PLAN

So, this is what's been happening since the last time I wrote a proper post:

- I have been on long-term sick leave for four months
- I have tried three different types of anti-depressant, none of which have worked
- I have basically subsisted entirely on cereal, brownies and cheese
- I have cut out most of my regular activities because seeing people is terrifying
- I have, on occasion, refused to go down the stairs in my own house because of non-specific terror
- I have been completely unable to write because all the words look wrong
- I have got quite sick of all the above but not felt able to do anything about it
- I have not been having very much fun at all, really

However, over the last few days my brain has seized on to something it's calling my PLAN, very definitely in capital letters but also not standing for anything (Paving Laid for Achieving Newness? Preliminary Lists of Ambitious Notions? Pugs, Limes, Ardbeg, and Netflix? STOP IT JEN this is not a useful way to spend an afternoon). It's quite excited about it and I'm worried it will run out of steam before we get to the important bits. I'm trying to keep it going by eating actual food and not sleeping during the day and possibly coming into contact with other humans, i.e. the exact opposite of what I've been doing since May, because I really want PLAN to work and I want to have the wherewithal and motivation to make it happen.

Boiled down to its essence, PLAN is as follows:

This year: quit job.
Next year: get another.

PLAN is a bit scary. No, PLAN is a lot scary. I've written before about my fear of not being able to get another job, and I've been there for, frankly, years longer than I should have been because it was comfortable and I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted and the money was OK and who else would want you, anyway. But they're not compelling arguments anymore - it's no longer comfortable, sick pay isn't a thing forever. I'm still not sure exactly what I want, but my sights have shifted from "something better" to "something else".

The goal of PLAN is not to find the interesting, highly-paid, conveniently located, work-life balance respectful, wonderful people-filled Unicorn Career of my dreams. It's not even to find a great job, or a good job, or lots of new friends, or an incredible latent talent of some kind that I've managed not to discover up to this point. At its core, PLAN is to get me to a place where I'm comfortable existing in the world again; eating and sleeping on a normal schedule, doing things I enjoy, spending time with people I like, without panic and tension and fear invading it all and sucking all the fun out of life. I will possibly write a bit more about the fear thing, because I think I might make daily blogging a thing again for a while. Either that or I'll just write out a list of all the terrible "how fear feels" metaphors my brain comes up with while trying to write the first sentence.

My doctor's appointment is made. My social life has been scheduled for the rest of the month. All I have to do until October is eat, sleep, write, sew (oh yeah, I do that now) and remain calm in the face of other humans. Here goes.

a short play

Cast

ME, a depressive
BRAIN, an asshole

[Bedroom, 9pm]

BRAIN: I'm tired.
ME: It's only nine.
BRAIN: I said, I'm TIRED.
ME: I'm not going to bed now.
BRAIN: I can't stay awake.
ME: Yeah, right up until I turn the light off, when you suddenly remember a graphic newspaper article from when I was twelve or that time someone shouted at me in the street or when you thought of some really creative ways for people I love to get hurt and for it to be my fault.
BRAIN: Well, we need to be prepared for all the ways people you love might get hurt and it might be your fault. Then it won't be a surprise.

[song interlude]

BRAIN: I'm TIRED.
ME: You've got to wait.

[Bedroom, 11.30pm]

ME: OK, this is more like bedtime. We can...
BRAIN: We should empty the washing machine.
ME: O...K...
BRAIN: It's important.
ME: Remember when you wouldn't let me do any washing for weeks because downstairs was too far away and I still had three pairs of clean pants?
BRAIN: IMPORTANT. WASHING MACHINE.
ME: Fine.
BRAIN: And hang it all up.
ME: Yes.

[washing machine is emptied, contents are hung on clothes horse]

BRAIN: While we're up, this room's a bit of a state.
ME: What, now?
BRAIN: NOW. It's a mess.
ME: Yes, it's a mess. It's always a mess. You look at it and you CAN'T and it's AWFUL and you have to lie down.
BRAIN: This sounds like excuse-making. You're always doing that.
ME: Alright, fine. I'll put a couple of things away.

[an hour later]

BRAIN: This cupboard needs reorganising.
ME: You have got to be kidding.
BRAIN: IMPORTANT. CUPBOARD.
ME: It's 12.30am and the cupboard is fine.
BRAIN: I'm on a roll. Stop complaining. You're always complaining about things that need to be done.
ME: Remember when you wouldn't let me eat because moving was too hard and you might accidentally see some other humans?
BRAIN: You're fine. Stop living in the past.
ME: Uh...
BRAIN: ORGANISE THIS CUPBOARD FULL OF FABRICS AT ONCE.

[organisation happens]

BRAIN: Now for writing.
ME: What?
BRAIN: You should write! You keep saying that!
ME: ...you haven't let me write for over three months.
BRAIN: So you'd better jump on it, hadn't you?

