"Someone heals teeth, someone's head": How to tell colleagues about depression and disorders

In Russia, attitudes towards depression, mental disorders and other mental features are changing, but very slowly: many still consider that it is necessary to "just be less lazy", or remind you that "others have more serious problems." This situation affects the work: most of the chiefs are much more relaxed about the news of a broken leg than talking about a depressive episode. We talked with several men and women with different diagnoses about whether they talked about their difficulties at work - and how people felt about it.

My diagnosis is depression and adjustment disorder, but it was not easy to find out. It began more than six months ago: I stopped responding to emotions, to understand and accept them. I had a brilliant career, I studied very well, I received a second degree, everything was great in my family, a lot of friends, parties, travels - and all that weekend I was crying in my pillow. Objectively, everything in life was good, and therefore I ignored these states for a long time. Just came over, do even more: this is how sports and foreign language classes were added to work and study. Then came the physical consequences - transient ischemic attacks. Half of the body is numb, vision and speech are lost, and in my head there are only thoughts about death. At this stage, I did not yet know that the reason for this was depression, but I was so scared that I decided to quit. Several months passed examinations by neurologists (a ridiculously sad experience - one doctor suggested that it was an evil eye, and another advised that she become pregnant). In December, I finally got to a psychiatrist.

Now I can not work in the office, I can not communicate with people for a long time, I still have difficulty sleeping, and the attacks can be repeated several times a month. Of course, it interferes with the work - it is almost there. I did not tell the former employer about depression, only about somatic manifestations. It was difficult to make a decision about dismissal, but it was easy to talk - I was so afraid to die that I finally stopped thinking about work as a priority in life.

Now I speak about my condition only to my friends. Even some family members do not know. Usually the question "Why did you quit?" I answer: "For personal reasons." If this is not enough, add: "Due to health problems." I hide the truth, so that people do not consider me an inferior, pampered, hiding behind the diagnosis, in order not to do something.

I was diagnosed with type II bipolar affective disorder (BAR II) about four months ago. I then was in a depressive stage. What did I feel? Emptiness. Life has lost all meaning, the food has become cardboard in taste, and even the most favorite activities did not bring pleasure. The long-awaited vacation in Europe did not save me either: I returned even more exhausted. I wanted to lie in bed all day and cry, I went to work through force, and that was not always the case.

BAR is a disease that directly affects the ability to work. You constantly balance between two stages: hypomania and depressive. In hypomania, you are full of inspiration and desire to live, you can sleep for four hours every day and not feel tired, new ideas are born. At this time you are a hundred times more productive than others. Therefore, bipolar patients are often tempted to refuse treatment in order to preserve the benefits of the hypomaniacal phase. But sooner or later, such a hyperactivity will have to be paid for by a deep black depression.

When I was diagnosed, the first thing I wrote was Twitter. Many colleagues read me, so I immediately brought them up to date. The guys from the department reacted with understanding, helped in the work, while I was adapting to the pills, and one even admitted that he also has bipolar disorder. It was easy to open: the diagnosis explained my behavior.

I did not directly tell the management about the disease, but I did not hide either. Before that, a girl with such a diagnosis worked for us, and she quit with scandal. I didn’t want to expect the same from me. Sometimes it's easier to say that you have a cold than to explain that you cannot force yourself to get out of bed. With me, this was only once: at the very beginning of the depression I told my colleagues that I was “unwell” and would work a week from home. When you are a person with a mental disorder or feature, your feelings and emotions will be blamed on him. This is a very clumsy perception: bipolar stations can experience ordinary mood swings, like all humans.

A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. This was expressed in a constant sense of panic. I woke up, and my first thoughts were: "I am shit, I do not have time, life is terrible, I want to die." This is not that much interfered, but after I came to the therapist, it became clear to me for the first time that you could not live in hell. The anxiety returned only after a year: it was so bad that I could not eat from the devastating feelings of guilt.

Now I lead a small team, and this experience has become a serious stress trigger. I began to drink in order to get rid of thoughts that were swarming in my head. After drinking one and a half liters of moonshine alone in a very short time (this had never happened in my life), I realized that the situation had not gone away. Now I take light sedative pills and go to yoga - it helps a lot. I do not hide from colleagues that it is difficult for me, but I do not dedicate them in detail. The manager is expected not to complain and cry, but to make sure decisions, help and support. I do not tell my subordinates how I weep for half a day and drink two bottles of wine on the weekend, because this is my difficulty, not theirs - why should they know this.

