Psychology Place

A client’s story of clinical depression

Please don’t think that this is a description of how people should cope with their individual mental health issues, but rather, it’s a description of one persons’ journey in this area that may be of some relevance to such people. This isn’t me interfering with your life, heaven forbid that, but, it’s just me sharing stuff that could be of some use to you. I’ll attempt to explain the circumstances behind my issues and hopefully you might be able to identify aspects of the processes that are applicable to you in some way.

I’m in a situation where I’ve learned a lot about clinical depression in a short period of time and, that in itself has been a huge challenge, considering the fact that at no time did I ever think that I’d be in this position at any stage of my 61 years of life. I am a secondary teacher with 38 years of experience at a large school in Gippsland. One of the duties that I have loved has involved over 30 years of student management where I consistently helped students to deal with the full spectrum of personal issues that were making it difficult for them to learn effectively and take advantage of their innate abilities.

To give you some background into my issues I’ll briefly discuss my early life and then show what happened for me to be in my current situation. I had what was the normal sort of life that any baby boomer had in Melbourne in the 1950’s and 60’s with parents who grew up during the depression and had strong commitments to family and stability in the home environment.

During the second world war my father was tail gunner in Wellington bombers late in the war and flew many raids over Germany from a base in northern England. His discussions of his experiences were all about the positive and funny stuff with no revelation of any of the negative experiences that were an integral part of his daily life. My mother was the second oldest in a family of 8 children and spent much of her early life helping her mother cope with looking after her family without the presence of a father and or husband.

Growing up I had regular contact with the extended families on both sides of my immediate family and enjoyed living in the friendly community of a growing outer south eastern Melbourne suburb. By my later teens I had completed high school and was attending Monash university with the intention of becoming a secondary teacher. I played football with a local club with a lot of the people I’d been through school with.

Consequently I had an active social life with that extended group and had developed a relationship with a local girl who new many of my friends through tennis. We were the first couple to be married but over the next few years we attended at least ten engagement parties / weddings of members of this group plus others associated with my family and other groups of friends. We again set the pattern and had children first and by the time I was 23 we had moved to the country to start teaching with a three year old and another on the way.

Once we settled in, we became involved in the local sporting organisations with football and basketball taking up the majority of our time. I was on the committee of the basketball association and played, coached and refereed as well as helping to run the organisation. After 7 years there, I joined the committee of the local football club and over the next 9 years took on a range of jobs for the club. We had many social activities with both organisations and became well known within the local community.

For the last 20 years I have been involved with the development and operation of an elite junior football club that participates in the best junior competition in Australia. The result of this is that I’ve worked with over 80 AFL players with the club as well as at least another 100 with state football teams. Included in these groups have been 10 number one AFL draft selections, over 30 AFL premiership winners, AFL team captains and Brownlow medalists.

When I started teaching the school had had been through a tough year and, many staff had left. The consequence was that there were 36 new teachers, 24 of whom were first years. This meant that there was also a strong social scene within this staff group so we again had plenty of opportunities to be active within the local community. The only complication of this scenario was the fact that we fitted within the age group of the first years but had a similar family structure to teachers with between 5 to 10 years of experience.

With this background, we went through what we considered to be a normal family life with seemingly few significant problems. The strong relationships city based friendship group and my extended family gradually declined to the point where those relationships disappeared and the friends from the local community groups and work took their place in our lives. We thought that all things were going along an acceptable pattern and I didn’t ever consider that there were subtle changes occurring due to my natural way of coping with stress.

Our children both went to university and the eldest became a teacher while the youngest studied human movement. The elder one has been married for 13 years and has a 4 year old son. She lives in the same town as us and teaches in a local primary school. The younger one lives in Melbourne and has had an extensive sporting career as well as a range of career options with sports journalism becoming her most recent focus.

We did a lot of family based holiday stuff with regular trips to Gold Coast with our daughters and then over 20 years of holidays in Bermagui on the south coast of NSW. My wife and I decided after the early death of her father that we would always attempt to have such trips as well as mid-year trips to places like Port Douglas, South Mole Island, Tasmania, Noosa and places like Darwin and Adelaide.

Things started to go obviously wrong for me when my wife and I went to Lord Howe Island on holidays in October 2011. We’d ridden push bikes for almost two weeks and I decided to try to get to the local village without using my brakes or pedals after going down a big hill near where we stayed. Yes it does seem a little stupid now. The consequence of my “brilliant” decision was that I came off the bike on a corner and cracked some ribs, smashed a collar bone and had lots of scraped skin.

The worst problem however was that I’d suffered a sub-dural haematoma (bruising and bleeding of the brain) and was immediately flown to St Georges hospital head trauma ward in Sydney. I woke up there two days later and for about a week thought that it was just about my collar bone. My poor bloody wife came around the corner after me and had to deal with all the horrible stuff until help arrived. She couldn’t go on the air ambulance with me so had to do all the arranging of flights and accommodation herself without knowing how I was coping.

