Negotiating Anxiety

By admin on March 31, 2012

I am revisiting anxiety because, while normal, it can become intolerable. While it may not be possible to describe any particular threat feeling of anxiousness can override our coping mechanisms with a sense of impending danger. Neither our good outcomes or our safety is ever certain, that’s not the adventurous world we inhabit; the future is, almost by definition, uncertain. This article on anxiety, and the thoughts of 19th-century philosopher Kierkegaard on being anxious, explores just that.

Kierkegaard wrote that “All existence makes me anxious, from the smallest fly to the mysteries of the Incarnation; the whole thing is inexplicable, I most of all; to me all existence is infected, I most of all. My distress is enormous, boundless; no one knows it except God in heaven, and he will not console me….” He described anxiety as a simultaneous feeling of attraction and repulsion, and the dizziness of freedom.

I wish for the dizziness of freedom, just consider the alternative. Dizzy but not disabled by anxiety, a normal sort of instability and balanced by Kierkegaard’s belief, “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

That can’t be right…

By admin on March 21, 2012

Public toilets tend to assault one’s senses with a profusion of smells, sights, and sounds, if I could hang on I wouldn’t use them, but there is not doubting their convenience.

On Sunday after sitting through a 90 minute movie and enjoying a coffee I had a natural urge to go. As the door swung closed behind me and I was stifled by a synthetic floral stink, one of those unnatural bouquets, worse than any commonplace lavatory stench. My olfactory sensibilities were heightened and when I noticed the the advertising poster on the back of the door other sensitivities were insulted by what I read: “Depression and anxiety – it’s not a normal part of getting older.”

Really? While I might not take much pleasure in aging, and even seek treatment for any accompanying depression and anxiety, I find the suggestion that these states are not normal is offensive.

The poster was a little on-the-nose. My photograph doesn’t really do it justice but it does capture how dank my mood became, in the cinema toilets on that sunny Sunday.

As in evidenced by this blog, I do tend to side with darker outlooks and I would even argue that anxiety and depression are pervasive, if not commonplace, as we age. Normal. We are complex and multi-faceted beings and our thinking around what is normal can be too constrained, too narrow to accommodate experiences that might be unwelcome but are nonetheless characteristic of the human condition.

On one hand we are encouraged to celebrate diversity and accept what is different, rare, or unconventional. On the other hand if the very thing that is unusual is in some way dark or uncomfortable and can be medicated into abeyance, then it is labelled abnormal and that’s troubling – if not just plain wrong.

I wonder what hue I would be if I had only been coloured in with happy normal shades?

Thoughts of normal and abnormal cause me to wonder about being only normal and how I might be burdened with common, conventional, expected, standard, usual, and I would miss my quirky.

I have learned more from my experiences, both challenging and fabulous, than from any other form of education. I believe joys would be less joyous without knowing sorrows and that I would be less normal without my abnormal.

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

Vale Diana Bliss

By admin on January 30, 2012

News started emerging on the weekend that Diana Bliss had died by suicide.

Ms Bliss, despite her own many accomplishments, was best known as the wife of Alan Bond, the man who backed the America’s Cup challenge in 1983 that saw the trophy in the hands of someone other than the New York Club for the first time.

Unsurprisingly her family and friends are reported as distressed and devastated. They knew she was deeply troubled and that she was seeking support and care for her depression.

Reports didn’t mention suicide but they alluded to it with the standard statement: “Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.” A euphemism which does not protect anybody’s sensibilities. What is being reported is widely understood for what it is.

Suicide should be reported with simplicity, sensitivity, and clarity. Doing otherwise does not diminish the stigma surrounding deep depression and its possible consequences but rather, reinforces the opinion that this is a, perhaps, offensive and taboo topic. Shhh…

Recent Press Council recommendations reinforced that responsibility and balance are appropriate. Tragic circumstances should not inhibit straightforward reporting.

If you, or someone you know, needs emotional support call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Crisis counselling is available around the world.

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

Miserable?