It seems to me that it is especially difficult to discuss such things with older people. I often hear from older relatives something like: “Well, my experiences will be stronger than yours,” I would like to refute them, but I just don’t know what to say here. If I say that I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and I regularly sincerely want to die, my relatives are unlikely to communicate with me normally after that. Probably, if someone from colleagues says that he has a craze right now, and then there will be a recession, I will treat this as normal. I would like to discuss such things become the norm.

I have bipolar disorder. Mood fluctuates much more than that of others, and in general, feelings are much stronger. What you feel is real, but the intensity is twisted. For example, when I watch a movie, if I like it very much, I want to climb inside the screen.

I have BAR II, which is softer than BAR I, to put it simply. I am dominated by depression, I have very large efforts are familiar to other actions. Often you just want to stop existing, to stop hating yourself, to constantly feel anxiety, apathy, hate yourself for lying in bed instead of doing what you really wanted. The diagnosis itself does not interfere - on the contrary, it explains my condition and life, helps to accept fluctuations. I work all my life in the media. I was lucky, I was always in the team of open people who mainly treated my state with understanding.

If a bipolar gets to work, then he makes it with great energy and dedication. Ten years ago I was a photographer, then there were presidential elections, I went to an incredible number of events for a short period of time. But when the depressive phase begins, it becomes hard to work. I'm a straightforward person, it's hard for me to hide something. When I got a job at RBC, I said at the first interview that I had a BAR. Then I switched from one medicine to another, for a long time I had a free schedule. Then the boss got tired of it, and he asked me to work in a more strict regime.

Now I have selected a treatment regimen in which I feel comfortable and stable. I have to stick to it, take care of myself, not take on too much work. The last is the hardest. I am a journal editor, and the tasks are unevenly distributed: at first there are few of them, but before release the load increases greatly, and I get tired so that sometimes after it I just can't get out of bed. An unstable lifestyle can exacerbate fluctuations. My task is to stabilize life. The issuing editor of the magazine has a similar task - to learn and teach colleagues to hand over material more evenly. In this sense, my professional tasks and tasks as a patient are the same.

Five years ago, I started going to a psychoanalyst and said this only to the immediate superior. I did this only because I had to leave work at 6:30 every Friday, and the rest often sat much longer. I could return after the meeting if work required it. At first I said that I just had a doctor, then I told some of my colleagues that this was a psychoanalyst.

It was 2013, and then it was much less accepted than it is now, and it was awkward for me. But my boss reacted calmly: if on Friday someone tried to pile things on me, she could say, say, contact me, Ira leaves. Now I can calmly discuss psychological difficulties with colleagues. Someone heals teeth, someone head. The diagnosis itself - bipolar disorder - was given to me only in May of last year. Before that, I was just trying to understand what was happening to me. It became so hard - I was sobbing in the toilet, I could not pull myself together and keep my face - that I went from a psychoanalyst to a psychiatrist. Then I realized that what “storms” me and throws from one mood to another, was all my life, but with different frequency. Now these periods are longer, the mood does not change during the day.

This sometimes gets in the way of work, but I try to concentrate on it so much that I distract from features. It’s good that now I don’t have permanent employment: if I realize that it’s difficult for me to build communication with my colleagues because of personal difficulties or aggravation, I’d better give up taking pictures and let me relax. I will not talk about the diagnosis of my grandmother or grandfather. Only a year ago I told my brother that I had been going to a psychoanalyst for a long time.

The first doctor I went to said that I had endogenous depression caused solely by chemical processes in the brain. Another said that I have bipolar disorder. There are different situations: when I get very tired, it is unclear why, when I just need to isolate myself from everyone and sleep for two days in a row. It is clear that this is not the type of behavior that people accept and understand. Until I found a good doctor, there were difficulties.

A year ago it was very bad, I felt that I was not realized in work. I did not want anything, there was no strength. I was engaged in social networks, it was not necessary to go to the office, I constantly stayed at home, didn’t get out of bed for most of the day and tried to sleep. I thought I needed a shake - I quit and immediately found a new job.

