In terms of being able to get out of bed and trying to face the world (or at least some of it) things have been quite positive this week, which is something to be grateful for. Probably the most encouraging thing this week has been that I've managed to get a few tasks done each day and usually felt like I've achieved something at the end of them. Part of the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach to reversing the cycle of depressed thinking/feelings leading to altered behaviour leading to additional depression ad nauseam is to instigate positive behaviours despite the individual not necessarily 'feeling' like carrying them out. Attempting to put this into action has (usually) meant that I've not spent hours sat around the house feeling too terrible to do anything and even more terrible because I'm
not doing something. But a slightly confusing realisation has been surfacing out of it...
The other week I decided to reorganise the kitchen cupboards to make frequently used items more accessible. Then I made a list of all the random half packets of food we have lying around so that I could deliberately cook meals that would use them up. I started slightly obsessing about having all the washing up cleared as soon as possible, and keeping the living room neat and tidy. I went from having not cooked for over a week, and not really eating much unless I was around other people, to first making quiche from scratch then to trying to cook a full roast chicken dinner for the house. I keep tidying up and wiping down the whole kitchen at the end of the day.
Huh?
Out of all the activites that I could fix on to help me re-immerse myself back into the world outside my head, this attempted ultra-organisation isn't what I would have predicted. Especially as a much more typical insight into my general level of organisation would be this:
Not that I'm particularly happy to be this messy, but it is the everyday reality of my life, give or take a few unwashed mugs going mouldy in my bedroom. The desire to cook is less atypical, as normally I do love cooking and often used baking as a reward after handing in uni essays, partly so I could feel that I'd created something a bit more substantial (and tastier!) than an e-mail attatchment. Usually I love eating food as well as creating it. But the bizarre bit right now is that on some level I still don't care about food very much. I don't have my appetite back, just my desire to do something useful with the ingredients in front of me. So how to explain the real concern I've felt this week about finding some way of using up the excess carrots before they go off?
If I'm shutting myself into the kitchen can I at least have this apron? Please?
I'm wondering whether there's an appealing element of gratification in being able to effect order in at least some areas of my life. As in most of my life might feel like it's too much for me to handle, but you mess had better believe that I can clean you right out of this kitchen, do ye hear? And I admit there's a lot of satisfaction in getting to the end of a cleaning or cooking task and being able to see in front of you the difference that you've made, especially when too much focus at the moment is on what's happening in my head.
The bit I'm wary of is that cooking and especially cleaning have fairly transitory effects. Once you've cooked one meal there'll soon be another one on the way. I may manage to keep the kitchen spotless for half an hour or so but living in a house of five busy people makes it a certainty that it wont stay that way for much longer. If my sense of achievement keeps coming from organising and creating order through cleaning it's being built on very shaky ground. As I said before I can be a very messy person, and sharing a house means I can't really control anything that goes on outside of my room. If I'm gaining a vicarious sense of order in my life from the successful organisation of the freezer shelves I'm going to have problems when someone else opens the door. I've got to find a way of taking enjoyment out of what I've done without being wound up by the inevitable demise of most of the things I've worked on. I think I could be particularly prone to this at the moment when I might have spent most of my day on these things.
On the other hand my ever-so-slightly obsessive aproach to cleaning is probably instilling some good habits in me. I'm actually checking for cups before I leave the room, and trying to sweep up the kitchen before I finish. These have to be good practices I think, and they encourage me that I can sometimes stick to a sense of routine. Maybe the best thing to do is to make sure that I've got significant tasks and activities going on outside the house, or at least outside the kitchen, to try and reduce the potential annoyance when a sense of chaos takes over again. We'll see.
