Remembering that happiness comes from within

After the death of my husband who was 27, I was devastated. I was 23 years old then. At the time (more than 40 years ago) there was no such thing as grief counselling and at six months pregnant, I was told to ‘pull myself together’. It was years later while being a Hospice Volunteer that I actually worked through my own grief.

I know that ‘happiness comes from within’ through the Hospice Volunteers training. I read lots of self-help books at that time. This made me realise that ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step’ and that the change must come from me.

Recently, a number of my friends became very sick, and two very closed friends passed away. It had been hard for me to deal with the loss of these friendships.

Remembering that happiness comes from within helped me to keep going in spite of these losses in my life.

Dust if you must!

Recently I was reminded of the poem 'Dust if you must'. This poem helped me to move on after bouts of Depression.

DUST IF YOU MUST!
(Author Unknown)

Life is short. Enjoy it!

Dust if you must,
but wouldn’t it be better to paint a picture or write a letter, bake a cake or plant a seed, ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must,
but there’s not much time, with rivers to swim and mountains to climb, music to hear and books to read, friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must,
but the world’s out there with the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair, a flutter of snow, a shower of rain. This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must,
but bear in mind, old age will come and it’s not kind. And when you go – and go you must – you, yourself will make more dust.

It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.

Remember ‘dust doesn’t rust’!

Recently, a number of my friends became very sick, and two very close friends passed away. It has been hard for me to deal with the loss of these friendships.

Remembering that happiness comes from within helped me to keep going in spite of these losses in my life.

Having time out to think about things

I had some hard times recently and that made me feel depressed and emotional. In the face of Depression I found it hard to even deal with small things. Turning up for work was a struggle. Depression made me swing from ‘comfort eating’ to ‘no appetite’.

Having time out to think about things helped me to deal with Depression. For example, I had some time out recently to think about what had affected me so much emotionally. I was able to break down the issues that were affecting me and tackled them one at a time. I realised that one of the issues was my job environment. I started a new job a month ago and the girls around me were gossipy. Having time out to think about things changed my attitude towards those colleagues who gossip a lot. I told myself that they are not my friends (they are just my colleagues) and decided not to let them affect me. Instead of being quiet and withdrawn at work to avoid the gossips, I decided to be more proactive and make more efforts to get to know other people at work who were not gossipy.

I learnt these skills of ‘staying calm’, ‘thinking about things’ and ‘breaking things down’ from one of my ex-colleagues. He did not go into fits of panic even when things were very stressful. He also had a logical attitude: ‘Being stressed or pulling your hair out won’t change anything!’. This calm attitude is very different to the family environment I was brought up in. I was glad to be able to observe and try out these skills of staying calm.

Thinking about things and breaking things down helped me to cope and feel better. When I was able to think about things I often found ways to speak up and ‘stick up for myself’. I feel that I empowered myself a little bit in the process.

Being patient even though I know I might have to suffer for a long time

My son finished a methadone program at around the time I approached the community health centre for help. Although he had stopped using heroin, the drug addiction had brought up lots of issues in our family. My husband and I needed to deal with the loss of confidence in our ability to protect our children and we had the tendency to ‘check’ on our children more. This sometimes caused conflicts with our children.

My husband and I are both from a refugee background. My husband had very high expectations of our children and sometimes he was really strict with them. I found myself constantly needing to explain to the children where my husband was coming from and to ask my husband to consider the Australian culture that our children are immersed in.

In a way the drug problem made me re-think the way I communicate with my children. I wanted to get closer to my children so they would feel comfortable to tell me what they think. I knew that I needed to be patient and couldn’t just get angry. I know that this is the only way that I can help my son.

During the time that my son was using drugs, I was patient with his friends even though they looked like they were drug users and drinking a lot of alcohol. For example, I let one of his friends stay in my house for a week. I patiently explained to him my family situation and that I was very sick with a deteriorating chronic illness. He ended up helping my son to understand my situation!

My husband and my sister-in-law could not believe how patient I was. I don’t know how I developed this patience. Maybe God helped me, as I prayed for patience. When I am being patient, I am able to focus on what I need to do now and feel less affected by Depression.

Focussing on achieving something

Achieving something gives me a sense of hope. I have a creative interest. I look at something to see what I can do with it. I make cards, special albums, aprons, etc. I like to give away these things that I created. It pleases me to be able to give things to others. When I achieve something, I feel better about myself and am less affected by Depression.

Hanging out with positive people

Hanging out with postive people

Choosing to hang out with positive people helped me to get out of Depression. Putting myself around people who make me laugh and feel good about myself was an antidote to thinking about my ex all the time.

Just one person rejecting me doesn’t make me any less of a person

My relationship break-up had a big impact on my self-esteem and my sense of self-worth. It was pretty overwhelming. It was hard to deal with the sense of rejection and I felt like I was not really worthy of affection. I also noticed that my ‘self-deprecation’ thinking became worse.

