The Depressive v The Addict..An imbalance in Empathy.

It's been a very interesting week which started with a discussion about men and depression which was recorded and podcast. The reaction to it has been really positive but the problem is the message will soon get lost again. It takes the suicide of a major movie star to get folk talking about an issue that is such a major killer of men in the UK.

Depression is not trendy. It is a dirty word. Addiction is trendy and is not a dirty word. In fact in terms of the celebrity world addiction appears to carry with it much kudos. Obviously addiction is part of a wider issue for the sufferer and the person will almost certainly have an MH problem at the root of their addiction.

Depression just seems so dull and draws a picture of a man or woman with slumped shoulders and a melancholy tune playing constantly in their head. The reaction to someone confessing to depression is normally to tell the person to pull themselves together. The addict will find empathy and folk stating that they have suffered in life and that their addiction is a reaction. The addict finds a queue of people ready to hug them and support them.

The fact is most depressives will have had a life event that set off the depression. Not always. Depression can just be a chemical imbalance. The depressive who has had the perfect life really is the hard done by one. No one deserves depression or asked for it.

There is no pain worse than depression. Physical pain makes sense. Depression doesn't.

People need to get educated. Read up on it. Maybe then the depressive will find the empathy that the addict finds in our rather fucked up society.

Tim 2015 

Not Drowning. Waving.

This month marks 4 years ago since I pitched up in Johns office a rather fucked up person who had been passed through the system and shat out the other side. They got so pissed off with my depression in 1999 that they gave me 12 courses of ECT(electric shocks). But this did get me on the BBC so it's not all bad. I spent most of 1998/99 in The Maudsley Hospital in South London.

Self harm had been a massive issue back then but I didn't think it was a big deal. It was part of my day to day. I've not done anything like self harm for over 7 years now.

So, I eventually ended up with John. I've been lucky in that he has given me 4 years on the NHS. But, in his words, I was, am, a complex case. I should just stick with was because I am a very very different man now to the one who sat in his room in 2010..  I'm still a complex cunt but a more free of    
my demons complex cunt.

I'm happy to go through life as I am. I have a good and loyal friend. I still don't like people very much  and tolerate them and trust no one. But this is not a bad thing. There are many out there you can't trust. So I have that one person I can tell anything to and not face judgement. I didn't have this in 2010.

I've used twitter as an outlet but I'm slowly withdrawing from it. A week of silence last week did me good. I lived inside my head. I couldn't do this in the past.

John and I now see eachother every two weeks and this goes to once a month and so on. The work has been tough. Chronic depression doesn't just go away.  It will never really go away. You have to be taught how to manage it. And I don't quite have it sussed but I'm 80% there and if that's all I end up with then that will do.

Don't be ashamed of depression. Normally the judges are binge drinkers. Drunks. Believe me. They have a bigger problem than us.

If anyone does judge your mental health condition, do as I do. Tell them to fuck off.

Tim 2014

One for the lonely at Xmas...

Xmas is hard for many people. For those of us with depression it can be extra difficult. I've been trying to figure out why this is so. After all it's just one day. The problem is, this one day is built up to for over two months. A relentless barrage of imagery from advertising. These images are likely to make you feel inadequate if you are not part of a huge family who all sit round a table on the 25th. Or they are likely to make you feel excluded because you don't look like one of the beautiful people applying make up or spraying perfume.

Of course these adverts are all just vanity projects of the cunts who make them. There is nothing real within these images. But have you ever seen any Xmas imagery that represents those cast aside by society? Or an advert depicting a person who can't face days like this, so stay at home isolated and away from the overdose of bonhomie.

The only images you will see of this kind will normally involve the Sally Army cuddling some actor who's been paid to act homeless.

There will be a large amount of people out there who can't cope with the 25th of December but they don't get a look in.

Secondly, and personally, I find the need to celebrate Xmas for what seems like endless weeks is quite disturbing and very isolating. You will walk past the packed pubs and look in and see a world you simply don't feel you belong to or can possibly be part of.

But, my friends, most of the above is bullshit. It's not real.  And Xmas is just 24 hours long. It is way past being anything to do with religion. It is now about greed and excess. It's about fucking someone at the staff party. It's about throwing up in public because you can't handle your booze. Do you really wish to be part of this? And yes, many people do have large extended families but the majority don't.

All of the above isolates people like us. The 'sensitive ones'. You are constantly told that it's a time of year for spending with your loved one. What if you don't have one?  The truth is most of the imagery represents a time long lost. Or it's a middle class ideal. I don't recognize any of the images I see leading up to Xmas. They are alien.

I'm a big fan of January 2nd. It signals normality. Whatever that is. But don't go sitting there thinking you have to love Xmas and that if you don't you are somehow fucked up.

