Independent production company Baby Wren Films have released an excellent short film for World Suicide Prevention Day called Into The Surf.

The haunting 12 minute piece tells the story about two brothers, Sebastian and Daniel. Once Daniel becomes ill, Sebastian finds it increasingly hard to cope with his older brother’s deteriorating mental health and the subsequent breakdown of their relationship.

When it’s too late to change the course of events, Sebastian finds himself confronted by his overwhelming feelings of guilt and abandonment, wishing he had been able to protect Daniel in the way Daniel had always protected him when he was young. He speaks about his confusion and his fear and in the end attempts to find his own voice in the wake of the tragedy that happened around him in his young life.

Into The Surf is a very strong, emotionally dark yet beautiful short film about matters affecting people of all ages that are all too often ignored. It highlights the importance of increasing mental health awareness and reducing the stigma around it.

I recommend this exceptional film to everyone, since words can hardly do justice to its powerful message:

There is something about my life that I noticed only recently when I had to spend a week in hospital and was literally forced to leave my own little world behind for a while. I had to undergo unexpected emergency surgery, which meant I was pulled out of my familiar surroundings and routines one minute to the next without warning. There was nothing I could do to prepare myself for what was about to happen, so my brain almost immediately switched into standby position just to protect me from the sheer amount of overwhelming events I was being exposed to within a very short time. Lights, noise, confusion, strange rooms, a zillion different faces speaking to me, telling me what was going on and giving me documents to sign. It all just sort of happened in a haze and the next day I woke up lying in my hospital bed with tubes coming out of my belly and infusions running through my veins. I felt weak and powerless, trapped in a situation I wasn’t able to control or to get out of.

Having only just survived some acutely life-threatening condition, I was forced to stay in this unfamiliar place and recover before I was deemed fit enough to be released back into my own world. It was on the second or third day when I suddenly started to feel strangely light and relaxed, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulder. I felt like being in an outsider’s position looking at my everyday life, the life I was forced to abandon for a couple of days without warning. It was then that I realised the immense amount of pressure I feel subjected to every minute of each day, no matter what I do or where I am. I noticed there is no difference between work life, leisure time, being in public or on my own. My brain seems to be running at full blast 24 hours a day. Whereas other people seem to be able to leave their everyday life behind after returning home in the evening or at weekends and do whatever they want to forget their daily worries and stress, it’s all the same for me. I can’t forget my everyday life. For me, everything is an everyday occurrence. No matter what I do at whatever time in whatever situation, I am in a constant state of pressure and stress just to deal with anything and everything: conversations, noise from the street or in the house, different types of light, sensory issues, anything. Even when I sleep my brain does not stop, waking me up from vivid dreams or nightmares almost every night. And I feel it keeps getting worse with each passing year. Lying there in my hospital bed being at the mercy of doctors, nurses, machines and medication, having nothing to do but waiting it became clear to me how much that mental pressure turns into physical pressure that affects my whole body, my health, my being. That I didn’t even notice a life-threatening process going on inside my body, a process that in normal circumstances would have caused massive pain, seems even more alarming in that context. It got me thinking about how to protect myself better from all that in the future.

It’s in the music

Thinking of ways to ease the pressure, the focus almost automatically turns to music. Since my early childhood I have a strong connection to music and to this day I take refuge in it. I use it as a means to get out of the world in which I live, to enter a world I can understand. A world that doesn’t scare me and where I can be what I am. Music takes me out of a world that is loud, illogical and sometimes downright frightening.

It’s an escape that means I can relax, at least a little. That I don’t have to meet expectations all the time, even if they’re all my own expectations. That I don’t have to do something all the time and that things can be simple. Music is something that I understand intuitively. It evokes feelings without being too literal. Sometimes I think music is the only thing I really understand. If someone expresses himself through a song I feel like I really get what he or she thinks.

When I hear music I have a clear picture in my mind. Whether it’s of a place, a situation or a colour. I tend to think in music a lot. In most situations I have a song in my head that directly relates to what I feel at this moment. For many emotions and feelings I have an audiovisual picture in my mind. It helps me to better understand certain situations. Even though I can’t verbally express what I feel at the time, music helps me to build a bridge between my inner self and the outside.

Listening to music helps me a lot in my everyday life. It means I don’t have to concentrate on a face or study other people’s behaviour. I don’t need to look someone in the eyes or concentrate on nonverbal cues.

When I hear a song I perceive it as a whole soundscape made up of different instruments, patterns and voices. The rhythms, sounds and musical colours transpose into a picture or a feeling that will forever be linked with that song. These pictures are universal and don’t relate to a particular voice of a male or female singer. They relate to the whole arrangement of notes, instruments and vocals.

