Category: Fear

Sabre toothed tigers and hypocrisy

The Mental Health Awareness Week blog

Feature image “Sabre Tooth Tigers eating Daffodils” by andrew_j_w  CC BY-SA 2.0

Whenever I write about my experiences with mental health people tell me how brave I am for doing it.

I’ll let you all in on a secret though, whenever I talk about a rough patch it is always after I have gotten through it and am out the other side. When I am in the middle of scrapping with my brain I won’t admit I am struggling to a soul.

I tell the world that there is no shame in having mental health issues, but when I’m having my own I clam right up and pretend everything is fine. In short, I’m a giant hypocrite.

I told this to my therapist once and she heartily agreed, in a kind way. She’s one of those people who tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. She once gleefully quoted passages of my own book back at me – yet somehow I don’t know what I’d do without her.

The unfriendly ghost

When I’m not well I go into misguided superhero mode. I don’t tell my friends things are hard because they have their own issues to deal with. I don’t answer their messages because I don’t know what to say. Instead of keeping them safe from worry about me though, what I’m really doing is ghosting them, which is actually a pretty shitty way to treat a friend. A message saying “hey, I’m struggling a bit and not feeling particularly social but I’m fine. It’s nothing to do with you” isn’t actually that hard and it helps so much.

So instead of not writing about Mental Health Awareness Week this year because I’m not feeling super mentally healthy, this is my public version of that email.

This is the year I am going to quit being a giant hypocrite. Hi, I’m Anna Kirtlan and this Mental Health Awareness Week I am struggling with my mental health.

We all have mental health

One of the things I really like about this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week material is that it opens with the phrase ‘we all have mental health’. It says that mental health is something everyone has, a taonga that we should look after.

It’s so refreshing in a world where people still talk about “mental health” and “mental health issues” in unspoken air quotes and low whispers. Instead it says mental health is a thing we all have. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not so good.

People don’t talk about “physical health issues” like they are something unpleasant you wouldn’t want granny overhearing, so why should we do the same with our hearts and minds? It’s health, pure and simple, and we need to look after our health – all of it.

My mental health comes around to bite me on the butt when I’m not looking after it sometimes. I also hold down a full time job, have a great friends and family and am growing my writing career. It’s not always easy for me or the people around me, and I don’t always get it right, but I’m doing it. It’s a learning curve the whole time and right now what I am learning is not to be ashamed when things are tough, especially when I make a point of telling others not to be!

Dealing with sabre toothed tigers

This time round for me, and for a lot of New Zealand to be fair, the particular head weasel (a term I picked up from some awesome writer friends) is anxiety.

It isn’t always easy to spot when someone is anxious or having an anxiety attack. It’s not necessarily hyperventilating and shaking and clammy hands and darting eyes – though sometimes it definitely is. Instead it can be more subtle.

I’m sure by now many of you will have heard of the fight or flight response. Where our brains throw back to the days when it actually wasn’t that unusual to find ourselves being chased by sabre toothed tigers.

The choices you had were pretty much turn around and beat the tiger up or get the hell out of Dodge. Unfortunately, for quite a few of us, our brains didn’t get the memo that there aren’t so many sharp-toothed beasties roaming the streets and eyeing us up for lunch anymore. And sometimes the DANGER DANGER synapses fire up for what appears to be no good reason.

When this happens to me I tend to default to ‘fight’. My heart rate goes through the ceiling, I start talking loudly and aggressively at a million miles a minute and my nerves are fire. If someone sits too close to me when I’m in that state it takes every ounce of my self-control not to physically shove them away from me. So far I haven’t swatted anyone, but it’s not easy to be around that, I know.

The third F

What I wasn’t aware of until this year was that there is a third F in our throwback brain wiring – fight, flight or freeze. Going back to our sabre toothed friend, the freeze reaction would be when we don’t move a muscle and hope Bitey McBiteface doesn’t notice us.

Without the actual tiger this feels more like numbness. When you are finally so overwhelmed you feel nothing at all. It was peak Rona stress, when it seemed like bad things were happening to good people everywhere, all the time, that I learned I was experiencing this one. I rushed off to my therapist convinced I was either sliding into depression or becoming a monster. Whenever something horrible or stressful happened, when people around me were clearly struggling, I felt nothing. Where there should have been sympathy or empathy and concern and the desire to help fix the problem, there was numbness, paralysis – zilch. Surprise! That turned out to be anxiety too.

Instead of the usual million miles a minute, punch the tiger in the nose trick my brain usually did, my prefrontal cortex just noped right out of the whole equation. I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t a monster, I did care. I was just overwhelmed. I was standing behind a tree, frozen in fear and hoping the monster didn’t notice me. Learning that was a massive relief.

Do what works for you

I am most certainly not a mental health expert so please take everything I say with a grain of salt and don’t use it in the place of professional advice. Different things work for different people, so all I can share is what works and what doesn’t for me.

Medication and therapy work for me. Inspirational quotes and positive affirmations don’t. It may be the exact opposite for others. Exercise works for a lot of people. It does for me, but I have to get my brain space fixed first before I have the energy to do it.

So these top tips are based entirely on me. You do what works for you.

  • Don’t be ashamed if you need to take medication and don’t suddenly stop taking it because you are feeling better. I have done both of these things. Neither ended well. You wouldn’t be ashamed about taking medication because your blood pressure was up or down and you certainly wouldn’t stop taking it (I hope) without talking to your doctor because your blood pressure was back to normal. This doesn’t work any differently when you are dealing with serotonin.
  • Therapy isn’t for everyone, but if you think it might work for you, don’t give up if you get a bung one first time round. Trust me, I’ve had some howlers over the years. I had one tell me all I needed to do was look in the mirror daily and tell myself I was “a beautiful person” and another say I wasn’t going to get better if I didn’t stop using humour as a defense mechanism. Yet another told me Covering Things Up with Humour is Bad counsellor was full of it and that my humour defense had kept me going so far. It was a perfectly legitimate coping strategy – but perhaps I should work on some others. I now have an amazing therapist who challenges me and supports me and doesn’t take any crap from me. She keeps me on the level and I never would have come across her if I had given up after the first time someone waved a crystal at me. I do realise I am saying this from an enormous position of privilege in that I can afford to pay to see someone however. I know access isn’t easy for everyone and going into why this is so unbelievably wrong would take a whole new blog. For the avoidance of doubt though, I believe everyone in New Zealand should have affordable, accessible mental health support and we need to do more in this country to make this a reality, especially now.
  • Remember you are not alone in going through this. For some of us 2020 has been an ‘oh no, here we go again’. For others it has been the first time their mental health has kicked their butt and it is new and scary. Either way you’re not doing this alone. There are weeks like this to remind us that we all have mental health and there is help and resources available all year round (see below).

You can find Mental Health Awareness Week resources at www.mhaw.nz/

Need to talk?

  • Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor.
  • Lifeline 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE).
  • Youthline 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat.
  • Samaritans 0800 726 666.
  • Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
  • Depression and Anxiety Helpline – 0800 111 757 or free text 4202

    

   

Changing the way we talk about OCD

Feature image by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for a while but always end up agonising over whether it’s the right time. There are so many voices that need to be given the space to be heard right now – more and more every day it seems. So it feels selfish to try to add my own to that number.