I will be 49 on Xmas eve. I've been through much in those 49 years. Xmas makes me extra sensitive. Not because I'm getting older but because it sets me off on a trip down memory lane I'd rather not go on.

I'm not the miserable cunt I come across as on twitter and I'm not the loud mouth either. I'm a quiet reclusive person the vast majority of time. I'm lonely much of the time yes and this is why I wrote this. For the lonely people who may feel even more isolated and cut off from everyone else. Well, you're not. You, like I, just walk differently from those others.

Switch it off. Put your favorite music on. Shut out the imagery. It soon gives over on Xmas day
afternoon to Boxing Day sales and the death of our culture and the death of the morality of the people fucking mad enough to camp out for a sale. They're the unwell ones.

I find much of Xmas morbid. The way people say goodbye to eachother on the last day of work like a death is about to happen. It's melancholic in the extreme and we already know about that via our black dog. Remember, the TV or magazine adverts are made by pigs for pigs.

You will survive.

Tim (London2013)

Xmas and Social-phobia/Isolation.

I spoke of social isolation in my last blog and the weekly work I've done with John to conquer this for the past four years. This time of year challenges what I've taken on board but I fucking dread it. I'm not my best around fake bonhomie at the best of times but December brings it on like an express train of vomit.

The work I do with John is entirely based on my childhood and the schemas that were put in place back then and shape your life. It's a fascinating but scary process. Facing demons is hard but John has shown me that everything I do now, the way I behave, was shaped from about the age of 7.

My Dad died last week. Making this time of year all the more difficult. But that's for another blog. I haven't filtered this properly yet.

I'm not going to be forced into doing Xmas stuff. In the past I felt like I had to go to parties at work or pretend I like being squashed in a pub surrounded by people I don't like very much anyway. I'm selective on whom I like and whom I wish to spend any time with. I operate most of my life solo. I have my close friend and can confide in her.

My big change is that I'm comfortable now to decide I don't like this that and the other. Take away my depression, BDD, social phobia, and I'm quite sure I wouldn't like doing these things anyway. In fact most of the elements listed here don't haunt me as much as they once did. I've told John that I'm not putting myself through hell in a pub or a party just because I HAVE to. I don't have to. I find people who've had a drink repulsive at the best of times. Call it another lesson of childhood well learnt.

I like the things I like. I'm not clever or cultured because I watch French films. I like them because they speak to me. My mind is filled with images. Images invade me. I fall in love at least twice a month. I get crushes that crush me at least once a week. I sometimes skew reality with what I watch on film. Even my poems are for a muse I've never met or seen. I think my single sexless life for 7 years has taken its toll but sometimes the films, the images, the non existent muse, are enough. They are my souls companion. I must sound a right cunt but I'm not. I'm just a tad too honest, not a trait that wins you much kudos these days. I must sound or read like a loser. I'm not. I was dealt a hand that just means I can't cope with things that some others find easy.

When you are a single person, this time of year is extra tough but it's only an illusion. An illusion not helped by TV ads telling you Xmas is a time to be around love ones. Images of the beautiful people handing each other perfume etc. It's all bollocks.

This time of year just highlights social phobia, isolation, awkwardness. If you struggle like me then read this and take it in. You don't have to go to the lousy fucking office party. You don't have to do anything in this life you don't want to do. Instead of feeling like an outcast look at it this way. I don't have to follow sheep. I Make my own life. I'm a one off. I'm an individual. I find my happiness in other ways and not the ways of a society that only appears happy when it's pissed and puking up in a gutter or kissing people it doesn't even know.

This is how I do it.

I am who I am.

Tim, London 2013 

Social Isolation/Twitter and I.

It's very difficult to explain what work I do with John and have done for coming on for four years come January. If you are reading this you will be on the internet. It's called Schema Therapy, a form of deep CBT. Look it up.  They are the root to my chronic depression.

I have two schemas that I scored highest on when assessed. Defective and Social Isolation. I have a deep seared belief that I am defective. BDD if you like. I do believe this. I believe I am ugly and have no relation in looks and physicality to any other man. This has been my belief for as far back as my mind takes me.  John has proved to me that these beliefs were  established in me around the age of 7/8.  My learning difficulty was badly dealt with at School.  I am dyslexic. John diagnosed this when I was 45!!

So social isolation. Sounds straight forward enough. Far from it. I find it almost impossible to do things that most find so easy. The idea of say going in to a pub full of people will keep me awake for days. Going to the supermarket takes days of mental planning.  My life is going to work and coming home the quickest way possible.

People say, 'you live in London, how can you avoid people ?'. Easy ..London makes it easier in that I can get lost in crowds of strangers. It's the up close and personal stuff that I find impossible.

