An emotional hand grenade with the pin pulled out

I’ve had to deal with the aftermath of three major emotional explosions in my life. All three involved a period of deep mourning for the loss of who I perceived I was and eventual reconciliation with myself. It turns out the explosions took away a perception I had of myself that wasn’t really part of me; like a sculptor who creates by chipping the marble away.

The first explosion occurred when I was 16 and in the final year of secondary school. I had been going to speech therapy throughout my childhood in the hope I would get rid of my stammer. I had unwavering faith in this. I had to get rid of my stammer so I could cope with being an adult, or so I thought. I constantly asked myself, "How could anyone function as a grown up with a severe stammer?" Also, I heard that it was easier for a child to get rid of their stammer and much harder for an adult. Therefore, I had to catch the last boat to Fluent-ville and I was already running late.

I attended speech therapy as usual one day when my speech therapist handed me an emotional hand grenade with the pin pulled out. She told me "I am going to pass you on to a therapist who deals with adults who stammer".

I thought, "Sorry, what did you just say?" I said, "Sssssssssssssss..." and stammered, both verbally and emotionally.

And that's when the hand grenade went off. I was dragged into adulthood before my time and in the process lost hope and lost my perceived fluent future. I simply wasn't ready to be called an adult nor was I ready for the realization that I would have to live the rest of my life with a stammer. I felt I had failed myself in the worst possible way. I had failed to give myself the means to be myself.

I saw myself as horribly disfigured from that explosion and the ringing in my ears deafened me to my voice for years. It took 12 years of emotional turmoil to come to terms with being an “adult who stammers”.

The second hand grenade I had to deal with was my depression and nervous breakdown. The explosion blow away my flesh so I was just a skeleton; it drove away everything except my bare bones. I had to layer each muscle back onto my skeleton and repair each nerve fibre and tendon. I had to rebuild my emotional wellbeing one cell at a time. It took two years.

The third hand grenade that was handed to me was Parkinson’s disease, “You might have Parkinson’s disease”, my disease said and dangled the pin from the hand grenade in front of me. The wait was agonising to find out whether the hand grenade would explode or not. It eventually did and separated my mind from my body and catapulted me into the clutches of a prognosis which tries to dictate to me, “you will be severely disabled”. I’ve been trying to glue my mind and my body back together ever since.

Ultimately, the three explosions have enabled me to know how determined and resilient I can be in my life. The aftermath has helped me to refine how I see myself and become a lot more realistic about who I am. I’ve learnt to be alongside the problems I have. Each explosion taught me something new and gave me the opportunity to learn and challenge my perception of who I am. I’ve slowly emerged from the marble…

Fragile suspension

After years of driving on rough ground with three heavy passengers riding in the backseat (stammering, depression and Parkinson's) my suspension has started to wear out. Whenever I am in a pressurised situation my problems put on weight and become prominent, causing the weakened suspension to buckle; therefore making the journey more uncomfortable and the car likely to break down.

Recently my speech and depression has suffered with the burden of worsening Parkinson's symptoms. Why does Parkinsons have to attack such a weak spot as my stammer and depression?

I have spent quite a bit of time in the cognitive behavioural therapy garage getting my suspension repaired. I’ve been using the tools I’ve learnt to carry out the repair; the idea of thrownness (I am blameless for my problems but I can do something about them by reacting to them); my future is unwritten; I’m savouring the slice of cake I have (stop asking for the rest of the cake, you have got the whole cake!).

I am sat in the garage taking a break from the repairs, drinking powdery hot chocolate from the drinks machine they always have in the reception. I look towards my body on the car ramp and I think, “We’ve been through a lot together! Hang on in there and I’ll try to repair you to get you going again!”

What my depression feels like

My life is like a carefully woven ball of wool. To live my life I use the ball of wool to create all sorts of garments; in the past I’ve made a DPhil jumper and currently I am trying to make a pair of writers trousers. I need the wool in a neat ball so it unwinds without getting tangled, allowing me to live a smooth and contented life.

