Another thing that the therapist taught me is to look out for signs of how I act, how I react and how I think about things and I can tell when I’m not quite right and having discussed that with my friends as well, my colleague at work, we’re good friends, she knows just from when I walk in or even from a text message and my current partner will know if I’m not right because they know the signs to look for and then they can jump on it straight away and say, “Well hang on, you know, are you OK, are you struggling?” And I’ve learned to say, “Yeah I am struggling today,” rather than just say, “No, no it’s fine, it’s fine,” but admit that you know you can’t do everything all the time.

And you say you’ve got a new partner?

Yes

And is it easier to be with somebody that understands?

He’s, I was very open with him right from the start and he said he wanted to know everything so I told him everything and he stayed, he didn’t run off. He’s very supportive, he doesn’t know always know what to do but again he’ll say, “I don’t know what to do,” rather than just ignore it or be quiet. Any reading or anything that I’ve pointed him to, to help he’ll look at, he’ll engage with it. He’ll ask, he wants to know how he can help and what he can do.

Mm. Sometimes it’s and people say you know it’s not that you want someone else to fix things for you but just to hear you and listen.

Yeah just to listen and hear, not just let it wash over.

My doctors have been my therapists because they are willing to spend the time. If I’d simply gone in and they said oh you’ve got depression heres some pills then I might have said oh is there anything else I can do’? But the fact they are willing to spend half an hour just chatting and talking through the problems, I won’t mention it here but I think some of the things that kicked off the depression years ago… I’ve discussed my doctor we, I think I know what caused the initial attack put it that way.

So you’ve had some discussions about not just medical things but about how you feel about things with your doctor and that’s helpful?

Yes.

And so is that to the extent to which you feel you need that kind of talking help or would you have liked to be able to have counselling or any kind of other therapy?

I don’t, as I say I get enough from my doctor but I’ve got my family at the other end of the phone line if I do feel low I just get on the phone and phone my mum or my dad or my brother or whatever and just have a 20 minute chat just talking things through, that helps. So I think I’ve got a very good family unit around me.

I’ve started to play the ukulele and so I go to this thing on a Monday which I would never have done when I was depressed at all – never have dared go along to something like that because I, you know, would have been terrified about what they thought of me which is ludicrous because everyone who has a passion wants to share it so if you have a passion going along to a club but shares your passion because people just embrace you so anyway. So I thought let’s start a club at work I knew another person who was interested in playing the ukulele so we sent an e-mail around and suddenly ten of these people who were interested in playing the ukulele, came out of the woodwork, came along and so we’ve got a group that’s going to meet weekly.

And that sounds like something you, you know, like you said you would never have organised when you were feeling….

No I would never have organised it.

When you were feeling bad.

No, no, no, no.

A couple of strategies that I put into practice, one was having a well- being diary, so one of the things that people who are depressed including myself often do is go to bed thinking about everything that went wrong during the day and all of the things they have to do tomorrow and worrying about how I’m going to make my life better. So it’s making a deliberate effort to say okay what went right today, why did it go right, you know, and especially looking for reasons within yourself when things go right.

Writing down when you have a tendency towards pessimism which, which I do and I think most people who suffer depression often do. When something good happens it happened just that once and it was because of somebody else and it will probably never happen again. When something bad happens it was because of you and it happens all the time in every area of your life, okay. so the using the gratitude diary is actually saying okay this has happened and it happened for a reason and that reason was something to do with me, even if that was just, you know, I was walking home and there was a really beautiful, you know, autumn trees there and I noticed them and it was great and the sun, you know, and I noticed that because I wasn’t looking down at my feet worrying about tomorrow I was looking up and I was paying attention to the world around me and that was something that I’d chosen to do okay. So looking for the positive aspects of the day and recording them and writing them down. and doing other things such as writing a thank you letter to somebody that you’ve never properly thanked for something as well, yes it has a big impact on them but it also has a big impact on you and one that lasts. So they’re what I mean by the kind of gratitude interventions.

Will you explain what the mood diary’s all about?

Yes I, since that first episode every day I keep a record on a one to five score where three is okay as sort of the average how I’ve felt on average that day and then I just put that into a spreadsheet and just produce a little graph from it so I can see what’s happened over the year. I now use a website called Moodscope which does all that for, you produces all the graphs and Moodscope’s very good because it also, you can set it up to send an e-mail to someone else so I have it set up so that every time I, they have a questionnaire for determining your mood, but every time I do that and get a score it gets e-mailed to my wife [name] And actually that works well for a depressive because when you’re going down sometimes you start to withdraw and actually you may not talk about it but [wife] will know that I’m going down and so she can, she can sort of step in and say Look your scores are going down we need to be aware of that,’ and What’s happening?’ and so.