It’s probably no coincidence that I don’t like voices very much. In voices I mean technically brilliant and rather dominant singers. It terrifies me to hear a vocal too high up in the mix as I don’t get a connection. It sounds artificial and impenetrable to me, just like another person’s face during a conversation. It evokes feelings of rejection, disgust even and I can’t bear to listen to it for too long. To me a singer is just an instrument out of many. A voice is a part of a song that intensifies its emotional content or puts an emphasis on its key message, but it’s never the central part. Therefore lyrics are best for me when they are rather abstract and not too literal, which stands in direct contrast to verbal communication, during which literal and direct messages are essential for me to get the point. A song is like a painting that becomes very personal to the listener depending on the emotional responses it triggers.

It comes as no surprise to hear that I’m a passionate collector of records. I have been since I was about ten years old. My whole life can be told through the albums and singles I have collected over the years. They all take me back to various points in my life and evoke special memories and feelings. They are to me what to other people are their collections of photographs. I barely have any photos of my life at all, as they don’t do anything to me. Looking at photos feels like looking at some distant, abstract thing, even (or particularly) if it’s me in the picture. There’s no connection at all. My records do the trick and above all the whole experience is a very personal thing that only exists in my imagination, it can’t be shared with anyone else. Their meaning is personal to me and that gives me some sense of security and control, since it’s my private little universe.

Private universe

If music is my only escape from the world around me, it shouldn’t go unmentioned that about one and a half years ago I finally decided to teach myself the guitar. It was a conscious decision to try and utilize my autistic personality to learn an instrument. To try and understand the very structured world of chord diagrams and shapes and learn through endless repetition. My ability to focus on one thing at a time and my sense of discipline has really brought great progress over a relatively short space of time, but most of all it’s a very effective means of escape. I do practice for about an hour each day which relaxes the mind and on top of that I keep learning a lot about guitars themselves, a truly fascinating, beautiful and rewarding instrument.

Going back to the start of this little piece, spending a week in hospital has made me realise how important music has been and will always be for me. It has even become more important since I’ve realised it’s the only way for me to escape the massive pressures of my everyday life, even if it’s just for a bit. And it provides me with some degree of security when it comes to relating to emotions and identifiying situations. It is more than just a special interest of mine, it’s an integral part of my personality and my mental hygiene.

Music is something I will definitely try to pursue even more in the future, whether it’s through listening or creating. After all it seems the only way to find a connection to my inner self and to survive in a world that seems so alien and incompatible to me in many ways.

Now here’s some music:

I never had any plans to write anything in the near future, but this morning a good friend of mine sent me an article that dealt with loneliness among autistic people and put it into context with Christmas time. It immediately struck a nerve and related so much to what I’ve been going through the last couple of weeks that I had to put down a few words. If the following paragraphs appear a bit unpolished and all over the place, please bear with me — I wanted to get this out exactly the way it came into my mind and not spend too much time elaborating over it.

The thing with loneliness

As a high-functioning autistic person I have been struggling with my social skills and communication for as long as I can remember. Interacting with people or joining social groups has been and probably will always be one of the most difficult challenges for me. As good as I am at holding conversations in professional and controlled settings, I usually become very quiet, anxious and awkward in loose social situations. For example I never start a conversation, I hardly know how and when to join in and I find it hard to focus on more than one person at a time.

Against the odds I have managed to build up a few friendships over the years, some of which have lasted for more than ten years now, others have long fallen by the wayside. Still I find it difficult to maintain friendships, as I very rarely initiate contact, which people can find irritating and quite often misinterpret as disinterest or ignorance. My desire for social interaction deviates considerably from that of the majority of people. As much as I like to communicate with the people I love it’s usually them that have to make the first steps, i.e. pick up the phone or send a text message or whatever else. For me a normal day already takes up nearly all of my energy, I simply don’t have much in reserve to ask someone to go out or meet up with me in the evening. Therefore I very often turn down invitations just because I feel too tired and exhausted. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to communicate though. I would really like to be able to socialise more, but I simply can’t. I can see how this complicates relationships and makes it hard to put up with me and there are times I feel really sad about it. Viewed from the outside, I might do perfectly fine: I can hold conversations with colleagues or clients and appear all smiling and cheerful, yet still I do feel very alone and lonely behind the mask.

