Tag: depression

Unsent letters

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

To: HR Lady
CC: My boss (and yours)

Dear HR lady,

My counsellor has informed me that the company has decided against funding additional sessions, and that you would speak to me about this matter this week. I am disappointed that you have not done this, and have instead allowed a third party to deliver news to me which should have come directly from the company.

I was extremely surprised by the decision to discontinue funding counselling. In May, you wrote that my mental health and well-being was important to the company and that you would review whether I needed further support after the 5 sessions were consumed. The decision not to continue was made without consulting me, so I am therefore extremely disappointed that the company no longer considers my mental health and well-being important.

Furthermore, I have received no explanation or communication in general regarding your cancellation of the ‘late June’ follow-up meeting, which we had scheduled. I consider it a recurring problem that the company is not communicating with me to an acceptable standard on matters of professional importance.

About six months ago I would have sent this without too much deliberation.

Now…

I have a growing suspicion she might be a bit autistic. But I can’t take on responsibility for her mental health as well as my own, on the basis of a vague suspicion.

Aftermath

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I took today off sick because I felt that life had got a bit on top of me again. This is now the sixth day I’ve had off sick this year. My contract says I will be paid for ten, but I still feel like I’m taking too much time off. Work is a pain at the moment anyway because my manager is on holiday and the customer is expecting me to do his job to keep them happy. Unfortunately, I’m not a manager and I don’t have the authority to make things happen. I’m also pretty demotivated by being unhappy at work, so… I’m not exactly going above and beyond here.

I do still feel a bit off it, though, which I think is the citalopram. I only took it to deal with work so it’s fair that my employer absorbs the cost of me not feeling well.

I feel content and perhaps slightly relieved that I’ve chosen not to continue with it. I think I had been stressing myself over whether or not to take it. It might have helped but it raised so much long term uncertainty.

Now I feel like I’ve worked my way through that crisis.

Citalopram day 1

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So… I bit the bullet, or more precisely the pill, and took my first dose last night. I had trouble sleeping but otherwise felt OK until this afternoon when I started feeling headachy and nauseous, but it’s not too bad, and, let’s be honest, it could just be anxiety. I’m not sure if the sleep problems were the tablet specifically or just the fact I was worried about finding out what the side effects were. I woke up at about 2:00 and I knew I was supposed to be worried about something, but I couldn’t remember what for a while.

But…

I’ve had second thoughts. All my problems are work. Work is an unhealthy environment. I felt wonderful when I had a week off. I felt just like myself again. The answer isn’t to take medicine, it’s to remove myself from the unhealthy environment. Medicine is a decent second option if you can’t do that… but I can.

The fact is that I’m lucky. I can take a few months being unemployed with no significant effect on my finances. Most people don’t have that luxury. I’m panicking because I feel trapped, but I’m not trapped.

I don’t have to do anything right now, but if I do find myself needing to do something, I can quit. I’m not trapped. It’s OK.

Now… if I get another job, in a new environment, and find I still can’t cope, then that’s a different story. But I think for now, it’s worth entertaining the hypothesis that the environment is a bigger problem than me.

Citalopram day zero

~ e.v. ~ 7 Comments

Trigger warning: suicide, down at the bottom.

LIFE updates!

Phone call with IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapy) was fine and I’m on the CBT waiting list, which is going to be a few months.

Gastroenterology appointment was OK. He was concerned my haemoglobin levels had dipped at my last blood test (March) and had me do another one today. He mentioned the possibility of long term iron supplementation, dependent upon the results. I think they’ll be OK. In the words of David Lee Roth, I don’t feel anaemic.

He (the doctor, not David Lee Roth) is drawing a blank on the cause of the bleeding but suggested that if/when I next have active bleeding I could go to A+E and they might be able to do some kind of immediate test. He called it a ‘scan’, which sounds a lot less mechanically intrusive than jamming a camera down my throat.

I asked him about the SSRIs and he said it would likely be fine.

