I am not good enough – whatever I do, whatever I achieve I am not good enough. This is the constant soundtrack to my life – the voice that I can never silence. As a child I thought that academic success was the answer – that if I passed enough exams, if I was top [...]
Category: Recovery
PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVERYTHING INCLUDING DEPRESSION
It has become a commonplace – every time a celebrity dies before their time I assume that the cause is suicide as the result of depression. Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, Lucy Birley, Ellie Soutter – a roll call of people who seemed to have it all – money, success, rewarding work, friends and family, but [...]
DEPRESSION – A MAJOR RELAPSE
And so it is Christmas and what have you done? Thank you John Lennon for that lyric which can tip me over the edge at the festive season. Christmas is a time of families and food - neither of which are comfortable topics for me. I have no family and my memories of festivities en [...]
REGRET
Regrets – unlike Frank Sinatra – I have more than a few – or perhaps I only have one – my life and how I have wasted it. It was once said that the Spartans would leave their babies on a mountainside to sort the weak from those who would thrive – it now seems [...]
SOME WOMEN HAVE NEVER HEARD OF EATING DISORDERS!
This week I had to explain bulimia nervosa to a colleague. Yes here was a women who had never really heard of eating disorders – she knew about anorexia – 'people get very thin, yes?' But bulimia was a mystery. What had started as a joke about Princess Diana – became for me a real [...]
WHY I SHOULD NEVER MAKE DECISIONS WHILE LYING IN BED
Every morning I wake up depressed – I lie in bed and contemplate the barren wasteland that is my life. I can go right back to my school days, go through all the wrong decisions I have ever made – in other words every decision I have ever made and all this before I have [...]
Falling Off The Wagon
I knew that there would be days like these – days when all the horror of the past returns and the future seems hopeless. When I slip back into all the destructive patterns and forget all the progress I have made. It is important to remember this is only one day – I am trying [...]
LIVING AUTHENTICALLY
Why do I want to live an authentic life? I am a person of very definite opinions – about almost everything – one of the great sorrows of my life is that people do not behave as I would like! But of course we cannot make people agree with us. It is difficult enough to [...]
WHEN RECOVERY FEELS TOO HARD
When you feel like a python who has eaten a cow – and you're a vegetarian! When you start eating and fear you'll never stop. When you cannot think of anything to eat. When you wander round the supermarket for 10 minutes and walk out with nothing. When the server forgets your order and you're [...]
FINDING MY INNER CHILD
Yes it is all because of your childhood and yes you can get over it. Finding your inner child is a cliché of therapy – every self-help book tells you to give yourself the parenting you missed. But what if like me you feel that you have examined your past at such length that you [...]