I was thinking about leaving

Dear Bloggers,

As I read through the web for conversations, questions, ideas about depression, I am struck by how many people who write to forums and blogs are desperately asking for help not for their own depression but for that of their spouses, partners, loved ones. So often, they report bewilderment. They feel stunned to find anger and rejection in place of love. How can it be that the person I have known so well is suddenly different, alien, hostile and wants to break out of the relationship that is so precious? 
 

What is this longing to leave that so many depressed people feel? I have no simple answer to that, but I can describe my own tortured experience with an almost irresistible drive to break out and start a new life.
I spent many years feeling deeply unsettled and unhappy in ways I could not understand. Flaring up in anger at my wife and two great young girls became a common occurrence. I’d carry around resentments about being held back and unsatisfied with my life, fantasizing about other places, other women, other lives I could and should be leading. 
 

My usual mode was to bottle up my deepest feelings, making it all the more likely that when they surfaced it would be in weird and destructive ways. I’d seethe with barely suppressed anger, lash out in rage and, of course, deny angrily that anything was wrong when confronted by my wife.

I was often living on the edge, but there were two threads of awareness I could hold onto that restrained me invisibly. One was the inner sense that until I faced and dealt with whatever was boiling inside me, I would only transplant that misery to a new place, a new life and a new lover. However exciting I might imagine it would be to walk into that new world, I knew in my heart that it would only be a matter of time before the same problems re-emerged.
The other was a question I kept asking myself : “What is it that I am leaving for? ” What was this great future and life that I would be stepping into? Could I even see it clearly? More often than not, the fantasy portrayed a level of excitement I was missing. Crazy thoughts or a very lively fantasy I would call it now.

Some buried part of me knew that a life based on getting high on non-stop brain-blowing excitement wasn’t a life at all. Maybe it wasn’t alcohol or drugs that lured me, but it was surely the promise of intense and thrilling experiences, the opening scene of an adventure film without the need to wait for the complicated plot to unravel. There was no real alternative woman out there waiting for me, only a series of fantasies with easy gratification, never the hard part of dealing with a complicated human being in a sustained relationship. And inwardly I knew, I would still face the fears, depression and paralysis of will that had plagued me for so long.

That bit of consciousness kept me from breaking everything up and leaving the wonderful family that I’m blessed with.

So just imagine what my wife was going through. She had to face the rejection of my anger at the deepest levels. At the worst of it, she had to hear me telling her she wasn’t enough for me, that I needed more than she could give. And the tension and pain between us, the frequent rage that I felt, spilled into the lives of my children in ways that slowly and painfully were to emerge over time. 

That is the hardest part of talking about this now, to grasp how my closest loved ones disappeared from awareness into the haze of my own self-hatred, my own feeling of emptiness that I was desperately trying to fill. I had no idea how my behavior spread in its impact, like widening circles in water, to touch so many around me I’ll continue with this theme and try to get at what can be done or said to someone possessed of a longing to leave.

The longing to leave one’s intimate partner brings out something that isn’t much discussed in descriptions of depression. It is the active face of the illness. We often focus on the passive symptoms, the inactivity, the isolation, sense of worthlessness, disruption of focused thought, lack of will to do anything. But paradoxically the inner loss and need can drive depressed people to frenzied action to fill the great emptiness in the center of their lives. They may long to replace that inadequate self with an imagined new one that makes up for every loss. 
 

My experience with this phase of illness occurred when I had only limited awareness of the hold depression had on me. That may be a key to understanding the dynamic and how to respond to someone in the grip of this drive to turn life upside down. Unhappy without knowing why, I had to find an explanation, and the easiest way to do that was to look outward. I could only see my present life, my wife, my work as holding me back, frustrating my deepest desires. In effect, I was blaming everyone but me for my misery. In that state, I could only focus on the promise of leaving, finding a new mate, new work, new everything.

Every suggestion my wife might make that there was something wrong with me only brought the angriest denial. Every time she said how much she loved me only felt like a demand that I stay stuck in this unfulfilling life and do what she wanted me to do. I knew so clearly that I was not the problem, certainly not sick but for the first time on the verge of escaping into the exciting life I should have been living all along.

