Mind over matter.

I'm not sure if I want to write about this when I find it so very difficult to talk about it to even my closest friends. But this is my blog, it's about what happens to me on a daily basis and it might help me to try to write about it.

I've been struggling over the past few weeks/months with increasingly bad anxiety attacks, sadness, constant crying (for no reason, at everything. at home, in cafes, on the bus) feeling all stressed out (even though I don't actually do very much) and just being really down (without being able to pinpoint exactly why).
I don't really understand what's going on but physically I'm a lot worse at the moment too, probably from the exhaustion of being stressed and anxious all the time (I have ME and Fibromyalgia). I mentioned the other day that I feel like I'm reaching breaking point, it's scary.

After a particularly harrowing morning I decided I really needed to speak to someone urgently so I phoned the Doctor's and managed to get an appointment for this afternoon. She was really good and listened patiently as I tried to explain what was happening, then when I backtracked and said it really wasn't that bad and I had no reason to be feeling like this, then cried, then tried to make some sense of it.
She said - and I'm breaking down a long talk we had - you are really depressed and you have every reason to be feeling this way and we're here to help.

I've suffered from clinical depression in the past, I've had various treatments and concoctions with varying success over many years. But I felt it was something I'd put behind me, that I still get down (I have a long term debilitating illness, of course I still get down) but that it was something I could handle without medication. I actually came off the anti-depressants I was on a year ago and looking back things have become steadily worse since then. So it seems I'm someone who needs something extra to hold the serotonin in my brain. I need to just accept that and give up my crazy idea of no pills = healthy! ;)

I've also always been very keen to make people understand that I have a physical illness not a mental one. ME/Fibro is NOT all in my head. I'm not ill because I'm depressed, I get down because I have to deal with being ill. I know that it's not all in my head, it's not my fault that I have depression too, the one thing does not lead to the other. Making ignorant folks understand this is not my problem.

So, at the moment, whether I'm worse physically because my mental health is deteriorating or it's the other way around I really don't know. But I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as I get help for it.

Apologies if this is a bit garbled. My head it out of sorts just now....