October 10th was World Mental Health Day.
I didn't see many posts about it over the past two days ... unlike previous years.
I was thinking about it on my motorbike ... it's a great place for a think ... on the way home from work this evening.
People who post about mental health issues and their personal struggles or experiences are often called "brave" for revealing their pain and the effect it has on their lives.
But to talk about it, and especially their first or second hand brushes with suicide can also be (I think) both painful and cruel. I'll try to articulate what I mean.
In my thirties I began to experience depression. I think of depression and sadness as very different things. For me depression was something that came out of nowhere. It seemed to have no source, no cause.
Depression was something that, for me, was just a feeling that would grow steadily over time ... sometimes months. It was not a rollercoaster but a steady slide into a state where normal functioning became difficult. There was no one thought or issue that would consume my thinking process but a wave of unending mental dialogue that became darker and darker.
For several years I took antidepressants, which I found were very useful. They helped stop the slide and allowed me to resume at least a superficial stability enabling me to function normally at work and at home, but I was never happy that whatever was causing it was actually being addressed - just masked.
For about ten years I was like this. Now the out-of-nowhere type of depression that I could not pin down does not happen so often.
Now I deal with what I regard as a very different form of mental issue - sadness. But this is very much related to identifiable sources - some of my own making. So I can rationalise and reason the issues in my own mind ... and I can "deal" with them though they cause as much distress and despair as depression. So although it is still a constant internal dialogue, I am in control, can function well enough and don't take medication anymore.
Depression (for me) is emotional ... it's a feeling ... maybe not even a thought. I was a full time sports man in my twenties. I had more than a decade of the brain being high on serotonin. At 25 I stopped. By 27 I was married ... more emotional highs. In my early 30s I think I probably came down as the 9 to 5 routine of a desk job and the treadmill of everday life no longer charged my brain. I wasn't physically active - had no serotonin charge, and so my emotional state suffered.
That's why the antidepressants worked for me - Prozac gave my brain a steady daily dose of serotonin which gave me some emotional stability. And once I felt balanced and in control I would come off it. The problem was the depression slide was so imperceptibly slow it might take up to six months before I would find myself at the bottom and go back to my doctor again.
I think maybe a strength that comes from being older enables me to manage the slide now so I am no longer medicating ... but I may at some point need it again in the future ... and that will be fine.
Nor is depression, or sadness just "stress". I don't feel stressed at all. Stress is panic - being out of control dealing with shit ... not being able to organise your thoughts ... the mind becomes a runaway train. With stress there's no order ... everything is whirlwind out of your control....it's about not being able to make sense of a world of confusion.
The sadness that I feel is very much organised thinking. I know exactly what the issues are - my own take on them - I can articulate very clearly what's going on in my head - there is clarity ... but the result of what I think is this sadness. The high of a prozac pill won't change how I feel about those things ... they are not emotionally based ... they are based on clear, logical, mature, rational thinking ... it's the result that's emotional - not the source.
So labels, categorisations, generalisations etc. are absolutely NOT HELPFUL I don't think. There are as many types of 'depression' as there are sufferers. And as many reasons for suicide as there are victims...
With both types of struggle the concept of suicide has been present.
While some will say it's "brave" to talk about it it is also quite painful and in a way cruel. To say that you even have the slightest thought of suicide is (for me, I repeat...) an admission of failure ... failure to deal with or have the ability to deal with those things that are consuming you with sadness. Failure in relationships, failure in responsibilities, underachievement, lack of ambition... It's a cultural thing in part...we're supposed to man up ... to not let things get on top of us ... to fight back.
"Brave" is also ENTIRELY the wrong word to use - because to someone suffering with depression or someone suicidal who CANNOT express themselves either personally with a friend or publicly in something like this it might lead someone to infer that they are a coward... Of course that's not what is meant by "brave" but is the WRONG LANGUAGE - and everything about this issue is related to language. Our thoughts, our internal dialogue ... they are very definitely a form of self-programming ... your thought patterns form your reality ... and to sow an idea that someone suffering like this is not brave is to insert a virus into that programming. Perhaps the bravest ones are the ones who hide it all ... it's actually almost impossible to properly verbalise about the subject because it is thoughts wrapped in emotions and contradictions and reason battling unreason.