It is a mask I have been perfecting since I can remember. I have been living with chronic depression for roughly three decades now and I can safely say that I have turned into a stereotypical cliché over the years: I usually put on a smiling face and my sarcastic sense of humour guarantees a laugh or two on any occasion. But it’s just a facade to conceal the pain I feel inside. I have learned to go to great lengths to hide my feelings, good or bad, just to avoid being stigmatised or singled out. It’s an act I play in public that gets more exhausting with each passing year. It helps me to survive in one way, but it saps my energy more than it is healthy.

Being autistic means I tend to get overwhelmed by all sorts of outside influences quite easily. I feel most comfortable and natural when I’m on my own in my familiar surroundings. It’s where I can be myself and do whatever I want and not feel the pressure to function or to put on my survival mask. I need a lot of time to recharge my batteries. I can spend days without leaving my house and still feel exhausted from social activity from days before.

The thing with Christmas

And that’s where Christmas time comes in. It’s the time of year when I feel a lot of pressure coming in from the outside world. Society all of a sudden turns into hoardes of smiling, jolly people enjoying each other’s company and pitying the ones unable or unwilling to join in. Spending Christmas time alone seems to be a huge stigma, but I think it’s important to know why some people can’t or don’t want to be part of the whole thing. Crowded cities, christmas markets, packed supermarkets and too many lights are just a few things that can easily become too overwhelming for me and therefore I prefer to spend these weeks in the safety of my familiar surroundings. I can’t and I don’t join in the Christmas rush and by doing so almost automatically place myself on the outside for these few weeks. It doesn’t help when people try to persuade or pressure me to come with them for some mulled wine amid crowds of other people, just because this is what you are supposed to do during December. It only makes me feel bad for turning down their efforts and failing to meet their expectations. I happily spend the Christmas days from 24th to 26th December on my own, because these few days are the only days of the year I don’t feel the pressure to be readily available and don’t have to answer the phone or reply to emails. That I don’t have anything in terms of family really helps in that regard and that isn’t meant to sound sad. Yes, there may be moments when I feel lonely, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It just wouldn’t work for me. So it’s best not to always point out to me that apparently one can’t be alone at Christmas. One can and some just have to be.

It’s not the festive period alone that makes these last few weeks of the year difficult for me. It’s because it is a time I do reflect a lot on the previous twelve months and the things I have or haven’t or should have done.

I tend to become all hyper-critical towards myself and start to dissect every aspect of the past twelve months.

Has my business been as successful as it could have been?
I don’t think so.

Have I been to all the places I wanted to go to?
Nope.

Have I been with my friends as much as I wanted to?
Certainly not.

Have I worked on myself hard enough to improve my life?
It can never be enough…

Have I finally stopped worrying and thinking too much about everything?
I’d have loved to…

It is hard to ignore that I have a tendency to put a lot of pressure on myself. The sheer weight of expectation almost inevitably causes feelings of failure and frustration. I have a hard time focusing on what really is important and all too often overlook where I have done well.

I have been practising the guitar almost every day this year and I’m really making good progress.

I have worked on some interesting projects and enjoyed it.

I have met some very interesting new people and enjoyed these conversations a lot (a big hello to Macclesfield, L.A., and my home town amongst others — you all know who you are).

I have discovered some amazing new music and been to some fantastic gigs.

That I am able to name these four things alone seems to be an improvement compared to previous years, but it still doesn’t feel like it. It is very difficult for me to release the pressure and take the edge off my inner struggles and I am not sure if I’ll ever succeed in doing so. But it would be helpful to feel less pressure from the outside, particularly during the closing weeks of the year. It only enhances the feeling of not really belonging anywhere and being something of a failure in the eyes of society.

It’s a fine line between wanting and needing to be alone and feeling lonely. It is particularly difficult for people on the autism spectrum and/or suffering from mental illness. It is demanding in regards to friendships and relations and requires a lot of understanding. Sometimes talking helps. Sometimes silence helps, too.

I wish everyone who reads this a Christmas they enjoy and some good final weeks of 2016.

One day at a time…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xLvF6xoG30

It’s been two years since I got diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, so maybe it’s the right time to look back and reflect on what has changed since then.

The answer I usually give is that everything has changed, yet at the same time nothing has changed. Getting a diagnosis obviously doesn’t change you as a person or anything about the way you are. It’s merely a tag attached to you that says you’re outside of what society classifies as normal. But what does normal mean anyway? Looking at other people can be confusing: People want to be individual and unique, yet they don’t want to be perceived as mavericks. The pressure of wanting to belong to certain social groups dictates their demeanor, being themselves seems to be difficult for most. Everybody wants to stand out and not be labelled outsiders at the same time, hence people go with the flow. They care about what others think about them and adapt to their environment as much as they can for the sake of blending in and to feed their egos. Maybe the concept of normality is a contradiction in itself.

