Finding HopeBEHIND THE SONG: Sounds Like Hope
Posted on May 15, 2020
‘Sounds Like Hope’ has been out for a week now. It’s always so strange putting a new song out into the world. It makes you feel so vulnerable. Or that’s how it makes me feel, at least. But it’s also exciting because these are songs I’ve been waiting to share for such a long time. So it’s a weird mish-mash of feelings.
I’ve just posted a new video to my YouTube channel, telling the story behind the inspiration and the writing of the song. I think I’ve talked about this before but, while this is primarily a mental health (and Autism, obviously) focussed blog, music is a big part of my life so I will always post about that too. Having said that, my music is heavily influenced by my experiences with my mental health so it links the two biggest parts of my life together, mental health and music. So it actually kind of makes sense to post about it here.
Of course every artist wants people to hear their music, the work they’ve poured their heart and soul into. So, yes, obviously I want people to listen to my songs. But it’s more nuanced than that; I would think it’s the same for every songwriter – we all just have our own, personal reasons. For me, I spent a lot of time feeling like there wasn’t any music I related to because of what I was struggling with. Why would I care about a love song when just surviving each day was a struggle? So a big part of writing music for me is writing music for people who have struggled like me, who might struggle with music the way I did (and sometimes still do). I don’t want to exclude anyone – we’re all so layered and complicated that I’m sure most people can relate to these songs in one way or another – but I specifically wanted to write music that people who have struggled with their mental health could relate to (I think I’ve actually gotten better at this since writing these songs but you’ll have to wait for the next project to hear those…). So of course I want people to hear my music but I really, really want people like me to hear my music.
If you haven’t listened to the song yet, you can buy or stream it here and the music video will be out very soon.
When You Don’t Want To Feel Better
Posted on June 30, 2018
I have now been clinically depressed for thirteen months. I’ve been living with depression a lot longer than that but, in May of last year, everything spiralled and I was diagnosed with clinical depression for the second time. So I know my depression pretty well now and there are a few differences between those two states. One is the presence of hope: while living with depression, it’s a constant battle between my depression and the hope that things will change and get better. But sometimes that hope just disappears and the depression takes over. That’s when things start to get really bad. Another difference is the ability to cope; when my depression is particularly bad, I feel completely overwhelmed on a daily basis and devastated on a weekly one. I feel like one more impact and I’ll never recover.
I’ve been in what feels like the lowest place I’ve ever been for the past month. I wish I could describe it but I don’t know if I can; I don’t know if there are words that accurately capture that feeling. It’s like that feeling after you’ve had blood taken, after they’ve pulled the needle out, and your arm hurts in a way you’ve never really felt before but it’s everywhere. It’s like you’re drowning inside your own body. It’s like having a black hole in your chest that’s sucking everything in, leaving you aching and empty. It’s like all of those things and none of them at the same time.
But recently there’s been a slight shift. It’s so slight that saying ‘I feel better,’ feels like a gross over exaggeration and fills me with anxiety. But it is there and that’s really frightening to me. I’ve spent weeks feeling like I’m suffocating, like I can’t possibly survive feeling like this for another minute, but now that that’s not the case, I’m honestly terrified. As miserable as the depression is, ‘better’ is unknown. And scary. As much as I wanted to feel anything else, being depressed is somehow safe and… comforting is the wrong word, but hopefully you know what I mean. It’s clear. I know where the edges are, how it feels. In some ways, being depressed is easier because it’s familiar. I know it sounds weird but it’s like nothing can hurt me because everything hurts already. So, if I step out of that, it opens me up to really feeling hurt again and that is really, really scary.
But what if I’m not ready? Being depressed takes up so much space within me. What if I’m not ready to process everything that I’d have to if that space wasn’t being monopolised by the depression, if it was being filled with more life than I’ve had up until now? That’s overwhelming. I feel so raw and so fragile. What if I’m not strong enough? What if something happens and suddenly I’m crashing down even lower than before? I’m not sure I could survive that. I feel like a fractured windowpane that will shatter if it takes one more hit.
I feel like a little like I’m being dragged into ‘better’ regardless of how I actually feel. I do feel better physically: the brain fog has receded significantly, I don’t feel so numb, to the world and my own emotions, and so on. I’ve even had flashes of future plans, like going to the gym and learning how to bake something new; I haven’t had thoughts like that in a long time. But despite all of that, I don’t feel better mentally so it’s confusing and overwhelming and stressful. I know that that kind of change takes time, conscious processing, and most likely therapy, but that’s hard to remember when I’m feeling so overwhelmed by anxiety.