Something that causes (most) of my sadness is the loss of contact with my daughter following my divorce. I bear some of the blame for this ... it's partly of my own making. It's been paralysing to find the right way to overcome it ... and I've been trying ... without making the pain worse for her.
Dealing with the pain of this, and other (sometimes more mundane) issues has brought me to points of severe emotional crisis over the past 7 years. The most recent episode of despair and desperation came last March when I was so distraught that ideas of suicide were very strong.
Suicide is not something that came with depression ... I remember clearly in my teens thinking about it .. not for myself but just as a concept ... and how it would become a "thing" as the world was changing and speeding up.
In my thirties, dealing with depression there were a few times when the concept became an "option" in my mind. I am 51 now and in March it became an "option" again. An option but not a solution.
I have been blessed to have a mind that while being tormented with negative thoughts is also predominantly and rational, reasoning mind and I have always been able to find either the internal strength or some rationale to not do anything "foolish". I've never attempted suicide ... so I don;t think I am in any danger, but while it's "brave" to speak about it
It is also painful to admit it and (for me) is cruel to my friends and family to reveal it because as something I think I should deal with, it feels unfair to cause them the pain of hearing it ... but that's not a reason anymore to keep it hidden.
I have seen suicide up close.
I would say I think about it a lot; I imagine it occasionally; I've considered it maybe 4 or 5 times but
I've never attempted it.
And this is the first time I've spoken about it - although I've posted about depression before.
Mental health and suicide especially are invisible. I've no doubt many people even reading this have been to similar places but none of their friends or family would even suspect anything of the sort.
Recently a long time friend of my Dad, a married man with family, successful in business, highly intelligent and professionally qualified simply disappeared ... without a trace and without (as far as I know) any prior warning or signs of mental struggle.
The inability to speak about it is rooted in our Catholic teaching, our repressed national psyche and the cowardice of the State to deal with it properly. To our shame, the state ignores it. period.
Actually, more than that, that State contributes to it in very damaging ways ... perhaps unintentionally but in a real way nonetheless.
If there is a place on earth that can be described as hell it is the Family Courts.
One time I started to become upset while in the middle of a hearing. I caught the court clerk rolling her eyes at me that communicated very clearly "oh, here we go ... turn on the waterworks..."
This is partly society's dismissive opinion of men who are weak, unable to handle intense emotional situations with more acceptable masculinity. It is also the State's attitude to men in Family Court. I won't say any more about it but it is totally unacceptable, dismissive, unprofessional and damaging.
In the 2014 Budget the State also removed a tax credit for separated/divorced couples. I spent months and months sending long, detailed and clearly articulated arguments to very member of the Oireachtas against the 'logic' for its removal and explaining the consequence of the change. I received a handful of sympathetic responses but not one TD or Senator was prepared to take my the more reasoned alternative proposals and raise them in either House. My arguments and proposals remain well reasoned and valid - but nobody will do anything.
Whether it's the Courts or the Legislature, the State has shown its inability to understand the real world effects of its attitude and its actions.
We don't speak mental health and suicide because it is an admission of failure of ourselves and to keep it hidden is to protect our loved ones. And not least because the invisible nature of mental health means it is treated almost as a myth or an abstract thing ... or even as some kind of hipster illness ... to be dismissed as some failure of character or weakness.
In 1988 I was in the Olympic panel for Seoul and the team (cyclists) went to do interviews with a psychologist/psychiatrist ... sports psychology was a very new thing and I don't think there any specialized sports psychologists in the country at the time. I've never forgotten that in the interview there was a question whether you had ever had suicidal thoughts. I lied...afraid of what it would mean for my chances of getting selected...
