Hi All – A brief introduction from me.
I am a married man aged 41 (no kids) from the UK. I have had 2 depressive episodes in the last 18 months which I believe have largely been brought on by stress.
The most recent of these came to a head in early April. I got in such a state at work one day that my flight mode just kicked in. I had to get of that damn office.
My Doctor diagnosed an ‘Acute Stress Reaction’ and signed me off work . I was a nervous wreck and belived I had let myself and wife down and for the rest of the month my mood steadily spiralled downhill until I reached rock bottom at the beginning of May. At this time my wife was away from home with work and we decided it would be a good idea if I spent a few days at my parent’s in Wales rather than being stuck at home on my own. Good idea in principle. However, I felt so wretched by then that I couldn’t stand being around them, so after a couple of hours I packed my bag and left. The car journey home was awful. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion; tears were streaming down my face and I’ve never felt so disconnected from the rest of the world. This was a beautiful spring bank holiday Monday and all I wanted to do was to kill myself.
Luckily, I was able to fix up an appointment with my doctor for the next day. I told him about how I had spent hours surfing suicide websites and he was somewhat concerned! I’m not sure I was close to making serious plans to kill myself; rather I suspect it was my bodies sixth sense screaming at me in the loudest way possible to give myself a break and take my situation extremely seriously. The doctor recommended I start taking anti depressant medication (citalopram) and agreed I was in no fit state to return to work.
Since that awful time I have been recovering, slowly but steadily. My anxiety and depressive symptoms are subsiding to a point where I feel I can start to look forward with my life again and look for ways to maintain my improved state of mind.
My first big decision a couple of weeks ago was to resign from my job. Some may say this is a risky maybe even a foolish move in the current economic climate. I can’t disagree, however, all of my family and friends who were around me when I was at my worst believe I’ve made the correct decision.
My (ex) employers have been pretty good about my illness and didn’t want to lose me, to the point where they were willing to discuss revised job terms and conditions, and will provide a decent reference. Of course, the cynic in me says, they didn't want to lose an employee who worked his backside off for them to the point where he keeled over with stress, and would no doubt find ways to revise my job workload upwards once I was back. But in my current calm and positive mode I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, I now need to find and keep a new job which is going to be a challenge, and part of my plan of keeping well during this process is to follow the online CBT course on this site.
I’m only on section 2, but so far so good.
Keep well all......
Cycleguy.
