What better way to celebrate Christmas than to write a piece on Mental Health. Apparently, depression doesn’t take time off at Christmas so if you suffer with it, then I’m afraid you’re stuck with it. But all is not lost. Pushing away the demons is about managing depression in a meaningful way.

In the last piece I posted on Mental Health I focussed on the outside looking in, i.e. how someone without depression might assist someone who suffers with it. This piece is viewed from the opposite end of the telescope. From the inside looking out. How you might help yourself in ‘pushing away the demons’.

Below is a shopping list of ‘do’s and don’ts’ I made a during a period of mental instability.  It was a simple list of things I could do, or consider doing, should the pressure of depression become too much and I began to slip off the path towards redemption and better mental health.  They were not written in any significant order, other than the order in which they came to me, but this is what I noted and tucked away for a rainy day.  And trust me, I had some rainy days.  Quite a lot of them, actually.  So much so, rivers flooded, reservoirs were full and thoughts of a hosepipe ban were no more than a distant memory of years gone by.

Pushing away the demons doesn’t mean beating the illness, because an illness it is. It’s keeping it at arms length, at a manageable level, so you can live your life. None of the things on this list, either in isolation or collectively, will banish depression from your soul but they all help. And as you may know, even if you can keep it at bay just for a short while, that is a joyous thing in itself.

This then, is the “10”

1. Positivity
2. Do One
3. Transience
4. Out Out
5. One Day
6. Exercise
7. People
8. Diet
9. Communication
10. Judgement

Collectively I referred to them as ‘pushing away the demons’, hence the title. You can call them what you like. Anyway, let’s take a minute to study these in a little more detail because I think there’s something of use in here.  If not, hopefully I’ll think of something amusing to say along the way. This might allay any fears that reading this is a complete waste of time.

Part 1 deals with items 1 – 5. Items 6 – 10 can be found in Part 2 which will be available very soon.

1.     Stay Positive

It’s fairly self-explanatory this one but how do you do it?  When you’ve got the death-chains wrapped around your neck and they’re getting tighter and heavier by the minute, it’s safe to say it’s going to be difficult to stay focused and also stay positive.  But stay positive you must.  The death-chains won’t be there forever. It’s your job to outlive the death chains even if they do keep you awake all night with their incessant rattling.  Why doesn’t someone invent death-chains that are silent? Why do they have to clank about so much?  Couldn’t they be made of foam for example, to aid restful sleep?

Of course, you cannot ‘stay positive’ when depression is blasting through your mind like a cyclone with anger management issues. But there are days, sometimes only hours, when your depression feels a little less overbearing than normal. And these are the little chinks of light, the tiny shoots of encouragement you can cling to to remind you of the brighter days ahead. We all know those moments won’t last forever and the black shroud of darkness will descend again soon. But until it does, enjoy it and try to remember it and remember that those moments will return, one day soon.

2.     Do One Thing

I may have mentioned this in a previous piece but it’s worth mentioning it again because it’s quite important; at the beginning at least.  The “do one thing” mantra is much like the five-minute rule and they could be linked. As in the “doing one thing” could last “five-minutes” therefore satisfying the criteria of both rules. The five-minute rule is choosing to do something, anything, for five minutes – that’s all.

(You can read about the 5 minute rule here Can’t Get Started? End Procrastination with the 5-Minute Rule )  

This is what is called the double-whammy and if you’re considering having CBT sessions then prepare for some homework between sessions.  If you have reached the point where self-help is something you’ve recognised as being beneficial to you, rather than the enemy within, then doing one thing a day is a good place to start.  And it is simply that.  Finding one thing to do…in a day, deciding what it will be and doing it.  It’s not as easy as it might first appear but stick at it and it may become a regular feature of your life.

3.     Feelings are Transient

Well yes, they are and we know that otherwise we’d all be in a state of permanent joy or constant anguish, but in those moments of doubt, when all you feel you can rely on to keep you company is the shitty British weather and its ability to throw cold, grey, twenty-four hour days at you for what seems like an eternity but is in reality only twenty-four-and-a-half hours a day, then your dark mood might just get the better of you.  

What better way to deal with such angst than to let go of it sooner, rather than later?  In dark times I embraced the hatred day after day.  It was my best friend and perhaps the only thing I could truly rely on but at the same time it was soul destroying, not to mention exhausting.  Hanging on to that level of negativity for days on end saps so much of your strength that, at the end of it, all you want to do is sleep.  Save the sleeping for the grey days.  If it’s warm, dry and sunny then try to enjoy the weather.  Or just sit in it for a while. 