It has cost me much. I am a total social recluse. I can't establish relationships, love, sex, and all the messy stuff. I've been single coming up to a decade. It has cost me just experiencing things.

Some things are not so hard to do now. I can plan to go the Theatre in advance.

Strangely I can sit in a bar in Paris and feel ok. It's as if the language barrier somehow protects me.

I live alone. I have just the one friend who I trust my life with. I live in a darkness that is so hard to put into words. Desolate. Empty. Noisy silence.

I've never written anything for sympathy. I am not looking for it. I write and tweet truths about it just so people may understand a bit more or someone may think it sounds familiar and that they won't have to feel alone.

And that brings me to why I tweet. It's my company. My lover. My mate. My outlet. My pub.
People dig at me for the time I spend tweeting. Because they are perfect. Always strange how they tweet me this info. It's allowed me expression, creation, proper friendship. My shell opened up on it.

I'm an ok person. Not mad. Never been arrested. I work hard for the down trodden in my community.

Twitter is my small entry into a social life. It is mainly safe. I've been tweeting for 4 years. Folk who have followed me that long kind of know me. I've never known anyone for 4 years apart from my parents.

It will sound very melodramatic to those who don't suffer the side dishes of depression but it saved my life to a degree. I know this to be 100%  true.

I started the Pinter acc and it's loved. And despite the big names who follow it
the big joy for me is been a kid says he picked up a play and read it for the first time because of it. That's my being social. I exist most days. So don't judge me.

Tim ...London 2013

Depression...the real last Taboo

You know me by now...you know me by now because you follow me on twitter. I tend to speak off the cuff. I don't shirk the issue. I am a truth teller...well, ok it is my truth. Facing the truth will free you.

Here we are late in 2012 and depression is still a taboo subject. And coming from a man???..shock horror..shoot me now!!

I get a little pissed off with the 'celebrity' depression. They check in to The Priory because they can afford the £500 per nigh fee's. They normally check in after a tabloid has caught them with their nose in the coke bag. Best to say you are having a break down rather than just casually experimenting with Class A drugs. For some reason this kind of 'depression' will win you kudos.

I am not saying for one minute that because you are famous you can't suffer depression. It is an illness that knows no divide. It is just that small number of assholes who can see their career going down the shitter and turn to depression and The Priory to court sympathy.

Bipolar seems trendy with this sort of person at the moment. I have been in hospital with people who suffer bipolar....it is no to be mocked...and I find it astonishing the high level jobs the trendy bipolar celeb has. Presenting TV shows...etc etc....I will leave it there.

Depression kills....depression is something that people would rather not talk about. Well tough...because talking is what is needed.

I have had a good life, up to a point. It could have been worse but it could have been much better. Depression has cost me so much.

I have been in recovery now for 3 years...as you know my therapist is a genius. He pulled me from my gutter. I have to fight it everyday but these days I tend to win.

It has cost be relationships...the reason I am long term single is so that I could deal with this black dog on my shoulder and not bring my gloom on others. So now I am 48 and, well, maybe the 'big love' has passed me by. I will not get depressed about this...(promise...it's a joke)

I shall be doing some blogs in the coming weeks and try and tell my side of what it has taken to beat the darkness.....beat is a bit final....I am beating it...that sounds more active.

I love life...I have my 'own way'. Others would see it has lonely, maybe...but I like what and who I am now.

It took 20 years but ...I would not change it. It has shaped me......odd that really.

T.R London 2012

ATOS ..The Shit That Stinks The Sewer.

I am not someone The Daily Mail can put a label on. Never been a ponce. Paid my Tax. Worked since 16.

A couple of years back I did need the help of the benefits system for a very short period of time, like most normal people will do at some point in their working lives. The majority of us have uncertain jobs. We are not all Civil Servants who appear to believe they are entitled to everything.

Because of my various battles with Depression/BDD I was forced, by one of the best Psychologists in the business, to take time out of work.

I found myself sitting in front of an ATOS health worker. The whole experience was humiliating.

I don't mind someone questioning mine or anyone else's health condition if they hold a qualification within the particular field of expertise in your condition.

I sat in front of someone who had 'Nurse' on their badge. Now I am not trying to be a cunt here but I would not discuss my health to an NHS nurse. A nurse is a nurse. A nurse is NOT a Dr. Is NOT a consultant. Nurses are marvelous but they are not qualified to have opinions on clinical conditions. They are there to serve the condition.

From the moment I walked in the ATOS office I was struck by the coldness of the staff. In their eyes you were guilty as charged with Daily Mail crimes. ATOS employees are bastards.

I had the advantage of not having to worry that their decision on me would ruin me. I would return to work at anytime. Because of this advantage I took on the person who interviewed me.

