Not Disney

I've got so used to the same answer that I barely register the response. Mind you there was a time when I had to spend a lot of time just coaxing an answer out of the little guy. He is dropped off and we go for a walk. How was nursery? Fine. Who did you play with? Always the same answer. Not today. No, not a one word answer either. A whole novella on how his little pal was not at nursery but in Disneyland and I knew what was coming- can I go to Disneyland one day daddy? Christ. No money and agoraphobic, what do you say? Of course.

The thing is he doesn't know what Disneyland is but is instead repeating what his sisters have said as they always obsess about it. And the irony is they have both been, the Paris one, but can't remember it. So its "a thing" you say as its something good. No I can't give him Disneyland and maybe never will but you never know so why kill the dream when a dream is all it is.

We went walking and walking and through the park and as I walk more and more and go further and further and stay out longer and longer I tend to be more at ease and notice things that would usually have passed me by as I raced rigidly from A to B and back to A again. For the first time today I noticed him looking longingly at the swings and the chute. Never noticed that before. Do you want to go on the chute? I didn't need to hear the answer as I knew by the way his face lit up what the answer was. Little things. Little things I couldn't do before but can do now and no its not Disney but its a start. And so he was up and flying down by the seat of him pants and waited and a nod and he was away again. Small things.

I was thinking to myself: why never before? He goes through the park every day to nursery with the wife and his sisters and half the time comes back that way. But he is in his uniform and we can't get that dirtied can we? Well we can when I am in charge. He was still in it today and skidding along the ground on the seat of his pants as he shot off the slide. I won't be popular later but I don't care.

Nightmares in day time

I should have seen it coming because there was something not right from the moment I got up this morning. There was something gnawing at my mind which although I could not put my finger on kept filling me with a sense of dread. In snatches that were hard to hold I got the impression I had been woken at some point by a nightmare that I could not recall but was playing over and over still somewhere in the shadows of my mind.

And as the morning went on the feeling of impending doom got stronger and stronger. Its a horrible thing. There is nothing to focus on and challenge, just an abstract feeling constantly nipping away at the grey matter. But I should have seen it coming because its not the first time. However infrequent it is too frequent and maybe becoming more frequent- the last time I blogged about at the start of February so nearly a 3 month break.

My hope was that after the boy was dropped off from nursery and we went for a walk it would go of its own accord as a product of being stuck indoors alone thinking introspectively as I do which is the breeding ground for all negativity. And so we went. Freezing cold wind right in our face and the driving rain so I could not stay out too long for the sake of the boy but it was not shifting anyway. It just kept coming at me.

When we back home it finally hit and just like last time. It started with a brief moment of deja vu and then I was staring all too vividly into the face of it and it scared the daylights of me. The boy was oblivious. As he sat playing the Wii I was rooted to the couch with my head burning and coming out in cold sweats shaking with fear. As always I cannot actually say what it was except now I have the suspicion it was the memory of a weird nightmare that had woken me during the night and as always ambiguous images along to a tune which is playing far too slowly like I am watching something in slow motion. I must point out however that the actual content of these things I have called "fever moments" are not actually scary but they come on so strongly that I get spooked and the fight or flight system kicks off so basically I am in panic.

So I have been reading the CBT book about obsessional thoughts and I am glad I did because it explains it so well. Its just panic and there is a reason for it. Firstly with anxiety, via fight or flight, the mind is in a high state of alert looking for danger and this is how these mental manifestations occur. Anticipatory anxiety does that- in my case the sense of dread from a nightmare I could not recall (until later) and the fear of it returning- the fear which in fact brought it back to the surface. And even with all that the memory in visuals and sound is not the problem. That is true. As I said the content is not actually scary, just weird. But the importance and meaning attached to it is. The reaction. Then there is the point. The point where if you accept it then it will die down because its the reaction which fuels it- just like a panic attack. I had noted this point before and its maybe my problem solving nature that is the cause but there is a point where I sense I must let it go and yet I can't. I have to see it face on and try to rationalise what it is when I know that is the wrong thing to do but I still do it. I keep noting this and so when I read the following in the book I knew this is really what I am experiencing and going through the process keeping me stuck:

