Tag: health

Day four of our alphabet – ways to look after you. D. D is for depression

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

In my life I have several periods of depression and I could not see beyond it. My experience is that – reminder I am not a medical professional and I’m a Doctor of Creative Writing! – sadness and depression may be confused. I have found that when you are sad you can still have joy alongside it, but in depression it is through a glass darkly. Perhaps it’s different for you. Depression, for me, involved intense feelings that were just awful and I often felt deeply isolated, stressed and numb. I think periods of my childhood and adolescence were spent in depression too, and I knew it wasn’t right because I had felt happiness. This was the impact of events within the family home and the sense that no-one, anywhere, would believe. I still get snatches of that feeling now – but it fades.

Depression has a way of knocking you out and it also lies; it says, you will never get better: this is not recoverable. It’s an awful thing, but if you are managing it, know how common it is too. I am not, for the purposes of this blog and because I am not qualified to say, going to write anything about medicines or therapies, because that is not my place. I AM going to tell you about a book that has been my companion for a many a year. It’s by the late Australian psychologist Dorothy Rowe, who remains a bit of a heroine for me. I have been told by some that she is rather old fashioned, but I have been in and out of the system for years and I can tell you that I STILL find fresh insights and comfort from her work. Rowe was always particularly interested in how we create meaning and in this book, below, she explains that just as you created meaning through a series of pictures of the world, so you can create new meaning and different understandings. Isn’t it simple? That takes work, but, hearing it for the first time, it’s like soft rain on a dry soul. Here:

I have always adored Rowe’s warm and forthright style and her range of literary examples, which appeal to a bookworm like me and I encourage you to have a look at the book.

Gradually, over time, I have had fewer and fewer periods of depression because I have learned to think and behave differently and my, it has not been easy. But I leave you with a few things.

The first is that, perhaps, how you are feeling is a reasonable response to the life you are not living not being right for you. In my case, I had so many unhelpful thought patterns ingested because of what was repeatedly said to me about myself, myself and others’ view of me, and what I was capable of – either nothing or only bad things – that I needed to unlearn that this was not the whole of the world, but what I had been taught. I recall a very particular day when the scales dropped from my eyes and actually thinking how fresh and bright the colours around me were. I cried and cried with relief. I had to deconstruct that monolith inside me so I could begin to live a life that was right – or better – for me.

Now I want to say, please do not be ashamed and furthermore to reiterate that you are far from alone. I hope from this place can come new understanding and new life for you. I know that this has been the case for me.

Finally, there is work to be done and how long that takes is unique to the individual. I said above that depression lies – it says you’re no good and this will never end. It is not so.

I have so much to say on this topic, but all my posts in the alphabet need to be brief.

With all my love and with encouragements,

Anna.

The first day of an alphabet, just for you

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

Midsummer’s Day, 2025.

It has become really clear to me that, despite my doctorate, all my books, my teaching and my salient lived experience, I am not going to be able to get a big memoir or any kind of book that’s mental-health adjacent to market. I’ve tried too many times. I don’t have a big enough author profile, I don’t have the time or the health to start and maintain and build a massive podcast, I am not a celebrity and I am not demonstrably and publicly expert enough in this area. I have found this particular disappointment a hard one to bear.

But that’s not the end. I decided that, instead, I would just spend a month gifting thoughts on topics that are about looking after you. Please know I am not a health professional and that I speak from lived experience and a lot of reading. Just enjoy these or read them for interest. Please share widely.

Today is the letter A. Let’s make it about ACCEPTANCE.

I cannot tell you of everything that is going on in my life because to do so would be treading on others’ agency. I can tell you that I came from a background which left me with a lifetime of mental and physical health problems and that for a long time no-one believed my story. I am sure plenty still don’t and Dear Lord, it has caused me so much pain and confusion. Into any life may come hardship or suffering, terrible loss, or the long dark night of a soul in a life which had seemed free; now you feel it has no meaning – no core to which you may be tethered.