But that is one of the insidious things about mental illness. It tells you that you aren’t worth it, that so many people have it so much worse that you, that you need to get over yourself. It’s one of the reasons so many people don’t seek help. They feel that help is for others, not them.

Which is why, when I was inspired by an awesome Re: news article shared by the Mental Health Foundation this morning, with amazingly brave people sharing their OCD stories, I decided to write the damned blog.

Re: People with obsessive compulsive disorder say lockdown allowed their condition to thrive (renews.co.nz) – image courtesy of the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

My story in brief

I’ve shared this before, but for the benefit of new readers, I’ve lived with obsessive compulsive disorder pretty much all my life. I was diagnosed as a teenager in the 1990s when mental illness was something people Did Not Talk About and there was a very real fear, realistic or not, that if people found out something was wrong in your head you could end up in a nuthatch.

OCD often comes as part of a triad with anxiety and depression, which is not surprising really – taking on your own brain can be scary and exhausting.

Through a combination of therapy I was lucky enough to be able to access when I was younger, medication and a great brain-flosser I talk to on the regular, I only have mild symptoms now, but the anxiety is still there and rears its ugly head from time to time. Lockdown certainly gave it a chance to get nice and comfy for a while.

Words matter

While we were busy trying to fight the rona as a country our heath minister, while encouraging us all to wash our hands, casually said “now is the time for OCD.” It felt like a slap in the face.

There is never ‘a time for OCD’. It’s a horrific disorder that left unchecked can utterly destroy your life. Our health minister should have known better than that. OCD isn’t always germophobia or hand washing either. Nor is it always about being incredibly tidy or organised (anyone who has seen the state of my desk at work can attest to that.)

When you are older than Google

These are the manifestations of it that most people know about, and that is understandable. They are the easiest to explain, or portray on TV or in film. There are many other types of OCD that are just as debilitating that don’t get the air time.

I’ve always been torn about this, because it was amazing for me when people actually started saying those three letters out loud. Letters I had previously only heard from doctors or therapists or read in the textbooks I got out from the library (yes younger readers, I am one of those people who are older than Google!) The experiences being portrayed or talked about weren’t necessarily the ones I was having, but the fact they were being portrayed and talked about at all was amazing for me.

The problem is that when people only hear about those ones is that the others people live with go unrecognised, and potentially untreated.

@obsessivelyeverafter

A really great account to follow on Instagram for insight into the different types of OCD is @obsessivelyeverafter. Run by psychotherapist and OCD specialist Alegra Kastens, it has made my day on a number of occasions and above is one of my fave posts (which links through to some great information.)

Don’t go down there!

When something starts to become normalised – which is a great thing – it can become casualised in the lexicon. Then you start getting things like people saying “I’m so OCD” when they are talking about needing to have their cupboards organised ‘just so’. In reality that particular OCD can have you not able to leave the house for a week because something is a millimetre out of place and it you don’t get it just right someone you love will die horribly and it will be your fault.

The shitty thing is that you know these thoughts are utterly irrational, but it doesn’t stop you having them and it doesn’t stop you doing the thing to make them go away. It’s like watching yourself from the outside and being unable to do anything about it. Like screaming “Don’t go down there!” at the soon-to-be victim in a horror film as you helplessly watch them descend into the haunted basement. Casualising that experience hurts.

Ignorance rather than malice

As Paddy often says to me however, these things are usually said out of ignorance rather than malice. It’s hard to see that when you are in the middle of being upset and outraged, but most of the time it’s true.

One thing that illustrated this to me and gave me so much hope was actually an interaction in the comments section on, of all things, a car video on Youtube. Paddy’s an engineer and a bogan and often our evenings are spent with him watching people faffing about with car engines on the internet while I ignore him and read, write or kill zombies on my phone.

One particular evening during lockdown, when I was a little anxious and overwrought, I overheard a chap on one of Paddy’s videos talk about being “a little bit OCD” about something to do with the car he was working on. Often I let these things go but this time I roared “YOU ARE NOT OCD!”

Paddy stopped the video and said “do you want me to say something? I’m certain he wasn’t being malicious.” I told him not to worry about it and that Car Dude was lucky I was medicated and left it at that. Paddy went quiet for a minute then sent me an email and asked “is it okay if I post that in the comments?” I read it and nearly burst into tears.

* I really love your videos and it is fantastic that you are spotlighting the wonderful things that Kiwi innovation can do for us. You are an awesome guy and I really appreciated the service that you gave me in wellington. I have one small suggestion / request. I watch your videos in the evening when there is nothing much to watch on broadcast tv. Lets face it that is a lot of the time. My partner who is the most awesome person I have ever met and who managed to manage her mental illness to sail over 5000 miles around the the south pacific with me overhears what you say. She has struggled with OCD her whole adult life and when you say you are OCD about you FD it makes her feel belittled. I realize that is not your intention but please understand that this is an awful thing and people struggle with it in a way that we really can’t understand or thankfully never will. So please…… Be obsessive, passionate, focused …. or anything but please not OCD that is an awful disease that you would not inflict on your worst enemy.

Best regards

Paddy

*Identifiers have been removed

I said yes and the very next day Car Dude had replied saying that Paddy was absolutely right, he was definitely not trying to belittle anyone and that he would think about his terminology more clearly. He apologised to me and that apology is 100% accepted.

That was one small interaction between two blokes on the internet but it gave me a lot of hope that we can change the way we talk about things. Not just mental health, but all the things we need to change the way we talk about right now. It also showed me that speaking up when you feel uncomfortable actually helps. People don’t know what they don’t know and if you don’t tell them, then they never will – and if you do tell them, then it’s on them to think about what they say.

I know it’s not easy. I catch myself getting things wrong from time to time too. But the thing is, I catch myself, and I correct myself and if I hurt someone then I apologise. That is all we ask. If two Kiwi blokes with a mutual love of cars can do it, so can you.

And that is why what the people who spoke to Re: news did today was so important and why Re: News did such a great thing by running it in such a respectful and understanding manner. You guys, and every other Car Dude out there who speaks up or who listens, are all my heroes right now.

If you are looking for support here are a bunch of resources I blagged straight from the Re: article

National helplines

Salt and vinegar

The yachtie circle of life.

So here I am on holiday, finally getting the chance to finish writing up the blog I started last time we went on holiday. If that isn’t a wake up call to take more time to tell life to get bent and do more writing, I don’t know what is! (Of course I say that every time and as we all know, life can be terribly persuasive.)

We are in Vanuatu at the moment (actually we are back now but the internet was really bodgey when I wrote this). We took a plane rather than a boat this time because, as Paddy likes to say, nothing goes to windward like a 747.

We are staying in our favourite Vanuatu spot, Hideaway Island. It’s a resort but it has a much more laid back village type feel about it, which is about my comfort level when it comes to resorts. It is on the edge of a marine reserve and so there is good snorkeling and great diving spots. They have their own dive shop and it is where I got my scuba licence many moons ago. I really love the staff here too. You can always tell when they are around from the gales or raucous laughter, which makes me happy.

Hideaway Island

We are also happily taking part in the yachtie circle of life. Last time we took our boat round the Pacific we had friends act as mules, bringing over boat parts and other necessities (like Clearasil – the tropics did terrible things to my skin!) This time round it was us bringing supplies for our friends Mike and Dani on their boat Mirabilis – spare parts and a paddle board oar. Dani and I met when we were both doing our Boatmasters course and discovered we lived down the pier from each other and Mike crewed back from us from New Caledonia to New Zealand to get experience for when they took their boat away for the first time.