That fear of admitting to having those types of thoughts still exists now...30 years later.
That's not progress on an issue so important and prevalent...
I didn't get to go in the end.
🙁
I have been in my boss's office over the years quite a few times in tears, and he has been understanding and sympathetic ... but that's just at the times when I've been at the bottom of the slide.
Apart from those times, at times when I've appeared normal, and functioning, and even "up", he has never called me into the office to ask me how I'm doing then...when just below the surface I've been just as distressed.
I don't mean this as a rebuke or a criticism of him .. it's just the nature of mental health. It's invisible. Until it breaks the surface it is unseen, undetectable ... and therefore it almost doesn't exist.
In this country mental health is only discussed after the fact - when it's too late.
I don't know what the forum is for allowing people to talk about it more openly. Of course everyone should see their GP first - Pat Watson in Ashbourne has been of incalculable help to me - but in a way, the closed-door confidentiality of the doctor's surgery doesn't help when it comes to addressing the issue out in the open, in public, with a wider audience.
I've never spoken to any friends or family about how close I've been on a few occasions, even life long friends - and it will be painful for them to hear it here ... and especially for my kids ... but being open about it now might make a difference in their lives ... as much as I have hidden what's inside of me from them, I've no idea what is going on with them that is invisible to me.
I feel like the social media platform might also have some form of connotation or stigma ... that posting like this can be seen as a "me, me, me" kind of attention seeking, self promotion vehicle. To that I say FUCK OFF ... this is painful to reveal ... it doesn't give me any pleasure and will hurt people close to me ... but it needs to be unveiled, made visible.
I don't know if what I've written here is even coherent so apologies if I've rambled.
I think life is a search for happiness.
For some, the longer the search goes on without success the more futile it must seem.
The idea that happiness might never be found ... the idea that life itself might be futile ... that the future holds no joy...
That's when suicide feels like an option.
But it is never a solution.
Thank you for reading.
The search continues...
I didn't see many posts about it over the past two days ... unlike previous years.
I was thinking about it on my motorbike ... it's a great place for a think ... on the way home from work this evening.
People who post about mental health issues and their personal struggles or experiences are often called "brave" for revealing their pain and the effect it has on their lives.
But to talk about it, and especially their first or second hand brushes with suicide can also be (I think) both painful and cruel. I'll try to articulate what I mean.
In my thirties I began to experience depression. I think of depression and sadness as very different things. For me depression was something that came out of nowhere. It seemed to have no source, no cause.
Depression was something that, for me, was just a feeling that would grow steadily over time ... sometimes months. It was not a rollercoaster but a steady slide into a state where normal functioning became difficult. There was no one thought or issue that would consume my thinking process but a wave of unending mental dialogue that became darker and darker.
For several years I took antidepressants, which I found were very useful. They helped stop the slide and allowed me to resume at least a superficial stability enabling me to function normally at work and at home, but I was never happy that whatever was causing it was actually being addressed - just masked.
For about ten years I was like this. Now the out-of-nowhere type of depression that I could not pin down does not happen so often.
Now I deal with what I regard as a very different form of mental issue - sadness. But this is very much related to identifiable sources - some of my own making. So I can rationalise and reason the issues in my own mind ... and I can "deal" with them though they cause as much distress and despair as depression. So although it is still a constant internal dialogue, I am in control, can function well enough and don't take medication anymore.
Depression (for me) is emotional ... it's a feeling ... maybe not even a thought. I was a full time sports man in my twenties. I had more than a decade of the brain being high on serotonin. At 25 I stopped. By 27 I was married ... more emotional highs. In my early 30s I think I probably came down as the 9 to 5 routine of a desk job and the treadmill of everday life no longer charged my brain. I wasn't physically active - had no serotonin charge, and so my emotional state suffered.
