Constant Anxiety is Very Draining

I think the new thing when I went off sick 8 months ago was anxiety. I mean anxiety as a clinical condition instead of anxiety the thing you experience every day. The clinical condition is of course really the same thing, but overdone by your brain and body.

I've been wanting to write this post all day.  But I am finding myself very tired and with little energy to do something as write a personal depressed academics post.  I came home at lunchtime from work (though decided it wasn't a holihalfday or sick halfday since I spent a large part of the weekend getting marking done.)  I had a nap and didn't do much.  All I wanted to do was write this post.

I have been finding over the last week or so that I have been very anxious almost constantly. That means very jumpy, always being ridiculously worried about the next little thing that is coming up, feeling a pounding heart, and generally having the symptoms of anxiety.

Before you say I should see a doctor about this, I am seeing a doctor. And I am going to an anxiety management group. I think the group leader said literally (but possibly a slight variation) that "what happens in anxiety management group stays in anxiety management group", but I can say two things. It is indeed an anxiety inducing thing to start an anxiety management group. And two, I will NOT tell you who the person who sat next to me is a doppelganger for: I mean seriously, this person could get a job as a celebrity impersonator if they wanted.

I've also found over the last week, that I am getting progressively more tired. It's starting to get annoying. I mean tired is nice if you can go to bed or have a nap. But it's just draining me. This morning I was obviously very tired at the start of the day, and it didn't go away. I came home early, and a nap didn't really get me going again.  As well as getting things done at work, I've been finding it harder to get the energy to do gardening or get out for good runs, both of them being things I enjoy, are good exercise, and usually make me feel better afterwards.

A few days ago I just thought I was getting a cold or perhaps was allergic. That might be true, but what I think now is simply this:

Constant anxiety is very draining. 

Shout out to Student Minds

I'm embarrassed I hadn't heard about Student Minds before. They are "The UK's Student Mental Health Charity."  They write:

"Student Minds is the UK's student mental health charity. We believe that peer support can change the state of student mental health. Our vision is for students to take action to foster an environment where everyone has the confidence to talk and listen to each other, the skills to support one another and the knowledge to look after their own mental health."

Here is a lovely video from the St Andrews branch (my university) which I happened across today.

I can't provide any form of personal recommendation in favour of Student Minds, but I am delighted that students are supporting each other in this way. If this is something you might need, please do investigate.

Popehat on depression and anxiety

Popehat writes well on his own experiences with depression and anxiety.

If you have a loved one in pain, from my perspective the best thing to do is to say "I don't know what I can do, but whatever it is, I'll do it. I'll help you, and I'll take you to others who can help. Let me help you carry the weight." You can help by eliminating the excuses we use not to get help. "I'll miss work!" I'll cover your shifts. "The kids need me!" The kids can stay with us for a month. "I'll lose my job!" No you won't — I'll go to bat for you. "I don't know who to call!" I'll call for you.

And still it is invisible and a liability.

This StackExchange question makes me sad. The student asking wants to know how to deal with a manic episode that screwed up his undergraduate studies bad: how to frame it in future applications (jobs, graduate school, …)

Answers hovered around:

1. Don't say anything if you don't have to.
2. If you have to say something, make sure you show remorse and demonstrate how what happened can never happen again.
3. If you have to say something, preferably make someone else (in a recommendation letter) say it.

I am unhappy that “I broke my leg and I failed classes” is more acceptable and less of a liability than “My brain broke and I failed classes”. Sure; the discussion in the link includes academic cheating — and I do not condone that — but there is an underlying tone of «don't disclose your mental illness» that really worries me.

Miracle medication

It's been a while since I wrote about my current cocktail of chemicals; I've talked about the grinding feelings of numinous dread — they're mostly gone; I've talked about the nerd sniping of near hypomania — that's mostly gone as well.

I've had a few episodes with emotional crashes. Every single one directly connected to a clear and reasonable stimulus. Most of them the result of travel stress combined with sleep deprivation and jetlag.

I've had a few instances of emotions that I'm, frankly, not very used to. I've been angry, irritated, annoyed, and emotionally touched by movies and books.

And the amazing thing. The one thing that takes all this so very very far from anything I'm used to. It is that these emotions come, but they do not take over. S and I have been talking for decades now about how the end goal is to have emotions, and to be able to let them go. To be able to disagree without it leading to a meltdown. To be able to be angry, meet the anger — even express the anger — but staying in control of myself, my actions and my emotions.