This time they had an extra hitchhiker – 8 month old Arlo, adding yet another awesome chapter to the yachtie circle of life. Arlo is officially the most chilled out child I’ve ever met. He’s like baby Buddha. He just takes everything in his stride and has this whole boat kid thing down. The boat kids I have met all seem to be pretty cool and well-adjusted and I think his parents are giving him an awesome start in life.

The cruising circle of life

Hey, no problem!

This is how you hold a kid, right?

Anyway, enough gloating about being in the tropics. Here’s the blog I have been trying to finish for so long:

Dusting off the cobwebs

For various reasons (life) it has been a long time between swims for Wildflower – and us. Give or take a couple of little outings it’s been roughly three years since we have been able to take her for a good run.

So we both took a couple of weeks leave to head over to Queen Charlotte Sounds over Easter.

In getting ready to go we discovered parts of the poor old girl had seized up due to lack of use and we felt like the worst boat parents ever. There was also a slight concern that the same thing may have happened to us, in sailing terms at least.

We were both really ready for a break but also a little nervous. Heading to the Sounds means crossing Cook Strait – a narrow stretch of water between the North and South islands of New Zealand known for wild and woolly sailing.

It something we had done a frillion times before but you can make things much bigger in your head when you haven’t done them for a while. I kept telling myself I had made it round the South Pacific in her and that this was just a New Zealand puddle jump, but I’m not always the best at listening to myself.

Waiting on the weather (again)

Once we’d carved out the time to go it was the usual story of waiting for the right weather pattern. The good thing about that was by the time we fond a window where the wind was blowing in the right direction, at a reasonable speed and without too many lumpy bits, I was ready to go.

Trolled up and totally ready

Things were starting to come back to me too. How to tie certain knots, how to attach ropes to cleats, everything except how to decently throw a rope – which I was embarrassingly reminded of when we were at the diesel dock. I’ve said it before and will say it again, I deeply lament the location of the fueling dock on Wellington’s waterfront.

It’s exactly the spot where people stroll past with their morning coffee looking over at the goings on in the marina. Hell, there’s handy public seating right in front of the frigging thing. So I can pretty much 100% guarantee that when I am ineffectually flailing a piece of rope in the air as I utterly fail to lasso a bollard to make us fast to the wharf, there will be an audience. I don’t know what happens, the mechanics of it work fine when I am practicing on the boat, but when I need it to work I revert back to the kid in primary school who can’t throw or catch anything and nobody wants on their sports team. Luckily there wasn’t too much wind though and with a bit of teamwork we go there in the end.

Flashbacks

By the time we got Boaty McBoatface out of the harbour and towards Cook Strait there was stuff all wind – which was both good and bad. It means you aren’t getting shunted along at an alarming angle, but it also means a lot more sudden flapping and banging noises as the sails flop from side to side looking for wind to fill them. We had about 10 knots of wind, but anything less than 15 and Wildflower just says ‘no’. She’s a fuller bodied lady and it takes quite a bit to push her through the water. It was a good thing we had Big Red the engine to keep us chugging along.

Because we’d had a strong southerly blowing through over the previous few days we also had a bit of a southerly swell (2 meters and easing). It wasn’t much, and while hearing it described over the radio made me nervous, I was surprised at how minor it seemed and how easily I handled it after so long out of the water. It did mean things were a little bit bumpy through some of the rips though. There are three rips near Wellington and you have to go through two of them to reach Cook Strait. It was a little wibbly wobbly through the first rip, but not too bad. Next was the infamous Karori rip.

Captain calm

Because it had been a while since Wildflower had been on the water, Paddy and I were both in meerkat mode, poking our heads up and checking that everything was okay every time she made a sound that wasn’t quite the norm.

We were both still meerkating through the Karori rip when we heard a bang from below deck. In my new ‘don’t jump to the most terrifying conclusion straight away’ mode I said “It’s probably just something falling off a shelf inside”. Paddy nodded quietly and headed downstairs. Unbeknownst to me the bang had been followed by the engine sounding slightly different.

First mate meerkat

I tried to keep my cool, but the last time Paddy quietly headed down to the engine room like that ended in a Mayday call, Paddy having to use brute force, towels and hose clips to stop water pouring into the engine room and me on the radio to our would-be rescuers – who we didn’t need in the end because Paddy is awesome (see Which Way is Starboard Again? the book for the full story).

So ‘don’t catastrophise’ went right out the window and was replaced with ‘okay, can I remember how to use the radio, it’s channel 16 for emergencies right?’ It didn’t help that we were pretty much in the same place where the last incident happened either. So when Paddy popped up I was braced for the worst and doing my best not to lose my shit.  It turned out the bang was just the engine room door swinging open, hence the change in engine noise. When we got to the Sounds we also discovered there was a crack in the engine mount – but there were three more holding the engine up and it was working fine. We needed to get that welded up but through one of Paddy’s friends based in Picton we managed to find someone to do that – and on Easter Sunday too!

Absolutely everything was fine, we were completely safe, and there was nothing at all to worry about. The problem was I had a bunch of adrenaline dumped into my system and it had nowhere to go. Once upon a time that would have been the cause of a screaming panic attack. It’s always when things stop and I am completely safe that these things happen. This time though, I just sat down on the floor of the cockpit and took a bunch of deep breaths. Paddy asked if I was okay and I said yes, and actually meant it. I was a little bit jumpy for a while but I was fine. It wasn’t actually the fact that we were safe that was the win, it was the fact that I actually managed to convince my brain that we were that was. I was quietly proud of myself.

Salt and vinegar

With my regained calm I decided to pop below deck and make a pot of coffee. This began with me muttering about what a good job I had done stuffing the cupboards with pillows to stop everything crashing around before we left. After I managed to wrestle the coffee pot out from under several pillows I discovered one of them was soaking wet. Pulling it out I discovered a couple of pots were filled with what looked like water too.

I remembered the first thing you should do when finding water on the inside of the boat that shouldn’t be there is check if it is salt or fresh. If it’s fresh it’s not great as it could mean you are losing your drinking water, but if it’s salt then you really have a problem because it’s coming in from the outside. So I grabbed a potful, gave it a big sniff, and nearly burned all my nose hairs off.

It turned out it was neither salt or fresh water, but white vinegar. I located the culprit – a plastic bottle of cooking vinegar that had expired  in 2014. I gently picked it up and promptly got squirted in the eye by a geyser of vinegar through a tiny pinprick hole in the bottle. It turns out that while vinegar doesn’t really expire, it’s packaging certainly does! So instead of getting a nice cup of coffee I ended up covered in vinegar and smelling like that one fish and chip shop in Christchurch that served chips in brown paper bags covered in vinegar.

After I peeled off as much of the vinegar covered clothing as I could (unfortunately it was also all over my sailing overalls) I got the coffee on the boil. Paddy actually said he was proud of me because once I would have seen water where it shouldn’t have been, freaked out and got him to come down and fix it. This time I assessed the problem, worked out the issue and found a solution (de-vinegaring the cupboards when we got to the Sounds.) It sounds pretty obvious but when you run on fear and adrenaline as much as I do , that can actually be a big thing. It was really nice of him to recognise that, because I probably wouldn’t have.