I used to be a bit like that when I was younger. But with each passing year I realised the incredible amount of energy it required and how little I succeeded in belonging to groups or adapting to my social environment. It seemed to me a somewhat pointless exercise, so over time I gradually became more true to myself, not trying to please anyone or to succumb to any constraints imposed by society. Yet I couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling something wasn’t quite right.

I think my diagnosis has actually helped me to recognise my true personality and to see why I am the way I am and how it has nothing to do with being normal or not, that it’s rather a different way of thinking and perception that makes me the person I am. It has helped me to feel a bit more comfortable in my place and to accept that there is something in my brain structure that makes me hang on to my strict daily routines, that makes me want to spend a lot of time alone with my special interests and that usually I just don’t cope too well with too much noise, too many people or unforseen changes.

It wasn’t all that simple right from the start of course. In fact my Asperger’s diagnosis hit me like a bolt out of the blue and I was anything but prepared for it. I had hardly known anything about autism before, so being confronted with it for the first time was a real shock for me. I only wanted to have another go at easing my lifelong depression when the new psychiatrist I went to suggested it could be a form of autism that triggered my ongoing mental issues. When after a few months the diagnostic appointment at a specialised clinic finally came and I was told to be clearly and unmistakenly autistic it felt like a true watershed moment. Being some kind of relief on the one hand, it started a long and painful period of coming to terms with the past on the other hand. Almost everything in my life suddenly seemd to appear in a completely different light, to make sense, to become logical in way where before a mixture of confusion and helplessness was the predominant feeling: The horrors I‘ve been through at school, the problems with my family or the way I intuitively set up my professional life in accordance with my strengths and weaknesses suddenly all made sense. The realization of having Asperger’s of course wouldn’t change any of this, but it would allow me to finally put some demons to rest and to stop questioning what I have all done wrong in the past, to stop accusing myself of not trying hard enough to fit in more seamlessly and to cause less trouble for myself and for the persons around me. It took me the best part of the last two years to get there though.

I have in the meantime become more accepting of myself and my life, I have developed a better understanding of what I need and what isn’t good for me. Obviously I am still on a journey that probably ends on the day I die, but it feels as if I have entered a new stage of life I couldn’t have reached without the diagnosis. It doesn’t change me as a person, for my autistic traits have always been there and will stay with me for the rest of my time. It has however re-adjusted my personal balance a bit and it finally feels as if I’ve been put at the center of my life after all. It hopefully enables me to utilize the strengths that come with my condition to a better extent and maybe cope with the downsides in a more reasonable way.

Over the last two years I have met a few people on the autism spectrum, each of them with their own unique and intriguing life story — from a lovely guy in his late teens who got diagnosed at the age of two and now uses his strengths impressively on his way through higher education to a fascinating person at 60 who only found out about his condition at the age of 55 and who, despite having been through massive difficulties in life, still manages to be positive and is willing to see the new discoveries as the beginning of a fresh start. These are people to look up to and to learn something from, as they are making the most of it. They are what they are because of it and not despite of it. They live with it but don’t let themselves be defined by it.

One question that has come up in conversations with some of these people is if there was a cure for autism available, would they want to be healed from it? Nobody I talked to said they wanted to be cured and neither would I. I don’t want my autism to be healed or altered in any way. It’s an integral part of my character and my way of being. Taking it away from me would turn me into a significantly different person. Asperger’s is not an illness and it can’t and it shouldn’t be treated that way. Speaking for myself, I feel better since I know I have it and I feel in good company.

Coming back to the start of this piece, I think it’s down to society’s basic instinct that everybody should be the same somehow. What doesn’t fit needs to be changed, no matter how, whether the person concerned likes it or not. We are different and there must be a reason for it. Taking away our autism would deprive us of our special skills that are essential for us to succeed in life, for example our ability to focus on things, our reliability and honesty and basically just the way of looking at things differently.

Granted, there are downsides to it and we all know it. I have, amongst others, issues with my communication, and my inability to intuitively understand gestures and facial expressions. Still I think it is much more important to focus on the abilities of autistic people rather than the disabilities. Getting a diagnosis has helped me with that. It has made me more aware of myself, allowing myself a fresh outlook on life and the world around me.

It is good how it is.

There is no need to change anything.

Thank you for reading this and for all your encouraging feedback over the last couple of weeks, I appreciate it very much. I would like to dedicate this piece to Terry and to my friend from Liverpool.