So it turned out that this first month was the last. The difficulties began almost immediately. I had to get up early and come to the office on time - during such periods it is difficult for me to get together in the morning, to convince myself that all this is worth the effort. I was twenty minutes late for half an hour. After a while, the boss called me and said that this would not work. One day, when I was especially ill, I myself wrote to him that I could not come today, because I have a depressive episode, I am not able to do anything. The next day came to work, we talked. He said that it was worth talking about such features right away. I said it was probably worth it. On the other hand, you do not want to immediately confess, and in general you have the right to keep everything secret.

The chief asked that such situations not recur, but this, of course, happened again. The next day I came to him and said that, probably, I really could not work in this place, which is very bad for me and this is not what I expected. On the last working day I did not come again. I did not care. We didn’t break up very well, even though I understood that it would be so. The boss brought me to the door, counted out the money, deducted the amount from them, opened the door and said: "You are welcome". It baffled me, I even forgot that I was going to not allow myself to be humiliated. Money is fair, but they kicked me out in disgrace.

I have a diagnosis of three and a half months, two of which I denied. I have a bipolar affective disorder of the second type, and we are now learning to live again - together. I am a documentary filmmaker, reality is my profession. All my life I have been looking into the world and what is happening around, and the last few months - only in myself. They diagnosed me in a state of clinical depression, when I forgot how to read and write: words and thoughts broke and fell apart, the letters showered with meaningless signs. I couldn’t work, and if you consider that nothing exists in my life except for work, I logically concluded that this was the end of my life. On this joyless note, I wrote a huge post on Facebook - such a coming out. Friends and colleagues sent me to a psychiatrist with threats and persuasion, I was picked up a treatment regimen, and I gradually return to the world.

Now I have a "hospital" - such as it can be in a non-state theater. I only do what I can, I don’t get any deadlines and wait for me to remission. I was very lucky with my superiors: the director realized that something was wrong and was very supportive. Do not be such a reaction, I would really believe that it is irretrievably lost to work. True, not everything was even. One day, someone from those with whom I worked said: “Enough to speculate with the disease,” and I sobbed for three days. One of my colleagues is still sure that I thought of everything, but such people are still a minority.

As soon as I said that I could not cope and I had difficulties, I was surrounded by care and affection. One poet meets me with the phrase "God Save the Bipolar", and the German director, with whom our joint project was moved, wrote that he is suspicious of those who live in Russia and at the same time are mentally stable. In general, you will part with someone forever and no joint work will be possible (and it hurts), but for someone you will remain the same person with your diagnosis as before.

I did not go to a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, but I have difficulties. This became clear a couple of years ago, when my condition began to affect my work: for example, I could not wake up in the morning, because I simply did not understand why I need this, what I would do. The work became uninteresting for me and the audience; it was not clear what I spend my life on, how I will cope with it.

I wrote about this half-closed post, for example, my colleagues could not see it. Not because I was worried that this could somehow affect the attitude of the authorities, but rather because I simply did not want to tell everyone about it. In addition, before this similar post was written by my friend, who returned from the war. I was ashamed: I did not go to war, after all.

When friends in the comments began to ask when it all started, the only thing that came to mind was the death of a loved one two years before. My grandfather died, it was very hard, because we were very close. It burned down in three months. First he broke his arm, then he got worse, and then we came to him in the beginning of May to the dacha, opened the door, and the grandfather was lying dead in the bathroom. Mom was sure that he could be saved: "Let's take it to the bed, let's get an ambulance soon." I wore his body, it was short for me. I do not know if I survived this situation or not. There was a period when I dreamed about it, when I thought about it a lot, then only pleasant memories remained. I have a feeling that I have come to terms with the loss, but, for example, I cannot delete his phone number.

Now I often can not come to work on time. It seems to me that when you can not wake up, it means that you do not want to go there. But there is a nuance - I like my work. When I feel fine and have an interesting topic, I have four hours to sleep. But yes, sometimes I perform bad duties, although no one has made complaints to me. Still often I can not leave work. Sometimes I just sit and not go home. This is probably not very - there must be some other life?

Two years ago, when I wrote a post, I did not turn to experts. First, there was no free money. Secondly, I spoke out. Many people wrote to me, gave advice. No one said that "others are much worse." Do I see a situation in which I am still willing to see a doctor? Now, in general, yes. If I continue to cover, then I will talk with a psychologist. It seems that now I will have something to say.

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