Postcard New Zealand

We had a fabulous time in the Sounds. It’s such a beautiful place and when you are staying on a boat it’s like waking up to a different postcard of New Zealand every morning.

We settled in at our favourite chill out spot Erie Bay which offered us eerie fog and stunning blue skies alternately. The use of a friend’s mooring in Milton Bay meant time spent in another idyllic spot – and the Easter Bunny even managed to find us there (though Paddy needed a little bit of help with the Easter egg hunt.)

The Easter bunny found us

When we began to run low on supplies (and get sick of stir-fries) we headed to the Bay of Many Coves resort, where cruisers often pop in for lunch and a drink. However it turned out that the entire place was closed for a private function, and given the disappointed looks on the family who had dinghied in looking for ice creams, we weren’t the only ones surprised at that fact. We were able to stay on their moorings overnight and on the up side, with the employment of walkie talkies, I was acing picking up mooring buoys.

Next stop was Punga Cove, where the cafe was open. It was awesome sitting there watching families play on the water’s edge and people coming in covered in mud from the cycling tracks. Sometimes you forget how lucky we are in this country, being able to take a break and go play in paradise.
We both splashed out on fancy fish and chips – no vinegar in sight!

 

Erie Bay morning

Chilling in Milton Bay

Leaving Milton Bay in the clouds

Wildflower at Punga Cove

Bit more relaxed now!

Waiting on the weather (again) part 2

The only drawback was, as soon as we arrived in the Sounds we had to start planning when we would leave. When you are sailing back to Wellington you have to get the timing right when you hit Cook Strait, in terms of weather and tides. It’s not a stretch of water you want to take your chances with. So if you have a deadline you need to get back for (work, family, pets), working out when you are going to leave is pretty important. So as soon as we hit the Sounds we were listening to the marine forecast and checking the tide tables to see when the best time to head back would be.

We had a lovely time, but it’s not super easy to relax into a holiday when you are constantly checking ‘are we leaving tomorrow? Maybe the next day?’
Paddy managed to get the timing perfect and, in contrast to our ‘no-wind’ trip over, we had the perfect amount of wind to actually sail on the way back. Wildflower loved it (so did the skipper). She really does feel better when she is sailing, like a big dog being let out for a run. She puffed out her sails, heeled over and made quick work of the crossing.

A strange quirk of the ocean is that celphone reception is better in the middle of Cook Strait than it is in the Sounds. This meant I was able to snap a couple of ‘hey, we’re sailing!’ shots to send to our Whatsapp family group chat. I think the smile on both our faces said it all.

Morning ferry race

Look Mum, we’re sailing!

Happy captain

Little legs

We literally had a one day window to get back to Wellington before the wind switched back to the opposite direction we needed it to blow and we timed getting back just as it started to change. Everything was going swimmingly until we were just outside the marina and attempted to drop the sail.

One of the facelifts we gave Wildflower when we got back from the Pacific was a much bigger main sail to help push her along in lighter winds. A larger sail meant we needed a longer boom and when this was replaced it was also raised a bit to stop it banging on the roof of the pilot house. Since one of my jobs on berthing/anchoring was to clamber round the front of the boat and a help pull the sail down, I voiced concern about the extra height. Paddy’s response: “It’s only a couple of inches!”

It turns out when you are four foot eleven, ‘a couple of inches’ is actually an awful lot.  It also turns out that we probably should have practiced lowering the new sail a few more times before having to do it  in earnest. Because the wind was getting up, Paddy headed us right into the harbour where it was more sheltered and would make dropping the sail easier. That would have been a great plan, if the East-West Ferry wasn’t trying to berth at the same time.

The extra two inches meant I had to clamber as far up the mast as I could reach (not very). I had also completely blanked on how to get the mast steps to go down properly so I was balancing pretty precariously (don’t worry Mum, I was clipped on!) trying to yank down the sail as Paddy dropped it. Another problem was the whole system  hadn’t been used for so long it was a bit stiff and my puny arms just weren’t up to the task. So there we were, circling around with a bunch of ferry passengers and people on the waterfront looking on as I stretched as far as my little legs would let me, flailing my arms ineffectually. Even my dad, who was stalking us via GPS, was wondering why we were sailing in circles. In the end Paddy pointed the boat into the wind and headed up to the bow to help me with the final few yanks and we decided that perhaps next time I would point the boat into the wind, while he acted as sail monkey.

All’s well that ends well though and, even though it was just a little trip, it gave me my confidence back in a lot of ways.

End note: Our Vanuatu holiday gave me confidence back too, in terms of scuba diving. I normally get quite angsty at first but this time, with the help of one of Hideaway’s awesome dive guides, it was just like riding a bike (or flying over fields of coral). I was relaxed enough to be able to get my buoyancy right and Paddy busted me doing the Kate Winslet in Titanic ‘I’m flying!’ arms. So I guess that means I’ve got a decent handle on the crazy right now and that really does feel pretty good!

Gumboots and porridge

Porridge in the air

Comedian and mental health advocate Mike King describes depression as feeling like walking through mud. That was the inspiration behind the first Gumboot Up NZ day on April 5.

The idea was for people to walk a day in the shoes of someone with depression, while raising awareness and funds for youth mental health support.

For me, instead of mud, it’s always been porridge. For some strange reason, if anyone asks me to describe what depression feels like I have always said ‘walking through porridge.’

It’s as if the air has turned into a sort of lumpy sludge and for every movement you make through it, a pile more slurps back in to take its place – and that’s just getting out of bed.

Counter-intuitively, something I often can’t do when I’m depressed is cry. God I want to, I really do. But the more I want to, the more I can’t. Sometimes I see the porridge as a mix of all the tears and snot that I want to pour out of me pushing back down on me from the outside.

Now that I think about it, it’s actually a pretty gross analogy and mud is a lot better. The mud was actually what caught my attention about this particular mental health initiative. For the first time I was hearing something that described exactly how it felt for me, and knowing that someone else feels something so scary and internal and personal as depression the same way you do is hugely relieving and empowering.

Gumboots at work

Boots and suits

One of the things that was really cool about ‘walking through mud day’ was actually just walking around town. I paid a little more attention to people’s footwear than I normally would and I spotted quite a few people in gummies.

The cool part was that those people were obviously doing the same thing, because often we would catch each other’s eye, smile and walk on. It was a quiet acknowledgement ‘I know why you’re doing this, you know why I’m doing this. You get it.’

That small public acknowledgement – from the guy in the suit, from the woman in the amazing 50s style dress, from my workmates – was worth so much. I even appreciated the ‘helpful’ offer from a colleague to pinch me on the soft but under my arm to help with the not-being-able-to-cry thing (you know who you are!)

The teenager I used to be, utterly convinced that talking about mental illness would have landed her in the nuthatch, would have been completely blown away.

Radio gaga

I also have a bit of a soft spot for Mike King, who gave me a spot on his Late Night Nutters Club radio show when I was hawking Starboard when it first came out.

It was a scary and exciting adventure where I got to stay in a hotel in Auckland and blather on the radio about mental health and sailing. Mike and his cohost Malcolm Falconer were really great and made me super comfortable even though I was completely terrified.

I blogged about it at the time and you can listen to the broadcast on there. I have no idea what I said and probably completely blathered. I haven’t listened to it since because I hate the sound of my voice, so I can’t vouch for quality!