And part of that anxiety is this suffocating feeling that something bad is about to happen. This is something I’ve struggled with for years (it’s on my list to write about) and although I know it’s completely irrational, it doesn’t feel that way when I’m in it. It feels completely logical. A good thing happened and so a bad thing must happen to balance it out. I dared to want more than I already had and so the universe must punish me for it. When I write it out, I can see how ridiculous it is but it’s how I FEEL. It’s like the instinct that you’re in danger: it’s that strong. You can’t just ignore it. I want to write more about this in the future because it’s important and complicated and distressing.
This is all really overwhelming and scary. And it’s really confusing to suddenly feel like I don’t want to get into a better space after desperately wanting it for so long. It’s really weird when your physical emotions and your mental emotions don’t match, if that makes any sense. I don’t really feel like I understand it so I end up feeling like I don’t want to tell other people because they might assume that it’s as simple as feeling better and therefore expect more from me, more than I’m capable or feel capable of giving. This is a learning curve and I seem to be moving through it very quickly but also very slowly. It’s a mess. I’m a mess. Thank you for sticking with me through this very ramble-y description of it.
Two Levels of Mood
Posted on November 18, 2017
Living with depression is hard. Yes, I know, I’m stating the freaking obvious. But I want to write about something that doesn’t come up that often, in my experience at least. And when I say ‘living with depression’, I mean going through repeated bouts of depression over a period of time. I’m not diminishing the difficulty of going through an isolated experience; I just want to point out something specific to the continued one.
Being at your lowest is excruciating but it’s simple, when it comes to the complexity of emotions. Depression is overwhelming; it blots out everything. The world is one colour. But as you start to move out of that place, it becomes emotionally confusing. A lot of you is still depressed but there’s also a part of you that’s trying to move forward. And that conflict is exhausting. Your emotions are constantly clashing and that takes up so much energy.
I recently landed in the lowest place I’d ever been. I feel like I say that every time but I know that this was the worst I’d ever felt. I had a very emotionally traumatic meltdown – again, the worst one I’ve had – and ended up sitting in the middle of my local park, crying my eyes out at eleven o’clock at night. And it was that heaving kind of crying where it feels like it’s coming from a place inside you that’s deeper than physically possible. It was horrible and when I woke up the next morning, I was in such a deep depression that I couldn’t do anything. I literally couldn’t. I lay in bed all day, staring at the wall. I felt completely hopeless. I couldn’t see the point in anything. There was no point in trying to be happy, in trying to do anything, because the only real thing is misery.
It took days to start functioning again (move around, interact with people, eat, etc), but I was still firmly locked in that point of view. I couldn’t see the point of anything but the oppressiveness started to lift and other emotions started to creep in. I was able to smile again and sometimes I’d even laugh and that was really hard because I still felt so hopeless. It felt wrong. I didn’t feel ready to be okay.
I feel like I have two levels of mood, my surface mood and my inner mood. The labels speak for themselves but I want to elaborate a bit further. My inner mood is what I feel at the centre of myself (my automatic thought was to name it my ‘real’ mood but I know the surface mood is real too – please bear with me: words are hard!) and at the moment, that is depressed. If I had to choose one emotion to associate with myself, it would be a sad one, like depressed or disheartened. My surface mood reacts to outside stimuli: good weather, spending time with people I like, a new episode of my favourite TV show. Those sorts of things do create spikes in my mood. It can be really easy to brush those moments off because they feel so wrong when I’m depressed. But they’re both real and both deserve to be recognised. That’s why I like the two levels of mood idea. By having two levels, one emotional reaction doesn’t invalidate another. I can feel really depressed and kind of okay – even optimistic – at the same time. It’s too simplistic to think that we only feel one emotion at a time but when they’re so opposite, it just makes the whole thing more difficult, more confusing, more exhausting.
The only time the two seem to synchronize is when I’m really, really depressed. It sounds sad when I put it like that but right now, it’s the truth. I know that my surface mood can change so hopefully the inner mood can too. Hopefully I’ll reach a point where it’s not so low.
Finding Hope 