So I’ve decided to start taking them… tonight. On the way back from the appointment I was coming up with excuses why I shouldn’t, but the fact is that I’m not OK and I need to admit this. For the past couple of weeks I’ve felt dreadful. At the moment I feel light headed, spaced out, my stomach is very unhappy and I had so much nausea this morning when minor things at work stressed me. I feel like I’m actually physically ill when at work, and magically better over the weekends. I’m still worried about side effects, but let’s just rephrase that a moment – I am anxious about side effects. That comes with the territory, doesn’t it?

The hospital itself was a strange experience. Firstly, my mum met me from work and we went over there on the bus, but before getting on the bus I took her on a tour of the graffiti near my workplace. The graffiti is of the extremely talented street-art variety, not just random tags. That was fine. What wasn’t fine was running into Becky. I felt like… I’d left work for the day, I was with my mother, it was personal time. Why you are here, Becky? Your presence is intrusive to my personal life. That’s how I felt when I saw her face on my phone when it notified me she was looking at my social media. Why does it always have to be you? Why is it never James or any other random colleague? It’s always you.

So that was uncomfortable. We just ignored each other, because why would you say hello to someone when you can just stalk their LinkedIn profile instead.

And the hospital itself…

The last time I was at that particular hospital was December. I felt dreadful at the time. I was anaemic, work seemed to be imploding around me, and I had the other issue in the background. I felt absolutely awful that day, everything was getting too much, and the day after, I decided to kill myself (and suddenly felt a lot happier). Obviously, I didn’t do that, but this was how I felt during that period of my life. I remember after the appointment going through the car park feeling that life as I knew it just seemed to be drifting away from me. Wandering through the car park today was a bit of a surreal experience. I didn’t remember it until I was there.

Not a great Monday

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

I went into work this morning feeling fine. It took about half an hour before my stomach had mysteriously become upset again, and 3 hours before I had to leave the office and take a walk just to get out of there.

I learnt today that there was a company social event over the weekend, which I knew nothing about. Who was in charge of organising that? Oh right… Becky. It’s just school-girl bullying. Exclude, isolate…

Perhaps unsurprisingly, HR lady didn’t speak to me after all. I don’t know how to interpret this. Doesn’t exactly make me feel included or non-isolated though.

If the gastroenterologist advises against taking SSRIs on Wednesday then I’m not really sure what’s going to happen. I don’t feel that I’m functioning very well at work at the moment and I don’t have a plan for changing that. Currently I think it is likely I will leave before I find another job.

So…

I don’t have a plan for changing anything but there are events that can change things and I’m holding on for these.

1. If gastro says the SSRIs should be OK then I’ll be starting them Wednesday evening most likely. Maybe they’ll help, maybe they won’t. I don’t know.

2. Otherwise, the only thing that could change anything is the last counselling session the company will pay for, which will happen next Tuesday. My counsellor will inform the company at which point they really really really should speak to me and let me know whether or not they intend to extend it.

Personally though I want to tail off the counselling. It was helpful when I was going through a lot, but I’m not sure anymore. I’m not learning to cope with things. I’m getting overwhelmed and switching into apathetic depression. I think I need CBT now, but the CBT waiting list is going to be 3-4 months on the NHS. I have a phone call about this tomorrow…

The problem is at the moment any HR meeting is going to go like this:

HR: “Hello eevee, how are-”
EV: “Why haven’t you spoken to me in the last six weeks?”
HR: “Er well-”
EV: “I asked you for a meeting six weeks ago. How do you think this makes me feel?”
HR: “Well, I, err-”
EV: “You know there’s a problem, you know I’ve been struggling. You should be checking up on me”
HR: “Well I’ve been quite busy”
EV: “OK, I’ll tell you how it makes me feel, it makes me feel that this company doesn’t care whether or not I keep coming to work”
HR: “Oh we do care, I promi-”
EV: “I shouldn’t have to be proactive here. That’s stress for me and it makes me feel that you’re not taking me seriously. It should you being proactive. Don’t you care what kind of environment you’re providing?”

And so on.