Nutters – Mike King and I

Radio Gaga  (seamunchkin.com)

I am hope – counselling for youth

I am also quite passionate about where the money goes for this particular fundraiser. 100% of the donations go to Mike King’s I Am Hope charity, which provides access to counselling support for young people.

When I was 15 and diagnosed with OCD, anxiety and depression in Christchurch in the 90s, I was lucky enough to have access to good counseling and support. Sadly, for a lot of young people now, that is just not the case. More people are aware of mental health issues, and this is amazing, but I think what it also means is that more people are seeking help and the resources just aren’t keeping up with it. Some young people in crisis are waiting up to 6 months for their first appointment and that’s just not acceptable or safe.

The way the I Am Hope donations work is that your money is deposited into their Kiwibank account and is then given directly to a registered health professional upon receipt of an invoice. This means 100% of the money goes to help kids get the support they need, when they need it.

Even though Gumboot Friday is over, you can still donate to I Am Hope through their website and Give A Little page:

Gumboot Friday (iamhope.org.nz)

​How to Donate (iamhope.org.nz)

When you can and can’t write

From one former Christchurch kid to the current ones, all I can send is hope and love right now. If any youth are going to need access to good counselling and support it’s them.

While I was able to write about the quakes that struck my home town, I just can’t find the words for the recent tragedy that happened there. I’ve tried and I just can’t do it. I honestly don’t know if I will ever be able to.

I was proud though, through my work at PPTA, to be able to share the words of others, and that is what I’ll share here:

Artwork by River Jayden of Street Wise

Against hatred we send love (ppta.org.nz)

One thing it has done though, is throw into sharp relief the little light-hearted ‘Gators, guns and keeping calm’ piece on our trip to the US that I was working on. I will still use the material in some way but it needs a different lens and a lot of different thinking, that I’m not quite ready for yet.

There is another project in the works however, and I promise I won’t rip it out from under your feet this time because it actually is finished. I’ve had some super helpful feedback from beta readers and it is now with a manuscript assessor to help me iron out the rest of the wrinkles before I decide what to do with it. It’s something a bit different in that its my first foray into fiction – and it’s a nice escape from reality for me right now. Its a young adult novella, and never fear sailors, it has boats, scuba diving and various other marine activities in it (it also has bitey mer-people who farm dolphins for snacks). I will fill you all in when there is more to tell, but whether I self or ‘trad’ publish it as young folk say, I promise it is something you will actually be able to have.

For those who aren’t into that sort of thing, don’t worry, I am going to keep up with the non fiction about sailing and being bonkers, it’s just always fun to try new things!

The case of the disappearing teeth

When I look back on it, my mental health blogs seem to jump from ‘bugger I’m bonkers again’ to ‘yay I’m better!’ with nothing much in-between.

That’s because in-between isn’t much fun, and writing when you are in-between is not an easy thing to do. But it’s probably the most important time to write, because in-between is the time that people need to hear that what they are going through happens to us all. That the ups will eventually stick around longer and the downs won’t last forever. I think we have a tendency to block out the in-between when we start feeling better because we don’t want to focus on the crap stuff. So we don’t write about it and we don’t talk about it.

So my blog for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (which kicks off tommorrow) is about what in-between being sick and being well looks like for me.

Why do I feel sad? I’m better dammit!

In-between is having an awesome, productive weekend where you do all the things that seemed so insurmountable for so long. You mow the lawns and remember how much you love spending time in the garden. You tidy your room and hang up those pictures that have been gathering dust. You feel successful and, for the first time in a long time, really happy.

In-between is coming home the next day and crying your face off because you have felt sick and sad and anxious all day and you shouldn’t be feeling that way because you are better now dammit.

Poor, long-suffering Paddy says getting better isn’t a straight path, it’s a continuum. And he’s right. When you start to see little glimpses of sunshine you take it so much harder when it starts to cloud over again.  But the sun is still there and eventually it will stick around longer and longer.

Okay, who stole my teeth?

In-between for me this time was also finding out how much damage my anxiety had done to my body. It was going to the dentist to have a filling replaced and finding I had anxiety-clenched my teeth so hard, for so long, I had ground down the enamel so far you could almost see the nerves.

It was also having to be a grownup and working out a payment plan so I didn’t have to sell a kidney to get it fixed.

Funnily enough, I had actually noticed in a couple of pictures friends had posted online that I seemed to have a weird gap in my teeth when I smiled. I remember thinking ‘that’s odd. I don’t have a gap there’ – not after all the money, time and trauma my parents went through getting me braces as a teen.

Then the dentist broke the news to me.

“You have the mouth of an 80 year old,” he said.

“What?!” I spat.

“Well, maybe a 70 year old…”

“Dude, that’s not much better!”

It turned out he was talking about wear. I had done about 80 years worth of wear and tear to 37 years worth of teeth.

Yeah alright, it was me. 

After the initial shock, I wasn’t actually surprised. I most likely grind my teeth in my sleep, and I have experimented with sleeping with a mouthguard before, but the real issue was during the day. When my anxiety was up I could judge how tense and jumpy I had been by how much pain my jaw was in by the end of the day. I wouldn’t even realise I was clenching my teeth until I unclenched them. My jaw would pop and my back teeth would be stuck together like glue.

It was actually one of the first signs for me that the new medication was starting to work. I would get to the end of the day and think – ‘hey! My jaw doesn’t hurt!’

So while I wasn’t exactly surprised, I was rather shocked that something that was going on in my brain could do that much damage to my body without me realising it. (I may have had a minor meltdown over that, but seriously, who wouldn’t?)

Goodnight, sleep tight – don’t let the tooth monster bite!

The next step was, what to do? Leaving it was an option – for six months or so anyway, much longer though and it would be the difference between $3000 for building up what was there and $50,000 for getting crowns on everything.

I decided to rip the bandaid off. I knew that if I put it off I would just keep putting it off. There was a psychological component to it too. What’s more symbolic of getting better than taking a ragged, crumbling, anxiety mouth and giving it a proper smile again?

So I booked in to get some scans and moulds made. When I saw the mould of my mouth I was horrified. It looked like something parents would use to scare their children. It turns out I had ground several millimeters from both the top and bottom of my front teeth. I needed nine teeth built up with the equivalent of 11 fillings worth of schmoo.

Ahhh! Run away!!

They probably aren’t lined up exactly right as I was balancing them on a chair in the dentist’s waiting room while taking the pic, but you get the idea.

New gnashers!

It all happened quite quickly. A week after seeing the funhouse horror moulds I was in the dentist’s chair having scaffolding put on my teeth. Two hours in the dentist’s chair later (no fun drugs, just lots of injections) and I pretty much had a new set of gnashers.

It was actually a fairly painless process, the crick I got in my neck was the worst of it really. Hearing comments to the dental assistant like ‘look at all the wear there’ and ‘have you seen many procedures like this before?’ and learning that one of my front teeth was actually loose from all the pressure I’d put on it was a little more traumatic.

The dentist looked pretty proud of his work and he had every right to be. I thought I looked like a whole different person. He said I looked younger but he would – I was paying three grand and he had that ‘mouth of an 80 year old’ line to make up for!

I’m pretty happy with it though and think it’s an awesome symbol that things are getting better.