However, I am currently going through a bout of depression related to my worsening Parkinson's symptoms. The effect of my depression is to unravel the ball of wool so it ends up in a tangled mess on the floor. It is very difficult trying to find the exposed end of the ball of wool to enable me to knit a garment and get through the day; I spend ages untangling the wool before I even pick up my knitting needles.

The longer the wool is left on the floor the quicker it becomes frayed and damaged, making it harder to knit the necessary clothes to function in daily life. Even when I manage to knit a garment it falls apart because of the damaged wool. The unused wool then becomes scattered around my life and my feet get caught in it and I continually trip over.

In the absence of new clothes to replace the old, the clothes I am wearing become faded and drop off me. I am left exposed to the cold winds of the depression storm.

I need to see the ball of wool as unraveled and not accept its tangled state as something normal.  I need to gather together the wool again and make sure it is wound into a neat ball. I need to recognise again the range of garments I can make. I need to be me again...

Losing and gaining hope

Losing hope is caused by not being able to see the possibility of your free will influencing the outcome of an event. In our random, unjust world it is a constant battle (mostly filled in by religion and science) to maintain your hope. All hope is based on the basic premise that one day we will fully understand the world and be able to be the cause of its effect on us. In the absence of hope we sink down to our knees and let the howling winds of the world shake us out of ourselves.

Therefore, we lose the connection between ourselves and the world when we lose hope. Like the arrival of Parkinson’s in your life, you see the future you expected to have being snatched away. How do we gain our hope back?

We do not lose our free will when we lose hope; we lose the perception of what our free will can do. Therefore, even when we lose hope we are free to choose our reaction to the world and in doing so colour the world according to our will. For example, losing hope I will ever share my life with someone because of my Parkinson's causes me to perceive every woman I meet as automatically not interested in me. This causes me to lose even more hope and makes me determined to give up any possibility I have to express my heart. The world continues with its perceived indifference towards me because I don’t engage with it. I need to see the possibility of the world accommodating me and allowing me to express myself within it. If, with renewed hope in the efficacy of my free will, I can create space for me it means I can create space for others to join me.

Trusting myself

I have lived under the burden of self-doubt all my life. It’s as if I have worn multiple layers of clothes and it has made me feel stiflingly hot and deeply uncomfortable. Try to imagine not hearing your own voice and not identifying with your voice; try to imagine feeling you are not in control of your mind and feeling you are in a constant battle with yourself; imagine not connecting with your body and not feeling in control of it. These are the layers of stammering, depression and Parkinson’s self-doubt I have been consumed by. I reacted to self-doubt by trying to control everything and when I couldn’t control everything in the world I would add more layers of self-doubt clothing.

I have emerged from those layers during the past year: ironically since my diagnosis of Parkinson’s. I have recognised that those self-doubting layers of stammering, depression and Parkinson’s are just a part of my thrownness (or the state in which I exist). I focused on those things to the exclusion of almost everything else. I didn’t notice the person beneath those layers. I neglected myself in the all out warfare of proving myself and filling in the void of self-doubt.

I have emerged battered and bruised and severely dehydrated. I am only now learning to drink the cool, refreshing water of trust. Trusting my breath and my voice; trusting the stability of my emotions and my mind; trusting my mind to connect to my body; trusting the future and my ability to still do things; trusting the value of myself and my ability to be me.

Listening to the echo

When you recall a piece of music in your head you are listening to an echo of your past; in the absence of the original physical experience recollection reconstructs the experience again. The moment you access the sounds, either outside of yourself or later within yourself, the experience is filtered and made sensible by a sense of self and its memories.

The mind is full of these echoes, which reverberate around the mountains of understanding and valleys of memories within the self. For example, when I talk to someone I hear the words in my head as I formulate what I’m going to say; these words are echoes from the vocabulary I originally learnt growing up. Then, in a separate act of listening, I hear the sound of my own words spoken aloud. Finally I hear the echo of the words I have just formulated and spoken. I listen to these echoes both as the instigator of what I want to say and the means of producing the sounds.

When somebody talks to me I do not hear the formulation of the words in the other person’s head; I do experience the physical impact on my eardrums when the person is verbalising their words. But, I only hear the echo of myself listening to the external sounds, not the echo of the formulation of words.