[writing]

ME: Does this mean you're going to let me dance again too?
BRAIN: Let's not go nuts.
ME: But...
BRAIN: I don't like moving. And there are people.
ME: I like people.
BRAIN: Yeah, but let's face it, you're no fun anymore.
ME: Whose fault is that?
BRAIN: This would be a lot easier if you just accept the fact that nobody cares if you're there or not and that moving around is rubbish.
ME: I'd rather not.
BRAIN: Maybe you should clean the carpet.
ME: Maybe you should shut up.
BRAIN: Maybe YOU should shut up. Ever think about that?
ME: Yes.
BRAIN: Good.

[writing finishes]

ME: Now is it bedtime?
BRAIN: You need to make a spreadsheet.
ME: A spreadsheet?
BRAIN: IMPORTANT.
ME: Can't we do that in the morning?
BRAIN: Well, sure, if that's a risk you want to take.
ME: Fine.

[The next morning, 10am]

ME: So, did you want to vacuum the carpet?
BRAIN: I'm TIRED. I was up LATE.
ME: Whose fault is that?
BRAIN: I can't do ANYTHING. Not one thing. Bring me the internet.
ME: But...
BRAIN: IMPORTANT. INTERNET.
ME: I remember when you used to be nice.
BRAIN: Stop living in the past and bring me the internet before I start imagining that you've been locked in a room with your ex for science and all you can do is scream obscenities at him because of all the things he did that I'm about to remind you of.
ME: Yes, yes, alright.
BRAIN: Youtube is soothing.
ME: The room is still kind of a mess.
BRAIN: You made me do THINGS. I'm not doing THINGS again for WEEKS. Remember when we stayed awake every night and watched five hundred videos of improv sketches in a row? Wasn't that great?
ME: It really wasn't.
BRAIN: Those were the days.

[Youtube]

ME: Can we go for a walk?
BRAIN: Ask me again in a week.

help, or a difficult post

Every year since I was sixteen, I've made ten New Year's Resolutions. At the beginning of the year I write them down, and at the end of the year I go back and see how well I did. For over ten years I posted them in my OpenDiary - last year's resolutions with short commentary on how many I kept and what I did, and a fresh ten for the coming year. Now that OpenDiary has gone I put them all in a Word document, and it's a tradition so deeply ingrained in me that I forget it's actually a pretty weird thing to do. 

For 2015, resolution number seven was "I will ask for help when I need it."

I thought this was a great resolution, and actually quite insightful in terms of things that would make a real difference to my life. I'm terrified of asking for help. I'm terrified that I'm being an imposition, or being annoying. If I can just learn to ask for help, I thought, I'll be less anxious, more secure, life will run that bit more smoothly, I can get things sorted as soon as I start to see a problem rather than letting it run itself up into a catastrophe. This is a Good Resolution. 

It wasn't until Tuesday, when I found myself sobbing hysterically in my therapist's office for nearly an hour after the session was over that I realised there was a deeper layer to it. A conversation about my problems at work, my being completely taken aback by how upset I was about work, and the realisation that the session was nearly over and I was now going to have to walk my blotchy and red-faced self right into work were all feeding into each other and I just couldn't stop crying. My therapist, who had never seen me do this before, was rather concerned. I was struggling to speak, but between us we managed to establish that I did not feel up to going to work, but also had a meeting to take and didn't feel like I could call in sick. He suggested that obviously there was someone else who could take the meeting, it was no big deal at all, did I really think I'd be able to work in the state I was in? My brain acknowledged that this was not a question, this was therapist-speak for Holy shit, dude, GO HOME, and helpfully switched its narrative from you can't seriously be thinking about calling in sick because you're crying to now you have to call your manager and that's terrifying. 

It sounds stupid to write down. The same brain that conjured up images of every single person in my office sitting around talking about how rubbish I was for calling in sick is now berating me for being so stupid as to be scared of that. But that's what happened, that's what I thought, and my upset got worse and worse until I was choking on my own tears. I knew what I needed; I needed him to make the phone call. You can't ask him that, said my brain, shocked. He's here to help you learn to deal with your own life by yourself. He's not going to enable your stupid behaviour by making the phone call for you. He thinks you should damn well be able to make it yourself. If he offers, fine, but you can't ask him for something so unreasonable. 

He did, eventually, offer, and it was only when I heard him leave a voicemail that included the words "my professional opinion" that any part of me registered that this man was a mental health professional watching a patient have some kind of breakdown and of course he could make a phone call to my employer. It fought with the part still insisting that I was overreacting and/or deliberately and manipulatively trying to get out of work and not take responsibility for it. I went into work the next day, which was a very bad move, and the day after that I got an emergency doctor's appointment, a sick note, and some fancy new drugs. 

