The Depression Challenge

I started this blog yesterday  but had to stop due to the deep black hole I currently reside in.  It’s that place where anyone who suffers from depression can find themselves in, everything seems futile & it’s nigh impossible to find it hard to give a damn about anything. As a Counsellor and an obsessive self analyst I know Why I’m here, and this is what makes this episode worse.

My latest descent into the depths of despair is purely down to external factors; I’m terrified of today’s launch  of Workfare for the chronically sick & disabled; as I was recently placed (after yet another argument with the DWP) into the Support Group, I am theoretically at least, aware that for the moment I’m safe; however I have family and friends who aren’t.

At any time in the next few days they could receive yet another dreaded brown envelope, this time summoning them to an interview at a JobCentre to meet their ‘Personal Advisor’; a low grade civil servant totally inable to make any informed ‘decision’ about Ill health/disability.  From there, they could realistically be bullied into yet another assessment; only this time it willcarried out by an employee of yet another Publicly funded company, but still with absolutely NO idea of their Health needs. The Assessment claims to ‘help’ ESA claimants into work, but the recent Workfare experience should tell us all we need to know about people forced, by threat of removing benefit, into stacking shelves!

I’ve written this because usually, writing is an effective tool which helps me manage my depression; generally I find the process of writing cathartic, an opportunity to offload my angst, but for this latest bout it’s not working. After much soul searching I’ve come to the conclusion, this episode of depression is a result of genuine terror; I’m terrified, I have that gnawing feeling right in the pit on my gut, I feel sick and my black clouds are secured on the top of my head.

For me its not enough to try and relax/attempt to focus on how this won’t affect me, I just can’t. I firmly believe the countless inhuman Policies that threaten our very right to any sort of regular life, have become enacted, because that too many people have done just that. On every other occasion  when a new element of the draconian Welfare Reform Act has began, I’ve rallied; but this time I find myself felling at a loss at what to do.

So I’ve done the only thing I can at the minute, I’ve added my voice, and my fears to the ever growing awareness in Cyber Space; in the hope that we are heard in the real world, and in the hope that at if only at a sub-concious level, the process helps deflate my personal black clouds and helps me rise back out of the pit.