As you may be aware if we are friends on Facebook, I am currently in a depressive episode.
This makes this a first for me: publicly talking about my depression while I’m still in the depths of it, dark and cold and frightened and exhausted.
Of Vulnerability
As I talked about in my post about social anxiety, this segment was not originally intended to be a self-help column. It was meant to promote understanding among those who want to better help their loved ones, and to provide encouragement for those in a similar state.
I like to present myself as together, responsible, strong, and reliable. But the truth is that there are times when I am none of those things. The truth is that virtually none of us are all those things all the time.
Depression means that there are times when it’s impossible for me to completely hide my soft underbelly from anyone. This leaves me, at those times, extremely vulnerable—to friends, family, colleagues and strangers alike.
It’s not even necessarily that anyone has to say something “wrong.” The thing that sends me falling further and further into the dark can be well-intentioned, and compassionate. Yet my mind, consumed by shadows whispering of self-loathing and hopelessness, might interpret that as an insult, or a slight—and there’s very little I can do to correct that, in the moment.
Conversations about depression are something of a taboo, or at least a very sensitive topic, in most societies. One of the reasons, in my belief, is because depression by its nature is a difficult thing to talk about for those of us who suffer from it. All it takes is one dismissal we can’t help but take to heart, one careless word from someone whose opinion shouldn’t even matter, and we’re sent careening out of orbit and further into the depths where everything becomes pointless and hopeless.
I was 17 or 18 when I was first able to admit to myself that this thing in my head was called depression. I mentioned it explicitly twice to two people over the next five years. Their responses horrified me and made me ashamed, and I clammed up again, slipping back into only vague references to the hopelessness in the presence of very close friends.
What did they do wrong, these two people in whom I confided?
Honestly? Nothing. On an objective level, there was nothing wrong with what they said.
The first was my father, who expressed relief and agreement with my self-assessment. I brought it up. I told him. He never told me, “Hey, I think you’re depressed.” He only agreed with my own assessment that I had experienced a severe depressive episode.
Bear in mind, this was not a subtle episode I’d experienced. I spent months increasingly unstable, and there was a stretch of a full 2 weeks spent literally hiding under my bed in my dorm room. I missed all my finals and tanked my GPA that semester, only managing to salvage those classes that allowed me to retake the final later. I was lucky to have a parent like my father, I know. Other parents might not have been able to see it for what it was, and blame me for my failure, nitpicking my lifestyle to find causation, and therefore fault in me. This is not a hypothetical: my mother did this. Her shame in me was palpable, and she blamed my eating habits (I’d gained quite a bit of weight during my freshman year of college).
By all accounts, my father’s understanding, his agreement with my assessment, should have been a haven. Instead, I behaved as if something grievously offensive had been said, and tried my hardest to keep our conversations away from that corner for years afterwards.
The second was a roommate of mine in grad school. I announced my “depressive tendencies” to her on our first day of meeting. I don’t know why I decided to do that: perhaps it was my way of turning over a new leaf. This roommate and I did not get along as a general rule, but with regards to this, she did the best that could be expected of anyone in such a situation. She accepted my statement; and weeks later, when I was explaining that I didn’t like exercising, she tried to delicately tell me that it might help my depression.
I hated being told what to do; I still do. It’s sheer arrogance, and it is more often a hinderance than not. This was no exception to that rule. I backtracked, informing her that I wasn’t really that depressive, I was just telling her the worst of myself early on so she wasn’t surprised. She called me weird and shrugged it off. I was left feeling shaken and small.
So, to reiterate: neither of these people did anything wrong. Yet I reacted as if they had. Why? What was I reacting to? What should they have done?
It was nothing about them, actually. It was that the admission aired one of my deepest vulnerabilities, and I was uncomfortable placing such trust in…anyone.
And yet I did nothing to help myself, for a long time.
Why? What was I waiting for?
Nothing. I was in denial, hoping it would go away. And at moments when I was forced to admit it to myself, I suppose I was waiting to be saved. I supposedly had all these friends and family who loved me—they’d save me, right? No. This is why one of my earliest posts was about saving yourself. No one knows your mind. My father tried to help. My roommate tried to help. I turned them both away, because their words weren’t the exact precise ones that I wanted to hear. Well, no one ever came up with that exact, precise combination. I learned to reach out and save myself.
Aside: A Day in the Life of a Depressive Episode
Now, I can talk about these things openly to the world not because I am less vulnerable, or because it will hurt me less when people deny parts of my mind that I know to be true, but because I have created a sense of self-worth and self-trust that I can believe in even when I can’t see it. Even when I feel like the stupidest, most worthless human to ever walk the earth, I can reach out past the noise to the stillness somewhere in me that assures me that, No. No, you know that this is the depression talking. We’ve been here before. It’s okay.
To be clear, it doesn’t feel like it does much. I could absolutely convince myself that this is accomplishing nothing, and a waste of precious energy.