"The thought comes in to your already sensitized and tired mind. It creates intense fear. Because you don’t realise that it is simply part of the fight or flight response you attach a great deal of importance and meaning to it and take it very seriously. You then either think even MORE (in an attempt to solve the problem) or try to BLOCK the thoughts which increases your focus on the thoughts which increases your anxiety which leads to more thoughts - a cycle of fear.

As always it dies down but then your memory of the experience keeps it ticking over in your mind - you fear that it will return so this increases your ANTICIPATORY ANXIETY. Not surprisingly it then returns. You need to understand this CYCLE OF FEAR clearly before you can begin to change it."

That is exactly it and I am attempting to solve a percieved problem when in fact its just a jumbled up memory. That is all it is. Thoughts, sounds and images jumped together in a bizarre mess which are not actually scaring but because I add fear because it is foreign (add undue importance) then I end up panicking and getting freaked by it.

As strange as it may sound after a little episode like that I feel shattered physically. Yes there is an explanation for that too which I will leave you with. But I just wanted to say one last thing. Understanding is key. Knowledge is power. I wrote this post not to scare anyone but in the hope that if anyone reading this has experienced something similar then they may also be able to see through it and not add worry that it is something wrong with them and in doing so keep it recurring. Its just panic. Its nothing to worry about and with understanding and putting that understanding into practice with acceptance and non-reaction then it will vanish. It is at root just a form of obsessional thinking...

"What makes one thought obsessional and another not is the IMPORTANCE and MEANING you attach to the thought.When you DON’T attach a great deal of importance to a thought it won’t cause you any distress. For instance, even when you are feeling anxious you will still have many ordinary day to day thoughts - ”I should eat something”, “I have to get ready to go to work” - and so on.. but these thoughts won’t become obsessional unless you add undue importance to them.

With panic disorder the thoughts might be something like..
“I am going insane” or “I will never be able to stop these thoughts”

Because the perceived MEANING and IMPORTANCE of these thoughts is frightening this activates Fight or Flight sensations. We then try to BLOCK or AVOID the thoughts but the paradox is that the more you try to block thoughts the MORE importance you attach to them and so they increase as does your anxiety and fight or flight sensations which leads to even more thoughts.

You can also become quite fatigued. It’s like waiting for something bad to happen for hours or days at a time - it’s no wonder you can feel exhausted."

A stroll

Good day today despite a lot of other things going on. This week I have done my quota of walks so really don't need to go out this weekend but I still want to. I want to keep going. That and a need to clear my head sent me out the door this afternoon. It was good. Different. Bordering on normal actually.

I ended up down the park and there was a football game on. So I stood for a while and soaked it up. No idea who was playing but I was more interested in just being there and not having to run away. Apologies for the crap photo but I only had my phone and as I didn't want to draw attention to myself took the photo shortly after I left rather than at the sideline.

I can't say I was impressed with the game but I was happy to be part of it in a way as a spectator and listening to the shouts and watching the battles. Just good to be immersed in something outwith home. Just good to be out.

Things are going really well but its in my nature built on recent years of experience to keep waiting for the fall that will send me all the way back to the begining. I am doing things I would not have imagined just at the start of the year and always planning a head to push further and longer and try to just steadily get there- to the end. And as I have said in recent weeks for the first time it really feels like it is possible. Even though my world is still small it has grown inch by inch and as long as it keeps growing then eventually, however long it takes, I will get there. Its a feeling I have not had in all the time since this first started. That alone builds a strength to push on and I think they are feeding off each other.

