"Is there something someone could have done?"

Recently I had a friend contact me asking for advice. She is a teacher and has noticed a girl in one of her classes displaying behaviour that fits into the category of anxiety/depression traits (gloomy, not achieving within her abilities, noticeably 'down' body language and facial expressions, negativity, poor self esteem etc etc). My friend asked "Is there something you wish a teacher had done for you?" She added that as part of the health curriculum, the students are addressing things such as self-regulation, resilience and conflict resolution strategies, body language and leadership skills, but she wanted to know if there was anything more that she could do. Was there more than being available to listen, and giving her extra time and support to complete tasks etc?

Firstly, I was surprised to be asked. My friend excused herself for the personal nature of the question, and allowed me the option to decline discussing it, but truth be told I was moved. Someone had recognised someone struggling, and had thought of me, thinking I could help. I have always been open about my struggles, in the hope that this very ripple effect could take place. Now that it's here, though, I'm not really sure what to say.

I didn't know whether I could make any real valuable additions to what was being done, but I offered the below response:

I’d love to be able to say that someone saying or doing any one thing (reminding me that there are people who love me, challenging my negative thoughts) would have pulled me out of the gloom, but the reality is that her brain is likely going to reject any evidence that you give her that says she is liked or capable etc, and it won't be a quick, transformative moment of "Oh. Right. Good point. Thanks." and skipping into the sunshine.

It’s a strong as hell voice in those dark corners of the mind.

Even when the rational side of your brain makes logical and evidence-based arguments that 100% disprove the ideas of ‘nobody likes you, you’re just a failure anyway, everything is pointless’, 9 times out of 10 that tiny, imperceptible voice will override them.

It’s like a gut feeling.

Ever had that sliver of a fear when you’re walking in the darkness of the hallway, and you know, truly and rationally, that you are safe and no one is there, but that little gut feeling says you need to quicken your step and get to the next lightswitch… just in case?

That’s the override.

BUT

That doesn’t mean that your efforts will go unnoticed.

I can vividly remember being called out by another student who gave me a firm but caring ‘not everyone is out to get you!’ and I hear her voice often, even as an adult.

And getting some kind of piece of paper that we had to pass around and write on, and discovering at the end of my school time that so many of my peers actually did like me and found me funny. I remember thinking why the hell did no one say anything before??

Because they felt I wouldn’t hear them. 

I would have heard them. Even if I dismissed it at first, I’d have shelved it.

It's common that your own gloom makes others uncomfortable, and they don't really know how best to approach you, especially if you've knocked back their efforts before. If the voice has spoken through you, biting back at their kindness, dismissing their offerings of any kind of light, it does make people think twice about reaching out again.

So, I guess the only thing I can suggest, as the girl on the other side, is to keep on reaching out. 

Teachers and other school staff were actually the people I took the greatest comfort from during that time.

If she says ‘nobody likes me’, a gentle ‘I think you’d be surprised’ could go a long way.

I was surprised in later life to find out that that inner voice had been lying to me all those years.

The depression and the anxiety go hand in hand. They lock you up and exhaust you, and encourage you that everyone has an agenda, and tell you that the only way to survive is to build walls even if those walls keep out the flowers with the arrows.

Anxiety can say "There are enemies at the door. Lock the windows, be on guard."

Depression can say "This is somehow your fault."

They're best friends, but not to you.

Keep reaching. 

Even if the hand is left hanging, keep it out there.

It will be frustrating, and exhausting, and it will seem like you’re wasting your time. But keep doing it. 

Remind her that you are there. Remind her that you will listen if she needs you to. Remind her that its okay to not be okay. 

I had a teacher who would tell me to smile, to cheer up, to put on a happy face. That last one was done via song so it did make me crack a smile briefly, but no it did not ‘cheer me up’. 

It made grumpy: I was allowed to feel down, I was keeping to myself and not bothering anyone goddammit, and these people were telling me I couldn’t/shouldn’t.

Having permission to not be okay has possibly been the greatest, most helpful thing about this journey. The growing awareness of these types of conditions today means that as an adult, I can now say to my boss or my friends or some of my family “Sorry, I’m not doing okay, but I’m safe.”