There is something very close to the power of addiction in the fantasy of escape. I found it almost impossible to see through the dreams of a new life. It meant so much – my survival as a person seemed to be at stake. Unaware of the full effect of depression, blocking out what my wife and others were trying to tell me, I inflicted a lot of pain on my family, thinking that I had to be brutally honest in order to save myself. Fortunately, as I noted in the last post on this subject, I had been through enough work in therapy to have glimmers of the truth, and that helped me step back from the brink.

I’m big on offering advice, but the potentially devastating impacts of depressed people on those closest to them leads me to go a bit beyond just reflecting on what I’ve been through. I see it different now my wife is stuck in a similar situation that has caused a burn out due to her boss.

If you’re trying to deal with the sudden transformation of an intimate partner, get help, starting with friends and family. You’ve likely felt such a deep assault and wound that it would be easy to get lost in the sheer humiliation, hurt and anger of the experience, searching for what you’ve done wrong, what you could do or say to set things right. That’s a trap set for you by the voice of depression. That voice tries to persuade you, just as it has persuaded your loved one, that it’s your fault. Not true. It’s your partner’s illness that’s at the root of it. 

Those closest to you and your partner have doubtless noticed something strange and may have been hurt as well by new behavior. That will remind you that you’re not alone in this. And remember that you can’t cure someone else with your words and love. They only backfire. At most, you can help your partner gradually gain awareness. It will take the combined influence of you and many others to get a depressed person to start seeing a different explanation for what’s wrong. Only your partner can do the heavy lifting. Only your partner can experience the inner change of thought and feeling that comes with the recognition that there is an illness to be dealt with.

I realize how different everyone’s experience is about the impact of depression on their marriage, and how desperately hard everyone works to reach what is for them the right answer about staying married or not. For me, though, it was a fantasy born of depression. I often wonder how it is, given where I began in my struggle to build a loving relationship with another human being, that my wife and I have stayed married for so long. “Marriage is survival,” I once heard someone say at a wedding, and the uncomfortable laughter in his large audience confirmed the truth of it. Despite all our struggles, we’ve managed to survive the worst of times.

For so many years, though, and long beyond adolescent dreams, I was searching obsessively not for the real work of two people always learning about each other. Depressed and full of shame at who I was, I searched desperately for someone who would make up what was missing, gifting me the worth I felt I lacked, so that I could feel like a whole person at last. I simply imagined I was falling in love. 

It would start with an attraction that soon became obsessive for a woman whose spirit and warmth I reached for instinctively to take in as my own. This was falling in love in a strangely one-sided way. I needed the responsiveness of the other person, to be sure, but only to a certain point. I can try to explain with a story, really a moment when something began to get through to my isolated mind.

I had, or imagined I had, an intense bond with K for nearly a year in my late teens. Her loving me meant everything. She was beautiful, talented and lively, and deep down I felt not just proud that she was part of my life, I felt alive and justified because of her presence. More than that, I projected into the minds of everyone I met the love of my live because such a woman loved me. That was the reality of what I needed from her, the sense of self-worth that I lacked on my own. I ignored what was clearly happening so desperate was I to believe that we would be together forever. After all, I was nothing without her. Our relationship came to end and I have been sick for days. My life was over. I promised myself not to start a relation again but to enjoy life

I was home, and we were up early, getting dressed and ready to get up for breakfast. I was avoiding deep talk. The windows were open to a fine Dutch winter morning. I was dousing my face with cold water in the bathroom as I had great hangover when suddenly I was startled by a beautiful singing voice floating in coming from the bedroom. It was a woman’s voice pouring a haunting melody into the air. It seemed to surround me, and the feeling and the sheer beauty of the tone put everything else out of my mind. I relaxed into its flow for a few still moments, and then I started to move. I had to find out where my future would start again. It seemed that I was ready for life again and I opened my heart and started a relationship again with the woman that I now call my wife. When I snapped out of my memories, I walked back to the bedroom and found my wife quietly sweeping a brush through her long blond hair.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
“That incredible singing – it was the most beautiful thing. Where could it have come from?”
“Oh,” she laughed, “that was just the alarm clock.”
“Just now? Just right now? I mean, it stopped a few seconds ago.”
She nodded slowly, still brushing.
“I mean … I never heard that song before.”
She smiled into the mirror. “Well… now you have.”
She finished brushing her hair. We got our clothes on and left the room. 
 