‚I find normality absolutely stifling and terrible.
The most terrifying thing about normality is that it turns young men into old men extremely rapidly.’
Bernard Sumner

‚…but you look totally normal!’

Following up on my last piece there is one aspect of mental disorder I wanted to focus on in more detail. It’s about prejudice, misconception and the way people and friendships change once you open up about things. It’s something I have experienced myself and something I have heard numerous times from other people as well. I dedicate these few lines to the lovely person I’ve had some rather exhilarating late night conversations with recently, you know who you are…

A few years ago I found out that I live with a condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, which itself was a revelation and took quite a while for me to come to terms with. It gave me the chance to put some things into perspective and to look at things in a different way, but that’s another matter I’m not going into right now.

Getting diagnosed however helped me to become more aware of what it is that sometimes puts me out of sync with the people around me, why there is something that feels like an invisible wall between me and my environment at times. I could finally see things in my behaviour and personality that can cause irritation and misunderstanding, a kind of glitch in communication on an emotional level perhaps.

Experiencing such a change in self-awareness comes almost naturally with the wish to tell people you are close with about it. Hope is that it could lead to a better mutual understanding and maybe more honest and closer friendships. However things don’t work that simple in most cases.

‚You don’t look as if you’ve got Asperger’s’ is the one sentence I’m frankly sick of hearing now. I’ve heard it countless times though. It’s usually the first reaction when I tell someone. Maybe it’s an attempt to suggest a kind of normality, a kind of reassurance it can’t be that bad with me, that I do appear ‚normal’ enough to go unnoticed — as if that was a qualification to be friends with me. It only shows how little people know about the condition and maybe it’s just a deeply human reaction to brush it aside, probably out of fear for the unknown.

Being an ‚Aspie’ in my late thirties for me means I have developed numerous coping mechanisms in order to adapt to different settings and circumstances and to minimize stress and anxiety. I have learned quite a range of facial expressions and phrases that are deemed appropriate in any given situation. In public I tend to come across a lot happier and more upbeat than I feel on the inside. I guess it’s my way not to attract attention and to manage everyday life and usually it works surprisingly well. I get on with a lot of people on a superficial level, yet it’s very hard for me to establish real and deep friendships. Social awkwardness is one thing, it’s the ubiquitous sense of being different that makes life very difficult. I think herein lies one of the most obvious correlations between my chronic depression and having Asperger’s Syndrome: the longing for acceptance and the wish to fit in more seamlessly, yet sensing it won’t ever be like that. During the diagnostic process I was told that most autistic people of my age suffer form depression and anxiety, partly because of living with an unnoticed condition that is integral to character and personality for so long.

Very often the inability to pick up on social cues causes a subliminal feeling that something is wrong, yet I can’t quite figure out what. I simply don’t have the right tools to analyze a situation correctly in real time. Self-doubt is my most loyal companion, it stays firmly by my side even when everyone else has turned away. In social interaction I can hardly rely on my gut feeling, I often misinterpret nonverbal cues and tend to get misunderstood myself. Therefore I think it is absolutely crucial to open up to close friends and tell them what it means to live with Asperger’s — if only to find out who really is on your side.

There’s a lot of misinformation and misconception about autism spectrum disorders. People know the clichés and only too willingly put a label on you without really knowing you: apparently all people with Asperger’s are mathematical geniuses, they do not have feelings and want to be alone all of the time. Things would be way too easy if they were really like that. We are all different, just like every person on this earth is different. I’m incredibly bad at maths and I would consider myself to be a very emotional person, I am only not particularly good at showing it. I like to be among people, but probably not as much or as physically close as others — but what does it matter? It hurts to be reduced to a stupid cliché. It hurts when people encouragingly tell you that you look totally normal, but start treating you slightly different than before. Because they assume you are devoid of feelings they become more reserved and reduce talk to more banal things. They start excluding you from certain topics they think you wouldn’t understand. But thankfully you look normal enough not to cause them too much embarrassment. Looking back now I am glad that some of my old friendships have more or less fallen apart after revealing more about myself. They have hardly been worth it after all.

All it takes is a little bit of time and interest to get a clearer picture of what living with that condition really is about. The right friends do care and keeping an open mind strengthens the relationship on both sides. Thankfully I have a few people in my life that don’t care about the facade of ‚normality’. They understand that getting a diagnosis doesn’t turn you into a different person over night, that it is more of an opportunity to get to know you better and to focus on the positive aspects that it brings, rather than fixate on the negatives. But it is essential to keep talking, to keep asking questions and giving answers and to experience things together in order to reduce barriers.