That's why the antidepressants worked for me - Prozac gave my brain a steady daily dose of serotonin which gave me some emotional stability. And once I felt balanced and in control I would come off it. The problem was the depression slide was so imperceptibly slow it might take up to six months before I would find myself at the bottom and go back to my doctor again.
I think maybe a strength that comes from being older enables me to manage the slide now so I am no longer medicating ... but I may at some point need it again in the future ... and that will be fine.
Nor is depression, or sadness just "stress". I don't feel stressed at all. Stress is panic - being out of control dealing with shit ... not being able to organise your thoughts ... the mind becomes a runaway train. With stress there's no order ... everything is whirlwind out of your control....it's about not being able to make sense of a world of confusion.
The sadness that I feel is very much organised thinking. I know exactly what the issues are - my own take on them - I can articulate very clearly what's going on in my head - there is clarity ... but the result of what I think is this sadness. The high of a prozac pill won't change how I feel about those things ... they are not emotionally based ... they are based on clear, logical, mature, rational thinking ... it's the result that's emotional - not the source.
So labels, categorisations, generalisations etc. are absolutely NOT HELPFUL I don't think. There are as many types of 'depression' as there are sufferers. And as many reasons for suicide as there are victims...
With both types of struggle the concept of suicide has been present.
While some will say it's "brave" to talk about it it is also quite painful and in a way cruel. To say that you even have the slightest thought of suicide is (for me, I repeat...) an admission of failure ... failure to deal with or have the ability to deal with those things that are consuming you with sadness. Failure in relationships, failure in responsibilities, underachievement, lack of ambition... It's a cultural thing in part...we're supposed to man up ... to not let things get on top of us ... to fight back.
"Brave" is also ENTIRELY the wrong word to use - because to someone suffering with depression or someone suicidal who CANNOT express themselves either personally with a friend or publicly in something like this it might lead someone to infer that they are a coward... Of course that's not what is meant by "brave" but is the WRONG LANGUAGE - and everything about this issue is related to language. Our thoughts, our internal dialogue ... they are very definitely a form of self-programming ... your thought patterns form your reality ... and to sow an idea that someone suffering like this is not brave is to insert a virus into that programming. Perhaps the bravest ones are the ones who hide it all ... it's actually almost impossible to properly verbalise about the subject because it is thoughts wrapped in emotions and contradictions and reason battling unreason.
Something that causes (most) of my sadness is the loss of contact with my daughter following my divorce. I bear some of the blame for this ... it's partly of my own making. It's been paralysing to find the right way to overcome it ... and I've been trying ... without making the pain worse for her.
Dealing with the pain of this, and other (sometimes more mundane) issues has brought me to points of severe emotional crisis over the past 7 years. The most recent episode of despair and desperation came last March when I was so distraught that ideas of suicide were very strong.
Suicide is not something that came with depression ... I remember clearly in my teens thinking about it .. not for myself but just as a concept ... and how it would become a "thing" as the world was changing and speeding up.
In my thirties, dealing with depression there were a few times when the concept became an "option" in my mind. I am 51 now and in March it became an "option" again. An option but not a solution.
I have been blessed to have a mind that while being tormented with negative thoughts is also predominantly and rational, reasoning mind and I have always been able to find either the internal strength or some rationale to not do anything "foolish". I've never attempted suicide ... so I don;t think I am in any danger, but while it's "brave" to speak about it
It is also painful to admit it and (for me) is cruel to my friends and family to reveal it because as something I think I should deal with, it feels unfair to cause them the pain of hearing it ... but that's not a reason anymore to keep it hidden.
I have seen suicide up close.
I would say I think about it a lot; I imagine it occasionally; I've considered it maybe 4 or 5 times but
I've never attempted it.
And this is the first time I've spoken about it - although I've posted about depression before.
Mental health and suicide especially are invisible. I've no doubt many people even reading this have been to similar places but none of their friends or family would even suspect anything of the sort.