This is a crucial difference: when another person judges me I cannot hear or do anything about the formulation of the words in their head; I am not the instigator of their thoughts nor do I make the decision to verbalise their thoughts. I can only do what I think is right and react to the consequences of my actions (good or bad) and any possible judgements as they arise. However, when I judge myself I can listen to the echo of myself internally formulating the words and act as border guard to ask whether that judgement should populate my mind. By overhearing the echo I can stop unhelpful judgements impacting my emotional state.

Therefore, you react to other people when you are judged and overhear the echo of yourself when you judge yourself. Both allow the freedom to choose to believe the judgements or not.

Parkinson’s can also be a painkiller

Being diagnosed with Parkinson’s is like sitting down and eating a big plate of pain. It has a grainy texture that sticks to your teeth and a sour, rotten taste that sometimes makes you vomit on yourself. The pain lays heavy like concrete on your stomach and the emotional wind that erupts from you is constant and powerful.

However, the human body (which crucially includes a mind) is remarkably adaptable and can extract the beneficial from anything. For me, within my Parkinson’s is also a painkiller because it makes me confront all aspects of myself (including my stammer and depression). Parkinson’s has taught me to appreciate the deep well of determination (some might say stubbornness!) I’ve got, helped me see the benefit of having a stammer and depression (also being chronic and incurable they taught me how to cope with Parkinson’s) and how much I want to be me within my disease. I see the value of the process of living a life and dealing with change since my diagnosis. After years of pushing myself away because of my stammer, I simply want to be me now; that includes Parkinson’s but also includes my intelligence and my heart.

Parkinson’s has given me the pain but it has also given me a new perspective and a new means to appreciate and deal with life.

1. Somebody I know - The problems of stammering

The Problem - How can I possibly pull two mountains together?

My mind is a fluent, non-stammering mind. My voice is a stammering voice. When I think I do not stammer. It is only when I attempt to verbalise my thoughts does the stammer intrude.

In the past I saw myself as separated from myself; one part of me, my mind, was standing on top of a mountain surrounded by a thick covering of cloud, invisible to all but myself. The other part of me, my voice, bathed in horrible sunshine, was standing on top of another mountain miles away from the first mountain.

My mind in fluent despair saw the ideas I carefully constructed and sent to the other mountain become shredded and degraded by my stammer; each idea my mind sent across lost its essence and fell away. As a result I did not recognise my external voice as a valid representation of my mind, the distance between the mountains was too great. Therefore, I was split in two. I was fluent and I stammered at the same time. I was confused. Terribly, destructively confused. How can I have two separate voices at the same time?

I lost myself in the gap between the mountains. This led to a very painful circular argument; my fluent internal voice undermined my external stammering voice and my external stammering voice undermined my internal fluent voice. So, whenever I tried to locate my identity either internally or externally it was undermined by the other contradictory voice. I ended up being nowhere. I couldn’t form a stable identity as I oscillated between my separate voices. It was very disorientating and very painful.

Because the emotional response I had to my stammer was so much more intense than my reaction to my internal voice I kept reacting to my stammer and eventually all I heard was the explosions of stammering blocks. I pushed myself towards the inside edge of my face and I existed very near the surface of my speech. I lost my inner identity and literally became my speech problem. All I heard of myself was my stammer.

My stammer had other consequences too. I felt that it was seemingly beyond the control of my mind (I never knew when I would step on a stammering landmine or how to bandage the wound when I did) and therefore every time I stammered it dismantled the value of my intelligence and my mind. I also felt alone in my head because I perceived that nothing of me (e.g. my thoughts, my consciousness) was getting through my stammer. I felt cut off and isolated; only my stammer was being seen and heard. Even when I was talking (no, stammering) with someone I felt isolated. Therefore, my “natural” state was to be alone with my thoughts.

Allied to thoughts of isolation was the fact I blamed myself for my stammer; it seemed logical to me that whatever came out of my mouth belonged to me. If I insult you then I would have to take responsibility for engaging and moving my mouth to form the insulting words. It was also my mouth that formed the stammer. Therefore, I was responsible for my stammer. If I was to blame I must truly hate myself to inflict such pain on myself. I concluded I deserved the punishment of loneliness for being unable to conquer my stammer. Why would anybody want somebody like me who was incapable of saying mere words (any infant spoke better than me)? I perceived myself as simply not being good enough to overcome my stammer. I couldn’t be me; instead I was something (my stammer) that I hated. Why would anybody want me if I didn’t want me?