Over a 5-month period I have gradually gained an upper hand over Depression. My self-confidence kicked in again. The turning point for me was when I realised that ‘just one person rejecting me doesn’t make me any less of a person’. Looking back, I think I have taken a number of steps to regain my self-esteem. These include:

• Stopping contacting my ‘ex’
• Finding something enjoyable to do to make me feel better
• Making constant effort to look at the positive side of everything
• Trying to laugh about things.

Not being scared of the problem coming up

Not being scared of the problem coming up

Sometimes fear creeps into my mind and I worry that my son may use heroin again. I realise that I need to be strong in my mind and not being scared of problems coming up.

I remembered there was a time when I found a piece of aluminium foil and an empty sachet in my son’s bedroom. Both my husband and I were very anxious. Instead of ignoring the issue and not dealing with it, I decided to stand up to the problem. I talked to my counsellor and also rang DirectLine* for advice. I then had a good chat with my husband and we decided to talk to our son gently about this. We were able to be open to each other about how we felt. My son admitted that he had used twice and made us aware of a couple of incidents that distressed him. Having an open discussion with our son helped us to deal with the issue together.

Sometimes I have the tendency to lie to myself and pretend that the problem does not exist. I realised that it is better to see the problem as it is. I learnt that I am protecting myself by standing up to the problem. I also developed an attitude of learning from the problem and this helped me to become stronger in my mind.
_______________________________________________________
* DirectLine (1800 888 236) provides telephone counselling, information and referral regarding drug and alcohol issues.

Realising that I need to develop a plan of action

I am 77 years old. All my life I have suffered from mental, emotional, and physical trauma and anxiety, and since the age of 45 years I have had five major physical disabilities invade my body – Meniere’s Disease, Angina, Leukaemia, Osteo-arthritis, and over the past 6 months (and yet to run its course of 18 months) I have developed PolyMyalgia Rheumatica which causes extreme, almost immobilising weakness of the muscles, and agonising pain. In some cases it can cause blindness and the medication for it thins the bones and blood and may cause disabilities. So it is an extreme worry.

With all this baggage I developed severe Depression and fearful Anxiety over the past 12 years. Naturally, I attended counselling which certainly helped, but I soon realised that I had to do something myself to cope with the almost overwhelming Depression which caused me to even contemplate suicide from time to time in order to escape (I also have bi-polar disorder).

Over the years I have developed a 7 point plan of action which has not only helped me to cope with Depression and Anxiety but finally to emerge from the dismal abyss into which I had fallen.

1. When I woke in the morning with depression and wondering how I could cope with another day, I began to think of all the good things in my life, such as ‘not in a country torn by war’ and ‘I can move, see, hear, and talk’.

2. Throughout the day I use positive affirmations such as: ‘I am a happy, healthy, positive, harmonious, loving person’ and ‘all is well in my world’ and ‘I love and approve of myself at all times’.

3. I meditate 30 minutes a day to soft, healing music. Visualisation also helped me. I visualise the soft green rays of healing flowing through my body.

4. When stressed over things, I try to see it as a way to grow. I also learnt to develop a sense of humour and this helped me to laugh and lighten my heart sometimes.

5. I like to borrow uplifting and self-help books from the library. Before I go to sleep I read some notes that I made from books that helped me.

6. I love walking to a park nearby, feed the birds, enjoy the peace and tranquility, talk to the lonely and elderly.

7. I found having an absorbing interest or hobby is very important to me. These interests help me to take my mind off my depression or anxiety, and give my day and life a focus. It gives me a sense of achievement and pleasure.

Wherever the Depression arises or fear and Anxiety, I now immediately use whatever tools fit the need and soon feel positive and in control again.

Allowing myself to grieve and being proactive in getting support

I have found the 'Cocoons and butterflies' booklet to be very informative and very helpful and I would like to share some of the things that touched on me (I can relate to a great deal more!):

‘Being proactive and wanting to improve my life’
I myself was overcome with Depression and needed counselling over the death of my dear husband to cancer after 33 years together and I have received wonderful support and have met some marvellous people.

‘Focussing on achieving something’
I feel that having a creative interest is very therapeutic and it gives me joy to create something beautiful for someone else’s pleasure. I was never interested in any sort of craft work in the past. Now I belong to a club and I make cards and do needlework. I enjoy doing this immensely. I also enjoy the company.

‘Remembering that happiness comes from within’
I can relate to this story as I remember my 84 year-old father saying to me when I cried on his shoulder at my beloved husband’s wake following his funeral service, ‘Not to cry and to be strong that I must go on with my life’. I agreed with him to a certain point but I have to be allowed to grieve.