By admin on January 6, 2012

In my previous post I wrote about the UK based suicide prevention charity, Campaign Against Living Miserably, CALM. The acronym is not bad but I think the organisation’s name is dismally inappropriate for its worthy goals.

Campaign Against Living Miserably infers that someone living with depression is living miserably, and that may sometimes be true, however miserable is not a word often used to describe the experience of living with depression. Depression is depicted as something darker and more bleak than misery. I don’t know maybe ‘living miserably’ actually understates the unfeeling numbness that often accompanies depression. I don’t like the term or the images it conjures.

Miserable makes me think of a wretched pitiable condition, the word seems heavy with negative judgement. I don’t mean to say that depression is enviable or not in some ways a miserable state, it is just not helpful for someone to be labelled as miserable. It is dis-empowering to be pitied, I much prefer some kind of strength based perspective. I get caught up in the semantics of depression and suicide, and I do because ill thought-out language comes loaded with meaning and connotations that serve to reinforce rather than dispel stigmas.

Michael Leuning calendar April 2012

A foundation’s name has a lot of influence on community attitudes, and it’s not possible to convey the nuance of Michael Leunig’s work in a few words. Organisation names that are less judgmental and less negative than Campaign Against Living Miserably are possible:

- beyondblue
- headspace
- sane Australia

Woody Guthrie was “…out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.” Support efforts need to do something similar and not only be against living in a certain way but also be for something – for support, for growth, for living a different way. Rather than struggling against a darkness imagine gently amplifying and nurturing the tiniest, tenderest essential parts that lie quietly at the heart of even our deepest darkest being.

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

Campaign Against Living Miserably – CALM

By admin on January 4, 2012

An article in the UK Guardian today describes the silence around suicide as deathly.

The organisation described in the story is Campaign Against Living Miserably – CALM – a suicide prevention charity. They ran a “poll [in November 2010] and it showed that nine out of 10 people haven’t a clue that suicide is the biggest killer of young men. [The unawareness is] deeply shocking. Awareness is even worse among young men themselves…”

I struggle with suicide prevention efforts in general, but my thoughts are jumbled and I can’t exactly explain what irritates me about suicide preventionists, but something troubles me about prevention being a focus for intervention. I am not sure someone can be saved by someone other than themselves. I am not convinced that we be saved from ourselves?

Awareness – yes – of course greater awareness around depression and suicide is needed, I didn’t know the condition and I underestimated the risks…

My own knowledge may or might not have made a difference but awareness by me, people I know and everyone generally would have helped. Specifically I think that would mean having less stigma associated with depression and emotional well being, and being able to confide or even broadcast how you are feeling with impunity, without risk or favour. It is hard to imagine a work environment where Mottsu may have been able to admit to his deep depression, find acceptance, and not have suffered from some form of ongoing stigma. He didn’t even feel able to take time off work, he didn’t perceive sufficient tolerance to allow him to be open about his well-being back when he could have used understanding, and maybe not today but I hope the future will be different.

Awareness and prevention sound like very different efforts to me, the intent behind each seems quite different. To me awareness could be more achievable than prevention per se, although inevitably one would lead to the other. Wouldn’t it?

CALM is here and their helpline within London is 0808 802 5858. If you, or someone you know, needs emotional support call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Crisis counselling is available around the world.

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

Saying something not so stupid

By admin on December 4, 2011

I am returning, just briefly, to the comments of Joey Barton and my previous post and I am relenting.

I have been feeling sorry that I said what Joey Barton tweeted was stupid, when he said that ‘Suicide is a mix of the most tragic, most selfish, most terrible (and I want to believe preventable) acts out there.’ He said what many people would say on hearing of the death by suicide of a friend. The first reactions of shock, and disbelieving are just what happens, there is perhaps no other way to receive the news of a suicide.

I remember the countless phone-calls I made and answered after Mottsu’s death. If he had died in an accident that would have been incomprehensible enough, his friends and I would have struggled to piece together a story that placed him in the wrong place and time and in the path of some fatal unforeseeable event. We would have tried to reconcile events with the whims of fate. While a tragedy that claims a life might seem senseless, it would have been explainable, and somewhat more comprehensible than his suicide.