This is not depression as I know it. Depression as I've experienced it in the past is a complete lack of motivation, days on end in bed, awake on the internet all night and asleep for most of the day, hoping to be able to stay asleep until the week, the month, the year is over. Depression is not speaking to people, depression is not being able to feed myself, depression is taking three or four days to force myself to leave the house. That's not what's happening now. Up until this week I was diligently going to work every day. I'm going out with friends, on courses, to dinners. I've almost completed my first self-made skirt. Yesterday I bought general housing supplies, ordered some chocolates for my mother, and went to a friend's party. That would have felt like a goddamn miracle to any previous incarnation of Depressed Jen. But my brain is being nasty to me, keeping me worried and scared and guilty and upset. I feel bad that I haven't cleaned the bathroom. I feel bad that I don't go home as often as my family would like. I feel bad that I left the party early last night even though the host told me she wanted me to stay. Everything makes me feel like a bad person, or a useless person. 

I ended my worst period of depression by breaking up a relationship. That relationship took away the things that interested and excited me piece by piece, while keeping both eyes fixed on me to make sure I didn't find anything else to fill my mind. That relationship made time stretch out so far it exhausted me, but berated me for being so exhausted by doing nothing. That relationship told me I wasn't good enough, would never be good enough, that I was a pain nobody else would put up with. To this day, ending it has been the best thing I've ever done. 

Now my relationship with my partner is healthy, encouraging and supportive, and he wants me to get better, which is so unfamiliar to me that it sometimes still confuses the fuck out of me after nearly a year together. But I see shades of that former boyfriend in the relationship I have with my job, and that's the one that needs to end. I've been aware of this for a little while, though not with quite so much urgency as this week, and I've mentioned it to people before. They say, "That's a great idea. Get a new job if you're not happy! It'll do you good to change things up a bit." 

The thing is, I don't know how. Apart from Saturday work during my A levels, I've never worked for another company. I've been here seven years. I came in at the suggestion of a friend, doing admin grunt work, and through promotion and pay rises and moving to a different city, I'm up to twice my original salary (which still isn't a lot, mind you). I don't know how you get a job at this level or higher. Every job I've applied for has been on application form, so I've never needed a CV. I've never done an interview that wasn't civil service competency-based. I've been working my way into a company, not a profession, so I don't know what I want to do or what sort of thing I could reasonably expect to get. I don't know how the real world of job-hunting works. I need help, but I don't want to ask for it, for several reasons:

1. I don't really know what I'm asking for

2. I don't know what or how much is OK to ask for

3. Part of me is convinced that at age 30, this is not the kind of thing I should need help with

This last one is a real sticking point for me. 30-year-olds should know how to get jobs. The kind of 30-year-old who needs help getting a job is a really pathetic 30-year-old. 

I'm not at my best right now. I'm sick, I'm exhausted, I'm upset, I'm taking a brand new anti-depressant, and I'm terrified of going back to work (also, terrified of getting fired and having no money and not being able to live in this city anymore). It's not unreasonable to think I would need help. And yet I judge myself, because asking for help is just an excuse to be lazy, or sure you can ask for help but you really shouldn't need this kind of help, or what the hell are people going to think of you asking for stupid things like that, or this is something you should be strong enough to do yourself. I give myself lists of things I've been able to do by myself as proof that my need for help isn't actually real. 

I probably do need really stupid help. I probably need someone to sit and go through job websites with me. I need from-scratch CV help. I need people to tell me what I'm good at. Since I'm not only trying to do a thing I'm unfamiliar with but trying to do it when I'm not well, I probably need a lot more than that. I need people to understand I'm having a shitty time. I need hugs and stupid conversations and reassurance that the world won't end if I miss a few parties. I need to be occupied but not overwhelmed. I need to put my mental health first for a while, and I need to acknowledge what a bastard hard thing that is to do. 

This was long, and sad, and tough to write. I judge myself for how depressing my blog is sometimes, and how it's not the fun storytime I started off with, but this is where I am right now. Stuff about sunshine and puffins, I hope, coming soon. 

the critical voice, part three

This morning I sat down opposite my therapist and said, “How do I stop trying to fix things?”
“What things are you trying to fix?” he asked, in his quiet Irish therapist voice.
“ALL the things,” I said. “Literally everything that crosses my mind; personal, local, global, minor, major, implausible, imaginary. Anything that’s a problem, I want to fix immediately, and my brain gets very upset with me if I can’t.”

He wanted examples. Therapists like examples.

I told him I was upset with the election result and worried about what might happen under a majority Conservative government. I was worried about the NHS, about my friends on disability benefits, and especially about the Human Rights Act. My brain responded to these entirely rational concerns with how can we fix this? I told it that I was in no position to personally fix it. I could not convince the Conservative party that they held horrible, damaging views, nor change the views of an increasingly right-wing nation, nor completely overhaul the political system to fairer and more compassionate ends. I could, of course, sign petitions and attend protests and, if I wanted to screw up my mental health entirely, return to political blogging. But this wasn’t what my brain wanted. My brain wanted me to fix it, personally. If not entirely by myself, then at least as the Leader of People Fixing Things. And it wanted results immediately, before the Tories actually managed to do any damage.

