The Toolkit (Part 2)

The first part of this post is here.

4. 2 particular business cards
a. One is for my psychologist. While she isn't on call, she does encourage me to get in contact if things become hard and the next session is too far away. When I was in the deepest part of depression following my breakdown, she called up out of the blue a couple of days after a session, just wanting to make sure I was alright. That was probably the start of me getting better.
b. The other card is for my massage therapist. I have a regular session every 3 weeks but I can sometimes get an appointment at short notice. She is, besides being fantastic at the massage thing, also good at knowing when I want to chat away for the hour or just have a quiet session. I originally started going to sessions due to an arm & shoulder problem but the therapy has also been helpful for my depression - by relieving physical tension it enables me to feel less tense in other areas too.

5. Credit Card. I have a couple of credit cards. One, in particular, gets most of the use for bill paying and car related purchases. Credit cards have been our biggest budgeting issue as a couple and it's only recently that we have been able to control them, and ourselves. I have another one that I never really meant to get, but did anyway many years ago. It's been used for some big purchases in the past - for a brief time I was keeping a company I worked for afloat with it while waiting on some big cheques to clear. This credit card forms part of my toolkit because it enables me to pick up the phone, call Madame2Bar and say 8 magic words: "Pack the bags honey, we're going to Bali".

6. Photos. I have 3 special photos in my wallet. The main one is of the Princess and the Bomb looking all cute and is my display photo. Another is of the Princess when she was probably not even a year old - it's a period of time that neither Madame2Bar or I remember very well as we were too busy coping with PND. The final photo is now 10 years old and was taken at our engagement party, way back when we were young and pretty. I have never been one to keep happy memories, instead I've allowed myself to often become captured by bad memories or over-wrought 'what ifs'. These 3 photos represent images whose happy memories cannot be re-interpreted.

So that's my toolkit. Not very macho - sort of like depression, really - but it really is useful.

depression