And both they and I know it will pass, to give me support or distance if I need, but most importantly, permission. I'm not allowed to apologise to the people who truly understand. Even if I try to, because that voice is saying how much you've disappointed everyone, those who really get it tell me put my apologies away. It's been a long and hard lesson to learn, but permission is a key pointer.

It takes a layer of stress and guilt away. 

Especially as a kid, I felt weighed down by people telling me about how I shouldn’t feel this way or that I didn’t deserve it because someone else had it harder. I found myself saying a friend had died, or it was the anniversary of a death or something similar just to get some peace from the questions. Only then did people say 'oh okay, yeah that’d suck, I’m here if you need/until you stop feeling so down, okay?' when that was all I'd wanted.

So I guess all I can really say in response to the question is:

I wish more people would have kept reminding me that they were there for me, should I ever feel the need/motivation to accept the invitations, and not been discouraged by my initial dismissals. Nothing more than a small reminder, stating that the offer was still open. That voice is quick to interpret the passage of time as a waning interest from others. Sure I probably would have gotten sick of hearing it, but when the time came that I wanted someone, I knew who I could approach.

I wish more people had said that it's okay to not be okay, that they wanted me to be safe but didn't demand that I be happy when I wasn't.

And I wish more people were brave and gentle and tactful enough to call me out when I was being ridiculous in my self-loathing. It's a delicate tap-dance of a kindness, but if the right person can find the right time and do it the right way, then it's something that can be useful down the track, and I thank the girl who first took the time to gauge where I was at and poked a hole in my defensiveness. 

I can't say that all or any of these things will be applicable to the student in question, but these are the things my reflections have brought to mind. 

I wonder if my healing would have started sooner had they been in play.

Musing over.

Related: Four Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Struggling With Depression

the dark is where the demons are...

It's nearly 3am and I have work 'tomorrow.'
I sit here on the couch in the darkness, thinking about nothing and everything; just a still, quiet meandering mind in the night.

It conjures up two memories, which revisit me not infrequently.

The first: a brief, fleeting image of being holed up years ago in a roadhouse motel alone by some interstate highway, listening to the trucks drone past as sleep escaped me. I stared into the moonlight and took dark 'artsy' photographs to pass the time, waiting for morning and the new workday, a sentence repeating over and over in my head - the answer to a question I hadn't bothered asking about why I could always sleep better in the daytime:
"The dark is where the demons are..."

The second memory is one from childhood.
I'm at a friend's birthday party. We're all perhaps about eight years old. Maybe younger. We've been playing in the backyard, and I've not been hugely interested in the games but joining in regardless.

Presently we're called inside: the party food is ready, probably cake too.

The other kids, maybe another 5 or 6 children, bustle through the back door to the kitchen and I linger at the back of the single file line. When I get to the door I let it shut in front of me and veer to a chair propped just alongside. I sit and I ponder without pondering - as I am right now - looking out over the now empty yard drenched in sun, and listening to the clamour of munching juveniles just within.

Someone notices I'm missing - the birthday girl, or perhaps her mother, and she opens the door to look for me. Seemingly startled to find me just outside, she asked "What are you doing??"

I reply, distracted "I'm just ...thinking".

Before she can respond her mother calls out to find out what's going on, and my friend relays over her shoulder: "She's thinking"
"Thinking!? What about?" the mother hollers, and my memory lets the rest of her words trail back into my mind and as the image fades to black I recall that I got up then and joined them, embarrassed.


Just being. Just seeing and feeling and thinking without thought. Numb, without the hopeless undertones, - though, she's still there somewhere.

Earlier this evening my partner and I had argued, and I suspect I am simply drained as always after such a challenging time. So I just sit. And am. My body claiming to want sleep, but my mind not surrendering to it, and my body only mildly convincing anyway.
I am not exhausted, I am just being. Just thinking.

A third commonly recounted memory surfaces:
I am in early highschool and the deputy principal has become a sort of mediator between another student and I in the midst of an emotional quarrel. She asks me what I do when I go home, after the conflict at school, and I reply that I do nothing: I do my homework and what tasks needs doing, but otherwise I just sit and think about things. Perhaps I include that I stare at the ceiling and think, I don't remember.
"Hmm" She nods slightly as she considers this. "That's dangerous."

