Functioning Depressionista

Yesterday I had a long awaited in person appointment with my psychiatrist, here on the Isle of Mull. I had reached out to the community mental health service not long after my return from my long adventure because I wasn’t feeling very well and I sought a medication review, believing the regimen I am on was no longer effective in managing my depression. I think because I had been out of the loop for so long, I found myself beginning at square one and it took a number of months for me to rise through the appointment list.

During the latter part of last year and since the beginning of 2024, I have been in a seemingly fruitless struggle with depression. In recent weeks, I was particularly concerned with how awful I was feeling and I made regular appointments with our doctors at the medical practice in Tobermory. They were excellent, giving me valuable time, listening to my concerns and I suspect, hastening my progress through the mental health team waiting list.

The depression I live with is a pernicious illness. The best way I can describe it to you, is how it seems like an organic upwelling of stagnant blackness. My energy is drained and motivation to combat the feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred is severely challenged. It is an exhausting process. All the positives I gained from my long sea kayak journey seem hollow and empty of truth. Such is the malicious intent of the depression I live with, I believe at the moment, there is no longer any purpose to my existence. I find myself returning again and again to the assumption I’m a fraud in kayaker’s clothing.

It is so easy to find myself affected by external events which appear to reinforce a belief of utter uselessness I have of myself. A horrible ending to the relationship I had with the prestigious literary agency in London where I found myself feeling abandoned and ignored. Being invited to send my writing to another prestigious literary agent and this too being ignored weeks afterwards. In sharing these two examples, I find I hate myself even more for sounding pathetic and weak. I tell myself to stop being so uselessly sensitive and man-up.

Over the coming weeks I will be giving presentations to various audiences about my year long journey. It’s a huge honour to be asked to do this. Yet, I again view myself as a fraud, a person who advocates outdoor connection and adventure for positive mental health, while failing to walk this path myself. This troubles me a lot.

Yet, despite the deep depressive malaise, I work hard to ensure I keep myself moving in a forward direction. In this regard I view myself as a functioning depressionista. A man who gets by with an outward countenance of normality. Despite my lack of literary ability, I continue to write for the book about my year long journey. In fact the words spill from my fingertips. I am also enjoying the creativity of making short films from the hours of video footage I took during the journey and posting these on my YouTube channel.

Sadly, my motivation to press forwards with life hasn’t extended to inviting myself out onto the sea to enjoy my kayaking. I also find I struggle to engage with social media, a medium which has also been a source of sustenance for me. Again, I view myself as no longer having purpose, with nothing of value to offer.

I have written this blog post because it helps me to do so. I feel I owe an explanation for my absence and my blog is useful for me to explain how this bout of depression is affecting me. The act of writing these paragraphs, focuses my thinking and helps me see beyond the emotional turmoil at the surface of my existence. I notice I’m reconnecting with the core truths I came to understand through my journey. These being, I have courage, I am tenacious and there is always hope.

Finally, I am safe. I experience strong suicidal ideation every day and I long for the peace from my anguish, I believe completing my suicide will bring. I have enough cognitive strength to challenge these sometimes overwhelming desires. I courageously face them head on, tenaciously holding onto the realistic hope this darkness will pass. Also, I am not alone. Karen is by my side and a loving constant presence in my life. I also have ready access to the professional support I require.

In a month or so, the warmth begins to return to our northern climes and with this, the hope the change in my medication regimen will be showing dividends. Until then though, this depression is a bugger and I’m fighting it as fiercely as I’m able. Sometimes, I feel defeated and this is really horrible.

Thank you for reading this and thank you as always, for your warmth, love and support.

World Mental Health Awareness Week - Sunday - Always Hope

Sunday 24th May and the last day of Mental Health Awareness Week. I hope my daily blog posts through this week have been of interest and even better, raised crucial awareness about aspects of living with mental illness and the concept of recovering from it. Throughout my writing this week, I have been aware of a reoccurring theme for me, and this is the one of ‘hope’.

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Hope is a word I use a lot when I describe my recovery. It projects me into the future where I attempt to forecast my well being and mental health. Recovery from my depression is a certainty. After a bout of severe ill health, I will recover from this. What is less certain is the enduring nature of the recovery and the achievement of the ultimate aspiration of a lengthy period of stability. Given the truth I will recover despite the illness persisting, there sadly is always the possibility the depression will triumph in the end. The hope then is, it will be me who will prevail and manage to achieve healthy homeostasis for a months and years.

I am pleased to say I do not leave the achievement of a hopeful outcome to chance. I am active within my recovery and as I grow in strength during post depressive bouts, I bring to bear my increasing levels of self-awareness to actuate helpful changes in my life. This is very much a dynamic process and requires determination on my part, each and every day. Sometimes this can be mentally if not physically exhausting. However, I am certain my eventual recovery will not have occurred purely through good fortune. Neither too am I totally alone on this repetitive journey. Karen is by my side as are my wider family and my cohort of friends and supporters. Karen in particular though, is a keystone in my process and without her steadfast tolerance, understanding and love, I would not have the ability to access to my personal resources when I need them most. She is there to hold me still when I feel at my most vulnerable and wobbly.

Alongside my personal supportive network, I am blessed with an excellent collaborative professional relationship with the Community Mental Health team, in particular my Community Psychiatric Nurse. Without this warm person-centred professional support and intervention, I would not have managed to maintain a realistic level of personal safety when edging towards, or immersed in, moments of depressive crisis. My regular appointments with Mairi and knowing she is there at the end of the phone, enable me to ground myself in reality when I have needed this the most. It is extremely helpful too the language used during these interactions is one of hopeful uncertainty rather than unrealistic certainty.