I told my brain that, see, this was exactly what I’d been telling it. It had proved that its expectations of me were way, way too high and completely unrealistic. Personally fixing the politics of an entire country? That’s ridiculous, brain. Surely you can see that. My brain sighed and said that’s a lame excuse and you know it. Everyone is sitting around like you, saying they can’t do anything, and that’s why it never gets done. Overhauling a country probably isn’t that hard if you know the right things to say. I asked my brain if it remembered what attempting to get involved in activism did to the state of my mental health last time. My brain said I can’t imagine why you’d think your personal mental health is so much more important than the fate of an entire country.

My therapist handed me a sheet entitled “Unhelpful Thinking Patterns” that he thought I might recognise some of. My brain scanned it and immediately scolded me for being so rubbish as to have all of them. I suggested that perhaps this might be its own fault, and it pointed at the sheet and said see that bit about shifting blame for things that are your fault?

I explained that for about six months now I’d been identifying problems in my life and trying to come up with ways to fix them. I’d come up with genuine problems, identify good and sensible ways to start turning things around, and then my brain would be pleased and start imagining wildly unrealistic consequences to my tiny starter actions.

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Unhappy with weight gain
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Feel sad and gross all the time
SOLUTION: Start small by replacing chocolate with fruit at lunchtime
EXPECTED RESULT: Somehow lose half a stone in a week; happiness to follow immediately thereafter

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Job dissatisfaction
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Boredom, more unoccupied time to exacerbate anxiety problems
SOLUTION: Begin thinking about different career fields
EXPECTED RESULT: Get ideal job immediately by stumbling over it in the street or some such, all problems suddenly fixed

If the expected unrealistic consequence was not instantly achieved, my brain got upset and discouraged and gave me unpleasant thoughts. It got to the point where this happened:

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Trying to fix everything
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Frustration, exhaustion, reduced ability to actually do anything
SOLUTION: Stop trying to fix things
EXPECTED RESULT: Attempting to fix things turns out to be root cause of all problems; everything stops being difficult within the next three days

When I told him the last one my therapist did that very, very slightly surprised face that therapists who think they know what’s coming make when they hear something they really weren’t expecting. I’ve seen him do it once before, when we did an instant visualisation exercise:

Therapist: What did you see when I said ‘Roses’?
Me: I saw an illustrated rose garden in the style of an Alice in Wonderland book I used to have, except instead of actual roses it was my friend Rose, hundreds of her, on stems.
Therapist: ...you have a busy mind.

He might not have heard, “Hey, I could stop trying to fix things! That’ll fix things!” before, but he assured me that the urge to fix things was common, as was having a critical voice with completely unrealistic expectations. Be kind to yourself, he said. The primitive part of your brain sends up a fear signal, then your conscious mind starts working overtime to make it stop. It’s completely normal human behaviour. But we can work on it.

Good, I thought.

PROBLEM IDENTIFIED: Completely unrealistic expectations
NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES: Small achievements overlooked, progress stalled
SOLUTION: Place some distance in front of the thought that throws up the problem, say thank you and tell it you’ll get back to it later, this is not the time to be crafting solutions
EXPECTED RESULT: Perfectly calm and ordered brain within the hour

ARGH.

less

About a month ago I posted this list of all the things I'd done in the first two and a half months of the year. It's a lot of stuff. The last point is actually about 20 different things - posh dinners, cocktail nights, comedy gigs, operas, cinema trips, nights in the pub, blues dance socials, and a mystery birthday surprise where they locked a bunch of us in a room and we had to logic our way out again. It's almost all been great fun, but for someone battling anxiety and Joyous Recurring Fainting Disease, it's a LOT of stuff. Too much stuff?

...yes.

When I first noticed I was struggling and started thinking about how to fix it, I did the logical thing: thought back to last time I had a mental health problem. How did I fix it then? I went to therapy, I took up blues, I started going out socially. It revolutionised my life, and I was like a different person. Which is the point. When I started getting therapy back then, my entire social life consisted of going to a dance class once a week. I never saw any of those people outside of class, and I would have something to do at the weekend maybe once every two months. My mother would call me and ask, hopefully, what I'd been up to, and I'd feel like it was a victory if I could tell her we'd walked to the supermarket rather than getting our shopping delivered. Of course it was revolutionary when I started dancing blues and getting invited to socials; I'd basically done nothing and met no new people for years.

I'm not that person anymore. My last free weekend was in January and I don't have another one until June. Between now and my next free weekend I'm going to several dinners, birthday parties and dance socials, as well as my usual classes, an opera, a treasure hunt, a hen night, a visit home and a holiday to Morocco. I booked a few days off work to give myself a break, then realised I was still going to be busy on four out of five of those days. Going away already clashes with four other things I'd quite like to do. If I commit myself to a regular course or class on a weeknight, I immediately find something else I really want to do on that night.