Please read part 2 and 3...

2. Somebody I know - The turning point?

For all my life I have felt great comfort being with my family and I was given the freedom to explore and develop my own interests. It was through this freedom and these interests that I found ways to express myself outside of my stammer (e.g. as I was growing up school work became my means to express my mind). In particular, Science gave me a way to understand the confusing world around me. Importantly it gave me answers to where I had come from and who I am. Also, Shakespeare, in his astonishing use of language to verbalise the inner emotions of his characters, taught me that words and voices could contain the ideas of the mind. Maybe, just maybe this applied to me; the gap between the mountains perhaps wasn’t that great.

Then after I completed my Masters course I had a nervous breakdown. It simply emptied me out; like a water balloon thrown against a wall, I burst and leaked depression everywhere. It took me two years to patch the balloon together and only after this time did I dare to fill it with emotion again. I learnt to never fill it to bursting again.

In many ways going through a breakdown teaches you the depth of your determination and fortitude; choosing to move through the howling storm of depression and finally to emerge from the other side wipes the blackboard clean but still with the former words faintly visible. The depression is still there but it is less intense; you can write over the faint words with new understanding while always referring to what you have been through.

Please read part 1 and 3...

3. Somebody I know - learning to live alongside difficulties

Possible steps to a solution

One of the main lessons I learnt from my breakdown was acceptance of the many challenges of my life. If I could meet the challenge of severe depression then I can overcome anything! So, I decided to take on the challenge of scientific research, which was something I had wanted to do and a goal that had survived my breakdown. I applied for research assistant jobs and to my surprise I was offered one in Oxford. I did say I liked challenges! I moved to Oxford on my own and I was successful as a research assistant. I gained a huge amount of confidence. After 3 years I was offered the chance to do a doctorate (DPhil) at Oxford University. Of course I said yes! I like a challenge!

During this time I attended a speech course with speech therapist Dr David Ward. He taught me a technique called “the slide”. I have difficulty moving from the first sound of a word (e.g. “f” in forty) to the vowel sound (e.g. “f” to the “o” sound in forty). I would say the “f” sound but get stuck in the transition to the “o” (e.g. “fffffffffff…ffffffffff…”). The slide is designed to ease the transition (e.g. “fooooooorty”). In essence it is deliberately stammering but in a controlled manner. When I used it I could get past the block and link up with the rest of the sentence I had in my mind. Then it hit me like a cold shower that becomes warm: for the first time in my life I could hear my voice!!! I could recognise my mind within my voice! I could be me! This had a profound impact. The explosion of stammering blocks no longer deafened me to myself. When I stammer now I have a better perception of the fluent parts of my speech. I can hear me and not just the stammer.

During my DPhil I felt the pressure and expectation and worked very hard on my project and as a result fell into depression again. I went to the University counselling service where I met a brilliant therapist, Ruth, who introduced me to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and the philosopher Martin Heidegger and his book “Being and Time”. In particular, Heidegger’s idea of thrownness: we are thrown into the world in a particular state but we are not to blame for this state; we did not choose whether we are male or female, have two eyes or have a stammer… Hang on, did you say I’m not to blame for my stammer?! It was a revelation! I wasn’t to blame for my stammer! This had a huge impact!

Another idea of Heidegger that complemented this was his notion that the process of being thrown into the world had a special type of momentum. Although our specific thrownness is fixed we have the potential to use the “tools” of thrownness (the structure and varied function of our body) to do a huge array of things; and we can choose how to use the tools. We live in a world where there is always something left to do.

I then read Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”. In it Kant develops the idea that how we view the world determines what we see. We impose a structure onto the world in the way we think about the world. This gives us great power in determining the meaning of our world.

