Healing and wellness.... (Part 1)

It's been a while, life has been so massively busy - church anniversaries, dog show and pet services, fetes and shows, and demolishing a church kitchen!

Now a couple of days off, time to draw breath.

I feel I ought to follow up from this post.  I did go through the emotional engagement that the counsellor wanted me to, and I think it was helpful in that space and time, but as my depression had already subsided it is hard to assess for any effects.  You can't test the roof patch until the next storm to see if it leaks again or not.

It maybe part of not fully feeling comfortable with my particular counsellor, but I felt that the process was regarded as a fix all. That having completed it in an acceptable way my depression will be all but gone and as I go into next winter when it usually flares up it won't and I will be seeing the doctor to wean off meds.  Ok she acknowledged a time lag as I adjust to what happened in the process but essentially it was all guaranteed as a logical progression.  I have had my last session with her, though she spent half the time explaining why I should go back during the adjustment time.

What is healing? or wellness for that matter?

I am part of a group trying to get something together in our rural town about support for mental health but also in a proactive way building people up to better cope with the stresses that come. As a community group we got a free stall at the local Agricultural Show last Saturday - and we needed to find a name and the working title we are running with is the Wellness Group.  We didn't have any events to plug yet but I took 170 odd mini grey cakes and resources from Time to Change and local carer support.  It was a very long day and we found some great people who are willing to help us and come with specialised skills, so very much worth it.

I sat with others involved at the start of the day and we tried to decide what Wellness meant to us in terms of the group.  Images around 'freedom to be', 'at ease', 'supported' were our conclusions, ideas that can go alongside and in despite of problems, stresses, health concerns etc rather than images of the absence of them.  It can be the removal of the unnecessary burdens that land on top of the core issue, and if the core problem can be relieved and removed then wonderful, but in a world where that is so often not the case then there can still be ways to reach towards wellness, to celebrate wholeness. 

Going grey on page 3!

Social media gets a lot of flak but it allows for sharing of ideas and the Depressed Cake Shop is one of those ideas that is growing like Topsy.

On the first weekend in August (or other convenient times in some places) watch out for a new pop-up cake shop, the same yummy mix of cakes but with one thing in common (well apart from calories) - the colour grey.

The brain child of Miss Cakehead it is all intended to raise the profile of mental health issues and the lives of those affected, to break through the silence that harbours the stigmas that get in the way of people asking for help.  The grey portraying the dull and negative feelings around depression and other conditions, but many of the cakes will be brightly coloured and full of flavour inside - the reality of hope, and the person beyond the clouds of depression. Profits from the shops going to locally chosen mental health support charities.

It started off focussed around the UK but people from around the world have now captured the idea and shops go from California to Kuala Lumpa with volunteer bakers both amateur and professional.

 Now I am not a great baker, but I know a good visual aid when I see one so with a stand at the High School fete approaching, already provided with Time to Change resources, I joined the ranks of those mixing up grey icing. Ok so mine was going on shop brought cupcakes and biscuits, but I planned on giving them away not charging so I think I got away with it. 

It was a really good opener for conversation - instead of 'have a leaflet' it was 'would you like a free cake' and then a reaction or comment about the greyness led on to why and the wider issue of mental health support within the community.

And it got me, the cakes and the whole issue onto page 3 of the local paper... (not the best look after an hour or two of stifling heat!)

With others trying to find ways to support people in our community we will be popping up again on Aug 3rd at Tenbury Countryside Show.

Taming the lions....

Two years ago, back in the infancy of this blog I wrote about being invited to speak to 100 year 10 students from the local high school – beforehand reflecting on Teen Angst, and afterwards in Before the lions.  Well after that terrifying walk into the lion’s den of my old fears personified in the crowded room of teenagers I was a gibbering wreck but glad to have faced it and got it over.

I was invited back last year and it wasn’t so bad, today I hiked with them again (well this year’s yr 10s anyway). Two years of journeying, including some scary Friday night’s at youth club, and now for the 3^rd time of asking I could stand in front of them without shaking, still a bit shaky in finding a starting point, but able to speak and my struggles with bulling at school, the depression, the importance of loving yourself and with resources from Time to Change challenged to stand against stigma and be open to talking about mental health and other tough stuff.

Gabi, my big fluffy dog coming along for the exercise helped break the ice and opened conversations too. It was clear that people were listening and affected by what I shared, both teens and staff. Talking about things that are so personal and touch deep vulnerable bits of you is tough, and for the third time round it is in some ways less scary – I know the audience won’t bite – but in other ways still as hard. 