The tiniest thing will still send me careening. Yesterday, I woke up at 6:30 as planned—and then stayed in bed until past 10, when I dragged myself up to start a load of laundry and get food. (Laundry was necessary because I had a flight the next day and no clean clothes.) My roommate and her SO emerged from the other room—they talked at me, and their words slid over me like I was underwater. I gave random responses and waited for it to end. Then I went back to my room and folded up my futon…and immediately lay back down on the floor and continued not to move. I forced myself up once more later to grab food, and periodically went into the kitchen for tea and water (but not nearly as often as I would have in normal circumstances).
It was near evening before I managed to get around to hanging the laundry—pointless anyway, I figured, since it was raining outside—a task I combined with grabbing dinner. All day, I was trying to tell myself that I really, absolutely, totally had to go to the lab while my brain kept up a buzz of, no no no no no people no no no no no they’ll hate me no no no no no.
As I’ve explained before, I don’t fight it. Fighting it, generally, makes it worse. I waited it out.
I waited all day. It was past 7pm that I felt a break in the panic in my mind. I seized it and went to the lab. I did the bare minimum I needed to do—the bare minimum, and I missed one little thing I was supposed to do.
By ordinary standards, this is abysmal. What a way to live, I would have berated myself in the past, pushing me further and further away from recovery.
I went to the lab, and ran a few other errands as well. I did the things I needed to do before I left (for the most part).
When I got home, I saw a text waiting. It was from an author whose book I’d promised to review a month ago, angry at me for having taken longer than promised (the promise was 3 weeks).
I did my best to be measured and calm in my response. I believe I succeeded.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t sleep until I passed out near 5am for a scant hour and 45 minutes, and the issue bugged me until it was resolved this morning.
Of Molehills and Mountains
As you will no doubt have noticed, nothing in my day was that big a deal. It was simply all in my head, looking at every anthill and molehill and seeing mountains the size of the Himalayas.
If you’ve never experienced this, perhaps it sounds trite. Perhaps it sounds like something that I should be able to correct. Perhaps it sounds more like a “way of thinking” than a “medical condition.”
Since I’ve started becoming more open about these aspects of my life, and perhaps even before that, I am often told the same thing: “You’re making life more difficult for yourself.”
The only thing less helpful than that is the dismissal, “You know, there are probably billions of people in the world who have it worse than you do.”
In the past, all either of these statements would do was compound the guilt, the self-loathing, the inability to accept myself. Now, I’ve so far been able to say, even from a depressed state, “Stop it, that’s not helping!” In a non-depressed state, I can usually smile and dismiss it.
The thing is, the molehills may still be molehills, but the lack of energy that makes them feel like mountains is very, very real. My parents used to encourage me to go exercise when they thought I was depressed. I think they thought it would be one of those things where you move, and you break through the energy-sucking thing and break out the other side. But it doesn’t work like that—at least, not for me.
The difference in my energy levels when I’m depressed and when I’m not is impossible to miss, for me.
In the past, exercising in a depressive phase felt like having an anxiety attack, which would trigger an actual anxiety attack, making everything that much worse. Now that I exercise regularly when not having an episode, that sort of occurrence has diminished; instead, I just feel weak and useless and exhausted. I’ve had to learn to forgive myself for making my workouts that much easier when I’m in a depressive episode. Moving is harder. Stamina is almost non-existent. If I lose focus, I just stop. There’s no such thing as a relaxing, easy exercise in a depressive episode. Every second is a struggle.
It can help. But mostly in the long run.
My point is this: the molehills don’t just look like mountains. They feel like mountains.
What Was Your Point in All This?
Depression tends to foster a sense of overwhelming shame of the self in me.
Society as a whole tends to shame depression, and the depressed.
These two tendency feed into each other in a disgusting, destructive fashion that’s not good for anyone. It’s a bad combo.
The only way to break this cycle, to even start making a difference, is to talk about it openly and say, This is how it is. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here.
Depression is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s okay. It can be treated. It can be lived with.
Great, So What are You Doing About That Depression Thing?
The moment I realized that I was in a depressive episode, I told the people around me—in detailed or vaguer terms, depending on their roles in my life—and they were all wonderful.
But I’ve learned that there are perils in relying too much on other people when you desperately need it. I ask for help here and there in little things, but the main things I take care of myself.
I’m stocked up with St John’s Wort tea. I’ve got pills in the mail. I found a psychiatrist that I’ll visit as soon as I have my insurance card. (I’m traveling in the meantime anyway, so it’s not the procrastination that might seem like.)
The bottom line is this: I have this core of self-trust, and an understanding of what the depression does to my mind. I know how past-me characterized myself, and I trust that she is a better judge than present-me. Using that, I can try to look at things a little more objectively, accepting that my current perspective is very skewed towards shame and self-blame. I can lean on that trust of past-me, and slowly, but surely pull myself out.