I could bring these various strands together to weave self-compassion and acceptance into my life. I could hear my voice, I wasn’t to blame for my stammer, I always had something left to do in my life and I could interpret the world how I wished. This led me to conclude that I could be my voice, there was no reason to hate myself for something I wasn’t to blame for and there was no need to be dragged around by my stammer or depression anymore; I could take control in how I reacted to difficulties.

The two mountains have been brought closer together.

Parkinson’s disease

During the last two years of my DPhil I was unknowingly suffering the onset of Parkinson’s disease. Again, through determination and fortitude (and the invaluable support of my family) I managed to finish my DPhil despite suffering from Parkinson’s (not many people who graduate from Oxford can say that!). When the Parkinson’s diagnosis came I was grateful to my stammer and depression for teaching me how to cope with a chronic, incurable disease; unknown to me, I had been in training all my life! Thanks to my equally brilliant current therapist Angela I also found space for me within Parkinson’s like I found space within my stammer and depression.

I now see the immense value of the process of life. It isn’t about the goals we have set ourselves: it’s about how we live our life. Achieving something teaches me what I already know already; the process teaches me what I didn't know. This is possible because there is always something left to do in this life...


Please read part 1 and 2...

Weight of the world

When irises grow the weight of their flowers become such that the stem cannot withstand the burden and it eventually bends and collapses to the ground.

As we grow up our heads are filled with emotion and experience until our personality and our life starts to blossom. Sometimes, the amount we have gone through, the depth of the emotional connection we have gained or an unexpected event or illness makes our head heavy and it drops to the ground. We are unable to shoulder the burden; such is the weight of stammering, depression and Parkinson’s.

However, the stem that supports us can be nourished with helpful strategies or positive thoughts to lighten the emotional load we carry. For example, the art of living alongside a problem or understanding the underlying cause can allow us to lift our heads again…

Fixing up

My nervous breakdown taught me four lessons that have helped me live alongside my depression, stammer and Parkinson's:

1. I have a deep reservoir of resilience and determination I know I can call upon. Going through severe depression teaches you to recognise such strength. Depression is not a sign of weakness but of strength!

2. I recognised there is space for me to live alongside the depression (and stammer and Parkinson's): I was still me as I travelled through my breakdown. I had depression, I was not depression. In this space I found I could be in the audience to my own thoughts; I could hear my negativity as the emptiness it is; it is a false narrowing of the world. In developing this awareness I gained distance from the raw emotion and I could live alongside my depression (and stammer and Parkinson's).

3. Being comfortable in the space you occupy is not blaming yourself for how you occupy the space; for example, you did not choose your gender, skin colour, susceptibility to depression (or stammering or Parkinson's) etc; these things are part of what Heidegger called our "thrownness". You were thrown into the world with these things but responsibility is an effect of this process not a cause. I have depression (and a stammer and Parkinson's) but I'm not to blame for their possession.

4. Heidegger's idea of thrownness includes the observation that in life there is always one more thing to do (a "not-yet"), which means we are never stuck. We have a fundamental freedom to think at least one more thought; to react to our thrownness and circumstances in our lives; this reaction is our responsibility and our choice. This is where we are located and where we heal ourselves.

Breaking down

I was 21 when I had a nervous breakdown. It had been building for a while; my emotion balloon had been filling with black air. A pack of wolves were stalking me in the shadows of that air and I could feel (but in no way understand) a creeping meaningless to everything within me and in my life; the threads of my life were coming apart. I felt and fell into a profound sadness that obliterated all other emotions. I was displaced from the paths other people walked on; I was becoming a refugee in my own skin. Eventually I began to feel nothing. I couldn't sleep and I was constantly on the verge of tears. I would feel nothing at all then I would feel everything all at one. What the hell was happening to me?

Then it happened, my crash day. The emotion balloon had reached its limit and finally popped. The wolves were close now and at last I heard them approaching but by then it was too late. Despair clung to my life and screamed in my ears. The wolves crashed into me and began to tear me apart. My emotions spilled out of their containers and burst in mid air. Everything became incredibly confusing and meaning dropped away. My life was being shook like a rag doll; everything seemed fractured and out of place. I stood naked in the biggest storm I've ever experienced. I was lost...

