I’ve Mastered Chaturanga: Can I have my happiness now?

Emile Robson reflects on the patience needed when recovering from a period of mental ill-health.

I’ve lived a complete and utterly fabricated life for the last few years. I am fine. Nothing to see here guys. Unless you want to see a young woman be completely and utterly fine. Me? Fine, absolutely fine. I don’t mean Ross with the margaritas fine. I mean compellingly, convincingly together. Fine to the point that I can even convince myself I’m fine. That is, until I’m completely blindsided by depression on a Wednesday afternoon and I can’t even put my finger on what it is anymore. For I am, you’ve guessed it: fine.

After a relatively bad stint of depression and anxiety in my second year of university and the recognition that my trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) could not go untreated, I found myself crying to an attentive but overstretched GP. After thirty seconds I was referred for CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and given a repeat prescription for citalopram. That easily. Produce tears and we’ll medicate you with citalopram, a drug whose side effects may include suicidal impulses and sleepiness, like good ol’ depression didn’t bring that shit to the party already.

My melancholy was nothing new but for once was turning me from Pulp Fiction Cool into an intolerable little shell of a lady person. A strong sense of social obligation, a need to be “the life and soul” kept me from socialising. Sure, we all like Pierrot from a conceptual standpoint but he’s not on your speed dial for gin o’clock. It was time I drew a line between my personality and my dysfunction as the two had blurred into one stormy little mess.

The Citalopram worked once I got over the initial “you’re worthless, you’re worthless” phase. The CBT ended up being a somewhat mixed bag. I ended up with a male psychiatrist who offered to be swapped out for a “lady doctor” after my initial meeting. I mistakenly said no, which resulted in me telling this man everything he wanted to hear because I fancied him a tiny bit and I am a woman so that’s what I am conditioned to do.

I can’t say the CBT didn’t work. Except, that in a way I can, because I still pull my hair out on a relatively regular basis. The problem with CBT is that it relies quite heavily on a person investing in it, which in turn relies quite heavily on the person having any motivation to do something that benefits you even though the voice in your head is telling you that you don’t deserve happiness. See? Problematic.

I obediently ticked the little boxes that I knew would indicate my course of CBT hadn’t been a complete and utter waste of my time, my doctor’s time and the NHS’s time and money. I was released from my weekly meetings in the clinic down in the bit of Leith where everyone has wild eyes. I weaned myself off citalopram with relative ease (though it is not easy for everyone) and I bought stress balls to distract myself from the urge to rip every single hair out of my head.

Ultimately, I ended up finding solace in spiritual practice which, I appreciate, may make me seem like a complete and utter wanker. I got hooked on books and videos by Eckhart Tolle, which at their best are simply mindfulness techniques and at their worst, reinterpret scripture for the evil mindfulness agenda. I can’t say this stuff does not still underpin my sanity. The “it’s all nonsense, chill out” facets of the teachings appealed to my inner nihilist and helped put a positive spin on my depressive indifference.

And for another while, I thought I held the keys to happiness in my hand, in the shape of some ambiguously named self help book by a vegetarian who juices. I had infinite universal wisdom. Years of conditioning to be utterly miserable erased by the knowledge that I was the universe, expressing itself briefly as a human. Yet every now and again I’d be caught completely off guard by an impending sense of doom, or a sense of hollowness or total fullness; an urge to fall off the earth or at least run away to the nearest bar.

What was this bullshit? If I am divine light, I can’t possibly be feeling anything other than pure, unadulterated joy, it’s simply not possible. And then I remembered, sadly, I am also a human. Attempting to break twenty years of habitual behaviour in a matter of years is ambitious at best and at worst, just daft.

Your “go to” inflammatory reactions and destructive patterns do not define you but they are very much a part of your illness; one you can’t simply take dynamite (or indeed yoga) to. It took 20 years for my misery to reach a climax and here I am expecting to erase decades of hard-wiring with a few downward dogs and some incense.

I am fortunate enough that my depressive episodes are now few and far between and seem to roll off me within a matter of days, something I definitely attest to yoga and mindfulness practice. The realisation that there was no quick fix and that I mightn’t be better forever was, to put it in bluntly, shit. The realisation that your sanity is going to be a life-long project is to put it bluntly, shit. The realisation that your methods of managing your illness are going to make you seem like an arsehole and alienate anyone unwilling to embrace ancient practices is to put it bluntly, just mildly irritating.

But perhaps the most painful realisation is that no matter how many people make their shoulders or ears available to you, you can’t always verbalise or quantify your sorrow. Sometimes there is nothing to say. No event you can put a finger on. No suppressed trauma to unravel. You just feel it or you don’t.

And so there isn’t really a shticky ending to this meandering piece. In fact, I’d go as far as to say this is completely selfish and egotistical writing, a therapy of sorts for myself. I’m not going to encourage you to listen to spiritual podcasts or try yoga, although a little supta baddha konasana never hurt anybody. The only thing anyone can take from this other than “god, she’s a bellend” is perhaps that you could have some more compassion for yourself and a little more patience with your recovery. Try to look after your head, whatever that means to you; it’s where you spend most of your time, after all. And maybe, namaste? No? Never mind.

Emilie is a part time singer songwriter, blogger and dramatist and full time waitress and unrelenting left wing feminist. Originally from South Shields, she currently lives in Edinburgh where she gigs, writes, causes a ruckus and carries plates.