I see a sharp border looking back between before and after I started on my current mix: on Lamictal and Wellbutrin.
Before, emotions were out of my control. After, my mind is my own.
Before, disagreements were catastrophes. After, we can disagree, and I can even be annoyed, and the world still goes on.

I am happy. I am sad. I am angry. I am content. I have a full range of human emotion.
But I have the emotions. They do not have me.
This must be what normal people — what neurotypicals — live like all the time.

An Awesome Conversation

I'm working - at least mentally composing - a post about applying for a fellowship when I was feeling miserable and anxious.  I was collecting tweets I'd seen over the last few weeks that struck a chord and found this entire conversation involving our very own Mikael.

I've storified it because I just thought it was awesome, and embed that here.  That's all that really needs to be said in this post.

Hidden mental health issues: my battle with anxiety (Guest post)

As ever we welcome guest posts.  This one is by Viv Dunstan, who has her own academic blog at https://vivsacademicblog.wordpress.com/, but has kindly written this for Depressed Academics.

Many thanks to Viv for opening up about this, and writing this blog post for us.

Hidden mental health issues: my battle with anxiety

I've been following this blog for a while, and thought I'd make my own contribution to it. Lots of my friends know I'm battling a progressive neurological disease which started when I was just 22 in 1994. Less well known is that I have mental health issues, specifically generalised anxiety disorder. This probably comes from coping with my severely disabling and life threatening disease day to day, but may also be due to the medicines I have to take. But it's not something I talk about much. My GP thought it would be a miracle if I hadn't developed something like this, given what I have to cope with.

I first mentioned it more openly in an email to a friend back in September 2014. He was going through a meltdown at the time, and I thought it might help to say that I understood part of what he was going through (soon after he was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder), but also that I suspected many more of his friends who'd been offering support may be dealing with mental health issues in a private way.

My anxiety started to develop from the early 2000s onwards. I'd worry unduly over all sorts of things, and the problems only increased over time, until it reached a crisis when I pulled out of a planned and much wanted short trip to Venice, far too anxious to make the journey. I'd been aware of problems growing for some time, with anxiety becoming more and more of an overwhelming issue day to day, but this was the final straw, and my husband wisely dragged me to the doctor the next morning! My GP agreed with my self diagnosis of generalised anxiety disorder (I'd figured that out from doing my research using good reliable online resources like NHS websites) and offered cognitive behavioural therapy, but warned there was an extremely long waiting list. He suggested I might like to try a SSRI pill first, or instead, which I was happy to do. Because of my MS-like illness I was already taking about 15 different medicines (~40 pills) a day - what difference would one more make, that might help. It took me a few goes to find one that didn't cause troublesome side effects, but I'm now happily settled on Sertraline. It doesn't remove anxiety completely, but makes it much more manageable, me better able to cope, and, importantly, I'm still "me", i.e. the drug doesn't change my personality too much.

I'm not working in academia in a paid capacity - my MS-like illness rules that option out completely now. But I am still active as an academic, doing new research, publishing journal papers, giving conference papers, all helped by an ongoing honorary research fellowship from my university. As a historian doing academic publishing I am a sole author, and have to cope with peer review etc. on my own. That can be extremely stressful, but I've adopted a very pragmatic strategy, and manage it well now. When I get feedback from peer reviewers that I may need to act on I'll skim through it quickly, take a deep breath, then put it to one side for a few days or even a week or two before I look at it more fully, and formulate a plan for tackling the reviewers' concerns prior to any resubmission. Time and distance helps to remove the worst of the sting! Giving conference papers is also a challenge, not least because of the logistics of travelling, with wheelchair, and coping stamina-wise with the event (I have huge problems due to my MS-like illness with fatigue, and can't, for example, do successive days any more at conferences, needing to rest/sleep on alternate days). I find that planning carefully in advance combined with pacing is key. And the more I try to do these ambitious things and succeed, the more my confidence grows, step by step, and the easier it gets the next time. But it's still hard, and still requires a leap of faith every time. Luckily I have a wonderful husband who helps me all the way.

I don't want to suggest that any of this is easy. I still have very difficult patches, as I know others do too. Also depression can be a factor at times, probably caused by coping with my illness, with some extremely dark patches. I don't try to be productive then. But as things lift I can do more, and I enjoy it.

But I suppose my original and most important point is that many more people out there probably have experience of mental health issues (their own, or those of close friends and family) than others realise. And this blog post is my small way of contributing towards that, by opening up about my own issues, and how I'm trying to cope with them.