To say I crashed when she left is putting it mildly. What could happen when my sense of who I was and what I was worth in the world walked away? Gone! There was nothing left! I would start drinking heavily, fall into complete depression, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work, crying a lot, burned with the obsession of having to get her back. For the second time in my life, I don't think I will survive and end up at a psychiatrist. To heal enough so that I could function. Then I’d be able to resume my obsessive quest for a woman to make me feel whole again!

And so the pattern continues for years. When I met my wife and we got married, things seemed so different. But as soon as we got past the intense early years into the time when the relationship gets real or gets broken, I picked up again the habit of obsessing over that shortcut to fulfillment. I could dream of other women, other places, other careers that would end the inner fear, emptiness and pain. It was the sort of dreaming that would always keep me from hearing the song close by. The dreams gave me a way out instead of opening up and talking to the woman who loved me about the real crisis I was in. There was always a fantasy person elsewhere who wouldn’t need all that talking and honesty!

It took me many years, but finally the escape artist in me called it quits. Those fantasies came in such abundance that I just couldn’t take them seriously anymore. Only then could I get on with the work of recovery and the work of marriage.

I understand now when my wife says to me: “Are you still in love with me and if you don't than you should leave.” I guess that she is having a hard time now.



The Old Sailor,

What if you start hating your job?

Dear Bloggers,

Someone I know is having a hard time at the moment as the atmosphere on the workfloor has become less human and more stressful as the chefs only think in digits. This is creating a lot of stress among the co workers as well and slowly she starts hating her job.

I was taught as a young boy to never to use the word “hate”. As there are many other words to choose from. You probably don’t use this word in your house very much either (I hope).

I agree it’s far too strong a word to use when it comes to describing the opposing football team or even a workplace bully.But the reality was for the longest time…

She hates her job, and is afraid to admit it.

If she admits it, would that mean that she’d been wasting her time with all of the energy and hours she has invested in this company?
This question had me concerned, and I discovered that if you hate your job you’re going to burnout.

It’s not a matter of “if”, but “when”.

Also if you hate your job, you’re not fooling anyone. It’s obvious. Hating your job shows up in how you walk into the office, how you answer the phone, and how you participate in meetings.

The easiest way to tell if you hate your job is that it shows up in your language. I had to find some facts about how people think about this issue.

In fact 183 people actually said that on Twitter on Monday before 7 am (I did a Twitter search on “I hate my job”).

Scary, huh?

Most of us don’t actually say it because it feels really uncomfortable.If we’re not actually saying those words it can still show up in more subtle ways like:

• You avoid telling people what you do for a living.
• You never share how your work day went with your family.
• You’ve got worries of impending work doom spinning through your head on Sunday night (dreading Monday mornings).

You can also see it coming if you frequently catch yourself saying, “another day, another dollar” or “I’ve got to go the work today” (instead of “I get to go to work today”).

When you hate your job, you’ll find lots of varied emotions…Each one of the emotions has their own story.
In this case, emotions are predispositions for action.Your emotion comes first and that inspires the action. Imagine if you’re showing up at the office in emotions of resentment, anger, and resignation when you enter the office doors?

The Physical Impact of Hating your Job

When you hate your job it takes a physical toll.The body tension generated from hating your job can lead to all kinds of health related issues. The one that I experienced was an overall tightness at work that started showing up at home and even at being on the push bike.