People endure so much. We cannot minmise the suffering of others right now, though we ought to respond with compassion – which includes practical action. Still, what I am sharing something that has been a fundamental for me. It’s acceptance; radical acceptance, really.

You may want things to be a different way, for your life and circumstances to be different, but there may also be things you cannot change. It took me a long time to realise that the reason I was so tired was partly hyper-vigilance, but partly always trying to fix things I could not fix; to understand things I could not understand because it was not possible to access the information I needed. It’s exhausting. Acceptance is a core practice in meditation, more like being at peace with exactly what’s here, in the present moment. I am also talking about fully coming to understand that if you learn to accept, with as much grace as you can muster, those things you cannot change, you are fighting less. It is simple, but requires practice and for you to remind yourself. With such practice, it is not that you feel less, but, I have found, habits of comparing oneself with others tend to recede and you notice what you do have because you are less focused on what you don’t. I find I have been less fearful, too.

In my case, I knew I had to keep tolerating certain things that were deeply painful, too; also, I’ve had a great deal of loss – and loss in traumatic and frightening circumstances, shaping who I was as a young person. I’ve found that focus on acceptance has helped to still my nervous system. If you’d like an app, then there are some helpful things to listen to on the Calm app from Jeff Warren and Tamara Levitt and I should keep an eye on the vast amount of free teaching that well-known psychologist Rick Hanson puts out there. If you google him, you’ll find meditations, talks and the very helpful JOT – just one thing – which is a free and well-written piece of information to consider every week. It often touches on acceptance

May I suggest a text for you to read? I have found this one of great practical value.

I have much, much more to say, but these need to be brief posts.

Be well, you’re not and were never alone,

Anna x

An A-Z of Mental Health. B is for…

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

So, in A, I wrote a little about anxiety. B is going to be a pick and mix for you. A range of bs. I will touch on the wonders of Professor Brian Cox (who’s the new physicist in my life), buns (not Brian Cox’s, although I am sure they are very nice, it’s just that I am more focused on particle physics here) and blame. I will add in some other things, too. Here we go… Do look back at Anxiety, too – and maybe the post that came before it, which gives you an idea of why I am doing this now. Each of these blog posts is written in thirty minutes with a timer. Stay with me if there are rough edges. x

B IS FOR.