It would be helpful to have a more differentiated presentation of mental issues in the media. Certain characters on TV paint a rather comedic picture of a condition like Aspergers, which doesn’t do justice to the complexity and seriousness of the matter. And it doesn’t help that people with mental disorders are often being pushed into a corner. Having depression or an autism spectrum disorder doesn’t mean you’re more likely to inflict violence upon others, as parts of the media want us to believe — in fact generalization like this couldn’t be further from the truth.

It is more important to focus on the individual and to bear in mind that even though we might appear happy and up on the outside, there is a lot going on beneath the surface that even we don’t fully understand. Mental disorder can evolve into different directions like crippling self doubt, a tendency for self-injury or increased risk for suicide, so it has to be taken absolutely seriously. It is crucial to have support from people who really care, and it’s equally important to keep people at distance that aren’t good for us.

Speak with us, listen to us and take us seriously. We all do our best in life, just like anybody else does.

‚…we all follow our own way.’

Usually I don’t start a piece of writing with a title, in most cases that comes at the very end after I’ve finished the words and have a clearer picture about what I was going to say. But listening to a song by the Manic Street Preachers earlier, the above words just stuck in my head since they resonated a lot with what I’ve been contemplating for quite some time now, a long time in fact.

The issue of mental health has long been of interest to me. I was first diagnosed with depressive disorder at the age of 11 or 12 and have been battling with what has grown into chronic depression ever since.

Speaking about an illness that isn’t too obvious on the outside is a difficult one, since nobody except people who have experienced some kind of mental illness themselves would fully understand what it really means. Speaking from my perspective, depression has nothing to do with outer influences that affect the mood, like the loss of a loved person or the breakup of a relationship. It feels more like a numbing filter that distorts every aspect of life to a more or less severe extent. It is something that is always there and can’t just be turned off, no matter how hard you try.

Depression isn’t about feeling sad all the time — it’s rather about feeling nothing at all. It sucks all positive energy out of body and mind and deprives it of feeling anything between happiness or sadness. It kills all motivation to do anything. Even simple and mundane tasks like getting out of bed in the morning or simply structuring the day become almost impossible. The result of this very often is complete withdrawal and isolation — a vicious circle that is very hard to break. A sense of complete worthlessness that comes along with massive self-hate and anxiety.

As much as depression can turn grown men into lost children again, more often than not people in their immediate surroundings start retreating as a result of feeling helpless and rejected. Attempts to motivate the depressed person to do something useful or to generally cheer them up will not work, since in a clinically depressed state they won’t be able to get the message. They don’t even enjoy pursuing things that otherwise would be considered a joyful pastime. For me personally music has always been a powerful resource. But during severe bouts of depression even playing my favourite records doesn’t interest me the slightest bit. It all seems like a worthless waste of time through the reality distortion filter of mental illness.

It is hard to comprehend that clinical depression is something that can’t be toned down by outer influences, a fact that seems even harder to accept by people who don’t suffer from it. ‘Don’t make such a fuss’, ‘don’t wallow in self-pity’, or ‘get your act together’ are just a few of the ill-advised hints aimed at depressives. However comments like these only make things worse, as all they do is reinforce feelings of inferiority and ineptitude. The last thing a depressive person wants is to feel worse or even more useless. In most cases it’s out of their hands though to deal with their situation alone as the mental illness cripples the senses and distorts perspective.

As much as I would like to say society’s acceptance and understanding of that invisible disease has changed and advanced over the years, sadly I have come to think that it hasn’t. People tend to either romanticise or stigmatise depression, depending on what they’re looking at. On the one hand there is the stereotype of the troubled genius, the tortured artist that expresses himself through his suffering and more often than not ends in tragedy: Ian Curtis, Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain, to name but a few… on the other hand mental illness is frequently taken as a lame excuse for irrational and destructive behaviour. Look at the media coverage of all the tragic and despicable incidents happening around the world at the moment: Mental health problems are all too quickly attributed to anyone committing a crime or injuring people, which leads to stigmatization of illnesses like depression and branding it as dangerous and a threat to society.

Therefore it is no wonder that the primary treatment approach for mental illness always seems to be to make a depressive person function normally again in order to avoid worse things not only for him, but for the environment around him as well. The patient’s individual needs and demands very rarely are taken into consideration at this stage, as it is mostly deemed too time consuming for the practitioner to dig deep enough to get to the core of the underlying problems. In most cases the prescription of some antidepressant drugs turns out to be the first method of treatment on offer.

