Recovery

Dear Diary

I've been trying to write this post for the last three weeks, ever since the day I handed in my dissertation.  But try as I might, I just couldn't work it out.  Something wasn't right.  No, nothing was right.  I'd lost the ability to do words.

You see, no-one told me that the hard part of finishing a degree wasn't the dissertation.  It was the recovery period that follows it.  I never thought to ask.

For months, I'd spent every evening, weekend and spare minute at lunch time thinking about my dissertation - about what I needed to write, about what the graphs and tables should look like, about how to format it, and about how to thank everyone who'd helped me with the process.  And then, all of a sudden, it was all gone.  No longer could I hide away in the library or squirreled away in my sofa-nest of blankets and journal articles.  I was expected to return to the world as a "normal" person, to be able to pick up where I left off - a time when I couldn't use my dissertation as an excuse for being permanently exhausted and just a little bit distracted.

The problem was, I'd forgotten what that was like.  Without warning, an empty space had appeared and "free time" had reared its ugly head. 

"Free time" and I don't really get on very well.  I don't trust it and I don't know what to do with it.  I live in constant fear that I've forgotten to do something, and that someone is going to come looking for it, forcing me to find an excuse for not doing it.

So the past three weeks have been just a bit empty.  I guess the reason I've avoided blogging is because I didn't want to have to tell you that, actually, I was feeling a bit crap. 

I spent a lovely three days "doing the Festival" with a friend from school (yes, I'm very aware that I promised you reviews and observations of the Fringe, and that hasn't happened.  They'll come, eventually), and it was great to have her here.  But apart from that, I've just been a bit lost.

While I was busy avoiding real life, I failed to notice was that the elephants in my head were secretly growing, hiding being my dissertation getting ready to pounce when I least expected it.  Have you ever seen an elephant pounce?  I understand they're generally not known for the element of surprise, but the elephants in my head are different.  They're sneaky.

To cut a long story short, the "lost" became "miserable", which became "depressed".  Although I still see myself as "having depression", I've not been "depressed" for ages.  So when I realised that was how I was feeling, it hit me a lot harder than before.  The problem with discovering emotions is that I now feel stuff, and that can hurt.

The hurting, as the result of thinking, as the result of not having a distraction any more, all came to a head two weeks ago - a Saturday.  I spent the day at a training session for Girlguiding Trainers, up in Stirling.  On the way home, I began to think.  Thinking and driving can be dangerous - I found myself in Glasgow, which is definitely not on the right side of Scotland for me to be a) not concentrating, b) feeling miserable, and c) exhausted. 

As I dragged myself across the M8, I realised that I didn't want to be there.  I didn't really want to be anywhere.  And I particularly didn't want to be at home.  These new-found emotions were confusing, and I didn't know how to deal with them.  I was scared, and I needed to find a way out.

Since starting to see a counsellor, I've found ways to deal with feelings that don't involve crying and retreating into myself.  So, I looked for options.  What I came up with was possibly not the best advice for anyone feeling the same way:

1.  Talk to someone.  Find a friend - except at 6.30 on a Saturday night in the middle of August people generally have plans.  I didn't want to interrupt them.  And I was probably miserable enough without having to drag myself off to the crisis centre or to call the Samaritans and be patronised for the rest of the evening.

2.  Alcohol.  For various reasons, mostly naivety and stupidity, alcohol has get me into some pretty ridiculous situations in the past, so I don't really drink a lot.  But I do like red wine, and sometimes it just takes the edge off.

3.  Pizza.  For the record, I'm aware this sounds like a bizarre "way out", but bear in mind I'm quite severely lactose intolerant - half a dairy milk bar makes my face erupt, and you don't need (or want) to know about the other side effects. 

I found my respite in Sainsburys.  I hate supermarkets, especially on a Saturday night.  If you have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than go to Sainsburys, you need to get a new hobby.  But you can guarantee that there will at least be other people there, making it a "safe place".  And Sainsburys sells both wine and pizza.  Double win.

My poor attempt to make myself feel better by giving myself a hangover and some particularly unhappy dairy-induced-side-effects pretty much failed.  Mostly because I fell asleep after the first large glass of wine and woke up on the sofa at 3am.  As angry as I was with myself at the time ("I can't even do miserable right"), I'm glad this is the way it worked out.   

I guess what this has shown me is that life isn't always happy all the time.  Sometimes, it's spectacularly rubbish.  But learning to accept that, and being able to question why we react in the way we do, is the first  step to making it a bit less rubbish. 

I've spent the last two weeks letting myself feel rubbish, but the difference between this time and the previous ten years of feeling rubbish is that I was aware I felt rubbish, and I was aware of why.