When you show up this way every day it starts to have a cumulative effect. You can even feel your body cringe when you walk in the door. After awhile you may be slumped at your desk and start finding your muscles tightening especially in your shoulders, hamstrings and lower back. And this is also draining your energy, it makes you extremely tired.
If you’re stuck in this body shape all the time it can tough consequences. This can lead to your body being into a permanent uncomfortable shape of leaning with shoulders forward, a slight bend at the waste, and head down. First of all you need to try to find a way to stop hating your job and if this is not working go find the energy to get an other job.

How do you stop hating your job

The good news is that you can try to stop the job hating and transform your job into one you love. I like to recommend stopping a few things first because that seems to take less energy (versus starting something new).

Here are a few things you can stop doing now to stop hating your job.

Looking Busy

Speak up if you not using your capacity.  The trap can be to get into a job where you using 10% of your capabilities. Often times the corporate environments silently encourages employees to get into a position where they are an expert and know how to do their job.  That’s nice, but sometimes it’s too comfortable and you lose your hunger for creativity and innovation.  You get bored.  You lose your edge.  If you’re using what you can really bring to the table then let someone know and start considering adding something your interested in to your plate.

Hanging around with Co-workers (at least the gripers)
If everyone was complaining about their job at the last happy hour you attended, then stop going with them.  Begin seeking out those people who love their job and go get coffee with them. This has an amazing impact because just as griping is infectious, so is passion!

Bonus Tip *Answer yourself the question “Why?” – Why are you working?  This is the supercharger for all careers. When you connect with the “why” you’re career will take off. You’ll find energy in places you never knew, you’ll wake-up early, and maybe even be disappointed that the work day ends!

The Old Sailor,

The Crash...

Dear Bloggers,

In the last few years, one of my close friends has dealt with the untimely loss of a spouse. I'd like to share this story and what we all have learned about dealing with grief and moving forward at the appropriate time.

My friend was the one who died suddenly of a massive car crash at age 32, leaving a wife and 2 children from 14 and 8. He could not go with them as he needed to finish things at work and he would come later that evening. While he had been feeling poorly that morning he had no easy answers on this feeling, he urged his wife and children to go on a family holiday out of town because they should not loose any of this precious time. Crazy how life can turn around so sudden. When his wife and family returned quickly when they learned of his death and dealt with the funeral, the estate and all the implications of losing their husband and father. 

It would have been very different circumstances if he would have been seriously ill with a sickness, for example cancer then there is most of the time some time left to say goodbye. even though the loss of any wife and mother or husband and father is tragic. The death of a father and husband which was sudden, unexpected and laden with guilt for his dying alone. 

Whatever the circumstances, dealing with the death of a spouse has to be one of the most difficult and traumatic experiences of life. Based on the experiences of others and lots of research, here are some ideas and perspectives that might help.
Try to understand the stages of grief.

• Denial: "This can’t be happening to me."
• Anger: "Why is this happening? Who is to blame?"
• Bargaining: "Make this not happen, and in return I will ____."
• Depression: "I’m too sad to do anything."
• Acceptance: "I’m at peace with what is going to happen/has happened."

Everyone who loses someone close to them moves through these stages, usually in this order. As a husband or wife who loses a spouse to death confronts the profound feelings of loss, it can help to recognize in which stage you are operating and to know that there can be personal peace at the end of the grieving process.
Recognize that time tends to heal wounds. When we are in the midst of feelings of loss or grief, it can truly seem like the feelings will last forever. But time's passage has a way of healing these feelings. Keeping a sense of hope through the feelings of grief can help a mother or father who has lost his or her spouse make it through each day. 

Lean on your support system. Fortunately for my friends, there were exceptional support systems. They both had large families on both sides on whom they could lean. They had friends also from work who were helpful through the transition.  Big plus they had was the community of faith on whom they leaned emotionally and physically. The ones who find themselves alone after the death of a spouse need to allow others who are close to them into their inner circle of feelings. People who care about you want to help, and you are in a time when you need it perhaps the most. 