  1. Brian Cox. I am a bit late to the party on this one. What am I on about here? I am currently watching The Planets on i-player. What is this doing for me? Well I find anything to do with astronomy or astrophysics or particle physics really soothing. It’s something to do with reveling in the logal, deduction, neat arguments and damned sexy hypotheticals. And scale. It helps me to see myself and us, our world, as something tiny. For my birthday, I had a telescope and such pleasure it has brought me. There’s something in the unimaginable vastness that is stilling and comforting. I watch Brian Cox in bed and leave instructions that I am not to be disturbed. My older kids might think I am watching porno, but no: I am listening to Professor Dreamy talking about the late heavy bombardment and why Jupiter is the godfather. The irony of this is that these programmes have a narcotic, even hypnotic effect on me. At the risk of sounding feckless, I was exactly the same with Neil de Grasse Tyson on Cosmos (could we have this back on Netflix please?) And, while I love the topics and listening to Neil say ‘Come with Me’ with sexy astrophysical hauteur and Brian smiling because he just loves it all and also doing his beguiling hand movements – both of these men are, I swear, the most brilliant natural teachers – the fact is they also put me to sleep because I am so soothed. For anxiety, an overwrought brain, to settle panic, FIND YOUR BRIAN.
  2. Buns. This is a general thing. If my mood dips substantially, I need to find ways to orient so that things do not spiral. I still have flashbacks and dissociative episodes and I won’t sugar coat (although I might the buns; I know: I am THAT funny) things and say that my daft techniques always work, but I know they help me. So, if I have time, I will cook something mindfully. Possibly buns of some sort. Careful with comfort eating, but you don’t need me to tell you that depression and the myriad mental health conditions which you may be navigating lead you to the need for comfort and sometimes that tips over into something destructive. I’ve done this too. If the cooking worries you, pick another thing. But do it in the moment and mindfully to still your mind and give yourself a rest. I make things and plant things, too. And my writing is hugely absorbing. As with exercise (see A is for Anxiety), I regard this time as time off. And maybe you can extend that bit of time off in increments?
  3. Blame. Oh. I have spent years blaming myself for things. Terrible things that have happened in my life. Because my parents and older sibling (and a few others) convinced me from the ground up that I was an appalling person, it didn’t actually occur to me until I had really effective therapy following a breakdown after my third baby…that they might be wrong. I held myself responsible for my parents’ illnesses and felt I had a considerable hand in their deaths: when you are repeatedly told such things with no-one there to correct the balance, it may be ingested. In my case, it was. I often felt terribly guilty. I got it into my head that people who had died in adulthood with whom I had been friends in early childhood had in some way been harmed by me. Heavy stuff, huh? Took a psychologist and – I am not joking – a GP with facts and no arguments to sort this one out. I was half the weight after it all. On the floor. For a while I could not get up. But then, I floated up, like a feather. That is what I want for you. If you have been led to blame yourself by others, I am not suggesting that you don’t reflect on how you might have done and might do things better, but forgive yourself and let it go. I wasted years of joy on this. Years, my bravehearts.
  4. Bubbles. Or anything trivial. I don’t mind. Go blow them. Be childish. Child-like. Play. Does this sound naff? Well not everything has to have a purpose that is immediately discernible. Some things are pure joy. Also, if someone stole your childhood, go make some new bits now. Early bereavement, trauma and abuse make a kid way too aware and heavy in heart. No child should have to live with that. I did, and I had it very easy compared with many.
  5. Bollocks. Yup. Or we could have, ‘Bugger off’. The voice in your head which says, ‘You are shit.’ ‘You are worthless.’ Whose voice is that? Is it your voice? Try to work that one out. If it’s your voice, think about how you wouldn’t be saying these things to another person, so don’t say them to yourself because it’s mean and destructive. Tell them to bugger off. Or say, ‘Bollocks’ – which I do when my mother pops up to have a carp at me about something or other in the middle of the night, cresting a dream and then feeling a cold wash of fear, back in childhood. BOLLOCKS.
  6. Breathe. This is so very simple but it’s easily forgotten, too. In through the mouth, out through the nose, 4 and 7, say. It is harder to feel anxious if you are focused on your breathing. While you are doing that, check what your back is doing. In my case rounding and shoulders have gone up in a stress, anxiety or fear response. Shake it out.
  7. Brevity. You may have  to excise people from your life to cope with your lot; if you want to and cannot – by which I mean that you will have to continue to see people who routinely upset you or are mean – then, brevity. Keep it short and look for a reason to be on your way or somewhere else in the room. Also you can be saying, ‘Bollocks’ and ‘Bugger off’ while you do it. Mitigate the influence of those who are no good for you when you cannot excise them completely.
  8. Bed. Rest. No-one’s looking. Managing mental health problems is hard on the body as well as the mind. I have historically been hopeless at this. But the fact is that my health has worsened and I’ve had a telling off from the practice nurse. Take a rest where and when you reasonably can.
  9. Bonanza. The High Chaparral, Murder She Wrote, Quincy. I think you know what I am talking about here. This is quality soothing telly right here.
  10. BOOKS.  This is going to come up again and again. Reading has always been the backbone of my life. With books, you can build and rebuild your mind. I know I have done and that I may do again. Reading is a way into another world, other lives and horizons and ideas. And beauty, in finely-wrought language: I can bask in that. I personally feel that plot is a bit overrated, but don’t get me started on that now. And with books, try new things, don’t assume something is too difficult for you. And – bearing in mind that I am a writer as well as an English teacher – try books from all times, all countries, from diverse backgrounds, in translation; if you find you cannot manage a novel, try poetry or a novella. Or a play? But experiment!
  11.  MUCH LOVE, Anna xxx