Luckily I held out my hand and my family grabbed it. I saw a psychiatrist and was put on anti-depressants. For months after the world was drained of colour but the earthquake gradually stopped and I regained my stability. A daily routine was built around me and I even tried yoga for the first time. It took nearly two years for me to recover.

Going through my breakdown taught me a huge amount about myself: my resilience, my fighting spirit, my innate love of life and willingness to learn. You have to go through depression to understand how to live alongside it; I never allow the emotion balloon to inflate that much again…

Silent space

It is important in music to not only play the right notes but also to know when to be silent; to allow space for meaning to grow from the silence. Sound needs to be juxtaposed with the gaps between each note.

In contrast, the sound of negativity can be an incessant, continuous, single musical note that drowns out the meaning of everyday life.

Break the negative sound by allowing silence to flood in and clear away the debris of toxic negativity. Only in such a neutral space can the positive find meaning. Without neutrality as a stepping stone, negative corrodes the positive and your emotions become a battleground. Disengage from the music of negativity and inhabit the silent truce to allow positive music to extenuate the meaning of everyday life.

The cost of disability - a cautionary tale

I think I need to apologise to my body and myself because I have played out the true cost of disability: loneliness. I was thrown into the world with a stammer, depression and Parkinson’s but the presence of these things is not my fault (they weren’t even chosen for me, they just are). What is my responsibility is how I manage these things and in the past I tried to contain their effect on me (and other people) by closing myself down. At the time it seemed like a good strategy when not one, not two but three very difficult things were punching me in the face every second. My strategy was to dull the pain. But, looking back I realise my strategy introduced a fourth entity that threw punches; I see myself standing over myself joining in the beating. I was defeating myself by shutting myself away and making loneliness almost a certainty. It helped to stop the beating by seeing the thrownness of my problems; I am not to blame for their presence in my life nor am I a slave to them.

So, I’m sorry body and mind for making your (and my) isolation more likely. I built barriers around myself to keep my disabilities away but I ended up keeping away everything else; I also stopped myself from reaching over the barriers and sharing myself. I’m sorry you haven’t been wanted. I see the choice I have to change this and I’m trying to make up for lost time before Parkinson’s potentially takes the possibility away.

Disability can be defined as physical difficulty engaging with the world (I see mental ability as having a physical basis so this includes mental difficulty). Our world contains varying physical terrain we have to manoeuvre ourselves in and around. There is another terrain we have to negotiate with, that of society and the interaction between people. Disability can lead to isolation in both types of terrain. I’m not sure which is worse; having difficulty getting to a social event or once there, feeling alone in a room full of people. Help should be given to battle both types of terrain isolation.

Mental health prejudice

We are made up of a mind and body. In comparison to the body, which has recognisable unconscious elements (e.g. we don’t control our heart beat) the mind is seen as conscious and therefore closer to the centre of who we are; control, moral agency and personal responsibility are seen to emanate from this conscious centre (after all we can create thoughts, can’t we?). In this view, the body is more peripheral and is something carrying less personal responsibility. Therefore, when the mind is ill, prejudice sees it as a failure of conscious control and the sufferer is somehow to blame. Illnesses of the mind are seen as having internal, personal causes. In contrast, when the body is ill the illness feels like it is imposed on us by an external cause and is fought by mechanisms of the body outside of conscious control.

This prejudice is flawed. It fails to acknowledge that the mind also has unconscious elements outside of direct control. For example, a susceptibility to depression is part of the structure and function of the brain. This is part of our thrownness (the state in which we exist) and thrownness is blameless (in the same way we didn’t choose whether we were male of female).

Despite having no choice over the fact of mental illness, we are not helpless: we can choose our reaction to it in the same way we choose to put a plaster cast on a broken leg to help it heal.

Depression Missile Crisis

It comes through on the wire; depression has installed its most advanced weapons on an island close to your shore. An emergency meeting is called and the atmosphere is thick with fear and confusion. Options are thrown on the table; engage the enemy and bomb the island but that risks escalating the situation; the threat is also not contained by doing nothing and assuming the situation will resolve itself; someone even said bomb ourselves…Nothing is decided.