4.     Get Out

This dovetails nicely with the last point.  Getting out of doors and getting some sunshine works wonders for negative mood swings.  It’s not easy to go out when all you really want to do is destroy yourself or other people, but you must try to remember, those thoughts and feelings are coming from another person and it’s not the real you that wants to do that.  When every sinew of your mind and body is screaming at you ignore common sense and stay in your room in perpetual darkness, your job is to secretly undermine the messages you’re being fed from within.  Your job is to demand of yourself the opposite of what you’re telling yourself you must do. 

You might, as with other points here, need some external help from a friend, spouse or relative to ‘chivvy’ you along, but getting outside and seeing the sun, or just daylight, does a lot for lifting the spirits.  It also means you’re changing your environment which is analogous to saying ‘a change is as good as a rest’.  And, as a revered stand-up comedian might say, you don’t have to go ‘out out’, just out will do fine.

5.  One Day At A Time

In 1979, there were a lot of changes occurring in the music industry in the UK.  The tail end of punk was happening; the invention of New Wave had occurred and as a consequence Indie came into being.  Ska and Bluebeat had begun to materialise from Reggae influences.  On top of this, Heavy Metal had also made great strides forward too.  Amongst this maelstrom of new genre activity, PYE Records (one-time home to Bowie, The Kinks and Donovan) released a single called “One Day At A Time” by Lena Martell.  It was a dreadful, dirgy, Country/Gospel mashup written by Kris Kristofferson of all people.  

Not only that but it reached number one in the UK charts and stayed there for a mind-boggling three weeks.  Worse still, Top of the Pops (the UK’s only weekly music show, and supposedly for teenagers) took great delight in showing the maternal looking Lena warbling her little Scots head off, at every opportunity.

Tubeway Army

“One day at a time sweet Jesus, that’s all I’m asking of you,” she went, and a nation’s disaffected youth yawned and growled “Good grief!” at the TV (or maybe they used more ‘colourful’ Anglo-Saxon adjectives).  It became the tenth biggest selling single of 1979, outstripping “Message in a Bottle” by The Police and “Hit Me with your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, arguably two of the most influential singles of that year, along with “Are Friends Electric?” by Tubeway Army (later, just Gary Numan), the latter which ushered in the new, new wave of eighties synth, keyboard and drum machine inspired pop music.

I was just 19 at the time, had my own punk band, was attempting to write punk anthems (which on reflection weren’t anything of the sort) and I often wondered where all this ‘old ladies’ music came from and why it was clogging up the charts, which really should have been a bastion of youth culture.

Scarred

But now, when I look back at Good Old Lena and her pseudo religious claptrap, it’s viewed through the benefit of a mind scarred by life and depression (yes, I did say benefit), and I can see a lot of positive elements in it for people such as myself, who are able to admit they are not without issues; who can and will lean on others when times are hard and pickings are slim.

Here’s the chorus:-

“One day at a time sweet Jesus
That’s all I’m asking of you
Give me the strength to do every day
What I have to do
Yesterday’s gone sweet Jesus
Tomorrow may never be mine
Lord help me today show me the way
One day at a time.”

Finding Your Way Back

With depression, taking one day at a time is as much as you can do.  Focus on today and do whatever you can to find your way back to who you really are.  Even if today you do nothing, that’s not all bad, it only becomes an issue when it becomes nothing every day, for months on end.  If you need Jesus or The Lord to help you, then take comfort in that.  If like me, you don’t subscribe to that point of view then that’s fine also.  It’s whatever works for you, not others. 

 

When you find what works for you then you can truly begin to work some magic and start to come back home.  One day at a time.¹

So, head on over to Part 2 which covers the equally exciting items numbered 6 -10 on the shopping list.

Part 2 is now available here… Pushing Away – Part 2

Lees Blogosphere (theleeadamsblog.com)

1. Even though I wrote this some time ago and I haven’t suffered with depression for a while, reading this statement still makes me very emotional, because I can remember being lost and not knowing what to do and how to escape the all pervading darkness. And although little old Lena didn’t help me then, I do know how powerful that message can be. One day at a time. Maybe just one hour at a time. Oh, and if you currently have a voice in your head telling you what you’re reading is a load of bollocks, do yourself a favour and tell it to fuck off. It’s called ‘pushing away the demons’.