Replacing the anxiety with New Things seemed like a good plan. It worked before. My head was so full of dance that I had no space to worry. But two free weekends in six months? Scheduling myself three, four, five nights a week? I'm exhausted. I'd set myself up a plan of acrobatics Monday, blues Tuesday, possibly blues or solo dance or balboa Wednesday, kickboxing Thursday. When the acrobatics course ended would switch to kickboxing Monday, blues Tuesday, possibly blues/solo/balboa Wednesday, balboa or ballet Thursday. That is a fucking insane plan. Heavy exercise four nights a week every week when I'm in somewhat crappy health to begin with? Of course, what then happens is that I'm too exhausted to go to one or more of my planned activities, and I lie in bed instead feeling crappy and unproductive and like I'm not doing enough. Which is exactly what I may or may not be doing right now.

It's difficult to cut things out, or cut things back. People remember aloud how things used to be, they make "hmmm" noises, they talk about how much fun all the things I'm doing are, and why would I ever want to give them up if I'm not... you know, getting sad again? I worry about it too, more than I should. Those were bad days; I don't want to repeat them. Sometimes my worry about that makes me sign up for yet more things to try and stave it off, as if this last one will be the one that pushes the anxiety out. What actually happens is that the anxiety just relocates itself to time I'm supposed to be sleeping, and then I get even more exhausted.

The fact is that as much as I love the people in my life, as much as I'm thrilled and grateful that they invite me to things and want to talk to me and spend time with me, as much as I love meeting a new person and discovering that we click, I am still super introverted. I can't appreciate the People Time if I don't get the Me Time, and right now I am getting zero guilt-free Me Time. The only time I spend with myself is time when I've flaked out of doing something, and then I spend the whole evening feeling shitty about the fact that I flaked. I need to do less. I need to have time for me. I need to do what I used to do; just walk to a field or a wood or a common and sit for a while, reading or listening to music or just thinking, losing track of the time and leaving when I felt like it, be that twenty minutes or four hours later.

I was on a train the other day, travelling through Somerset countryside,  and I saw an old man standing on a bridge. He had a camera with him, resting on the bridge wall next to him, but he wasn't taking photos, just leaning on the wall and staring off. The sky was blue and there was nobody else in sight, except the people whizzing by on the railway, barely even there. It's been a long time since I wanted to be somebody else as much as I wanted to be that old West Country man on a railway bridge, watching the time pass by and knowing that it didn't matter.

the critical voice, part two

The other day I sat down at my computer and Googled, "How to have fewer thoughts."

Google: Umm. I can do, "How to have fewer negative thoughts", if you want?
Me: I appreciate the sentiment, but that's not really what I want.
Google: Sure it is. That's what everyone wants.
Me: Fewer negative thoughts would be great, but what I want is to think less in general.
Google: I don't get it.
Me: There's too much stuff in my brain and I want to get some of it out. I don't want to turn negative thoughts in positive thoughts, I want to turn thoughts into lack of thoughts.
Google: If you don't want inspirational blogs on the power of positive thinking and some pictures of trees at sunset, I can't help you.
Me: Well, thanks anyway.
Google: I AM WATCHING YOU.

There have certainly been times in my life when "fewer negative thoughts" would have been the best thing for my quality of life, but right now that's not exactly my problem. My critical voice likes to morph and change with me, to make sure it's always at optimum levels of unhelpfulness. When I'm depressed, it sighs and tells me there's just no point, no point to going out or standing up or opening the curtains or operating on a normal human sleep schedule because it's not like I'd accomplish anything by doing so, is it? When I'm anxious, it lists all the things that could go wrong because I don't do things properly or understand human beings, or just because I have rotten luck and so why wouldn't my entire family die in a car accident on their way down to see me? When I'm happy, it doesn't have much to say so it just spins round and round really fast like an excitable kid to make me feel a bit dizzy if I stop doing things. Right now, when I am anxious but in the throes of getting a grip, it wants to fix everything. EVERYTHING.

Hey there, money issues? Let's make a complicated spreadsheet! Concerned about weight? Let's make a diet plan! Not feeling great about living arrangements? Detailed rental accommodation home improvements! Feeling sluggish? Sign up for every single exercise class you can find! Hate your job? Get a new one! Bored? Learn everything! Confused? Sit down and try and untangle that boxful of matted chain necklaces you call a mind while I throw new ones into the mix every 40 seconds because necklaces are shiny and fun!

Most of this stuff, in an of itself, is constructive and useful and a good idea. I don't think any of the things I've done or tried to do in the name of fixing myself are bad ideas. Sorting out my snacking at work and researching job opportunities and making a budget plan and signing up for kickboxing and acrobatics classes and seeking therapy and seeing an osteopath and making a commitment to write daily and trying to work through my mental blocks are all, individually, good and positive steps.

