Heading back to work.

From the time I was shipped home, till the time I passed my medical and was cleared to return to sea almost 5 months had passed.  

During that time I was seeing my psychologist fortnightly and we had primarily been working on happiness. 

Which, I suppose is a seemingly strange thing to do when you are supposed to be working on being scared.  Her reasoning being that anxiety is either very close to or a direct function of depression; and depression is caused in part by negativity.  We set out to try and re-train my brain at subconscious level.  In the words of the French philosopher Rene Descartes: "I doubt, therefore I think.  I think therefore I am"  

First we started looking at why I was unhappy.  What had changed recently that had made me this way?

It took a fair amount of soul searching to find the last point in time when I could honestly say I was happy for any decent period of time... which turned out to be a fair while earlier.  A changed had occurred both in and around me since then.  It was so subtle that until reflecting on it nearly two years later; I had no idea that it had even taken place.

I had only been doing my job for 18 months prior to getting sick, and I didn't realise how much I had become disjointed from friends and family at home.  I began to feel disconnected from real life.  I was stuck on a ship where I was learning nothing and feeling stuck and unenthusiastic, constantly fighting with the office to get me onto a bigger ship where I could increase my skill base and have some sense of pride in my job, this had ground me down to a point where I stopped enjoying what I was doing.  The friends that I was close with when studying were also working at sea and so; often when I was at home, we would only overlap by less than a week.  I wasn’t really getting much time to interact with people.  The ships I was working on in Auz had only 10 or 15 crew instead of the 1000+ on the cruise ships I trained on which were social by nature and more focused on fun and entertainment.  I was generally working the normal sea watch of 4 hours on 8 hours off and would often be lucky if I conversed with two people in the 8 hours that I was on the gear (which can start to feel a bit like solitary confinement after 36 days).  All of this lead to me seeing less of people and in general making me more isolated.
 

In the first year of being qualified, I purchased myself a horrendously cool car on which I spent a great deal of time (and money) fixing, planning, driving and just generally enjoying.  After a series of expensive problems came up while I was at sea it was decided that I should sell my baby.  At the time it wasn’t much of a bother, in fact it came as somewhat of a relief.  No longer did I have to worry that it would break down while I was away (saving me thousands in paying someone else to fix what I could do myself!).  We brought a sensible car and life went on as normal.  Somewhere along the lines repairing that car and spending so much time playing around with it managed to mask the fact that I was becoming more and more disconnected from friends and family.  So in the 9 months that followed, I became  more depressed both at home and while I was away at sea.  This combined with a long running lack of self esteem lead me to a very unhappy place.  All unbeknownst to me at the time of course. 

So what changed before I went back to sea?  

Betty Benz, the new money sucking automobile

Well for a start I decided I needed a long running project and once again now own another money sucking automobile.  To those of my friends who are reading, I'll save the ramble about how awesome it is (but to those who don’t know me... it’s pretty awesome! And you can read more about it on my other blog: http://kiwiengineer.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/betty-benz.html).  Once again I have something to plan for and spend time thinking about while I’m at sea and tinkering with while I’m at home.  
I started playing rather obscene amounts of golf and catching up with friends again. 
I began trying to structure my leave and holidays so that I had something to look forward to and so that I didn't feel so disconnected from life while I was away
I started exercising regularly again, it helped with squashing the idea of heart problems I.E - if I could prove to myself that I could get my heart rate up and nothing bad happens, then I must be fine.

Aside from all the physical changes I have made to my life, I have also spent a lot of time working on thinking positively, reinforcing my thoughts with positive affirmations and learning to trust in myself.  By far this proved to be the toughest of all the changes I have made.  Because its something that needs constant attention and has to be kept in check.  For me this was the real staring down the barrel stuff that if I didn't man up and do, no amount of exercising or planning for holidays would have made a difference.  
I have over-time developed somewhat of a routine that I try to stick to where I repeat about four or five positive sentences out loud to myself, aimed at convincing me long term that I am :
1) ok
2) allowed to have shit days 
3) a positive member of society, or a team blah blah blah
4) allowed to be good at what I do
5) allowed to be happy

With this new found confidence in myself and skills I had acquired, I felt finally like I was at least to some degree prepared to return to work.