After getting home in early November, I started to look for expert help with the collar bone and thought that it was all I had to worry about. I went to the local doctor and he gave me the rest of the term off so it was a bit of a relief. As part of this I had my collar bone fixed properly and then went to see a neuro-surgeon who finally told me about the seriousness of the head injuries and explained what some of the consequences were. The crunch came when he said that without a helmet I would have died. I dealt with this in my usual way I simply filed this in my “coping filing cabinet” and moved on. I’ll explain this later.

Without returning to my doctor, I went back to work at the start of 2012 as if nothing had happened but quickly realised that something wasn’t quite right eg, I’d fall asleep during spares and was starting to deal with difficult kids in a totally inappropriate and uncharacteristic way. After four weeks I went back to the doctor and he said that at no time had I been ready to go back full time and he set it up for me to be at work for two, half days a week.

By the end of first term I again thought that I was ok and started to go for three half days a week. However I was still tired at the wrong time, had anger issues and was too publically emotional so went back to see my doctor. After a little while, he convinced me to see a neuro-psychologist who tested me for about two hours and then spent time explaining what I was experiencing. The bottom line was I was suffering from clinical depression.

I coped with this as you’d expect and thought that it was bullshit as I wasn’t bloody depressed. As part of my recovery I was told what the full range of depressive symptoms were but only focused on the most severe and commonly acknowledged ones were. That is, I wasn’t suicidal or obviously depressed and had never been in a situation where that type of thinking had ever occurred during my previous 59 years of life.

However my doctor thought that it was an appropriate diagnosis and consequently gave me lots more time off. He wanted me to use anti-depressants but I didn’t get the prescription filled. The sleep stuff continued to be a problem as I was sleeping as soon as I got home from work. My inappropriate anger and over emotional outbursts were not improving either. He gave me more time off work and by the end of 2012 I’d had the last two terms totally off.

Early in 2013 he finally got me to go to start using the anti-depressants and then to go to see a psychologist. This was a gigantic step as I had always thought this stuff was for other people but not me as it involved telling people what I thought or felt, something I’d never done. I went to Melbourne to meet her and have seen her nearly twenty times since then.

After starting to get used to sharing previously, totally private thoughts and feelings, she helped me to start my recovery from the depression that I was finally starting to accept. The first thing she did was to explain it better than anyone else that I’d talked to before. I began to realise that I’d been showing some of the depressive symptoms for at least twenty years and probably a lot longer. It goes back to something you might identify with.

As a part of my work with her, I realised that my “coping” skills went back to what I’d seen my Dad do all my life with him, don’t share deep thoughts with anyone, no matter how serious or difficult that they were. He had never discussed any of the difficult issues from his life such as bombing raids over Germany, his family relationships and the fact that he didn’t work for a couple of years after the war and was a professional punter.

My extra coping skill involved putting these issues in my “emotional filing cabinet” and then just getting on with things as if nothing was happening. I thought that it had worked brilliantly for nearly sixty years but, the near death experience proved to be too much for me to store effectively in the “filing cabinet.” The problem was not only was I not dealing with this immediate and extremely serious stuff but, the other previously “stored” stuff came tumbling out as well. More discussions occurred and I realised that as part of my brilliant “coping” strategy

I had never discussed my inner-most thoughts at any time with anyone, no matter how important or serious they were …. ever.

I had showed increasingly less and less normal emotional responses to normal stuff eg, I didn’t grieve openly or privately after my dad’s or mother’s deaths.

I had gradually withdrawn from family and social events until my life was basically self-centred and very simple. This is called avoidance and is a natural part of the way we respond to anxiety. The result of all of this was that I literally didn’t need things like a mobile phone or face book stuff because there was literally no-one but my wife and two daughters in my life and I never talked to them either.

As a consequence of this, for many years, I’d see and talk briefly to my sister once a year, mother two or three times, my brother and sister in law once or twice and never saw any of both sides of my wider family unless at things like funerals or special events like significant birthdays. Another symptom of this strategy was that I never talked to any of them much on the phone so I was out of contact with all of those people for almost all of the year. This situation has led to the fact that I don’t need a mobile phone and have never seen or used face book or texting as I didn’t believe that there were any people in my life who would contact me in this way.

The next stage of the therapy process was that I started to realise that I had put my immediate family through exactly what I had experienced with my own dad. They didn’t know what I felt about anything that was important to me or them. They didn’t know the real me because I wouldn’t let them in. Strangely I was almost angry that I found out more about my “real” dad on the day of his funeral than I did over the forty years I was his son and I had done an even “better” job of this with my own family.

I finally started to understand why I’d withdrawn from an increasing number of social of celebratory events. I hadn’t had a birthday celebration since my twenty first, increasingly I hadn’t gone to events to accept things like life memberships of organisations I respected, long service awards because I knew I’d probably embarrass myself, family and other people by showing inappropriate levels of emotional response at such events.

We established that I’d really gone into overdrive with these strategies in 1992 when five key people in my life died in four months. My father, grandfather, best friend’s father and, favourite uncle and aunty (mum’s brother and sister) all died within this time. They were all important to me but I never grieved for any of them and by the end of it all I didn’t even go to the last funeral. This all went into the “filing cabinet” and I thought was safely held there with no negative consequences, but I was totally wrong and there were obvious signs that it wasn’t working.