The problem is that I'm trying to do it all at once, and it's exhausting. My critical voice says that all of these things are just a tiny change and it's just one hour out of my week, just one more thing to remember, come on, what are you complaining about? But it's just a tiny change over and over again, forty or fifty times a day, and every thought I have spawns three or four more thoughts about what I can do to fix that thought I just had. So I'm doing an exhausting amount of stuff, but because it's just a tiny change I can't actually see any difference in any of the problems I'm having. I haven't sorted my finances or lost any weight or made my bedroom pretty or felt any healthier or got a new job or untangled my mind.

What I have done is mostly cleared my overdraft and got a tiny savings account and stopped hoarding snacks in my desk drawer and done a thorough clear-out of my bedroom and sorted out my back and shoulders and made cushions and learned to alter my clothes and started proper exercising multiple times a week and been abroad a bunch of times and seen shows and eaten bastard expensive dinners and laughed with my friends until I cried, but none of that seems to count because it hasn't solved the problems I went in to solve (magically have a bunch of disposable income every month! Be three stone lighter! Acquire an interesting and flexible and well-paid job! BE EXCELLENT AT EVERYTHING!), and also because it hasn't created any space in my mind. Everything is trying to get through the door at once, much like that thing on The Simpsons where Mr Burns has every disease ever.

"So, what you're saying is, I'm indestructible?"
"Oh my, no. In fact, even a slight breeze could..."
"Indestructible."

Except that it's the opposite of that, because I want the things to be able to get through the door, and the fact that everything's squished itself in there at once means I'm not really able to progress with anything. Critical voice response to this is:

OK, good. Spotted a problem. How do we fix this? By picking one thing and REALLY trying to make that happen. While just making one tiny change to everything else. I mean, it's ALL important and you can't just LEAVE it to focus on this one thing, can you?

And this is why I need fewer thoughts.

the critical voice, part one

(This is an experiment I'm trying. I don't know how long this series will last or even where I'm trying to take it, but I have a problem I'd like to work out and you can come with me, if you choose to.)

When I was little, my parents sent me to swimming lessons at our local pool. I quite liked the water, but swimming wasn't particularly intuitive to me, and I wasn't really getting it. I don't remember much at all about those lessons, until a few weeks in when the teacher then ordered all but three of us out of the pool and lined them up along the edge.

"Now," he said, pointing to the three of us still in the water, "you watch them swimming, and tell them what they're doing wrong."

They started with me. I don't think they ever got to the other two kids. The teacher called on various children to shout out what I was doing wrong, and since I still couldn't swim at all, there were a lot of things. My four-year-old brain became very quickly overloaded, at which point they all, teacher included, triumphantly chorused that I was putting my feet on the bottom of the pool.

"That's right! You can't swim like that, can you?"

This is still a fairly accurate description of the way the world looks to me sometimes. I'm trying to do something and the whole world is lined up on the edge of the swimming pool, waiting and encouraged to spot what I'm doing wrong and point it out to everyone. An unidentified someone is that swimming teacher, directing everyone's attention to me, telling them I'm probably the one that will screw up the most (I've forgiven most of the people who were callous to me as a child, but if I ever knowingly meet that swimming teacher, I will actually shout at him. Who the fuck thinks that's a good way to get a four-year-old to be a confident swimmer? I didn't learn to swim for another ten years, long after people had stopped trying to teach me). I thought for a long while that seeing the world as that swimming pool was the reason I am so stupidly, unreasonably self-critical, and it's only recently I've started to realise that's not the root of the problem.

A week or so ago, I typed "dealing with the critical voice" into a search engine, hoping to find something a bit more helpful than my therapist's exhortations to "be a bit nicer to yourself". There were a lot of descriptions of the critical voice, all way more nuanced than "kid at the side of the swimming pool". They described a critical voice positioning itself as supportive and encouraging, often saying nice things, recommending rewards, and generally sounding as much like a force for good as anything can.

My critical voice thinks I'm a great person. An embarrassingly great person. My critical voice tells me, with absolute sincerity, that I am incredibly smart and talented and there's nothing I can't do. My critical voice believes in my writing more than almost anyone I've ever met. It's convinced that I have it in me to be exceptional, and often when I read books that voice will be there, saying get a load of this crap. Can you believe this got published? You're so much better than this, when you get your novel written it's going to blow everyone away. 

Sometimes I try something and I can't do it. My critical voice, which has already crafted several images of me doing that thing perfectly, says, Hmmm. That was bad. Try again. So I do, and I fail, and the voice says, That's strange. It really doesn't look that hard. I fail again, and it says Really? I mean, really? That's three times. Look how easy it is for other people to do this. You're definitely better than some of these people, but you can't even do this simple thing? Wow. 