New gnashers

It does feel rather strange though, like I have someone else’s teeth. I tried to bite my nails the other day and I actually physically couldn’t. Maybe after all these years I might be able to quit that habit!

Four weeks of schmoo

The only drawback now  is that for the next few weeks I am pretty much on a diet of mush until things settle down. So for me in-between is now soup and smoothies and sneaky KFC potato and gravy – but it will be worth it to have my smile back.

I have also developed a whole new respect for people on special diets. I got my teeth done just before a big work conference that involved catered meals. Everyone was fascinated when my dinner looked different to theirs and I got the third degree. By the end of three days my answers ranged from ‘I have new teeth and can’t eat solids’ to ‘I anxiety clenched my teeth to oblivion, please leave me alone to eat my schmoo’ – I seriously couldn’t do that all the time.

I love my new chompers though, and they are helping me in more ways than one. When I have a rough day and (as Paddy so eloquently puts it) ‘the black dog takes a dump on my brain’ I can look in the mirror and see that no matter how ratty things get, they can be fixed. It won’t be an easy fix, it could be the equivalent of four weeks of eating slush, but there is a fix there. In-between sucks, but it’s exactly that, in-between. You will come out the other side, potentially with a whole new smile (even if it’s one held together by plastic and dental goop).

Mental Health Foundation fundraiser

As always, and especially this week, 50% of paperback sales of Starboard the book go to the NZ Mental Health Foundation. Depending on how financial you are feeling you can either pay $20 and donate $10 here

Or take advantage of the sale price and pay $10 and donate $5 here

Free postage in NZ. If you are overseas just drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and I’ll investigate postage costs.

Where to get help if you need it (in NZ): 

Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor

Lifeline – 0800 543 354 (0800 LIFELINE) or free text 4357 (HELP)

Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)

Healthline – 0800 611 116

Samaritans – 0800 726 666

The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand also has a great list of specialist helplines which you can find here:

Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand helplines (mentalhealth.org.nz) 

Learning to forgive myself – and a big splash

A while ago I learned it is never wise to put a date you are going to do something in print.

If you miss that date for whatever reason its just staring at you and you spend more time beating yourself up about it than getting on with things.

When it comes to work or writing for other people, I eat deadlines for breakfast. When life gets in the way of my own self-imposed ones though, I get unreasonably mad at myself.

I should have learned after publishing Which Way is Starboard Again? the book, which I ended by saying we would do the South Pacific trip again in 2016. For various reasons that didn’t happen. Life moved in different, and amazing directions. There will be more sailing and there will be other trips, they may just be at a different time and in a different form. I don’t regret that at all, but I still have that 2016 date glaring accusingly at me from the page.

I did the same thing to myself when I announced the new book ‘Gators, Guns and Keeping Calm’ about our trip to the US. It started with a hiss and a roar, I had the chapter summaries ready to send to publisher and was all ready to self-publish as an e-book if they weren’t keen this time. I was taking regular ‘writing days’ as leave from work when I could and, if I’d stuck to my self-imposed deadline, I would have finished by now. But I didn’t, and I haven’t. And the reasons I haven’t have been mostly out of my control, but I am still bashing myself up over it.

And don’t even get me started on the half finished fiction…

I realised it was getting beyond a joke when I found myself getting all panicky and angry at myself and the world because I hadn’t written a blog. Well I had written it, but in a notepad, which has been sitting on the coffee table looking disappointed in me for months now, waiting to be transcribed.

It’s an important blog. It’s our engagement blog. (For those that don’t already know, after 10 years, the Captain finally proposed -spoiler: I said yes!) It was getting so long between the event and the blog that it was ridiculous. At least that was what I was telling myself. Yes I had a whole lot going on in my life, but what kind of writer am I if I can’t even make the time to write about my own engagement?

It was a couple of days after that last meltdown that I realised the only person who was upset and angry about this was me. That the voice I thought I had chased away during my earlier battles with mental illness was coming back.

“You’re a failure.”

“You’re letting everyone down.”

“Who do you think you are calling yourself an author? You’ve written one book. You should give up now before everyone realises you are a fraud.”

It is a voice that a lot of people have and it can be really hard to accept that it is a voice that is actually full of shit.

People aren’t thinking those things. They never have.  But it doesn’t make it feel any less real. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the hardest battle anyone can fight is the one against their own brain.

But I am telling that voice to shut up and get back in its box. No doubt it will pop up a few more times, but I fully intend to slam the lid shut.

I am capable, and I will do all those things I said I would.

There will be a trip.

There will be a book.

There will be a blog (with lots of lovely photos from our engagement party).

But they will happen when they happen and I refuse to feel guilty about that anymore.

Speaking of deadlines, another one we missed, through no fault of our own,  was getting Wildflower back in the water for summer. Instead of the usual paint and scrape, her butt was due for a major overhaul – sandblasting 14 years worth of antifoul right off and giving her a whole new beautiful paint job.

Wildflower takes up stilt walking

Last time Paddy did this he had a bit more time on his hands (and he was also 14 years younger) so this time we decided to enlist a bit of help.

Events that were mostly beyond our control meant the process took a lot longer than anticipated and crept into the colder season which meant then having to wait on the weather. The end result was that we missed the summer’s sailing, but Wildflower now has a lovely arse.

Last weekend we made a massive splash, plonking her back in the water again, where she is most definitely in her happy place.

Poor thing had been sitting so long that a bunch of gunk had clogged the switch of my nemesis the bilge alarm and jammed it on, meaning alarm bells ringing in the middle of the harbour.

Paddy calmly said “would you mind steering the boat for a bit?” and popped down to check things out and I only (internally) freaked out a little bit. Firstly over whether I could actually still remember how to steer the boat and secondly, well,  those who have read the book will know why that particular alarm gives me the heebie geebies. It was good news though. I did remember how to steer and the issue was with the alarm, not the boat sinking. I kept my nerves in check and any anxious meeping stayed inside my head. I was quite proud of myself!

I don’t see the point in dwelling on past frustrations, so while it was sad we missed the summer sailing, I am super happy our boat is back in the water and look forward to restoring her from a cesspit of dust and toolboxes to our floating home away from home again.

Also, if you pick your days, winter sailing in Wellington can actually be more settled. We might even enter her in a couple of races in the cruising division of the Evans Bay Yacht Club winter series – though no firm commitment, and definitely nothing in writing!

Skipper watching like a broody chook

Nice arse! Shiny new paint job

All aboard!

Relieved Skipper is relieved

1000 subscribers! Let’s have a sale! (proceeds to NZ Mental Health Foundation)

I’m super excited to see that 1000 lovely people have subscribed to this blog (especially since I have been a bit rubbish at regularly updating it of late) and a big wave hello to the new followers on the Starboard Facebook page!

This is an awesome surprise and a good wake up for me to share more with you all.

To celebrate I’m selling signed paperbacks of Which Way is Starboard Again? for NZ $9.99 with free postage in New Zealand.

50% of the proceeds still go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation  . Mental health is severely underfunded in New Zealand and this is a fantastic organisation that deserves all the support it can get.  I have already made our first donation of $200 so thank you so much for everyone who has been a part of that.

For those of you who would like to donate more the $19.99 full promotion is still available and there is more information about it here

Mental Health Foundation fundraiser 

You can also purchase it, and other cool stuff, through the Mental Health Foundation website (where they have also done a really cool review!)