That sounds really useful.

It is, very yes.

Oh yes, yes yoga. So I got introduced to it at the private clinic and I carried on with it.

And how would that, do you think that benefitted you in any way?

What’s lovely about that is I’ve actually found a class where the ladies are just, they’re not like physically perfect and so you’re not feeling like you’ve, you know. They’re obviously hale and hearty women who’ve played hockey when they were at school and they’re really nice and solid.

Keeping active

Yes exactly they’ve got this, one of them, they pair up in the class and one of them is very gentle, very nurturing and the other is very come on we can strengthen and we can do it. But it’s non-competitive so you’re all doing it at your own level and just being in a room with 20 people who are not competing with each other, they’re not trying to prove anything to each other, on a weekly basis is actually lovely.

Calming for the mind.

Calming for the mind because you know very often when youre socialising, you’re socialising at parties you’re sort of trying to prove yourself or keep up with the flow or, there’s nothing like that…we’re all just at peace in a room. We don’t really, you know, everybody is like affable they say hello, they say goodbye you sometimes support each other with activities but mainly you’re in, you’re just in a space with no one critiquing you, no one.

It sounds valuable.

It’s very good, very, very good.

It’s like being asked the question what’s going to make you better? I don’t know. You’re asked well, doesn’t necessarily make your cold better but what’s going to help your cold, well I’ll get a Lemsip or whatever, it doesn’t work the same for depression, anxiety, sleep, it doesn’t.

You know everybody’s responses are so different so that’s really a question that can’t be answered until you actually build up these tools and actually what we have to remember is there are some tools I’ve thrown out because I have tried things. I tried reflexology, it wasn’t for me and yet other people it is for them so that’s out my toolbox but I’ve tried it and I think that’s what you have to do, you have to try things in order to throw it at your toolbox because you just don’t know, you don’t know these things, you can only, it is a bit of trial and error, which is, is, is actually the frustration with depression and anxiety, is the fact that you have to trial things because there’s nothing worse than feeling utterly miserable and what you’ve got to do is spend weeks trialling things, you want to feel better like yesterday and it doesn’t, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t happen that way and that’s probably the most miserable thing that is about depression, is it can take, it can take a while and that’s horrible thinking about that.

I did the charity walk around England I now do a number of, you know, I’ve been asked to do a number of talks to various groups locally. I talk about the walk but I also mainly focus on my experience of meeting people with mental health problems and talking to people with mental health problems. And also just a bit of education in terms of how prevalent it is so the groups vary from next week I’m talking to some HR professionals, people who are involved in companies and through to public talks and Rotary and various different things. So it’s really just trying to do a little bit in terms of breaking down the stigma and just saying hey, you know, I’m a mental health patient but I’m not that’, well maybe I am a bit strange but, you know, it’s normal almost.

Yeah

Yes, yes.

So when you did the walk did you just, when you stopped off each day did you just chat to people or?

Well it was varied… I did, I met up with some, various groups along the way but a lot of it was talking to people, a lot of it through I was walking with my puppy, my springer spaniel, so dogs are great ice breakers so I had a lot of conversations where people would stop and pat the dog and talk about the dog and then say what are you doing’ and, I’m walking two and a half thousand miles’, why are you doing it.

That actually brings to mind two things I was just thinking off the top of my head. One is that you were walking miles.

Yes.

How many miles was it?

Two and a half thousand.

One of the things that is often suggested to help with depression is exercise.

Yes.

And do you feel that that was helpful?

Absolutely walking has been one of my main ways of, of dealing with it, one of my main therapies if you like. So I know that when I’m feeling down if I go out walking, unfortunately it seems to have to be a reasonably long walk, you know, a stroll around the park doesn’t do very much, I have to sort, but if I’m on a, you know, a reasonable hike then that seems to have some kind of calming effect on me.

And then the other thing that came to mind was pets.

Pets yes absolutely.

You know how the combination of both there but they do say that they’re good company and..

Yes and actually I was doing this walk for eight months and living in a camper van and my wife was joining me one week a month and meeting up with various people but if you look at my mood diary for those eight months it’s very consistently above average for precisely that reason. And also that I had a, a very clear sense of purpose, you know, a sort of project to do and you know why you’re doing it, it’s not like going to work in a job where I’m just going there to earn, earn the daily bread for instance and being out in the fresh air and walking every day and having the dog. And these are all good things for mental health.