My music helped me to rebuild my self esteem and confidence

When I was 14, I experienced school bullying. I remember feeling so lonely and isolated. Not being able to speak to anyone, I felt so alone.

I remember walking into the classroom and experiencing name calling like ‘Why are you here? Go home’, ‘Leave me’, and ‘You shouldn’t be here’. It was a difficult part of growing up knowing that there wasn’t much support to deal with the bullying in school. The bullying and blaming affected my self-esteem and confidence at the time. Everything I believed in was destroyed. I felt like I was the one with the problem.

If you ask me what got me through those times, I would say it was my music and my focus on the five things that were important to me. I always had a passion for music. I had a photo when I was a child holding a toy guitar. It’s incredible, how little I was, not knowing that in the future I was going to play a musical instrument which was a guitar. This special guitar was passed on in my family and then I eventually inherited it. It really helped me to rebuild my self-esteem and confidence. I regained myself through a passion that I really enjoyed doing.

When I was in year 12, I remembered saying five words repeatedly in my mind: Hope, VCE*, Strength, Courage and Peace. When someone tried to put me down, I would say the five words. That made me feel a lot stronger within myself.

Fighting back against Anxiety

I didn’t know what Anxiety really was until I had panic attacks. One of my friends who had panic attacks came to me and said that I had a panic attack. I said, ‘What?’. I still didn’t know what that was about until she took me to this counsellor and I learnt more about Anxiety.

If you ask me how Anxiety affected me, I would say that Anxiety had many effects on my life. Here are just some of the things that Anxiety did:
- Anxiety made me think about the ‘worse case scenarios’. For example, Anxiety told me that ‘if I’m in front of lots of people, I probably will trip over.’
- sometimes Anxiety made me blush.
- sometimes I got panic attacks about the possibilities of getting panic attacks.
- sometimes Anxiety made me feel this shyness about meeting people and speak in a quiet voice.

Looking back, there were things going on in my life with my friends and family when Anxiety took a grip of my life. My dad died. He had a heart attack. That kind of made me a bit anxious ‘cos it only went on for around two hours. My friend committed suicide back then too. The influence of Anxiety on my life was about 90% then!!! I think it is now down to about 60%. I used to get Anxiety a couple of times per week. Now it affects me probably twice per year.

I realised that the main tactic Anxiety used was negative voices. For me, one of the negative voices kept telling me that ‘I’m not the best that I can possibly be’ and that ‘I’m not trying my best’.

One of the main things that has helped me was combating the negative voices. I remember saying to myself that ‘I can just be the best that I can RIGHT NOW’. So instead of keeping trying, I just do what I could. Replacing ‘should’ with ‘could’ also helped. Sometimes there is no timeline. If I want to do something later, I could and I have that option. I also like to attack the negative voices with my ‘Ninja’. You know, Ninja and Kung Fu are things that I eventually want to do. I would think of these martial art movies and know that my ‘Ninja’ will combat the voices.

These actions of countering the tactic of Anxiety opened up things in my life. For example, I’m now a bit more social and go to groups that I like. I go to Art classes and did some paintings. I also go to music classes. Another interesting development is that I was also encouraged to sing along when I’m playing the piano!

Stories from 'carers'

Taking one step at a time – enjoy life at 86 years young!

Forty-six years ago I was a Technical School Teacher. Enthusiastic students attempted to complete practical projects too quickly and not learn thoroughly, so I constantly emphasised to ‘take one step at a time’.

Years later, through frustration and overwork, Depression set-in – a hopeless empty-tummy feeling and slow speech. A GP prescribed an anti-depressant and advised me to continue to work my way through. After a week, I discarded the drug and changed my mental attitude. Sheer willpower, live one day at a time, work on, but not to worry. Over time, I recovered and enjoyed success.

Nine years ago, for two years I was the sole carer for my wife who had Alzeheimers’ Disease. The greatest challenge in my life. Again I applied my axiom to ‘take one step at a time’. Together with advice from Yanada House and Alzeheimers’ Association we enjoyed our remaining years together. Now, keeping active, I aim for personal achievement each day, and thoroughly enjoy life at 86 years young.

Realising the effects of caring on my life; dealing with grief

My dad was diagnosed with very severe Depression and Dementia last year. Suddenly he could not do things for himself. And after a short time, I found myself showering and dressing him, prompting him on toileting and eating. He became very dependant on me.

I became very depressed and broke into tears easily and regularly. In a very short time I was extremely stressed as Dad required 24-hour care and Mum also required care and wasn’t getting enough – as you can only do so much. I was on holidays from work which I initially thought was great as it allowed me time to care for both parents, however, over time it had a very bad impact on my life. I tried to do it all and this left very little time for me to look after myself.

A review by Aged Psychiatric Assessment Team (APAT) saw my Dad return to hospital for further assessment. I knew this time, it would be best if he were placed in a nursing home which subsequently happened. Support from the family was very good at this time but it was still one of the hardest decisions ever made.