From the discovery of this staggering low point we then worked on ways that I could undo some of these stuff-ups that emerged from this situation and have a more effective and balanced way of coping with life. The first frustrating thing with the initial part of this was that a lot of the strategies that she suggested were exactly what I’d always advised students and elite footballers to do for nearly forty years when I was helping them to cope better with their issues.

To make things appear to be even more surreal I had, as a critical part of this role, consistently referred individuals to use professional therapists such as psychologists to assist them to find a better balance in their lives and had seen how well it had worked for them once that had accessed these services. Here I now found myself in a “physician heal thy self” scenario and really couldn’t ignore the need to do exactly the same thing myself.

I was going to have to start to let the three key people in my life know more about what I really thought. The levels of guilt I now felt about letting them down so much were incredibly strong. The first thing was to deeply apologise to and thank my wife for being such an amazing and vital part of my life. No other person would have put up with the gradual withdrawal from “normal” stuff or the far more challenging changes after the accident.

She confided in me about how some of that stuff had worried or hurt her and we’ve started to work on ensuring that she doesn’t ever have to put up with the crap again. Obviously my feelings of guilt were heightened even further but she has simply backed me even more than she has always done …… she’s brilliant and I know just how lucky I have been over such a long time and how lucky I am now because she’s still here and is continuing to make such a critical difference in my life.

After this incredible ground-breaker I then did some of the same to the girls without ever telling them too much of how serious the depression could have been and how deeply it had been affecting me for so long. I had rarely ever told them what I thought about them as people or what they’d achieved and let them know, in detail, via letters just how proud I was to be their dad.

They were like their wonderful mother and said everything was ok, they appreciated being told this sort of stuff, knew that I loved them dearly without having to be told and that they were alright with it all. I haven’t embarrassed them by spilling all my deepest thoughts at once but they are better off now and will be treated so much better from now on.

The immediate consequence of these vital steps was that the signs of my depression increased because of the awareness of totally understanding just how much I’d stuffed things up by using my “filing cabinet” and the other ways of managing. On a somewhat positive note I’m still not working and I’ve been off work for over a year now and don’t look likely to go back. However this is really OK with me as I’ve always joked that I was going to use my two and a half years of sick leave before I retired.

I don’t believe that this whole scenario isn’t a problem for me as I now know why it’s happened and that I can address it effectively by doing this sort of thing eg communicating more to people who matter to me or those who are going through the early stages of this. There have been several recent events where I’ve been able to better cope with previously difficult situations without using avoidance. I have been able to attend such events without becoming over-emotional and this has been a really important change.

I’m on a vital and very steep learning curve to undo the symptoms of my depression that has resulted from the failure of my “coping strategies” of nearly sixty years and will be doing it step, by gradual step, with the important people in my life. Some things mightn’t change, like having a retirement function when I quit or a funeral but I know that the stuff with my wife and daughters is the vital key to what’s really important in this process.

They need it and so do I, I know that I owe it to them and why there’s literally no excuse not to commit to them. If, as a consequence, I interact with people like my sister better without burdening her with the details of what I’m going through, then that’s a bonus as well. If I can be of any help to you via this letter then that’s well worth sharing so much of this very personal stuff with you.

In telling you this stuff I have told another person the full details of what I’ve experienced. I don’t worry about this fact as I feel that what I’ve been through might have some relevance to you and your loved ones. I know how important these developments have been for me and my family and feel confident that I’ve made the right decision for the right reason for you and your family.

I don’t expect to have direct contact with you about any of this but, will be here if you need any help at all like my psychologist’s name and contact details either directly or via any form of written communication, except face book, twitter or texting. I’d love to do whatever you need. Obviously I don’t believe you’re in my exact situation but you do some of the same things that I thought were so effective and hopefully can get something out of this as you deal with your own personal stuff.

I believe that I have always represented the typical “Aussie” male and his seemingly highly effective emotional coping skills as well as the avoidance, and sometimes total disregard of the need to use of mental health services. As a consequence I initially tried to downplay these processes but, fortunately was given enough effective support to gradually start to understand what this is all about.

Once I had accepted that I did demonstrate depressive characteristics, I again had a breakthrough in terms of recognising that I needed professional support to deal with the issues that were rapidly appearing in my life. As a result I now know what my symptoms are, what they mean to me and the important people in my life and, most importantly, what I have to do to deal with them and the impact that they have had on me and my family.

I am still working very hard on the important, family based issues and have made some steps to extend this process to better relate to important family members, friends, workmates and associates. Each time I make small progressive steps in these areas I feel so much better but there are 60 years of coping strategies to try to overcome and I know that the “avoidance” and “filing” haven’t stopped completely.

If you can identify with any aspect of my story than I would like to encourage you to take that giant risk and allow yourself to seek the professional support that can make an incredible difference for you. Once you do take this enormous and very positive step, back your counsellor and yourself to open up and talk more openly as well as be ready to accept the fact that you can cope with the sort of pressure that will be part of all of these processes.

Good luck, and I hope that you can make the progress that I believe that I’ve achieved despite the fact that I was the last person that thought he would ever need such support or that would participate as effectively as I think I have so far.