The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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An interesting observation: colors are literally brighter when you're not depressed. I can't stress enough the fact that this is not a metaphor. They're more saturated, and every now and then, I stop to look at the porcelain sky or a particular nice shop sign. I've even admired traffic lights. I think I'm as euthymic as I've ever been, and stress levels are, well, non-zero, but at a local minimum.
I have mixed feelings about the fact that I recently, over dinner, found out that most of my junior colleagues are older than me. An artifact of Scotland encouraging graduate entry medicine. I suppose that's a reminder that even after several years grinding exams to get here, I'm making excellent time.
And then a med student with grey hair and a look of deep despondence said he was surprised to learn that he was a few months older than me. He said he'd thought I was in my early thirties. I shrugged, and said that was one way to find out I looked decrepit. I asked him how he felt about likely becoming a consultant in his 40s, which, to be fair, isn't that late by British standards. He said he was trying not to think about. Poor guy had applied for medicine multiple times; he'd done well enough on the exams, but failed the personality screens/interviews. He was bad at even faking the extroversion. A real shame, I explained that medicine strongly selected for the Type A-s, but the rest of us could make it anyway. I told him the important thing was that he was here now.
And then I explained that I felt that grey hair or a bit of the Norwood was an asset for male doctors. Engenders confidence. Implies we know what we're doing. This is perhaps a mild amount of cope, but I retain all my hair anyway. That comes as a surprise given what I've been through.
And a little while earlier, my boss had implied that he pegged my age around 21. That would explain quite a bit about his attitude towards me. I wish that were true.
Then there was the time I snuck into a clinical skills session meant for fresh interns. I hadn't done an ABG in four years, and I have a slightly irrational fear that it'll be expected of me. Even though I work in a specialty where we literally don't keep the equipment around. It's early days, and everyone is getting to know each other at that hospital. I was asked by someone how I felt about starting my internship. I said that I was rather glad it was long over, and that I had no business being here, but they weren't checking the guest list closely. They were amused, and asked me if I was trying to blend in. I looked down at the rather different shade of lanyard, and my dress shirt and nice shoes amidst a sea of scrubs, and said that I wasn't doing very well. At least I got the ABG done first try.
Sticking to the theme: a youthful intern was rizzing up the med students. One of the ladies was Australian, and thus subject to cross-cultural discourse about Kangaroo Jack and Crocodile Dundee. Look man, it's that or Drop Bears. The intern said that these were childhood artifacts from "our generation" - and the young lady couldn't be expected to know about them - while gesturing at me. At me. As the reference generation.
I couldn't let this stand. Every now and then he says something that makes me me want to crawl into a coffin, call me an anti-pedophile the way I'm out of touch with the youth. Nice kid, nonetheless. He'll eventually live down the jokes from one of the blood cultures he'd taken off a patient coming back positive for Lactobacillus salivarius - a commensal/symbiotic organism that, as the name strongly implies, is supposed to stay in the saliva. Getting to show off in front of the med students is just about the only perk of the intern years. Well behind me, but at least I can admire public infrastructure instead. It's been a green light for the first time in years.
Dude It’s Summer (in the British Isles). Come back in December when it gets dark at 2.30 and you haven’t seen the sun in six weeks and talk to us about the color of happiness. This is like when you’re happy on vacation.
I have, unfortunately, been in bonny Albion over several winters. I can't say it's ever helped things. You should be aware I've been here long enough to know that.
More importantly, I have been depressed during the summer. Most summers. Most places, including India.
This isn't a simple seasonal shift. If mere exposure to sunlight sufficed, I wouldn't have been depressed at home. It coincides with... well, a lot of things. Overcoming serious adversity and taking control of my life being an important one. I managed to achieve that while rather badly depressed - which was most of this summer. I presume it showed.
I don't see much sun even on a good day at work, at the height of the summer. I'm lucky if I can nip out for half an hour during a lunch break, or catch photons on the walk to and from work.
You don't need SAD to be sad. At least I don't.
I think the summer in Britain is much better than the summer in India, though. It might actually be the best summer in the whole world, in my opinion. I actually thought you’d only moved a year ago, but time is passing so quickly now, well…
I’m a very happy for your newfound happiness. I am skeptical your depression was ever as serious as you feared, but as someone who was there and who also randomly, arbitrarily overcame it for no real reason (I think I have probably written about it before) I understand. Still, winter is the real test.
I administered myself the relevant instruments for assessing depression. I had a handful of episodes of passive suicidal ideation. I have my own notes from the worst patches, missives to a future self who was hopefully better off. That's me, today, but it's rather grim reading.
It was exactly as serious as I feared. It really couldn't have been much worse without a complete and utter breakdown. Sure, I've been clinically depressed to some degree for >95% of the last ten years, but it's usually mild to moderate. Having thoughts about walking into traffic after something as silly as a bad date and a few drinks was... new. May it stay old.
Rather annoyingly, now that my "urgent" appointment with a shrink is coming up, I've gotten better. You can't treat depression that doesn't exist anymore, but you can put yourself on their radar and ensure that you get somewhat more timely care next time.
(The wait is... concerningly close to how long it takes to spontaneously recover from a typical depressive episode without treatment. I'd call that intentional if that wasn't giving the NHS too much credit. The service is just overburdened and under staffed, I say as someone shouldering the burden. The irony of it isn't lost on me at all.)
I'd say that my depression getting better wasn't mysterious at all. It started due to immense stress. It got better as I adjusted to the workload, and the real turning point was my slightly hardass boss telling me he was happy with my performance. I could feel the muscles unknotting, as I realized that putting in 120% effort had paid off, and even better, I would be able to sustain things at mere 80% throttle for the rest of the placement.
As I intend to tell a more qualified and better paid shrink: clearly stress reactive, or vulnerable to psychosocial stressors.
Will this relief last? I don't know. Odds are against it, probably, given my history. But it clearly had a massive component of "shit life syndrome" and I managed to make my life markedly less shit.
Anyway. Sorry you had to go through your own issues, and happy that you're better. I found it very helpful to remind myself, at the nadir, that things would get better if I toughed it out. They did. I agree that winters are awful. That is why I usually flee to warmer climes. I'll get a SAD lamp anyway, if I remember to. Or join the local lassies at a tanning booth, if I ever lose all dignity.
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