What I hope is that in the weeks ahead I have more positive posts. Maybe something impressive along the way- though to me all of this is impressive. I hope that there are tales ahead to tell of things I never dreamed. Better days. If it needs hard work then it is work I am willing to put in because these small pockets of normality in the day have been bliss and I long for more. For now I will take the snatches but over the weeks and months I really do dream they will turn into the promised land I have spent all these years searching for.

Point 9

Point 9 of my graduated exposure. Finally. The push continues. Last year is was a struggle to get to point 6 and then the same the year before- more so. This year its just took off. Quite unbelievable. Finally its coming together.

It was nearly a year ago I wrote a post entitled "A Crossroad" in which I explained about getting to point 5, halfway, in my graduated exposure and finding it impossible to get beyond it. That was written in May 2012. I was getting close to getting past it but not quite getting there. And I was having doubts about whether graduated exposure actually worked because in actual fact I had been doing this for years now without getting anywhere. I would get so far and then find I could go no further and finally give up before decided at a later date to start over again and having to start at the very bottom. In actual fact I had been to point 6 the year before. At the end of 2011 I managed it twice but at night and never during the day and never at a busy time like the school run.

It was in fact 3 months later when I wrote a post entitled "Pushing On" that I finally past it in August but even then I was more concerned with maintaining that, which I was finding difficult that actually pushing on. It was the start though of a 3 month period where I got there a few times a week and I hoped as the year was coming to an end that at some point I would slide up and past the next point, point 7, but it never happened. In actual fact I actually went backwards and for the past 2 months of 2012 could not even get to point 5 never mind point 6.

So starting 2013 I had lost faith again in the graduated expoure and for the first week of the year could not even cross the road to point 2 which was how bad it was. I felt it had all fallen apart again just like every other time. What was the point?

Then it all clicked. Somehow everything just esculated quickly- by past standards. In the second week of January I went from not being able to cross the road to going to point 5 again and by the end of the month was again at point 6. Then on 7th February I got to Point 7 and posted about it giving a detailed explanation of the graduated exposure. For me it was quite incredible not on to get there for the first time in 18 months of trying but just a week later to pass it onto the next point and get to, on 14th February, Point 8 which I never thought I would do. And that is where I have been since repeating the journey and varying the ways of getting there and varying the ways I go after there and generally pushing on to different points further afield.

Today finally I have reached point 9 for the first time. I know it does sound like much but its almost there. I look at the shitty pic from my phone above and see the school gates and I go back to that post a year ago to read how I was struggling to get past halfway. Really all this has happened over the space of a couple of months. It would be wrong of me not to linger on it and squeeze it for all its worth soaking up all the little droplets of hope that drip from it. Something even at the start of the year I thought I would never do. In fact of late so many things I thought I would never do and yet as much as I say I need to linger on them I don't that much. My mind has such a boost that it is already looking ahead and planning where I could push to next. I am not going to stop it.

A little victory today. Though I do have to counter that by saying I don't think I will be pushing to this point again for another week. The schools are still off this week for the Easter break and its difficult getting out for one thing. But more than that paranoia kicks in as all that is in that area is the school and houses facing it so me appearing and stopping at a point and turning around draws attention I am sure escpecially when I look conspicuous with my clawing and trying to regulate my breathing as I try to stay a level above the panic. But it needs to be done and that is the aim for when the kids return to school. This is not really about getting to that point as such. By striving for that point I am making all the other points insignificant which is a good thing because I rarely have to give them much thought at I pass through them.

I sit and I wonder what will be. The latter half of this year will be the first time all three children are at school together. The boy moves up from nursery after the summer and then it will not be that long after when the oldest will be going to high school. And I have never walked them to school or met them after. I wonder if this year I will finally be able to do it. My mind moves beyond that and dreams of then going to school plays and parents nights and all the usual things parents do which I have never done- probably a lot of stuff most parents would rather not do but its different when you build an appreciation through not being being able to do it. The mind churns on down all different paths yet to be walked and I let it because they are all positive thoughts and that can only be a good thing. The more positive thoughts there are the less space there is for the dark doubts and fears and my mood stays good and that helps me get on my way.

