Well the main distortion in my thinking when I was depressed was about people not liking me which was a huge break through in therapy. Realising that, when I was in depression that I’d even, even doubt, my friends and family they didn’t like me, I thought even my best friend, he, I’ve known him for, since we were both 11 years old, so its almost 20 years, I even convinced myself that he didn’t want to know me anymore. That he thought I was useless and which in reality wasn’t the case at all, you know we love, we love each other deeply, and that’s always been the case.

I think part of the problem was that we also spoke about in counselling, is that as a family, we were never really… we weren’t really brought up to talk about emotions. We never really spoke about emotions with our parents, so I never really went in depth with my parents. They were always… they were aware that I was off sick and they were concerned but we never really spoke about it in depth. I used to talk about it mostly with friends, sort of colleagues as well, but in the main sort of release point was the counselling, which was to me was crucial. If I hadn’t have had the counselling, I’d probably still be severely ill and wouldn’t be, you know, happily now saying that at last I’m enjoying life to a greater extent.

But basically, my Mum has always experienced depression in a sort of similar way to me, I think. And basically, her response is just to like do it anyway and just kind of, shes always done stuff but she gets really anxious and shed always get really scared but shes done so much. Shes gone travelling and like shes done jobs where she was really scared of it and shell just do it and she doesn’t let things stop her. So I’ve always felt like, yes, theres some things that I haven’t done because I was scared but other things. I refuse to let my, have the depression stop me doing anything so I would never have a day off through being depressed. I would never not do something that I was supposed to be doing because I was feeling depressed.

And did going to family therapy change the family dynamics in any way?

I think so. Not, you know, it doesn’t, he, it doesn’t solve everything but I think it made us all a lot braver and to kind of remove this, this fa’ade. And also I found it very difficult to accept that I loved these, I loved people very much and we were very close, and we are fairly close but that I didn’t actually like them. This, this was the, in many ways and theres ways that I do, but I find that very difficult inside and now I can, I, whatever you realise a lot of people have their… and you just accept but, oh my God, the guilt and all of that. But I think it did help us communicate, yeah, a bit more, yeah.

I decided to tell my neighbours because I mean I like them, I wouldn’t tell them if I didn’t like them. But, because some of them are work from home you know, and they used to see me at home. I just felt better for telling them what, that I am depressed and they, they were very supportive the first day I told them. He ‘ He, this neighbour next door, he even kind of hugged me and said, ‘It’s going to be okay. And sometimes a very small gesture like this or a card, you know or someone looking at you or holding your hands, God knows, anything that’s’ Some stuff that’s probably done on a daily basis’ That you don’t see has any meaning, you know like a handshake or a hug or a kiss or, I think it helps.

I had it was a friend of a friend, and I had only met her really once or twice, I didn’t really know her. And she was just so lovely, she would write me notes and, you know, even now I can’t get over her… shell come up and see me once a week or, you know, after work shed come on her way home from work, and wed sit and have a cup of coffee. She sat here when I’ve been in tears and I’m going, “I’m really sorry [woman’s name].” Shed say, “It’s not, no it’s no problem” and I, me even now I can’t go out at night, I won’t go out at night and…so I will, say on a Saturday morning, I will meet my friend for a cup of coffee and that’s only just out in a coffee shop. And that’s only just happened in the last 5 months that I’ve been able to do that.

Yeah I have one friend, who was actually, I actually went to university with, and was there when I was first unwell, so she knows me quite well, and has seen me very low before, so shes you know, stood by me, quite well. And it’s got to the situation now when I can actually acknowledge to her that I do get periods of feeling suicidal and she will actually have that conversation with me, whereas previously that was far too scary. The thought of actually mentioning it, but now that’s out in the open it’s made our relationship a lot stronger, that has. I think what has helped my friend is that shes read a lot about it, shes learned a lot about it, shes been interested. She cuts out magazine articles for me, I’ve lent her books that shes gone away and read. She wants to know more, but at the end of the day, just being there, consistently. Consistently being there, not necessarily asking why, you know, why you’re in this situation, just accepting that this is how you are, and that at some point you may choose to say, ‘This is why I think I have depression. And just really being a friend in that sense.

It’s not bad, if you want to kill yourself. If someones determined to kill themselves, they will. And all this crying for help and the attitudes I’ve heard of so many casualty nurses when I used to work as a student, ‘Oh it’s selfish, it’s this, it’s that. Yes, okay, it’s selfish. Okay, it’s a selfish thought, I want to kill myself, I don’t want to go on, it’s awful, it’s dreadful. So what if it’s selfish?