Joey Barton is no more stupid, or smarter, that the average bear, uninformed maybe but not stupid per se. In the wretched aftermath of some suicides, not all but many, the shock is stupefying there are only questions no answers. I know how I tried to recount what I knew of what had happened to someone we knew as a rational respected journalist,and a warm and sincere friend. The facts in no way explained the loss, none of us was able to understand…

Fundamental to our existential natures is a tendency to seek reason and meaning, but often (always?) suicide defies rationalisation. There is no way to make sense of the anguished act, and the all but unimaginable possibility that someone might choose suicide. That is the tragedy that Joey Barton describes as “…the most tragic”.

Being confronted with a suicide is grim and it is heart-rending to think that something preventable, again that is Barton’s word, was not arrested not prevented. What might have forestalled a suicide? What did I know? Did I collude with a suicidal intent by not saying/doing anything rather than thwart it? If it is preventable who is the preventer and what might foil the suicidal?

I think our pre-occupation with prevention suggests an association with some sort of criminality , wrongdoing is implied. Something must be averted, prevented. If a suicidal person can be stopped and a suicide avoided then did someone fail when someone dies? Joey Barton didn’t say something stupid he said what many hold to be true “one of the…most terrible…acts out there.”

Suicide is confronting, it belies understanding and there is a pall of guilt. Someone is guilty of something. Barton identifies the culprit when he makes his accusation of selfishness. I do not agree.

If you, or someone you know, needs emotional support call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Crisis counselling is available around the world.

Posted in Tagged Leave a Comment

Saying something stupid

By admin on November 30, 2011

Joey Barton is an English footballer affected by the death of Gary Speed. Then he went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like:

If not stupid Joey Barton’s view is uninformed and ill-considered. Before anyone concludes that suicide might be a selfish act I need to say; it is simply not possible to rationalise a death by suicide with an everyday logical mind. Suicide is far removed from normal experience and we struggle to comprehend the act. It is too easy, it seems, for the way someone dies to change your memory of how they lived. The accusation of selfishness highlights the lack of understanding and the related depth of stigma surrounding suicide. I feel compelled to continue to rally against the apparently widely held view that suicide is selfish. I have explored that perspective and argued against the selfish view again and again, in other posts.

I am repeating a short excerpt from May this year as evidence I hope will convince any cynic. Scientific American described suicide as “an attempt to escape from oneself”. The suicidal mind is described as “unbearable”, burdened with a “crushing intolerable weight”. The same article says “Feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, inadequacy, or feeling exposed, humiliated and rejected leads suicidal people to dislike themselves in a manner that, essentially, cleaves them off from an idealized humanity. The self is seen as being enduringly undesirable; there is no hope for change and the core self is perceived as being rotten.”

Here in Australia it was recently reported that “Beyondblue has had success in raising awareness about depression and anxiety, but it has largely fulfilled that purpose.” Beyondblue was setup in 2000, as a not for profit organisation established to to erode the shame surrounding depression and anxiety. It is premature to suggest Beyondblue, or any similar initiative, has fulfilled its purpose while suicide is widely regarded as the most selfish act a person can enact. There are more stories to tell, more work to do, more tweets to twitter, and more compassion to bring…

Posted in , Tagged , Leave a Comment

Vale Ilya Zhitomirskiy

By admin on November 17, 2011

Ilya Zhitomirskiy died by suicide this week. He was 22 and one of the co-founders of the yet to be launched social networking site Diaspora*

He was described as “a great friend and a brilliant person.”

Too few deaths by suicide are reported in the news, the exception is high profile people like Ilya Zhitomirskiy.

There are the inevitable questions of why. The stigma and lack of understanding around suicide results in it being under-reported and not understood. We avoid talking about suicide and reporting it. It is staggering to think that there are at least twice as many deaths by suicide than the road toll. Road accidents are reported, scrutinsed, published, and discussed, deaths by suicide are not.