Waiting Room

Sitting in the at the local medical centre. Not for long but there none the less. Sitting in an empty waiting room. Memories flooding back of times past. The many frequent visits. Sitting in here waiting for my name to be called and another fruitless journey thereafter. Of the flood of words and explanations and hope that the doctor, of which there were many, would understand and see the problem and write a prescription for a bottle of pills that would take it all away and make me better.

I had been living here about 4 years permanently and in that period had gone to the doctors probably over 20 times for various things but about 75% of those visits were in the last year of that period where I was constantly back and forth searching in vain for an answer. Just an answer would do. What the hell was happening? Sitting here nervously. Partly hoping today was the day and partly fearing what the answer might be.

Yes for all the frequency of those visits I stayed up North for 5 years before that and only went to the doctors once in that whole time. That was strange because I never even registered with a medical practice until right at the very end when I had to after coming back from a holiday abroad with an ear infection. All that time working and not a problem to note and that visit was probably my first in about 8 or 9 years to a doctor such was my fine health- mental and physical.

And tht makes me wonder why the sudden change. Two big changes. Firstly a change of abode but I was fime for the first two years of that. The second change was the eventual change of job and that is when my problems began, at the refinery. That in itself had two problems. I remember a big old Geordie in the smoking room cursing and moaning about all the idiots confining the few to a single smoking room and if only they knew the shit they were breathing around about them pumped into the air from the refinery before going on to list a dozen and one different chemicals. The other problem was spending all day facing a wall in my own world cut off from the rest.

The last time I was here, in the waiting room, was January 2008. My wife was in hospital pregnant with the boy. The youngest girl was up North with her grandparents and the oldest girl I had managed to drop off at nursery that morning. I had to pick up a prescription. A neighbour had offered to get it for me and that was the easy way out but I was pushing on my own trying to force normality and so ended up here panicking in a queue waiting for a little bit of paper to take to the chemist and then run off with a bag full of diazapam to stop me falling off the edge- as I had pleaded to the doctor over the phone. I did it and it felt great but I was in no hurry to go back and the diazapam remain untouched to this day- well they are out of date now.

So 5 years since I had last been here and thankfully not sitting here because I need to but because I want to. The push continues as I try to get myself out further and for longer and I keep pushing. This is part of the push. This time it was my wife who was in for a prescription. The boy was not even born last time and there he was battering about some balls of a little toy on a table as he nears the time to start school. Another little achievement like last time but this time I will return again. That is what I have been doing. Pushing to get there and pushing to go back. Trying to force normality again but unlike last time it seems tiny step by tiny step to be working this time.

Half Light

"Strange how the half light 
Can make a place new 
You can't recognize me 
And I can't recognize you" 

Half Light I, ARCADE FIRE 

Oh yes. Still buggering about with low key images in the hope of getting something passable to get printed for the kids' school photos this year. The solemn one is a reluctant model unwilling to look at the camera or far distance too long as he longs to get back to Angry Birds. A sense of longing: a boy missing his tablet. And alas opportunities have been few and far between. Between dragging the boy to the window and the unpredictability of natural light in this everchanging climate I have now decided to give it a week of rest. At least until his sisters return as they are up north for the week and posing comes naturally even if the look is less so.

But on the photo itself its low key which I am looking for but the half light gives a look which is not suiting for a school portrait. More apt for a moody music album cover look or Film Noir poster- the light it means. So what it needs is a reflector to light the whole face and make the image less moody- and by the way the finished products will be colour which also makes a difference. But its an improvement on the shoddy Lightroom fakery previously posted. So I have my reflector. After looking on amazon at various kids of various costs I decided instead to cover a sheet of cardboard in kitchen foil and it does the same thing- I have tried. So good to go as long as the sun shines.