I am eternally grateful for all the support and love I receive.

I am well along my pathway towards what I believe to be an enduring period of robust good health. All the positive indicators are there for me. I am extremely hopeful at the moment (and I wrote this with a smile on my face). However, I am at the moment proceeding with caution because I am aware of my tendency to grasp at every straw floating my way and state these moments indicate a completion of my recovery process.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and for interacting with me if you have. I appreciate the interest you show and the comments you make. If you suffer from mental illness then I hope your recovery processes are well under way and you are enjoying a settled equilibrium in your lives.

My very best wishes to you all.

Compassion

On the morning of the 14th February, I had a meeting in the Oban Lifeboat Station with two senior representatives of the R.N.L.I.. This was a generous response on their part to a complaint I had raised regarding a film the organisation were supposed to be producing about me, living with severe depression and suicidal ideation, how connection to the wild through walking and kayaking helps me live with this, and finally, how being an R.N.L.I. volunteer was helpful for me too.

It’s not right for me to detail the nature of my concerns and subsequently, the substance of the meeting too. Needless to say, I was deeply grateful my issue was responded to with good grace, concern for my well being, and a desire to set matters straight. This was not a conflictual meeting at all. Without dancing on eggshells, we addressed the main issue concerned. Heartfelt apologies were given and accepted. This was really important for me. Then the conversation moved to the future and how the footage and content of the film would best serve the R.N.L.I. This led into a fruitful and in depth discussion about opening a wider public dialogue about mental health matters, more specifically suicide.

I did not realise this fact, but the second highest reasons for lifeboat launches around the country are for the desperate souls who have completed their suicide or survived an attempt to do so. I noted my shock, when realising I am one of those statistics. The three of us agreed the issue of suicide is more than often too delicately discussed, with me going onto insist, it should become an important part of our societal lexicon rather than being hushed up. There is wide ranging national debate about how this can be achieved, where the information and messages about suicide do not lead to vulnerably ill people becoming motivated to attempt to complete their suicide. This was the main issue of the film about me. I had been frank and honest during production and this was deemed to be too descriptive by two mental health agencies who were approached for advice about the film. While I understand the need for caution, especially the huge outreach the R.N.L.I. have, I did feel it was a lost opportunity to share my story in a manner which does not glorify mental distress and suicide in anyway whatsoever.

There was little more to discuss about this issue. I am hugely relieved to now know what the intentions for the film are and I look forward to my future involvement with this.

The unintentional theme of the meeting for me was - compassion. This first came up when I described my experience of when I was taken aboard the Oban Lifeboat from the CalMac rescue craft which had found me in the sea. With a broken voice of emotion, I described when lying on the stretcher in the pungent warmth of the lifeboat Thomas, a crew member knelt by my head keeping me awake with warm words of encouragement, often referring to my kayaking and connections this had brought for me and the R.N.L.I.. As an aside here, when I walked into the Oban Lifeboat station for the meeting, I was greeted by Thomas. For the first time since my rescue last May, I was able to grip him by the hand and emotionally thank him for all he did. Not only did he look after me on the lifeboat, he also visited the hospital casualty to find out how I was and to speak with my wife. I’m eternally grateful to him and all others who saved my life that day.

Through our discussions about the future of the film, we realised the heart of the matter is the selflessness of the lifeboat crews. We surmised because of this selflessness, it may be easy to miss mental health worries crew members may be dealing with. After all, the culture of a life boat crew is one of robustness, an essential attribute given the primary purpose of their existence. We discussed many scenarios where my messages through my personal telling, of hope, suicide awareness and living with deep depression could be shared for the benefit of all in the R.N.L.I.. We did not come to any conclusions, and I was happily satisfied to know this is a subject which increasingly gaining ground within the organisation.

I experienced yet again, the selfless compassion of the R.N.L.I. personnel from the two managers at our meeting. Their kindness and warmth were authentically generous.

Here I quote from a passage in the book I’m writing about my kayak journey around Scotland where I visited each of the Scottish R.N.L.I. lifeboat stations. This piece comes from the chapter about Longhope in the Orkney Islands:

“Even though they were strangers to me, I connected with each of their names on the plaque, because I understood the motivation which impelled them, despite knowing the danger this entailed, to heed the call for help and head out into that fearsome storm on the night of 17th March. I was certain that their motivation was not for fame or glory. I was certain too, it was a motivation which runs far deeper and because of this, can be difficult to quantify. There are sometimes insufficient words to describe the compassion people hold for strangers, which compels them to risk everything of themselves, to at least have a chance at saving a another’s life. Maybe it can be best explained like this and here I paraphrase from Kurt Hahn, the founder of the Outward Bound movement; “The experience of helping a fellow human in danger, or even of training in a realistic manner to be ready to give this help, tends to change the balance of power in a person’s inner life with the result that compassion can become a primary motive.””

In recent months I had lost sight of the R.N.L.I.’s compassion in the fog of my sense of indignation and self righteousness believing I had been wronged by the charity. From the moment I tabled my complaint to the meeting yesterday, it was the compassionate sense for my well being which set the order for the day. It’s a relief for me believe this once more, compassion is the core our nation’s treasure, the R.N.L.I.