Isn’t it time we talked more openly about suicide, if only so that more of us understand that depression can be fatal? I don’t know if bringing the topic into the open, and more particularly onto the front page, will help us to appreciate more of the risks of depression but I hope it will.

How do we tell our stories?

Posted in , Tagged Leave a Comment

Highly Unusual

By admin on October 16, 2011

As I walked home from the shops today, I looked at the clouds being herded across the sky by the wind while my thoughts were roaming free-range across my mind’s sky.

I was thinking about normal, how I define normal, how I perceive normal. I don’t imagine I am entirely alone in my thoughts, I am sure others would think them too but, as I strolled along the street, I was lost in my head unaware of anyone else in the world.

Normal resists definition, it is a flimsy sort of subjective concept. When I think of normal as standard, average, expected, or even usual, it is not something I particularly want to be identified as. Normal is a label I don’t much care for and I suspect it is a measure over-valued by society.

I remember in my childhood there was a need avoid incurring the disapproval of the neighbours. My family didn’t want to be noticed for the unusual and creative individuals we were, rather we wanted to pass as normal, like any other household in our suburban street. Occasionally one parent or the other query something out loud asking, “What would the neighbours think?” The neighbours, even the ones we didn’t like, were vested with extraordinary powers as the arbiters of what might be deemed normal. My family and I were reluctant to be noticed as the highly unusual beings we could be.

There was a, probably unrealised, fear of being noticed as different, we didn’t want to regarded with amazement, however amazing we might have been. Was it ridicule that was the threat lurking in the judgement of our neighbours?

Today I strolled along my own street with my head in the clouds, thinking about how delightful it is to have the freedom to be regarded as highly unusual. Highly unusual, I was musing on the phrase and enjoying playing with the syllables. The rhythm of high-ly un-us-u-al made me smile as I tinkered with the emphasis and started to trifle with the possibility of being highly unusual, it was an exceptionally pleasant musing.

It wasn’t until an adolescent walking towards me came within hearing range that I realised my singsong solo was being spoken aloud – Oh dear! I was caught out acting highly unusual.

Oh well, it was good to be caught out doing something peculiar rather than passed by while being a more prosaic normal. Today I didn’t feel ridiculous…

Posted in Tagged 2 Comments

Who is asking?

By admin on September 30, 2011

I’m troubled by R U OK? Day. Something has been niggling at the edge of my thoughts and I am concerned that R U OK? Day might not be entirely OK for some. Well not the day so much as the question…

I have sat with my consternation for awhile trying to embrace the idea, and not quite able to. I like the suggestion that we are reminded to check in with someone who might be depressed on at least one day of the year. R U OK? describe themselves as “…an independent, not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is to provide national focus and leadership on suicide prevention by empowering Australians to have open and honest conversations and stay connected with people in their lives.”

Even knowing the good intent behind the push something still doesn’t sit well with me and I am unsure of how to explore my feelings. I’m in a quandary about where to start, so start with me and ask myself: R U OK?

Am I OK? Do I know what it is to be OK, well enough to answer the question? I struggle to form an answer to the ubiquitous pleasantry “How are you?” and now “R U OK?” is a question I see as more complex. It’s a question that feels inherently difficult to answer. I’m unsure how to assess if I am OK in relation to you, the person asking. Do I know you well enough to tell you how I really am? How much trust is shared between us?

I am going in circles, that’s how my mind goes…

“R U OK?” has a lot of assumptions about what is OK and what is not built in on both sides – the one who is asking and the one who is being asked. Am I? Are you?

More questions surround the central question; What is sought or hoped for in the reply? Why is the asker posing the question? What are the possible responses? What does the inquiry imply about the one being asked? How much support is wanted, needed, or available? What is it safe to reveal in response? What will the inquiry-maker do with the response? How far can we take the conversation?

What is best for us? We being the one asking and the one who is asked. I imagine the question R U OK? sitting in space between us, along with care and caring, all tangled up and awkward, and surrounded by many more implied and unanswered questions.

R U OK? is not a simple question, and it is not meant to be but I am still not quite OK with it all…

Posted in , Tagged