my story

My name is Nicola and I’m thirty two. And there’s my husband Alan and we have two children, four and a half and two and a half.

My experience with depression is I was diagnosed with post-natal depression after my second child when he was about four months old. My post natal depression actually started after my first child, but because I didn’t admit to anybody else the feelings I was having until I really hit rock bottom, I wasn’t officially diagnosed for about two and a half years.

I had … well usually a lot of sadness. I had a lot of anger, a lot of anger towards my two and a half year old. A lot of  resentment.  When I hit rock bottom I had already decided that I didn’t want to parent anymore, I didn’t think I was good at it. It was just something else I’d failed at. I had asked my husband if I could just quit that job and start something else.  I wanted to just walk away.

So for me, depression wasn’t always about the sadness, it was about the anger and the anxiety and the irritability and the lack of fun in life.  I had lost, you know, the want to do anything. So that’s how my depression took form.

When I had reached rock bottom, physically I was tired a lot, although I was sleeping eight or nine hours easily at night. I was just constantly tired, didn’t want to get out of bed in the mornings. Wasn’t interested in food, exercise. In fact I kind of lost a passion for anything really. Nothing excited me, nothing was fun anymore. I didn’t know how to have fun with my children.

my way through

When I got to the GP, I didn’t even know what to say to him. Like, it wasn’t, you know, oh I’m feeling a bit sad and so I just said to my GP, “Something’s not right but I’m not sure what”. And he was really good, he just said, “Well you talk, I’ll ask questions and we’ll see”, you know. Within a couple of minutes he diagnosed me.

Doing the cognitive behaviour course was a turning point for me because I realised that I wasn’t the person that I had become. When I was having the post-natal depression and not seeking help, I’d become a very angry person.

But I could see that there was a way out and that I was going to enjoy my parenting again. I was going to enjoy my kids. I’d lost any enjoyment in them. And I could have fun with them again and have fun in my relationship with my husband. You know, I’d lost all of that. So that was a real turning point I guess, to see that there was an outcome at the end of this.

staying well

When I had depression, I didn’t have any hope, because I thought that that’s just the sort of person that I was. Now that I know that I can make changes, and I can question my thinking and question other people’s judgements on me and be more confident in who I am, I have the hope that I can be the best parent that I can be. That I’m going to be a great parent, and a great person, a great wife for my husband to be around, not the person that I was.

Yeah, my support has played a really key role for me. My biggest support has been my husband and my best friend. And having my family nearby, and I’m very lucky to have both my husband and my family nearby. And so whether it be someone to chat to or someone to come and physically do things like take the kids and look after them, or help with the housework, or help with that. I have had a lot of support from both sides of the family which has really been a big huge help and being able to be honest with them and have them accepting as well has been really good.

I’m a lot happier person.  I used to feel quite worried about a lot. I was very worried about actually, a lot about what other people thought of me and now I’m more confident in who I am. So there’s definitely a positive side to it, because it’s made me have a really good look at myself and a lot of years of quite low self esteem and that. And I’ve been able to challenge all of those things. And it’s still a work in progress but yeah, I think I’ve become a better person out of it, yeah.

The word depression now for me, means a chemical imbalance that can be fixed with some medication, the same as a cold can be fixed with medication. You can fix it with medication and support and talking and counselling and it’s an illness that can be cured.