It has to be said that even though the use of antidepressants can be entirely justifiable particularly when it comes to relieving acute symptoms like insomnia or heavy sadness verging on suicidal tendencies, they are hardly the miracle weapon the pharmaceutical industry wants us to believe.

In all the years I’ve been affected by depression and anxiety I have seen many doctors that have prescribed me a number of antidepressants. Over the course of almost 30 years I have tried many of the common drugs designed to brighten the mood or to get better sleep. In the end none of them really had any noticeable effects, apart from making me feel even more numb and apathetic at times. Some of them helped me to get better sleep, which was some kind of relief, as sleeplessness is one of the main symptoms of my depressive disorder. Nevertheless I still continued to feel low, bleak, lethargic and devoid of joy.

I would go as far as to say that taking drugs that don’t have the desired effect can significantly worsen the mental condition. When I realised after some time that none of the medication that was supposed to cure me did anything for me, I went into a state of limbo between trying to ignore my constant state of melancholy or combating it with excessive intake of alcohol. Of course, none had any positive effect on me either, so at one point the idea to undergo some kind of psychotherapy was brought to the table. We are still talking early to mid Nineties, so suggesting therapy was neither as common as it is now, nor was it particularly well accepted. In those days people undergoing psychotherapy were even more easliy stigmatised or considered insane.

That I am currently in the midst of my fifth long-term therapy shouldn’t put anyone off. On the contrary, it only shows that persistance and the will to work on oneself will most likely pay off at one point. It is a slow and sometimes very painful process though.

I did have my first three periods of long-term behavioural therapy during the Nineties, all with different therapists. Back then the primary focus of my therapy sessions seemed to mirror the approach of antidepressant drugs: it was designed to make me function ‚normally’ again, to keep my demons at bay instead of getting to the bottom of my constant unhappiness. The emphasis was put on altering my behaviour and changing key elements of my personality in order to adjust better to my environment and, consequently, to reduce the levels of stress and anxiety. It all felt a bit too much like cosmetics on the surface, like an attempt to further disguise the illness rather than grasp the opportunity to seriously identify it and work out ways to cope with it. As a result I might have felt better for a moment or might have gone through some stressful situations more successfully, but it hardly had any long-lasting effect. My melancholy, sad and sometimes very down nature still dominated my days and sleepless nights.

After a halfhearted fourth attempt at psychotherapy came to nothing and still not having found any working medication to pull me out of the slump I kind of settled into a life of trying to accept my fragile mental state as an integral part of me, as something that is woven quite fundamentally into my character and my way of being. Still I have never stopped thinking about what it is that keeps paralysing me for days or weeks on end, time and again.

To my surprise I have found time to be a great helper. For me, growing older, gaining new experiences, watching my environment and finally being able to take a step back and look at life and myself from a wider perspective has enabled me to discover things about myself that have pointed me towards new starting points for another attempt at psychotherapy. I do believe now that the key to solution lies in ourselves, yet it’s a long, hard road to find it. It takes a lot of time and guts to go in confronting yourself with your inner demons, yet there is no way around it.

My current fifth attempt at cognitive behavioural therapy finally seems to be moving in the right direction. Not only do I think that in my third decade I now know a lot more about myself and about the things that trouble me. I do believe as well that the approach of psychotherapy has gradually changed over the years. For the first time I feel that the main goal of this new therapy is not to cover up the things that don’t work or to try and push things to work in a certain way, but to find out more about myself and about what keeps dragging me down. It’s about finding out how to make the best of life as it is, about finding resources to draw strength from and about gaining some self-confidence. It’s about accepting the things that are here to stay, to better cope with them yet not be defeated by them. When previously I have learned to disguise my problems and pretend to be someone else in order to function in my environment, now I am learning how to stand up as an individual, to be myself and not to hide away. I will still be a very private person that likes to keep his thoughts to himself, but hopefully I will be a happier and altogether more stable one.

Having someone to talk through personal problems, to dig deep enough to unearth the true reasons of the paralysing sadness and to try and find some strategy to deal with them definitely has to be considered one of the core starting points when it comes to treating mental illness.

It has to be absolutely clear that depression, no matter how severe, is a serious illness like any other physical illness. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Stigmatising or romanticising depression just makes the whole thing worse for anyone involved. It’s got nothing to do with lack of willpower or laziness or whatever, it’s a disease that is hard to control.

Psychotherapy can be a very effective method to support patients on their way to recovery, yet again it might take a lot of patience and maybe a few tries until a therapist that is willing to do the right things will be found.

