life. Sometimes I wondered how I left the house at all. I was so scared of so many things; dogs that I did not know personally, heights, crossing bridges, enclosed spaces, male authority figures, priests, confession boxes, speaking in public, singing in public, blushing, letters, bills, all things I did not need to be scared of. I felt shame so much , inexplicable shame of the catholic guilt original sin variety.
I realise today that I can still feel the awful waves of panic and the awful heat of shame.
Is it time to panic yet??????
It is OK to fail it does not mean that I am a failure. I have failed at so many things. I have judged my failure harshly. But my harsh judgement of myself is unnecessary. It is OK not to have all the answer, it is OK to fail, it is OK to ask for help. I do not have to change myself to meet other peoples expectation of me of my projection of their expectations. I have worked hard to regain my wellness. I have grown so much emotionally. I am ina quandary about how to go forward from here. Today raised all sorts of questions for me.
do I really want to move to here, I cant see the horizon anymore??????
I again wandered down streets of my past today, to remembered the expectations I had in those self same places. It was the first time I thought about the decision I made to move in with my boyfriend and change all the plans I had 17 years ago. What if I had gone to California like I planned, a sunny place instead of the wild north west. What if I had not had kids and had continued on to do a phd like I had planned. What if, what if , what if...........
Today raised more questions than gave answers. I had made my decision to move and now I am not so sure.
Where are you hiding fisheys?????????????
I spent a while trying to photograph the goldfish tonight. I find writing and taking photos help me to make sens of my world. I don't want to be walking down abbeyside strand in 17 years time wondering what if i hadn't move to Waterford, what if I hadn't gone back to work, what if I hadn't packed in my job.....
I wonder how I will know if I made the right decision.
Today while I was walking down Grafton street I was suddenly surrounded by bubbles. Given my bubble obsession I was a little taken aback. I carried Dr Claire weeks book , Self help for the nerves, around with me for around 3 months. I focused on her advise, get out of bed, face things and float. I needed an image to work with to help my float and I settled on the bubble. They float effortlessly. Today's encounter with the real world of work made me question if I was really any further forward and if returning to work would set me back again. But the bubbles reminded me to float, so its back to basics again. Retracing the steps that lead me to get well. Getting out of bed early, eating breakfast containing protein, resting when I felt weak, floating, facing up to things, eft, self expression, exercising even when I did not want to , taking care of my appearance, my home and my family, having fun and recognising my feeling. I learned to express myself and that I mattered. I am scared again now, scared that going back to work will cause me to slide backwards. I feel the need to dig that hole to crawl into and hide from all the pain. I do not want my brain to only recognicse the bad in everything.
Today made me question the certainty of the decisions I have made recently. Perhaps I need to dream a new dream entirely. I am standing at the fork in the road but which one to take???????????????????
The doctor told me today that I am ready to strat planning a return to work but that I am still psychologically fragile. Well maybe I need to do what you do with all fragile things ;handle with care.
So Im off to bed to. Treat the fragile things in your life with care. Perhaps that is todays lesson.
Happy Saturday and be sure to handle the fragile things with care.