He had a list of set questions that had no relation to my problems.

I asked him what right he had to question a very experienced 58 year old Psychologist. I asked him what he knew about BDD or Chronic Depression. He had no clue the former existed and he did not know what Chronic meant. I kid you not.

The whole attitude of ATOS staff to me would have made Hitler blush.

They are sub human, these people. No one can possibly love them. How do they sleep at night? Where is their humanity? Where are their ethics if they are nurses/Dr's. Ask any Dr worth his salt and he/she will say they have no clue who ATOS Dr's are or where they came from.

I don't hate them because they cut me off....they didn't. I was successful. I hate them because of what they represent.

There are people out there taking the piss out of the system. Just come round here and check the amount of people with Blue Badge disabled car parking permits. These same people get around perfectly OK. There is a woman on my block who has not worked for 15 years and many of us here could not say why. She has a good life on benefits and yes she should be held to account.

But 99.9% of people who have to go through the system are genuine. They deserve better than an amateur organization like ATOS.

ATOS is a fake company. No one who works for them is a genuine Dr. If they are then the ethical body that looks after Dr's and Nurses should strike them off.

The contempt I have for ATOS knows no bounds. They are the scum of the earth.  As low a form of life that you can find. I include every single one of their employee's in this.

I would rather starve and live homeless than ever let these people dictate my life.

I can only wish the most awful things upon anyone who works for them.  The planned occupations of their offices is, in my eyes, not enough, but it will do for now.

London 2012

Recovery and Living

I often receive moving emails, comments, regarding my vlogs and blogs about mental health issues. Total strangers step out from the dark.

My own rehab and recovery has taken 15 hard years. Time I will never get back, but if my role in life is to speak out, it will all be worth it. I will not stand by and watch the discrimination and sending to Coventry of those who live in darkness. this 'thing' has been part of my life since a teenager and now I feel like I have cut the chains....

I have sacrificed happiness to get my head right....that is probably the wrong expression....a chronic depressive sacrificing happiness!! What I mean is, I have had to do this on my own. Year upon year of coming home to total silence. Everyone turned their back....but I am their loss...

I have met so many people on this path that I would never have met, so in one way I am grateful to my demons. I have also been treated by the most amazing inspiring people. I am lucky but I had to fight for it. Depression and BDD are aliens in our society of bullshit and shallow ideals. I do know now that I will never step inside The Priory again.

I have been with John for 2 years and 3 months now. He has changed my life and I owe him everything.  I know by my recent relapse that this will never really be over....but I also know by the way I dealt with it that I do now have the tools to help myself.

I will never plan life......I never have. I just go with it....I am far more chilled then I have ever been in my life.

Someone said a really amazing thing to me at work the other day....they said  ''you are a happy person''.....this means so much to me...that I outwardly now look like someone who is always laughing and having a laugh. Inwardly this is also true 80% of the time.....the other 20% can go and fuck itself.

I now feel like the radical I once was again.....going to work back in Theatre again is just the cherry on top....it completed me. That is why I love it. Was my first love at 16....

I now know the limitations of everything and the potential of nothing.....that is how you keep a level head.

Thanks for reading..............

Tx (London, March 2012)

40 years repaired in 2 years

I will never be totally free of my demons but I hope I now have the tools to manage them.

The past two years have been tough in terms of therapy and the work I have had to put in. I have not finished with John quite yet but I am a different man now.

My body issues still always pop up in conversation and there are some aspects of me I will never be convinced about; I just feel now that these are not running my life any more. I am getting bolder socially and I walk around with a 'bit' more confidence.

2011 has been so important for me and I am a little bit proud of myself. The work I have to do on myself will never end but I am happy to do it.

Depression and BDD have both blighted my life in a way I am not talented enough to be able to express in words but I now hope I can live with some quality of life....I aim to carry on exposing the discrimination that persons with mental health issues face in so called 'normal' society.

We are all normal; its just that some of us are brave enough to admit to our demons and fight them back.

Tim (London 2011)

I will FIGHT in your corner

There is no end to depression....there is just the management of it. This last two years has changed me and having found John is the best thing that ever happened to me. He is a top class therapist. But it will all be wasted if I let go of what I have been taught.

My role now is to fight for the rights of those who suffer the stigma and discrimination of mental illness in whatever form it takes. I will go after the bastards who make life hell for those already in a type of hell.

I don't care who you are, if you continue with the attitude this Country has to depression I am going to expose you in public. Name and shame is the game.

The rest of my life will be spent looking out for those who have no voice. I am an activist and it is what I was put here to be. Your move.....but be sure of one thing. You do not want to pitch against me.

Tim (London December 2011)