Recently a long time friend of my Dad, a married man with family, successful in business, highly intelligent and professionally qualified simply disappeared ... without a trace and without (as far as I know) any prior warning or signs of mental struggle.
The inability to speak about it is rooted in our Catholic teaching, our repressed national psyche and the cowardice of the State to deal with it properly. To our shame, the state ignores it. period.
Actually, more than that, that State contributes to it in very damaging ways ... perhaps unintentionally but in a real way nonetheless.
If there is a place on earth that can be described as hell it is the Family Courts.
One time I started to become upset while in the middle of a hearing. I caught the court clerk rolling her eyes at me that communicated very clearly "oh, here we go ... turn on the waterworks..."
This is partly society's dismissive opinion of men who are weak, unable to handle intense emotional situations with more acceptable masculinity. It is also the State's attitude to men in Family Court. I won't say any more about it but it is totally unacceptable, dismissive, unprofessional and damaging.
In the 2014 Budget the State also removed a tax credit for separated/divorced couples. I spent months and months sending long, detailed and clearly articulated arguments to very member of the Oireachtas against the 'logic' for its removal and explaining the consequence of the change. I received a handful of sympathetic responses but not one TD or Senator was prepared to take my the more reasoned alternative proposals and raise them in either House. My arguments and proposals remain well reasoned and valid - but nobody will do anything.
Whether it's the Courts or the Legislature, the State has shown its inability to understand the real world effects of its attitude and its actions.
We don't speak mental health and suicide because it is an admission of failure of ourselves and to keep it hidden is to protect our loved ones. And not least because the invisible nature of mental health means it is treated almost as a myth or an abstract thing ... or even as some kind of hipster illness ... to be dismissed as some failure of character or weakness.
In 1988 I was in the Olympic panel for Seoul and the team (cyclists) went to do interviews with a psychologist/psychiatrist ... sports psychology was a very new thing and I don't think there any specialized sports psychologists in the country at the time. I've never forgotten that in the interview there was a question whether you had ever had suicidal thoughts. I lied...afraid of what it would mean for my chances of getting selected...
That fear of admitting to having those types of thoughts still exists now...30 years later.
That's not progress on an issue so important and prevalent...
I didn't get to go in the end.
🙁 I have been in my boss's office over the years quite a few times in tears, and he has been understanding and sympathetic ... but that's just at the times when I've been at the bottom of the slide.
Apart from those times, at times when I've appeared normal, and functioning, and even "up", he has never called me into the office to ask me how I'm doing then...when just below the surface I've been just as distressed.
I don't mean this as a rebuke or a criticism of him .. it's just the nature of mental health. It's invisible. Until it breaks the surface it is unseen, undetectable ... and therefore it almost doesn't exist.
In this country mental health is only discussed after the fact - when it's too late.
I don't know what the forum is for allowing people to talk about it more openly. Of course everyone should see their GP first - Pat Watson in Ashbourne has been of incalculable help to me - but in a way, the closed-door confidentiality of the doctor's surgery doesn't help when it comes to addressing the issue out in the open, in public, with a wider audience.
I've never spoken to any friends or family about how close I've been on a few occasions, even life long friends - and it will be painful for them to hear it here ... and especially for my kids ... but being open about it now might make a difference in their lives ... as much as I have hidden what's inside of me from them, I've no idea what is going on with them that is invisible to me.
I feel like the social media platform might also have some form of connotation or stigma ... that posting like this can be seen as a "me, me, me" kind of attention seeking, self promotion vehicle. To that I say FUCK OFF ... this is painful to reveal ... it doesn't give me any pleasure and will hurt people close to me ... but it needs to be unveiled, made visible.
I don't know if what I've written here is even coherent so apologies if I've rambled.
I think life is a search for happiness.
For some, the longer the search goes on without success the more futile it must seem.
The idea that happiness might never be found ... the idea that life itself might be futile ... that the future holds no joy...
That's when suicide feels like an option.
But it is never a solution.
Thank you for reading.
The search continues...