It’s not the primary meaning of it?

No. It’s not the primary meaning of it. It’s the, the meaning of it is that I just, just want to be out of it. I want to be away from this and the only way I can solve my problems at the moment is to be, is to remove myself from them. And I suppose, I suppose if you sit and think about it enough then you’ll think about, well, who are you going to leave behind? But I will say, it acts as a comfort for me and it does prevent me.. and I have got very low at times, but I just think, well okay, yeah you can do it, [interviewee name], but do you really want to do it? Is it actually going to solve any of your problems? It’s not going to solve any of them but it’s still my comfort. And I have a friend that understands that way of thinking as well because she feels exactly the same. And obviously.

What’s it like to have a friend who understands?

Marvellous, because she knows exactly what it feels like, and I know how she feels about a lot of stuff and shell just say, ‘Well, yeah, I just feel like killing myself at the moment so I just need to ring you up and talk to you about it.

When I was at my worst, I had completely isolated myself. I completely isolated myself from my group of friends who, you know, we meet up, friends from university, friends from a long time and we are always firing e-mails back and forth. And I actually use one e-mail account only for my friends and I didn’t check it, I purposely didn’t check it when I was depressed. And it was actually subsequently when I started feeling better and did check my e-mail account and found one of my best friends had actually come back from the States and had offered to meet me, because he was going to be in town and he had got no reply because I wasn’t reading my emails. There was a whole load of things that I missed out simply because well partly I didn’t want my friends to see me like that. I knew I was really, really low and I didn’t want my friends to see me. I also didn’t feel that I could even cope with talking to my friends. I wouldn’t go near the telephone. I would not telephone. I avoided speaking on the telephone as much as possible. I didn’t want to talk. Certainly didn’t want to talk to anyone face to face. Even my wife, I really didn’t want to talk to her. I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Again, as I say, partly because I didn’t want people to see me as I was, partly because I didn’t feel, I didn’t feel like communicating, I didn’t feel as if I could communicate. I just wanted to sit, sit in a darkened room in silence.

Yes, we needed to balance it because I would still get very tired, and so I didn’t want somebody who was there, talking all the time, because I found talking and listening tiring, and we, we might just go for a walk, and say very little really…. But just having their presence there. I don’t, I don’t know. I think I was frightened that I would go mad in some way, and loose control completely. That never happened, even when I was in hospital, that never happened. I was overly controlling really, but I just felt that if anything like that happened I’d got somebody there with me, and I was safe and [son’s name] was safe. So as I say, I just remember someone sitting in the kitchen with me while I just tidied round and did the ironing. Somehow it just helped give me a little more motivation. We talked about very little. She just shared her day with me. It was very mundane, and then we just had a coffee. We didn’t talk about a lot, we didn’t say a lot, we just… having her there I just felt safe in some way.

So it was her presence more than conversation?

Yes, yes. As I was saying I did get very tired very quickly and I did have a friend that talked a lot, and I cut back from seeing her because it was just too wearing.

No, I feel that [husbands name] felt that there was the focus on me, so I’d got the psychiatrist and the hospital, and as I’ll say later on I did have friends too, and my family. But he felt very isolated and cut off, and hed found it very hard going to work, juggling [son’s name]’s care, and being worried about me. And also because I’d been through it before with the postnatal depression. He just felt that he couldn’t go through it again, and he didn’t have anyone to talk to, so in the end he did go and see a GP because he was concerned that he was going to get depressed as well. And he did pay for some private counselling sessions. And then after six months I came back… yes after six months I came back to live here, and he came back. And we also had some joint sessions, through Relate, to help us deal with the depression together, and the fall out as well on our relationship.

What were Relate like?

They were excellent.

How – in what way were they helpful to you?

They gave us both a chance to talk properly to one another about our experience of the depression. I think before wed kind of tiptoed round one another really. We were just so scared of it, it just seemed like such a big thing. And I’d also felt very abandoned by him, and very let down, because hes left. But I was able to see through the sessions that… the pressure that hed been under, and why hed found it so difficult. And so we were able to talk through those very difficult emotions and feelings, and thoughts, in a safe environment.

How many sessions did it take to work through that?

We must have gone along for about six, and then we had a long break, and went back and had two more. But by then I think we felt that we were communicating that much better, that we didn’t need a third person there anymore.