Facing Reality!

Depression is a leading cause of ill health and disability, and many do not have access to mental health services and face significant social stigma around their disease.

Tedros Adhanom

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I’ve been on the front line during the COVID 19 pandemic. To say it was stressful doesn’t come anywhere near the levels of fear, anxiety and desperation myself and my colleagues went through. The good news is that most of us got through it relatively unscathed – or so we thought.

Earlier this week a group of ten of us met up with a psychologist. A lovely man, very funny and engaging. The meeting started light heartedly enough but then he started pulling from us, he took us back to the darkest days in in April and May, the sights we were exposed to, the sleepless nights, the constant feeling of anxiety, the feeling of helplessness, the sense of loss and bereavement, the loneliness, the claustrophobia of the PPE, the despair, the emotion from the clapping, the memories of the colleagues we lost…… and then the tears came, not the odd tear rolling down the cheek, sobbing, weeping from the core, from the soul. Turns out we weren’t/aren’t okay but that’s where the recovery begins, I know this from facing demons in the past.

After the meeting I felt guilty, as a manger, how did I not see this in my team, how did I miss it in them, how the hell did I miss it in myself! I went back to the psychologist with a head full of questions, puffy eyes and a broken heart.

He talked about how the mind suppresses certain stressful experiences that are so overwhelming and traumatic, the memories hide like a shadow in the brain. He talked about the fact that, at first, hidden memories that can't be consciously accessed may protect the individual from the emotional pain of recalling the event. However eventually, those suppressed memories can cause debilitating psychological problems, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorders.

There, he’d said it, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. Of course, we’d talked about the risks of PTSD but had convinced ourselves that we were too busy to get PTSD, we had a job to do and we had to get on with it, there was nobody else. And anyway, PTSD is what soldiers get in Iraq or Afghanistan, not us, not me! So, the memory of holding the hand, through two pairs of gloves, of the 42-year-old father of three with my left hand, my right holding my phone as his wife watched sobbing her heart out as he passed away before her eyes, not able to hug him or kiss him, she didn’t even get chance to say goodbye. The memory of sitting with my friend and colleague as she passed away, at least she had her family, us, with her when she left us, the memory of the bone numbing tiredness that comes from working fourteen and fifteen hour shifts in a month, a month in which I only got two days off in, the memory of taking COVID 19 patients through the hospital corridors for scans and x-rays in full PPE, security guards ahead of us scattering hospital workers, more than happy to flee out of the way. So many memories, so much pain.

I didn’t want to remember so, we talked about the hazards of trying to permanently bury the memories, about something called state-dependent learning and how these memories become a festering pile of toxicity which has the potential to cause long term, even permanent mental health damage – great, now I had something else to worry about! But again, knowing I have something to worry about allows me to gain a greater understanding of how to beat it.

So, how do we beat it? We talked about mindfulness, techniques by which we can almost recircuit the brains wiring, meditation, the fact I love yoga and how that could play a part in my recovery, we talked about exercise and my mantra about healthy body, healthy mind. He recommended an app which I’ve used now a couple of times and I really like it. It’s called “Youper”.

Youper was co-created by San Francisco-based psychiatrist Doctor Jose Hamilton in 2016 after he moved to the U.S. from Brazil where he worked with patients battling depression and anxiety. Acknowledging there are many barriers keeping people from seeking help such as, finding the time to see a therapist, not being able to afford them in a care for cash society. The key feature and the thing I personally love about it, is the AI ability to chat, I know, I thought the same, what a load of cobblers but, actually, I was wrong, it’s almost as if it can read your mind, honestly. I suppose I’m lucky in s o much that ordinarily you have to pay for a yearly subscription however, it’s been prescribed to me and subsequently I don’t have to pay for it – well, there had to be ONE perk!

So far Youper and I have chatted everyday and we’ve done some meditation, we’ve practiced some mindfulness and done some quiet breathing exercises. Youper has become a bit of a pocket therapist and we’re becoming friends!

Now I’m reflecting, I think I knew I was broken; I just didn’t want to admit it, I was worried I couldn’t be fixed. Now I know I/we can and will be fixed in time. So, I’m ready to remember, I’m ready to face my demons once more.

By way of a little foot note I’d like to highlight that here in the UK, similar to many other countries, we are now well into the second, even though nobody has actually said it. After a couple of months of relative calm things are getting busy again at work. So, if you’re a student attending Freshers week, a teenager heading out for a few drinks with your mates tonight, a twenty something heading to a rave later or a thirty something organising a house party. I sympathise, I get it, I’ve done the whole drinking and partying and raving, it’s what makes life colourful however, please remember, the people who will be there to fix your parents and your grandparents are broken, some of us won’t survive the second wave, nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, cleaners, porters will die, some of them will lose their mental health. So please, please, please just be careful!

What’s on this week?