The elephant in the drawing room
In my last post I wrote of hormonal imbalance and the difficulties that I'm facing with it. I spent the past couple of days with a friend who, with surpassing delicacy and tact, got me to confront the idea that I'm actually suffering from depression. This is not something that I really wanted to admit to myself but it all makes an unpleasant sort of sense.
I'm not that fussed about the social stigma. I have that across a few axes these days anyway and I know too many people who live with mental illness in one form or another to subscribe too heavily to that sort of rubbish. It does, however, kind of fall into the category of conditions which are managed rather than cured, often with pharmacological solutions that come with unwelcome side-effects. I'm not especially keen on this. It's also looking all too much like the bumpy ride I had into transition - denial, uncontrollable emotional turmoil, crisis, epiphany, coming out and I foresee a matching period of life upset, adjustment, therapy and a degree of further marginalisation. (ok, maybe the stigma does bother me a little - people can be stupid)
This, as with the hormone imbalance, is all speculation. I've had no blood tests, no consultations, nothing. I'm guessing. It's entirely possible that there's a little of situation, hormonal AND depressive aspects to what's going on and that this will only be resolved though careful investigation and a fair bit of trial and error. In the meantime, I'm going to be fragile, scatterbrained, a little reclusive and wary of doing a lot of things.
So I've made appointments to see appropriate people and am trying as hard as I reasonably can to do what cognitive work I can off my own bat. I suspect that it's all to easy for this to turn into all sorts of bullshit destructive downwardly spiralling badness and I very much want to avoid having my life fall apart yet again, potentially in all sorts of irretrievably horrible ways. I'm not sure I'm actually frightened by this but I'm apprehensive. I have no idea what my capacity to deal with this is, given that it's something that erodes that very capacity. I've taken time off work simply because each day there had become an exercise in endurance. I'm going back to work on Monday and I'm not looking forward to it.
So I'm contemplating a workplace change, about to start looking at buying property and coming to the realisation that I may be dealing with some kind of mental illness. I suppose I did say that my life needed shaking up. I should be more careful what I wish for.
I'm not that fussed about the social stigma. I have that across a few axes these days anyway and I know too many people who live with mental illness in one form or another to subscribe too heavily to that sort of rubbish. It does, however, kind of fall into the category of conditions which are managed rather than cured, often with pharmacological solutions that come with unwelcome side-effects. I'm not especially keen on this. It's also looking all too much like the bumpy ride I had into transition - denial, uncontrollable emotional turmoil, crisis, epiphany, coming out and I foresee a matching period of life upset, adjustment, therapy and a degree of further marginalisation. (ok, maybe the stigma does bother me a little - people can be stupid)
This, as with the hormone imbalance, is all speculation. I've had no blood tests, no consultations, nothing. I'm guessing. It's entirely possible that there's a little of situation, hormonal AND depressive aspects to what's going on and that this will only be resolved though careful investigation and a fair bit of trial and error. In the meantime, I'm going to be fragile, scatterbrained, a little reclusive and wary of doing a lot of things.
So I've made appointments to see appropriate people and am trying as hard as I reasonably can to do what cognitive work I can off my own bat. I suspect that it's all to easy for this to turn into all sorts of bullshit destructive downwardly spiralling badness and I very much want to avoid having my life fall apart yet again, potentially in all sorts of irretrievably horrible ways. I'm not sure I'm actually frightened by this but I'm apprehensive. I have no idea what my capacity to deal with this is, given that it's something that erodes that very capacity. I've taken time off work simply because each day there had become an exercise in endurance. I'm going back to work on Monday and I'm not looking forward to it.
So I'm contemplating a workplace change, about to start looking at buying property and coming to the realisation that I may be dealing with some kind of mental illness. I suppose I did say that my life needed shaking up. I should be more careful what I wish for.