Elsewhere things still going well. Little increments here and there but all heading in the right direction. School holidays are usually a time I hit a big lull but I am pleased to say I am pushing on harder than ever holding on to the little glimpses of hope I have been presented and not letting go. For the first time since all this crap started many moons ago I actually feel I am progressing and can come out the other side.

Still though the sword of Damocles hangs as I still await word from that French IT mob coming to tell me there is nothing wrong and to get out looking for a job ya lazy sod! Still I wait. But as I wait I am not standing still and maybe my the time they arrive I will be able to chase them. You never know.

Upward

Every step feels like its uphill until the next plateau. Makes me wish wonder whether I should carry a dustbin lid and sleigh my way home in style. Except its not all uphill- just metaphorically so. It is very much downhill which at first seems good but only if you travel from A to B and I never travel from A to B, always A to B and straight back to A again. Mumbly jumbly mess I am spouting here I know but its a little complicated.

Since pushing out I have been noticing gradients more and more. They are easy to find. This is an old mining village. The land is collapsing in places. The stank outside my home has just about disappeared. So its bumpy but not in immediate degrees and instead over expanses. What I have noticed is that our home appears to have been built on the crest of something- the last support- and as a consequence no matter where I go I am walking downhill. Which I already said is good but only if, unlike me, you don't need to come immediately back.

And therein lies an answer possibly to why for so long I wondered why the walking out was not the hardest part compared to the turning around and heading home. Partly that is because I use more than 50% of what I have getting out and pushing as far as I can and have to make do with what I have left to get me back home at speed. I see now though that is not the only reason. I turned and the horizon is always upward. I never used to notice gradients yet now my thinking is ruled by it.

Still I push on. I push on and on and on to cover distances people do without thinking about but to me have taken years to achieve. Two miles for the first time since this all started. Something I thought impossible now done. No wooping and yeeha-ing or jumping up clicking my heels. Instead just a burnt out mess crashed on the couch filled with regret for pushing too hard. Physical some, mental the other. How much of one and how much of the other I don't know. It leads me to try to recall how in the past I felt walking two miles. And maybe this is the problem because I cannot remember and my head instantly visualises someone without a bead of sweat breathing regularly with a bit of fatigue. But was that the case? And even if it was I was fitter then, younger then. I forget I am talking about 7-10 years ago. A quarter of a lifetime ago at the extreme. A time before my hair greyed and my face became more drawn. A more active time. So is it right to try to compare the two?

Of course not and this is what I have to try to get into my head. It doesn't matter how it felt before anymore than it feels for others. It is about how it feels now. I see from that I am still thinking about it too much. I think about it beforehand, constantly during and for a long time after but it is the after that causes the problems because my mind is set to look for problems. So I must try to be more mindful and less introspective. I must accept and let be and just keep pushing on without worrying about consequence and without regret later because there is nothing to regret when the alternative is spending the rest of days indoors miserable.

In the past I have talked of flashbacks. Random visual images of a former life. These are still as strong as ever. Now I see their purpose. They are coming more regularly now. Not alarming just a memory projected visually and briefly. In a car down a street I forgot about or sitting in a pub I forgot about. I have to say everyone is anywhere but here. None from here. Most actually from up north before I moved here. Now for the first time I see their purpose and it is a positive one. They are a reminder of what I want and where I want to be and spur to ensure I don't slack off and I keep going and even if I am exhausted to the point of panic I keep pushing myself out time after time striving to stay out longer and go further and do things I never thought possible. Ultimately to never give up and keep trying. And they are working. Its a change in mindset as I said in the last post and churns up an appetite to do more while the mind plans little things never done that can lead to bigger things down the road and all tie together at the end to not resurrect the old life but breathe a brand new better one like a metamorphosis of sorts and the breaking free from the cocoon. 

That is how it feels at least. It feels like every step is uphill and a struggle but at the end it will be worth it. Confidence builds little by little. I am hoping this is the slow start of heading out of this. Only time will tell.