Eventually, I get upset and frustrated and discouraged, and the voice says, There, there. I'm sure it's an off-day. Let's get you something you like. How about sitting on your own and eating cake? You like those things. 

I've written a few things that my critical voice is absolutely 100% happy with. Yes, it says. This, right here, this is the writer that you are. This is amazing. I knew you could do it. Problem is, that thing is usually a few pages of a novel. When I try to add more to it, the voice is sitting there saying no, no, this isn't right. Look at that awesome stuff you wrote. You're letting that writing down with this stuff. No, it's alright, I understand it might take a little while to get into the flow, I'll wait. Hmmm, I thought you'd have it by now. This is still all wrong. If anything it's getting worse. Maybe you should stop, you're obviously not in the right place tonight. Maybe have some cake, replenish a bit, reward yourself for trying.

I hate this bastard voice. It makes me feel like a massive egotist and a complete failure at the same time. This the first time I've tried to define it this way; I've been aware of it for a long time, but I always thought of it as two voices, one trying to be encouraging and the other beating me down. It makes sense that's it's the same voice, the same incredibly reasonable, logical voice, making a case for me to be the very greatest or the most useless, which is it going to be? 

Writing my way through a problem has historically helped me solve it at least 90% of the time. But this isn't "we had this fight" or "do I choose this thing or the other thing?", this is a long-standing part of my psyche and I don't think one post is going to do it, unless it were four hundred years long (not including musical interludes). So I'm going to try and write my way through my critical voice over the course of a few weeks or months or however long it takes and see if I can find myself any answers.

missing

For a year and a half, the most important thing in my life was dance. I went to any and every dance class or social I got a sniff of, and as many festivals as I could afford (and some I couldn't). All of my friends were dancers, and I went to everything, dance-related or not, that they invited me to. It was my life's infrastructure. Well, I'm never free on Tuesdays or Thursdays, probably not Wednesdays either. Last Friday of every month is out. Second Sunday of every month is out. I don't know how healthy or sensible that was, but I was busy and happy and had no desire for change.

I've lost that recently. I went for well over a year without missing a single one of my Tuesday classes, and now I go to maybe half, if that. I haven't been to Thursday classes in months. I go to socials infrequently, and usually leave early. I sold my ticket for the one festival I was planning to go to. It's even hard to enjoy stupid bouncy dancing in my bedroom at the moment. I don't quite know how to cope without that, because it's one of my default comfort behaviours and has been since I was a kid, but dancing just isn't fun anymore.

Maybe it's the dance. I've got stuck. In terms of steps and moves, there's not a huge amount more I can learn, and in terms of technique, I've been learning from the same (excellent) teachers for two years, and if they haven't been able to explain it to me by now I'm probably not going to get it from them. Maybe I'm bored of the moves and the music and it's draining my love for dance as a whole.

Maybe it's the scene. Where we once had a group of people learning stuff and having fun, we now have competitions and auditions and troupes and teachers in training. People practise and rehearse rather than dance. Teachers pick favourites and don't know how to hide it. Friends and acquaintances have long, detailed conversations in which they try to pin down their exact dance level in relation to other people we know, and discuss dance like it's our profession, not our hobby. Maybe that's been sucking all the fun out of it.

Maybe it's my body. I'm frustrated at my limitations, limitations other people don't seem to have because they came into this dance with years of learning technique in a different discipline, rather than what I did, which was just show up to a class after spending the vast majority of my adult life sitting on my arse thinking about aubergines. I'm analysing every move I make, trying to persuade myself to take up other dances to get this technique stuff and make my dancing look prettier, so maybe I'm sucking all the fun out of it.

Maybe it's my priorities. When I started dancing I had a dying relationship, almost no friends in the city, and an ache for interaction that had been growing for years. Two years later I have a very healthy relationship and friends that I believe I would keep even if I never danced another step again, so maybe the need is gone. Maybe I never really loved dance as much as I thought I did.

Maybe it's my head. Anxiety is getting in the way of a lot of things right now. Maybe that's all this is, and when I learn how to control it, dancing will be fun again.

It might be any, or all, of these things. There isn't really a fix for any of them, at least not within my power right now, which leaves me without a passion acting as the driver for my life. I'm not good at handling life without that driver. For some reason I can't drive it myself, so it either goes careening off into some bushes or I freak out and stop the whole thing. I wrote in November about needing a new thing, and I've tried several since then. I've enjoyed them all enough to keep going with them; I have made an improbable number of cushion covers this month. But none of them have gripped me in the way I'm looking for. I think about what I've done and where I could go next - dressmaking! Kickboxing belts! - and I don't feel enthused, just scared and a bit sad.

There's something missing. I've tried to fill the empty place but it doesn't want to be filled. Is that because my love of dance will come back, somehow, and doesn't want anything else to crowd it out, or is this a bigger problem? I don't know. Either way, it kind of hurts.