NZ Mental Health Foundation – buy useful stuff

If you live outside of New Zealand and are interested in buying a copy, drop me an email at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort postage. The book is also available on most ebook platforms, but I don’t have control over the pricing of those. Do shop around though, I have spotted it on sale at different sites. At the moment Amazon has it at $6.59 

In other news, book number two is definitely on the way and I will share a sample with you shortly. I am also investigating turning Starboard into an audio book, I just need to get my head around the technological side of that!

Will keep you posted.

Again, thank you so much for the support. It might just be a matter of pressing a subscribe button, but it means an awful lot to writers like us – so yay you!

Gators, guns and a new book

This is one of those blogs where I publicly announce I am going to do a thing so it forces me to do the thing.

The thing I’m referring to is another book, which I am in the process of writing (and now I have told all of you so I can’t back out).

I think it will just be an e-book this time. Though when I say ‘just’ an e-book, please don’t take that the wrong way.

Ebooks are great, I’ve read some brilliant ones. I’m talking more length really. I suspect I won’t have the material for a paperback as this story covers a shorter period of time. It’s more of a taster. I don’t think the process of writing and finishing it isn’t going to be any easier than it was for Starboard though!

Sorry sailors, but this time it’s not about boats – but it is about travelling.

I found that, next to the sailing and the crazy, quite a few Starboard readers picked it up because they were interested in travel writing. So this time I thought I’d give that a go.

This is going to be a story about travelling to the United States. A story about alligators, firearms, cowboys and an island that is home to more than 500 cats.

It is also a story about travelling there at a particularly unnerving point in time.

When we left the country’s president had just started lobbing bombs at Syria. While we were there North Korea’s leader was (mercifully unsuccessfully) launching missiles in our general direction and making all sorts of nuclear threats- it really was a fabulous time to be over there with an anxiety disorder!

Despite all the background excitement we had some fantastic, memorable, hilarious experiences, met some wonderful people and had many of our preconceptions challenged  (in both good and bad ways).

I’m going to tell you right now, I’m really nervous about writing about the US. There is so much history, culture and shared experience that I have not lived through and can’t possibly truly understand.

As a western tourist I am fully aware I am writing from a place of privilege. There are some heartbreaking things happening over there right now and I am writing about a holiday – but I hope I will be able to do some of the places and people we saw some justice.

Like Starboard, this can only scratch the surface. I wrote that book after living in the South Pacific for just a few months. In this case it was mere weeks. There is absolutely no way you can get your head around a country in that period of time.

It was a fantastic adventure though, and I am looking forward to sharing it with all of you.

My working title is Gators, guns and keeping calm – and, because I now know you need a tagline explaining what the book is about (thanks Starboard publishers!) – an anxious Kiwi’s guide to the United States of America

Though it’s early days yet and in a month’s time I might decide I hate it and go with something entirely different. Any better suggestions much appreciated – feel free to leave them in the comments 🙂

The trip was initially just going to be to Hawaii for Paddy’s 50th birthday (Hawaii Five-O styles) but then I discovered Tom Petty was going to be doing a tour in the states at the time we were going to be over there.

Since Petty to Paddy is like Bowie for me this absolutely had to happen. We worked out Texas was the best timed and placed concert, so I bought us tickets to his show in Dallas.

We thought Hawaii and Dallas would be an interesting enough combo, but then we got talking to travel agent friend and suddenly the trip grew.

So thanks to her the book now covers the following destinations: Hawaii – Waikiki, Maui and Lanaii (the island of 500 cats), San Francisco, Texas – Houston and Dallas and (the place I have wanted to visit forever) New Orleans.

Here’s some sample pictures to whet your appetite (and an entire album of cats for the cat people). I’m hoping if I go for e-book format I might be able to include a few more photos that I could with Starboard, but I’m not entirely sure how that sort of thing works. I’ll have to do my homework!

Lanaii cat sanctuary (an island with 500+ cats! Aka heaven)

Lanaii Cat Sanctuary

 

And a few others
 Leis and champaign Maui‘
Alcatraz
 Texas gun range
Texas drag racing
NASA
Space dinosaur
NASA spacesuit art project
Tom Petty playing Wildflowers in Dallas Texas
Tom Petty played Wildflowers! (The song Paddy named the boat after) You can listen to it here: Tom Petty – Wildflowers, Dallas Texas 2017
Bourbon Street New Orleans
New Orleans street boat
New Orleans Khris Royal
Swamp lady - gator tour
New Orleans gator
Anne Rice's house
Stalking Anne Rice’s house
New Orleans Lafayette cemetary
New Orleans - Lafayette cemetary
New Orleans, Which Way is Starboard Again? Karran Harper Royal
And finally some shameless product placement after lunch with the lovely Karran Harper Royal 

My brain is a basket of mismatched socks

Last weekend I lost it over a pile of socks.

It was a pile of socks I had been staring at for more than a year before finally trying, and failing, to do something with.

I used to have a system. When an odd sock came out of the wash I would put it in a basket in the corner of my room. Periodically I would upend the basket and paw through it, reuniting them with their mates.

I don’t know when the basket became a monster.

One day the multicoloured mess became insurmountable. I had so many socks I couldn’t close my sock draw and the unmatched pile had become a semi-dormant cotton volcano threatening to erupt.

Some of the culprits
Some of the culprits

The odd sock basket came with me when we moved to our new house – and sat there for a year.

It would glare at me malevolently, reminding me that we had been in our new home for 365 days and I still didn’t have my shit sorted.

The sock pile embarrassed me. I would shove it in a corner and forget about it for a while – then another odd sock would turn up.  I would promise myself I would take the basket upstairs, sit in front of the telly and sort the damned thing out – but then I’d be too tired from work, I’d have to cook dinner, there were cat videos on the internet that needed watching…

Yes I realise I was projecting onto the basket. My socky nemesis became a representation of all the things in my life I had been putting off doing. If I could conquer the pile of socks, then everything else would follow.

So that was what I was going to do last weekend. I was finally going to slay the sock monster.

I had a plan. I was going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in preparation for seeing the second film before it finished in the theatres, dump Mount Socksuvius on the floor and sort it out while watching something that made me smile.

It all fell to pieces when I couldn’t make that happen. I missed the film being on television and was annoyed with myself for that, but that was okay because it was on Netflix -I’d checked the night before. Only it wasn’t,  it was only on Netflix US not NZ. I tried TV on demand, nope. Lightbox, nope. It was a 2014 film for chrissakes, it should’t be so hard!

This upset me much, much, more that it should have.

The problem with being a functioning nutbar is that you often have no idea what silly little thing will make that functioning stop.

OCD is like that for me. Most of the time I’m pretty flexible. If situations change on me I can go with the flow and find a way to make things work. Other times I plan things meticulously in my head and if things don’t conform 100% to that plan I get really upset – irrationally so. The worst part of it is, I know it’s irrational. That’s why it’s so frustrating. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel so upset, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to stomp my feet and pull my hair out.

There doesn’t always have to be a reason, but this time I think there was. I was a bit stressed, my circadian rhythms were only just starting to sort themselves out after returning from my first (non-sailing related) OE, I was trying to start a new writing project (more detail on that, and the OE, in the next blog) and it seemed my house and garden were falling down around my ears. I was trying to do all of things and achieving none of the things and now I couldn’t even watch my movie and organise my damned socks.