Prescription drugs can be a reasonable method to alleviate the worst symptoms, as in my case a moderate dose of Mirtazapine now helps me to calm down and get enough sleep at night.

But in the end it’s down to us and the people around us, as well as time and patience… in no way can drugs replace what communication with a knowing and understanding person can achieve. Covering up the cracks and ironing out the rough spots with some medical aid might bring temporary relief and an illusion of recovery, however it is no effective long-term way to deal with mental illness. Face the facts and face yourself… all the drugs in the world can’t save us from ourselves, indeed.

Appendix:

As I am notorious for quoting song lyrics at any given opportunity, let me share these lines from a song by Scottish artist Helen Marnie. They perfectly describe how I sometimes feel on my journey through life:

A long way from home
On a journey that I must make on my own
Through the playground of dreams
A shadow dancing all alone

Listen to it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLyP_9pfIhQ

I feel so extraordinary… happy birthday to the greatest pop single of all time

Today is the birthday of something special. On this day in 1987 the song that has shaped, influenced and changed my life and presumably the lives of many others over and over again was first released as a single. Remember singles? Yes, it’s that long ago…

I feel so extraordinary… I still remember that cold winter night in 1987 when a friend of mine borrowed me his walkman with a cassette he’d taped off the radio. At the end of a compilation of familiar chart hits I discovered this new magical tune which sounded melancholic yet uplifting, atmospheric, electronic, bittersweet, and slightly mysterious to my ears. I didn’t have a clue what that song was or who performed it, but the melody and the lyrics instantly gripped me. It was a far cry from the other music compiled on that tape: Johnny Hates Jazz, Living In The Box, Pepsi & Shirlie, you get the picture…

It wasn’t until two years later that I accidentally stumbled upon the creators of that tune again and finally found out who they were: In early 1989 a psychedelic, warholian pop-art album cover of an angel statue against a magenta-coloured background caught my eye. It stood out from all the other album covers at the time, yet it felt totally contemporary: it was the halcyon days of acid house and raves. I wanted to own that thing of beauty, so I bought the record on the strength of that cover art alone. There was no band name or title written on the front, only some small lettering at the bottom of the back cover revealed that the LP was called Technique by New Order. I had no idea what kind of music to expect, so I gave it a spin and to my surprise the songs hit a nerve unlike any music before. I was completely blown away, it felt as if this music was speaking directly and exclusively to me. It managed to express my feelings at the age of 13, a mixture of teenage angst, mindless euphoria and brutal realism. The fourth song on the album, Round & Round instantly reminded me of that extraordinary tune I had heard on tape in late 1987 — it was the same voice, the same melodic bass guitar and the same elegant synthesizer sounds. I was hooked. From that moment on I knew this band was going to play an important role in my life. After a bit of digging in those pre-internet years I finally found out the name of that transcendental song from years before. It came in one of the most beautiful single covers I had ever seen: a golden leaf against a deep blue background, which perfectly captured the melancholy atmosphere of the music. It was called True Faith.

True Faith was about to become the single most important song for me. It’s been like a loyal friend, a comforting presence throughout some rough and rainy years and a cheerful companion in times of joy and happiness. It’s been many things on many occasions, yet it never lost its magic. The song’s emotional undertone still tugs at my heartstrings and makes me want to play these immaculate and totally poptastic 5:55 minutes again and again…

The lyrics speak to me as much as the music and I can’t count the times True Faith has urged me to carry on through phases of desperation and hopelessness. The older I got, the more I realized how much that song still speaks to me. The fading memories of a lost childhood, the struggle of growing up, finally feeling some sense of liberty and finding delight in the morning sun sound like metaphors for my life. No other song has ever felt more personal to me.

So True Faith definitely is the song of my life, followed by many other songs by this wonderful group I’ve held close to my heart ever since I first heard them: Regret, Temptation, Ceremony, Crystal, Restless… New Order have taught me more about life than any other person or institution. There’s no euphoria without sadness, no highs without lows, no gain without pain… that’s the price that we all pay…

I used to think that the day would never come… 30 years after True Faith, New Order are still here. They continue to surprise and innovate and their music, as well as their visual presentation, is as magical and otherwordly as ever. The enigmatic ‘Techno Tudor’ artwork of their most recent album Music Complete is one of their smartest, and songs like Restless or Singularity are as timeless as ever and sound unlike any other music released these days. Hopefully they will continue to do their magic for a long time to come.

So happy birthday, True Faith… now that we’ve grown up together, you haven’t aged a bit…