...but the plan

[Note: post is about current emotional state. Post may read as whiny and/or daft]

For some reason, I have recently lost the ability to deal with things not going the way I thought they were going to go. And I don't mean in the sense of being disappointed that something wasn't as good as I thought; if there's a plan I don't care about one way or another, and something that isn't that plan happens instead, I get disproportionately stressed out and sometimes burst into tears. 

I went to therapy today. My therapist wrote an agenda for the session on the whiteboard, as he always does, and we started talking. About fifteen minutes before the end of the session I realised that we were still on item two of four and there was no way we were going to get to the other two things today. This is an entirely normal thing to happen, but it stressed the hell out of me. I stopped listening to anything he was saying because I couldn't get past how he wasn't sticking to the plan, dammit. Then I started trying to justify my reactions in my head.

He did this last week as well. With those same two things! One of which I asked to talk about! We are never going to get to those things. Why is he still talking about this thing? We should be done with this thing. Nobody cares about this thing! Why did he spend over half the session on the homework and telling me about the lizard brain again? Why does he even write these agendas if he's not going to stick to them? 

This carried on until I got frustrated enough to burst into tears, which of course he asked about, and professional therapist though he might be, I could see that he had absolutely no idea what my problem was. He's usually great at listening to me, but he couldn't understand that I wasn't upset about us not dealing with those specific subjects so much as I was upset about the fact that he said we would. He said. 

This afternoon I took a meeting at work. The chair is crap at chairing meetings, so I never expect them to run to the time we set out in advance. But this time, just before discussion of the final item started, someone asked him how long it would take so that he could plan his journey home. "Oh, about fifteen, twenty minutes," said the chair. "We're definitely not going to need the whole half hour." OK, I thought, good. That's a plan now. He obviously knows what needs to be said. In practice, this last point took an hour and a half. Even though he said. Most of it wasn't relevant so I didn't have anything to do except sit there and freak out. I drank an entire decanter of water trying not to cry. 

It's ridiculous, and I know it's ridiculous. Being pissed off that he wasted an hour and a half of my life is normal. Freaking out about how that wasn't the plan and why was nobody else bothered about the plan is rather less normal. But I'm doing it all the time. I do it when a friend tells me they'll do something and then don't do it. I do it when my boyfriend and I agree a plan and then don't immediately start doing the planned thing. I do it when the train says it's ready to depart and then fails to depart. 

I don't really know what to do about it either. There doesn't seem to be any advice on how to stop this because people don't generally think it's a thing. But it is a thing, and it's in my head and I can't get it out. Gah. 

30

I had all sorts of ideas about the kind of person I'd be on my 30th birthday. At 30 I'd be a grown-up. I'd be doing what I wanted to do with my life, or at least know what this thing I wanted to do was and how I was going to get there. I'd have a decent selection of skills, both essential and useless, and be good enough at a couple of them to stand out in a group of people who also had that skill. I'd be happy with my body, with my hair, with my style. I'd have a handle on all the things adults need to do to function comfortably, and I'd be pretty OK with where I was.

What actually happened was that I spent the first few days of my new decade in a state of inexplicable and slightly scary depression, where I cried more or less constantly and felt like the world was caving in. Despite having woken up on my 30th birthday in goddamn Florence.

I had a flurry of half-baked, panicky ideas of how to fix everything that seemed perfectly logical from inside the half-baked panic, then freaked out even harder when they didn't work. I watched myself go through self-destructive behaviour after self-destructive behaviour and gave myself spectacularly ineffective pep talks.

"You see this thing you're doing? You should stop that."
"I agree."
"You're still doing it, though."
"Yeah, I am, aren't I."
"You should stop. You'll feel better if you stop."
"That's true."
[three days later]
"So you're still doing it."
"Yes. I thought about what you said and I decided using logic that the best thing to do would be to carry on doing it."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"No, it doesn't, does it. I'll think about that."

I feel better today, for no real reason. Maybe because I managed to make a phone call I needed to make. Maybe because I've decided that phone call is the one that will magically fix everything. But I've been thinking without crying, and I've made a couple of plans, and I've had a couple of realisations.

This year is going to be really, really hard. I can't even coast this year, because I actually hate coasting and it's making me sick. If I coast, the bottom will fall out of either my job or my health and everything will get exponentially worse. I don't want that year. I've already had the year where apathy fucked everything up, and I do not want it again. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to make things harder for myself.

In my 30th year I need to face things I'd rather ignore, force myself to do things I hate, learn to do things I've been complacently telling myself I'm terrible at. I need to set myself difficult restrictions, forgo things I want to do, and be uncomfortably honest about the person I am. Not because I'm trying to punish myself, but because I deserve better than this. I deserve more than fear and sickness and frustration and aching. I'm better than this.
I am going to have a difficult, scary year, so that when I'm looking 31 in the face I can smile at it.