Yet the power of the personal story is immense, beyond any statistics or flashy adverts, the story of an ordinary person reaches parts nothing else can. Which is why breaking the silence so we can talk to each other, daring to ask for help and daring to try and understand and support each other, is such an important goal.

Lies, Lies, Dying from the lies

I am Angry!!

Angry at the lies we tell, the lies we have told in the past, and the way they still apply today. Which lies? Well admittedly there may be a whole range of them and I am not attempting to take on them all, but the lies that have got me angry are those that get in the way of our mental wellbeing.

As a child I was told, or absorbed somehow, I can’t remember not knowing it, the great lie of childhood bullying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me’. It may have been intended as a putdown to bullies, a ‘you can’t get me’ claim, but for me it became a reason why my suffering, the fact I cannot remember school before the name calling that continued until I left at 18, was not worth making a fuss about. Why I should be grateful that it was names not physical wounding – yet the words seep in the cracks of who you are, they leak into the roots of your emerging identity, and can wound deep and for longer.

As a girl and now a woman I was saved from the other insidious, deathly lie – ‘Big boys don’t cry’.  Women are the majority among those receiving treatment for depression and other mental health issues, but men are the most likely to take their own lives.  Why? Because ‘big boys don’t cry’ – women can admit to their emotions but generations of men have been brought up to face it all with a stiff upper lip, and the shame of seeking help is greater so they bottle it up until the risk of it exploding in one lethal moment is huge.

Why is my anger riled today particularly? Well I am returning to counselling for support about the long shadows in my life. But mostly because today we farewelled and  buried someone who lived in anguish for decades after the death of the two men in her life, her brother and her father, due to suicidal depression. In an era when the pain wasn’t acknowledged, when men weren’t encouraged to seek support, when ‘big boys don’t cry’ wounds were left unbound, open sores to get infected with terminal depression.  Could things have been different? Could the life story, the family story we remembered today have been different?

How many lives have been lost to the lies, to the stigma?  And how many lives left behind have been torn apart because of the lies our society tells about emotional wounds, about so called weakness.

That is why campaigns such as Time to change are so important, that is why next Friday I will be taking the opportunity to speak to 100 14/15yr olds about the lies, and why talking about mental health is important. We wouldn’t ignore a heart attack, so why should we fear asking for help with a broken heart or spirit?

Weebles - lets stand proud, fight for wobblers rights

Today I have been like a weeble pushed right over – left all of a wobble and unstable in my depression.  It is another episode in the saga that is my car bump last month that has been the trigger this time, but you don’t need to know about that.

More important is the morning I spent in Birmingham yesterday at a resourcing event for Time to Change – the group behind the ‘Dave from Accounts’ adverts whose aim is to challenge the stigma and discrimination around mental health issues. We discussed the importance of breaking the taboo, the conspiracy of silence. 

I have felt that this has become a part of my calling – as a person, though as a church minister I have openings to speak out that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  I am researching faith and depression in order to raise the issue and create a place for stories to be heard, valued and to recognise the gifts and insights that we people of faith and depression bring.

And there is a real need for attitudes to be challenged, people should feel free to ‘come out’ as mentally unwell, and free to be silent if they choose. But forced silence out of fear is all too common. When I wrote in the village magazine about being off sick with depression it had a powerful impact, but I cringe when people tell me how brave I was to write it.  It shouldn’t need bravery to say I am unwell, I need help and your care. And as long as it does people will be slow to get support and more likely to reach full blown crises that need never have happened.

At the Time to change event we were told the results of surveys that show that the experience of stigma and feared stigma was – for a very high percentage – as bad as or worse than the mental health symptoms. And frankly the symptoms are more than enough to cope with without the extra hassle.

Over the last 24 hours since returning from the Birmingham event I have lurked in an internet conversation about self-discrimination – when we feel so guilty about taking time off for something as un-tangible as mental health concerns that we try to do what we are not capable of managing. Most of us would not put the same pressure on ourselves if it was a physical illness.  I have chatted to someone about discrimination in work because their mental health is considered irrelevant although physical matters would be accommodated. And I have heard about someone I need to visit who is in need of support but has been so stigmatised and rejected over the years because of poor mental health that it is very hard to acknowledge their need for support and they are incredibly isolated.

Add in my own wobbliness and it has been a Weebles World all round this week (and its only Wednesday!) It is Time to talk, time for the Weebles’ voices to be raised and heard...