This article barely scratches the topic of depression and I may complete this article in more depth in the near future. Dealing with depression was a requested topic for Mouthshut.com.
If you are feeling suicidal, please call your doctor, call a crisis line, or drive yourself to the hospital and tell them you are thinking of hurting yourself and get the help you need. You are worth it.
Sad. Hopeless. Sleepy. Apathetic. Leaving work in the middle of the day to come home and drink. Fidgety. Isolated. Not answering my phone. Going to sleep at 6 PM and getting up at 4 am to sit and drink coffee and watch the tide. Feeling worthless. Really, really worthless.
When you hear enough of them, your own story can seem so normal and boring – abusive alcoholic stepfather, a mom who chose to work swing-shift so she didn’t have to be home with her family in the evening, absent biological father, incestual abuse, paranoid schizophrenic grandmother. It just made me want to scream “WHO HASN’T BEEN ABUSED? WHO HASN’T GONE THROUGH SOME SORT OF CRAP IN THEIR LIFE?” And you know what? It’s all okay, as long as you can healthily and happily manage your life. But when your mind is interfering with your ability to live your life, it’s time for a reckoning.
In 1992, after a string of incidents(new job, new city, emergency gall bladder surgery in August 1991 with a 6-day hospital stay, breaking my leg in December, and then a horrific breakup with a boyfriend who I had been friends with for 4 years before we dated and crashed in April), I was diagnosed as being clinically depressed. I hadn’t the urge to kill myself, I didn’t have the energy, I just wanted to lay in my bed and sleep and sleep and sleep.
Well, not being independently wealthy, I couldn’t afford to do that. And I was getting really tired of my friends and family and neighbors wondering about me not being “how you used to be”. I am generally a very energetic, engaging extroverted person and I could see how the look in their eyes was different when they looked at me.
I realized how truly worried people were when they started kind of keeping watch or a vigil over me – for a few weeks, it seemed like I didn’t fall asleep without someone on my couch. I appreciated their concern, but the friends I wanted with me – I couldn’t find….so, I called a doctor and went to a counselor and began taking anti-depressants in conjunction with therapy.
I was told that many stresses upon a body and mind in a short span of time can cause the synapses in our brains to stop conducting the necessary level of serotonin and depression may follow. And once a person doesn’t feel good, starts getting depressed, usually the activity level becomes less. That causes our bodies to not secrete endorphins, which also make us feel good. It’s a vicious circle.
Within a few short months, I felt so “good” from the anti-depressants; I quit working for Washington State government after 6 years and moved to Dallas, Texas – sight unseen – to work with one of my former bosses. This job kept me busy for 6 months, travelling back and forth from Dallas to Chicago.
WHAT WAS I THINKING? I wasn’t…and if it is hard to fight depression when friends and family and the comforts of home surround you, it is even harder to stay sane when you are in a foreign land.
And so, I headed home to Washington State and started working with the Northwest AIDS Foundation. While I worked there, I was surrounded by loving co-workers, several of whom were social workers, and as I am a person who learns through osmosis and the experiences and knowledge of others, my life started to change. I continued going to therapy, not to have my head shrunk, but to gather tools to help me cope, to teach me how to deal with things and people and life differently than I had in the past. I learned that depression is simply anger turned inwards – and yet it isn’t simple, because it can cause a chemical deficit in your body, which affects your mind, which is part of your body – it’s a circle, see?
I learned that it isn’t my circumstance, it is my response to the circumstance. I learned that I am responsible for my own emotions. I learned that if I didn’t like how something was, I could either change it or remove it from my life. I learned that I was all I needed. I learned that there is so much to learn.
I look at all the bad things that happened to me in such a short amount of time as a blessing. I needed a wake-up call. When you have been depressed and everything looks bleak and dark and you know what it is like to peer over the abyss into the other side, you change as a person.
If you have the inclination whether it is genetic or circumstantial toward depression, it is not an easy fight. It is work. It is WORK every day to make the decision to act differently and think differently and fight the demons of depression.
Some suggestions if you are dealing with depression:
Call 9-1-1, a doctor, a nurse, a therapist, a counselor, a crisis line – seek help. Keep looking until you find a counselor you click with. Keep talking until whatever happened to you no longer has any ability to cause pain in your life.
Find an anti-depressant that works with your body chemistry, and use it to kick-start your road to feeling better.
Find tools to help you deal more effectively with your life.
Keep a journal.
Exercise.
Keep your eating and sleeping and working on a regular schedule.
Break insurmountable tasks down into small tasks.
And I live in Tulsa now, with the friend I was looking for in 1992, and I still have bad days. I still have days where I truly do not think I deserve to exist on this earth. But I don’t want to go back to how things were, and part of remembering the days upon weeks upon months of bad days - remembering how things were - helps me gather the energy to work the tools I know I possess. Sometimes, just “gathering yourself up” isn’t enough – sometimes medication is necessary to get the serotonin flowing in your brain. Don’t be embarrassed or ashamed about taking it – you wouldn’t be embarrassed to have a cast on your foot if it was broken, would you?
Reach for help – keep reaching…….