Express your feelings. Don't bottle up emotions of grief and sorrow. Sometimes societal expectations make men particularly want to be strong and stoic. Especially if you have children that are grieving with you, you may feel a need to be their "rock." But you will need some time to express your feelings, insecurities and loneliness. Talk to friends, seek counseling, write, cry  whatever the outlet will be, let the feelings be expressed. Repressing them only brings greater challenges later. 

Take care of yourself physically. It will be important for you to eat well, get enough sleep, and exercise. Avoid self-defeating behaviors like turning to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain. Just taking walks with a close friend or family member can make a world of difference in your mood. 

Take your time. Grieving works differently for different people. I cannot write a basic transcript for everyone as everyone experiences these emotions in his or her own way. Do not let others make you feel rushed to get on with your life or move ahead. Move at your pace. Don't make any major decisions that will have life-changing implications through the grief process. 

Today my friends are doing well and their life is moving forward. My friends wife is now back in the work force and busy raising her children. Not yet remarried and not really worried about it, she is again building a new life with new opportunities. All of them have worked through this important life transition, taking different approaches but main part is that it’s working. They gave me the permission on writing about their situation as others might learn something from it. I made the choice of not mentioning any names. I think that nobody gains anything here.

The most important thing for any grieving father or mother to remember is that through the grieving process, there is hope and that with time and effort, life can again be full of happiness and possibilities. All the roads you will take might look new, but most of them have been tried by someone. 

The Old Sailor,

The question most people ask themselves: "What if?"

Dear Bloggers,

Life is sometimes pretty miserable at this moment my spouce is struggling with some difficult situations at work.I don’t want to become to detailed but we talk about serious and mean bullying. According to the physician and the psycho therapist we are dealing with a boss that has a dangerous level of narcism.This boss is putting systematically employees down that they either quit there job or joining the game by putting her on statue. If you get mentally wiped of your feet by such a nut case your brain needs a total reset and the therapist will teach you to have a mind and opinion of your own.

This can give some hard conflicts in your surroundings as you change from the soft side to the hard side as your mind is changing. This can be pretty tough for people that have known you for all those years as the easy party. They feel like being stabbed in the back as they do not recognize there own behaviour. So just sit back and relax. The problem is that people near you have the biggest struggle to adapt to this new you. Time to let them deal with the questions:”Who is in charge in your life?” or “Is the inner child winning by crying and pounding with his feet or is the adult side in charge dealing with the situation by starting a normal conversation?” Tricky but not impossible I would say

Several years ago my life was upside down when I  fell down the stairs in our own home my brain has been scattered and I still suffer from gaps in my memory and my character has changed in a negative way according to my wife and some good friends that have known me for many years. Somehow there is a lot of work to do to get the old me back as my wife fell in love with a guy that was a real gentleman. Will I ever be able to get this old me back and restore all these good sides of me? Is it possible to get these memories back from the good old days?

What if you forgot who you used to be? And what if you didn't realize you had?

Imagine have uprooted your life to pursue your dreams. You shed all of your past hangups about making it big in your career, decided money wasn't worth pursuing anymore, and decided to dedicate yourself to a noble cause. And what if after you got there, while you were still basically in shock from the major change, still getting used to your new life, you suddenly lost all memories of your past, all memory of who you used to be. You don't notice at first, because you can recall all the major facts - where you used to live, schools you went to, people you knew, good times you had, even some bad times.

What then? Can you imagine not knowing who you used to be? In a way you would be like a child - devoid of any memories of life. Worse, your condition was such that you "remembered" emotions, but had no tangible basis for the memories so they didn't seem like real memories, just a blur of emotions which you cannot connect to events, or even times in your life. Walking past a store, you smell something that suddenly makes you afraid, not realizing that the memory of your first fight and the beating was accompanied by the smell of tobacco. Other times, a new acquaintance is treated badly by you because, unbeknownst to you, that person looks a lot like the kid who beat you up in school. But above all would be the overwhelming frequency of these kinds of things, and the complete lack of understanding of your own emotions.

If you haven't guessed I'm talking about myself by now, welcome to my blog...