As more and more bombs are delivered to the island and readied for launch a series of provocative military manoeuvres takes place. Tension increases as a few skirmishes break out. Direct communication with the island closes down. Missile launch is imminent.

You sit in your oval office, thinking about the depressive missiles over and over again. You feel trapped. What am I to do? Then, with courage and determination you call somebody into the oval office. You say with a trembling voice, “I think I might be depressed”. The person replies, “OK, don’t worry we will sort it together! We need to open up a dialogue with the island. The missiles don’t have to be there forever. Now you’ve told me, we’ll sort it out…”

Student Counselling Service at Oxford

Depression can be an incessant voice pointing out your flaws and saying you are no good. It tries to isolate you in these thoughts and drain colour from your thinking until you see the world only in depression’s dull grey terms. This internal sea sickness can be very difficult in externally calm seas but even more so when pressure makes the external sea rough.

My seas became rough and my depression storm intensified during the first year of my DPhil. It takes courage to admit difficulty but I’m glad I sought help. Oxford University responded well and offered me a chance to go to their Student Counselling Service. I felt less alone in my difficulties by the fact Oxford would fund their own Counselling Service. Depression and other difficulties must be quite common amongst the students (and staff) at Oxford, as in the general population. It is nice Oxford recognise this and provide the resources, despite any difficulties, for you to be successful. There is no shame in seeking help!

I was apprehensive before my first session but the therapist I met there, Ruth, was reassuring and compassionate; she obviously cared and wanted to help. I learnt that counselling is a neutral place where you assess your automatic negative thoughts and patterns of behaviour; it is an act of overhearing yourself that enables more helpful thoughts to replace the depressive ones. Ruth introduced me to mindfulness and the philosophy of Heidegger. Together we built a solid foundation of understanding that has lasted to this day. Indeed, I have started to build upon these foundations with my equally brilliant, current therapist Angela.

I am very grateful to Ruth, the Counselling Service and Oxford for helping me to take the first steps to understand my depression and to finish my DPhil. I now sail, both internally and externally, in calmer seas.

Emotions are blunt instruments

A negative response to Parkinson’s disease or a stammer may be appropriate in a given situation. However, the problem with negative emotions is you tend to get stuck in the negative until it is all you see; indeed, you may even begin to crave the emotion. Also, emotions are not subtle interpreters of a situation; they are blunt instruments when finer tools may be able to build a more complete picture of a situation. In addition, emotions are not permanent; they pass in and out of consciousness. Therefore, just because you feel an emotion, doesn’t make it true.

Thoughts and feelings form a reciprocal relationship; emotions generate thoughts and thoughts trigger emotions. Therefore, thinking negatively generates a spiral into negative emotion and more negative thoughts.

It follows that negative emotion can be reinforced by negative thought or changed by positive thought. For example, thinking, “I can’t do that because of my Parkinson’s (or my stammer)” generates a negative emotion, which supports the negative thought. On the other hand, thinking, “I will give it a go” creates a positive feeling. This reforming of emotion by thought gives us the opportunity to steer ourselves through rough, negative seas until we reach calmer waters.

“What the hell is happening to me?” – the first encounter with depression

I’ve suffered multiple bouts of depression during my life but my first encounter was the hardest. It is an incredibly confusing time because you know something isn’t right but you don’t know the source. You have to go through depression to know it is depression that is affecting you. Therefore, the first time depression hits it has probably been building for a while and you’ve missed the warning signs (for me, I wanted to cry all the time, I couldn’t sleep and I was numb to happiness) so the force of it can feel overwhelming; as a result I thought at the time, “What the hell is happening to me?” Depression is one of the most challenging emotional states you can experience. It is internal to you but feels something out of your control; it represses emotion and narrows thought. Depression convinces you it is the only way you can think.

It is important to seek medical help; you are not alone in your suffering and although it doesn’t feel like it at the time there is a way through. Depression is a process and not a permanent state. Working through malignant sadness the first time teaches you a huge amount about who you are and what you can do; it teaches you to listen to yourself, it shows your depths of resilience and determination, it arms you against depression so if it starts to build again you can catch it earlier and know how to deal with it.