He is now in a nursing home and receiving very good care. I continue to care for Mum and she will have a respite care break shortly.

The effect of caring has had quite an impact on my life. I find it hard to do the things which were so easy for me before I started caring. Keeping up with looking after the home, paying bills, cooking, and so on when there are less people to help with these things is challenging ... and there was the grief of losing my dad to Dementia and a nursing home. I am undergoing counselling to help me through this period in my life and I am attending weekly exercise classes.

I learnt a few important things out of my experiences:

• Always tell the Doctor everything e.g. crying regularly.
• Learn what you can about Dementia and Depression.
• Seek help early and work out what support is best.
• Contact your local Council to find out what help you can get.
• Contact Carers Australia and join a carers’ group early.
• Make good use of respite care in a hostel or home.
• Make use of counsellors to help guide you through the stages of Dementia and grief.
• Attend Family Carers courses run by Alzheimer’s Association.
• Don’t do it all yourself – make sure you look after yourself too.
• Keep working as this gives you respite, income, and a sense of wellbeing.
• Have an Aged Care Assessment Team assess the person you are caring for.

I learnt to let go

It’s OK to be sad, but it’s so much better to let past be past…

As ‘Kenny’ said, “dad’s emotional bank account had two cents in it, so mum was the one who let you know you were loved and dad, you know kept the work coming in and that’s how it was in those days.”

I was dad’s favourite but didn’t know it till the day he died. The day of my fifteenth birthday. He had decided that he could no longer live without my mum and ended it. Hanging himself in my family’s driveway. My two elder sisters found him. He was expecting my mum and I to come around and get my birthday present.

After three months of counselling I have learnt that life goes on. I am 29 now. This is my first year that I have not had a breakdown on my birthday. I went hiking (I’m not into exercise!), trekking about 15km over 2 days, saw a beautiful sunset at Wilson’s Prom, had drinks with family and friends at a drag show in Smith Street, took flowers to my dad’s grave (which I am ashamed to admit, couldn’t find it because I hadn’t been there for so long) and did not shed a tear, which before this I was an absolute mess.

I know it’s OK to be sad, but it’s so much better to let past be past and look onto the future …. whatever it may hold.

Letting go and getting better at asking for help

When I injured my back and had to stop working in my small business, I was overwhelmed by Anxiety. I felt really stuck! I felt like I was at a crossroad – I kept wondering if I should sell my
business. It was too hard to run a small business on my own, especially when my back stopped me from doing things that I could normally do and I had to hire extra staff. The Anxiety was
completely consuming.

In a way, the incident helped me to get better at asking for help. I started to let go of the need of doing things all by myself. I started to tell people that I was struggling, and I asked my friends to help out. Being someone who likes to be in control, it was difficult for me to let go. It was amazing to see how people offered to help me. I realised that people are willing to help and I don’t have to do it all by myself. The unexpected outcomes of ‘letting go’ and ‘asking for help a bit more’ were that it strengthened my friendships and my anxiety level dropped.

I don't have to fit the norm

Not allowing myself to be put down

My school teacher helped me develop this attitude of not allowing myself to be put down. He encouraged me to pursue my interests in poetry, art, opera, archaeology and philosophy even though these subjects were not considered as ‘manly’ at the time (more than 45 years ago). From a young age, my teacher taught me the importance of ‘educating the brain’. He helped me to understand that I don’t have to fit the norm.

I passed on this understanding to a school friend of mine at the time. When she was in high school she was continually told that she was stupid. I told her that I did not believe that she was stupid as she asked intelligent questions. I told her not to let herself be put down by others. The fact that others could not answer her questions did not mean that she was stupid. I told my story
and encouraged her to talk to a trusted teacher. She did so and the teacher helped her to use the library to find answers to her questions. When I saw her a year later she was over-infused with
gratitude to me. She had started to believe in herself and she proved to herself that she is not stupid!

‘Not allowing myself to be put down’ became a core value of mine. About five years ago I attempted suicide and was admitted to a hospital. When one of the professional staff called me ‘idiot’, I responded by being uncooperative and did not answer his questions about my life. This value helped me to hold onto my self-respect and dignity even at the time when I was deeply affected by Depression.

Life is a Marathon

Focussing on small improvements – Life is a marathon, not a sprint

Anxiety sometimes made me feel ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘freaked out’. These feelings brought up worries about my future. These feelings also made it difficult for me to hold on to the dreams and the picture of the life that I want to have.

Focussing on the actual things that I need to do helped me to feel more relaxed and less self-conscious. It also helped to keep my eyes focussed on the ‘small improvements’. I had a tendancy of overdoing things and then got frustrated because I had put too much on my plate. Now I start to pace myself. I like to remind myself of the saying ‘Life is a marathon, not a sprint’.