I have been getting increasingly anxious about feeling low and the things I haven’t got done because I have been hiding under the duvet instead. Last Friday I was open with my small support group about what I am like when the outside being a minister mask can be put down. With their encouragement I booked to go back to the doctor. I was thinking that there may not be anything much he could do, afterall I know the theory about challenging my thinking, of the benefit of routine, food, exercise and rest in taming the black dog of depression - I just can’t get it to work. In the same way I understand how a bike works and what to do but have never managed to ride one – just to discover different ways of falling over with one!
So made it to see my doctor yesterday, I had listed the bad day feelings so I wouldn’t forget things. He has changed my antidepressants, so it is a week to wean off the old one and then to gradually introduce the new, and he has put me on referral list for a psychologist. I mentioned my drinking and he asked a few questions but the answers didn’t concern him, so I feel less guilty about that now.
Today I feel better for having spoken about it all. My doctor had offered a sick note option until the new drugs kick-in, but I feel that I need the fixed points as a focus and a reassurance of the things I can do. So given that I can be flexible around what I do and when I declined the sick note. Knowing that it was available, that someone recognises that I am struggling and it is not just my laziness or lack of self-will, has changed how I feel today about the things done and not done.
Since I could have been off sick everything I manage to do in life and work is a bonus rather than thinking about the failures and things not done. This was essentially the idea from the support group – ‘have done’ lists rather than ‘to do’ lists. But with the doctor’s backing I have felt able to send a message to the church stewards to say I will be less than fully functioning for a while yet, and the layers of guilt are falling away. The glass may be incomplete but today I feel it is okay for it to be only part way and I will call it a quarter or a half full instead of focussing on what is missing.