Today, I'm done feeling rubbish.  I've had words with the elephants and they've shrunk just a little bit.  I've filled my "free time" with friends and Guiding and books and all of the other things I've neglected over the past six months (except washing up.  I'm not that desperate).  I've started eating vegetables again, and I'm looking forward to not having to do any more studying.  At least for now.

So that's my excuse for neglecting you over the past few weeks.  I'm not going to apologise for my disappearance - it's just a thing I needed to do.  But now I've stopped feeling sorry for myself and hopefully normal service will resume. 

*grins*

Rosy x

How to eat an elephant. Part ii.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my experiences of counselling and how difficult identifying the problem and actually dealing with it can be. 

Since writing about this, I've found that throwing the elephants out of the window maybe isn't as easy as I originally thought.  If you tie a piece of string to the elephant's tail and hold tight, you're never going to get rid of it.  (If you're confused about the elephants, read this post).

Since leaving my job, I've spent a lot of time reflecting and realised I've been clinging on to a lot of pieces of string.  And now they're all starting to get tangled.  Having a lot of metaphorical string in my head is not fun.  It turns out that even just working through the "easy" stuff isn't actually that easy.  Wish I'd seen that brick wall coming! 

This week, I tried a new approach.  Instead of trying to store a herd of elephants in my head, I reverted to revision-mode and put my elephants down on paper.

Cue cards

Putting them down on cue cards took the elephants out of my head, and introducing my counsellor to my elephants lifted a massive weight from my shoulders.  The brick wall just got a little bit smaller.

But now I have a stack of issues staring me in the face.  It's hard to hide physical pieces of paper in the storage unit at the back of my mind.  Probably impossible.

Maybe this is what I need.  Maybe to get over that wall, I need to stare those elephants down. Bring it.

(NB, I'm aware I'm using a lot of metaphors.  There's probably some psycho-babble that would suggest I'm trying to avoid talking about something.  That's ok.  I like metaphors.) 

How to eat an elephant

There's a lot going on right now in the life of Rosy. If I start telling you everything, we'll still be here a week next Tuesday. I have an exam on that day so can't afford the time right now to tell you everything. Needless to say, I'm pretty stressed.

In the past, when I've been this stressed, I've pushed and pushed to keep going until I break. However, since I started seeing a counsellor, I'm aware that my body is telling me I'm stressed, but my brain is able to take a step back enough to let me write to do lists. Of course, I still have trouble remembering words, getting halfway through a sentence and forgetting what I was going to say, walking into a room and forgetting why, and I still find myself staring out of the window at the building work over the road. But having a list at least reminds me to do the stuff I need to do!

A very close friend and I were recently talking about the process of counselling. For some people, the process comes naturally - they're happy to talk about themselves and how they feel. For those people, emotion is a normal part of daily life. Actually, they're the people who probably don't need
counselling...

For those of us to whom none of this comes naturally, counselling is probably the last ditch attempt to deal with the inability to understand our emotions before we either accept that we probably need to think about medication or we're past that and the men (or women) in while coats will soon be knocking down the door.

I've seen counsellors in the past, mostly on the instruction of someone else. Unsurprisingly, nothing worked. When I went to see my doctor this time last year, I was adamant I could do this on my own. I don't need to waste an hour a week waiting for someone to say something, anything, just to break that awkward silence (no-one told me the counsellor will wait for you to speak first. So basically, I wasted countless hours all because of my inane need to be polite.) And I don't want to become dependant on someone else to make me feel better.

Anyway, I've digressed. You're probably wondering about the title of this post. Well, you know those days when you're very aware there's something you should be doing, and you know that everyone else knows about it, but no-one wants to be the first to talk about it? That's what counselling is like for me.

When I first went to meet my counsellor, I assumed he'd be able to fix all my problems in the twelve weeks allotted to me and I'd go away 'better'. Of course, the twelve weeks flew by, and as I became more confident and able to talk, I became more aware of the elephant in the room. And week by week the elephant grew and grew until it reached the point that it was so big I couldn't ignore it any more.

Someone told me the first step in counselling is recognising the problem. The problem is we've spent so long ignoring the elephant that we've dealt with all the fluff around it, which has just given the bloody animal more space to fill. To the point where I know I need to tackle this thing, but I have no idea where to start.

After a couple of weeks off (thanks to my epic trip to New York) I realised that the elephant isn't one big elephant, it's actually lots of little ones.

What's the best thing about little elephants? They're easier to pick up, one by one, look at from all sorts of angles, and then throw out of the window.

So dealing with my metaphorical elephants one bite at a time seems to be the way forward. I just need to catch one...

This has given me an awesome idea for my next tattoo (sorry mum).

NB. I'm not going to tell you what my elephant is. Also, I am vegetarian and would never condone eating elephants. Metaphorical or otherwise.