Chucking them out and starting again wasn’t an option. I have issues letting go. I like my socks – they’re interesting. They have cats and boats and skull and crossbones, stripes and spots and so many shades of orange.

Of course you can match cats and boats or spots and stripes, I do that all the time – and I have done that with as many as I can, but some are different sizes or different types. Some are gym socks, some are socks to wear with boots. It doesn’t always work.

Sock3

One of the upsides of having OCD is that, usually, this sort of thing is fun. I love organising books, sorting out nuts and bolts on the the boat, colour coding buttons – but for this one I have a massive block.

And what did I do with the ones that didn’t match? I didn’t want to put them in the landfill, I don’t think socks are recyclable and odd socks are a pretty stink thing to donate to an op shop.

Paddy, who had been stoically coping with my irrational anger and looming tears, came to the rescue with that one. Car enthusiasts use a lot of scrap material as cleaning rags when they are tinkering around with their automobiles. I could put the ones I wasn’t going to keep in a rag bag and chuck that in the clothing bin. No sock left behind!

As I sat there contemplating the pile in the middle of the floor and I had a sock-related epiphany.

The sockpocalypse (asockalypse?) I was staring at was a perfect metaphor for my own brain. It’s exactly what I imagine it looks like in there – an unruly pile of colours and textures that don’t always always do what they’re told.

A bright, beautiful pile of crazy that’s sometimes impossible to keep under control.

I love it and I hate it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The best socks I have ever owned have all been bought for me by my Mum. They come in packs of three and either all of them match or none of them do. They’re interchangeable so it doesn’t matter if you lose one and I think they’re the answer for me.

The socks, like my brain, are a little bit different and help me do things in my own way.

Don't pair? Don't care!
Don’t pair? Don’t care!

I went out yesterday and bought  Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD so I can watch it any damned time I please.

The giant pile of socks is still there, it’s in the middle of the lounge so I can’t miss it.  I know it’s silly, but I feel like if I can get that under control I’ll be able to handle everything else.

I’ll get the house and garden sorted, I’ll start exercising again and I’ll write – a lot. Watch this space!

Happy pills – the changing of the guard

Disclaimer: I know there will be people reading this who don’t think medication for mental health is a good idea. That is your prerogative. I have tried living both with and without it and have come to an informed decision that I would rather be a functioning human being on cray cray pills than the wretched creature I am without. Please don’t send me articles about side effects and studies saying they will turn me into an evil alien cyborg. Trust me, I have read them. This is not a blueprint for everybody. It’s what works for me. Please respect my decision.

Right, now that that’s out of the way;

I have been on my little blue (sometimes green, sometimes purple and blue) happy pills off and on for 20 years.  I found something that made me able to function and achieve in the world and eventually I stuck with it.

Last year my old faithfuls stopped working.

It didn’t happen suddenly. In fact it took me quite a while to actually work out what was going on.

I’d have little ‘episodes’ completely out of the blue. I would be happily going about my day, then have a screaming anxiety attack. My jaw would start aching, then I would realise I had been clenching my teeth for an entire day. I would feel really low and lethargic for no apparent reason or I would be overcome by unaccountable rage.

It wasn’t until I started experiencing OCD symptoms again that I realised something was really up. It was just the preliminary stuff – having to stop myself from repeatedly checking whether the door was locked or the iron was on, counting, having to repeat certain phrases a certain amount of times or something bad would happen – but i knew if I didn’t do something about it things were only going to get worse.

Even then, it wasn’t until I talked with a friend who had been through something similar, that I worked out what might be going on.

Like everything, there are differing opinions about this, but for some people – my friend included – once you reach a certain age (in my case *cough* mid-30s) the meds can stop working as well. The colloquial term is ‘Prozac poop out’

It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, but I was pretty sure it was happening to me. I was put on fluoxetine when I was 15 years old and there are many different drugs out there now, so I figured it might be time to give something new a try.

My GP wasn’t keen to change my prescription without an expert opinion, so off I went to an incredibly good (and incredibly expensive) head doctor. It’s crazy (‘scuse pun) that you have to spend so much to access decent mental health care in this country and so wrong for people on lower incomes – but that’s another rant for another day.

Brain doc said fluox shouldn’t conk out but agreed that something wasn’t working in my case and thought something different might be better for me in a lot of ways.

Enter sertraline (more commonly known as Zoloft) my new kid on the block.

I won’t lie to you, I was pretty scared. Changing something that has kept you sane for decades is bloody frightening. I remembered what it was like in the black days when I was really bad and I was so afraid of going back there. But what I was doing wasn’t working anymore.

I did the switch over the holidays so it wouldn’t affect my work in any way and I’m glad I did because the first couple of weeks were pretty awful.

I stopped the fluox completely and started with small but increasing doses of sertraline until I got up to what we thought would be a therapeutic level. There was a period of time, when one drug was leaving my system and the other just entering it, that i was definitely undermedicated. I was twitchy as all hell and would start hyperventilating and crying while making dinner for no apparent reason.  I was determined to stick with it though, and eventually it passed.

After the first couple of weeks I did begin to notice a rather surprising side effect. I had energy again.  I guess because I had been on the fluox for so long I hadn’t really noticed that my normal was pretty much a permanent state of drowsiness. It had become worse over the past couple of years but it had always been there.

I was on quite a high dose of fluoxetine for my OCD and one of it’s known side effects is that it comes with extra added sleepy. Considering how permanently wired I was when I started taking it this was a welcome side-effect. It meant I could sleep and make it through life without bouncing off the walls. Some people don’t like taking it because it makes them vacant and foggy in their mind, but I never had that. I was still myself and I could function without screaming.

What it did mean though was that, in the later years of taking it, I didn’t realise that fantasising about going home and going to sleep at 3pm every day was not normal. That sneaking off for a nap at any possible moment at any time of the day wasn’t something that everybody did. If I got home from work before Paddy did I would crawl into bed and try to sneak  some z’s before he got home. He told me later there were a lot of times where he thought ‘where’s Anna? Oh, she’s asleep.’

Over the past few weeks I have felt more awake and alive than I have in a long time. I’ve achieved so many things over the past few weeks that I have been putting off all year and I’m getting back into writing again. It feels amazing.

One of my friends asked if I felt ripped off that I hadn’t done this earlier, but I don’t really. I needed to calm my mind and body down when I was really sick. After years of terrible insomnia it was a blessing. It’s only really been the past few years that it has been a problem, and even then I didn’t realise that it was. I achieved some pretty awesome things during that time. I sailed and scuba dived, I wrote a book. I don’t feel ripped off, but I do feel better than I have in a long time now.

The only other side-effect I have noticed is insomnia, but that is definitely easing up now. And the funny thing is, I didn’t get anxious about not sleeping. Previously not being able to sleep would wind me up like a corkscrew until I had to knock myself out with drugs. I don’t feel like that now. I just read a book  until I eventually conk out, and when I do I stay asleep, which is a new and exciting thing for me.

It’s still early days, but so far I have been having very few anxiety symptoms and I’m not getting the breakout OCD stuff anymore.

I feel awake and alive and happy – so roll on 2017!

PS – shameless product placement.

50% of proceeds for Which Way is Starboard Again? now go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation. Just click here or drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com  

Which Way is Starboard Again? the book