I had no idea how effective the memory therapy that I conceived for myself could be. I started by watching movies from my past. I bought an entire 500-title laserdisc collection partially for purpose. I also started listening to music from my past, but somehow it didn't click how much more effective it was. That, or perhaps I understood how overwhelming it was to get those memories back and put it off.

But two weeks ago, I had a visitor leaving me a copy of his music collection which encompassed an expansive collection of music from the 80s. I began listening to the music, dozens and dozens of songs I hadn't heard in soemtimes 15 or 20 years. And each song, despite memory loss, and despite not having heard them for that long, was so well remembered that I could sing along in tune, to the correct words (at least, as I understood them...)

And with each song comes memories often associated with it. And each song will have several memories attached to it, some stronger, some weaker, some never to be retrieved. Some memories are good, some are memories I would have rather have kept forgotten. But all memories are important, and each completes the history of who I used to be, of what I used to be like.

And until the past couple of days, I hadn't realized how important it was to know what I used to be like. I remember now what the basis was for decisions I made throughout my life - my past motivations, and the history of my decision making, my perspectives, my point of view how things in life should be and connecting these thoughts even as I type this. The story of who I am, by way of who I used to be, is being nearly restored, digitally, in Dolby stereo...

Is there a bright side? Can there be a bright side to forgetting who you used to be? Yes. If you lose all of your preconceptions, you are free to create new ones. And by sheer coincidence, on the eve of what I now know (as of this morning actually...forgot...better make a note) to be at the beginning of the end of the society, I turned off the television and later the radio. Thus, my new development, the creation of the new me, was in the absence of the influence of corporations and the capitalist system which I now understand runs our lives (well, your lives anyway.)

I became a new person, my development influenced by my old body being disabled, my new found perspectives, and from a fare more independent, influence-free perspective. Unfortunately, I was also plagued by the ghosts of my past, the lack of memory of who I used to be, especially given that I no longer had any contact with anyone from my past. This caused problems with socializing, and other symptoms of the injuries that my memory and brain had after the accident. Something I got along the way and it created a situation that made it nearly impossible for me to get medical help or even recognition that I have the problems I do. Life became hell.

I owe my survival to my intellectual gifts, and my drive to always be the best person I could be. It's easy to be open minded, to embrace new ways of thinking, when you have hardly any memory of your past, when you in fact have lost all of your old ways of thinking.

Is my ordeal a tragedy? Absolutely not. Tragedies don't have happy endings. Did I suffer unecessarily? Hell yes I did, but only relative to my personal goals going in. Have others suffered what I have? Have others experienced the injuries I have? Do others have the gifts I have? Have others fought as I have? Have others made the kinds of changes to their lives and perspectives as I have? Yes, absolutely. But I experienced all the right things in all the right ways at all the right times. Yes I have plenty of these kind of questions.

I feel as though much of the burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm still dealing with a lot of crap, oh boy am I ever. Events and circumstances in my life haven't changed. My awareness of them and ability to deal with them has. Now that I understand my past, I can better understand how I interact with people, and how to better succeed in my interactions. I have finally succeed in getting medical help for my diagnoses and needed accommodations; which I can attribute, at least in part, to my new interpersonal skills. Those who have been actively fucking with me would be well-advised to stop now while you can. I no longer have fear. I'm not going to run away, I'm going to turn and fight. And those on the border, who merely stayed away because it was the popular thing to do, realize your error of listening to the wrong crowd.

Things are still in the process of gathering up the old me and my old thoughts. I still have a few gaps in the thread of my life's paths to fill, but the bigger threads are there and the gaps are being filled even without conscious effort on my part. There is also the ever-important fact that I still have other problems, both healthwise, as well as from brain “damage.” I still have difficulty making and recalling short and long-term memories. The therapy I underwent on my own was merely to retrieve my past. It doesn't help me relearn how to think or how to make decisions. The ONLY thing it has provided is understanding of who I am by way of how I got here.

And now that I finally understand (mostly) who I am, others can have the opportunity as well.

The Old Sailor,