I didn't reply at the time, and don't recall anything else as clearly from that conversation in her office.

"Is it?" my head still asks her today.

Are the quiet moments like this really dangerous? Do they really cause me as much harm as being emotionally heightened sprawled on the floor? Or kicking furniture and yelling?

Usually this type of quiet is the shell that's left when I'm tired and I've spent all the fight in me. I'm not depleted of anything but some energy, and lots of fight.
I'm submissive, passive, pliable.

If my partner is patient enough to wait for the objection to burn out of me in the form of tears and fists into floors, sometimes for hours... in this quiet time, even after the flares of shame and guilt if there's any to spare, I will do whatever it was I was rebelling against to begin with. Whatever tiny, insignificant last camel straw set my balanced brain on fire in the first place.
I become obedient, for the sheer reason that there's nothing left in me in this moment.

Dangerous?

Sometimes I agree with her. But this is not one of those times.
I think she means those times when the darkness is like a vacuum. When your head is not quiet, but full and noisy and repetitive. When the broken record tells you how hopeless and useless you are, and how selfish you are for feeling hopeless and useless. When the dark is where the demons are.

But this is not one of those times.

The demons are still here on nights like this, but they sit beside me. Not tormenting me, but not ignoring me either. We sit together and gaze out into the shadows like two strangers watching the same sunset on the same park bench, in polite silence.

Quietly appraising and respecting each other.

It's as though we have a truce this night: I don't try to stifle my demons, and they don't try to suffocate me.
This must be a sample of what living in peace with your inner demons must feel like.

I pause from finishing this post on that note as one last thought strikes me:
It's not as though I am scared of the dark, but quite the opposite. The night makes no demands. It is peaceful and quiet, and so, so many people are asleep. The day, however, brings harsh light to renewed worries. People and their demands awake. The world stirs.
It's easier to sleep past it all. With a bonus of a soul-lifting charge that only sleeping in sunlight can bring.

Perhaps I've had it wrong all these years, where my demons sleep.

Checking In

So, it's a new era. I guess. Of sorts.
I figured it's time to update some folk.


* Still at school - albeit new subjects to break up the boredom. I was doing sign language. Now picking up the complementary health course I started in 2009. Had tried for a few weeks, but was still a nightshifter and in too shitty a mindspace to really do it. (Kinda strange that I choose to pick it up again now, but less mindfuckery and more support this time around).


* Working as a casual in Promotions. Basically this means working a few shifts here and there as a brand ambassador for different client companies. You know those people who hand out free samples at the shops? That's me. I'm also doing one assignment where I spend three hours chatting to the cashiers, ignoring the customers, and simply noting down the details of transactions in a particular chain.

The good thing about this job? Everyone likes free samples, the shifts are short and close to home, I bring free stuff home, and the company/client companies think I'm fab.

The bad things? I'm so not used to being on my feet a lot after more than a year of being an officebitch but that will improve, I've been warned that work can dry up in the future so I need to prepare for that, I had a random lady decide to tell me all about the second coming of Christ while I was stuck being a sample bitch in Coles yesterday :P


* Getting my house slowly in order now that I'm home more. This involves finally giving the place a goddam good clean, and preparing for a new arrival!
No, you fools I'm not pregnant. A new kitty will be coming in join our family. She's a rescue who loves cuddles. And a ginger, so I'm sold already. Hopefully existing older kitty will integrate well. We're going to set up her own room so we can slowly introduce them.


* Working on my Social Anxiety. I'm going to start seeing someone now that I have a referral to someone who's been highly recommended. Keeping things in check by using the "Irrelephant".
Concentration Meditation: a tiny metal elephant that I focus on when I can't handle situations. If there is too much noise or stimuli for example (which a main trigger of mine), I pull out my elephant (or any other small object on hand if he's not with me) and focus entirely on it. I turn it over in my hands and take in every detail, ignoring the fact that I already know him implicitly, and maintain that "Everything that has nothing to do with him is 'irrelephant' (wordplay on irrelevant)".
It's something I learnt a while back, and it helps. But leaving the call centre was definitely a good move, much as I loved my team.