The most central part of my journey, and central to every sub-section of this blog series, is self-awareness.
The first step was learning to know when I’m in a depressive phase. Believe it or not, I’d been having depressive phases for the better part of a decade before I learned to recognize them for what they were. It took even longer to be able to identify an episode while I was in it.
I’d have a hard time trying to pin down why, exactly, it was so difficult to reach such a basic point of self-awareness. The most simple part of the very complicated answer is fear. It’s frightening to admit to depression. There’s no cure and a lot of stigma attached to the notion. It affects how certain people view me; some people even act as though it’s a thing I should have been able to do something about. Even if they weren’t speaking to me, a conversation about someone else’s anxiety or depression (even if not mentioned by name) would feel like an accusation directed at me: “Why aren’t you able to control your own mind?” I’d hear. In depressive phases, I get badly anxious; I would become anxious about being called depressed and it became easiest to avert my eyes from the whole idea altogether.
In my case, over time, I eased into the realization. As it grew harder to deny, I became readier to admit to it.
The second step is learning how to help yourself get out of a depressive phase. This is extremely tricky, because by definition, one has very little energy or will to do anything in such a phase. It isn’t always even possible.
A “solution” that was often presented to me was the notion that I should exercise more. This did not work for me. I couldn’t explain how counter-effective this was until one day I stumbled across a video on YouTube. Nycea talks about a variety of issues, including her own experience with PTSD and weight loss. In the video I watched, she explained how she had anxiety and couldn’t “just exercise,” because effects of exercising felt too much like an anxiety attack and would trigger an actual anxiety attack. This, I realized, was exactly the problem I’d been encountering. So exercise was decidedly not the solution.
It did, however, help me to be able to verbalize why this didn’t work. The people who had been convinced that exercise was the answer continued to be convinced that I should be exercising. The ability to explain the problem made it possible for me to ignore this opinion, because I knew that it would not work for me.
In the worst depressive phase I ever had, I kick-started my recovery by finding the energy to call a friend. This was a friend who also suffers from depression, and I felt certain I could trust her to understand what I was going through and help me. I told her that I needed to get to a doctor to get meds but didn’t have the energy or the will, and the world outside was terrifying. She was calm and encouraging and pushed me gently (just enough), reminding me why to care. She was with me the whole time, first on Skype then over text. I had to wait for hours to see the doctor and had to go to 3 different pharmacies to find one that had the correct medication in stock, but I managed. And this friend made all the difference.
If you wonder, “Why not call a friend who could actually come and be there physically?” the answer is because I didn’t trust anyone in reasonable geographical distance with my psyche as much as I trusted this one friend. I judged that it was better to call a person I felt certain I could trust to help me find the strength, than to try to call someone I trusted less in the hope that they wouldn’t say something that would send me crawling back into bed to hide away for another week or three. In this case, I chose correctly. (But that doesn’t mean that if faced with a similar situation again, the same solution would work.)
The third step is learning to identify oncoming depressive phases before they begin, and counteract them. This is far more easily said than done, even more so than either of the first two steps. But having said that, it is my experience so far that it’s easier to counteract a shallow oncoming depressive phase than it is to crawl out of a deep, full-on episode.
For myself, one of the easiest signs that I am on the verge of a depressive phase is when my mind jumps straight to blaming myself for things I can’t help. When I find myself getting caught up in guilt over a memory, I know I need to do something. (This isn’t the only sign, and it isn’t always present when I’m on the verge of a depressive phase, but it is a common one.)
The solutions that help me are rarely the same thing twice. Once, I just started exercising more and a few days later was feeling better. Another time, I set off on a road trip to hike and visit a friend and was feeling better by the time I reached her place. Sometimes I change what I eat or how I eat. Sometimes I increase my social interactions; other times I cut out planned social interaction and make sure I have alone time to read and write and take it easy.
Largely, I find that I have to do a fair amount of soul searching to figure out what I need, or what would help me. My first attempt to recover sometimes makes it worse, and I need to work all the harder on the second attempt. Frequently, the solution that I require is neither the most obvious nor the most convenient.
Once, in the middle of a ski trip, I hit a mild depressive phase. I was feeling no enjoyment or excitement no matter how fast I skied: this state was not only alarming for my mental health, but also for my physical health. Having paid for the ski rentals and the accommodation for a certain number of days, I hated the idea of not skiing. But, in fact, a day or two of not skiing and just sitting inside writing was exactly what I needed. After that day or two, I went back to skiing and was capable of enjoying it again. (Though there was admittedly a numbed quality to the enjoyment, it was coming back.) To this day, I occasionally catch myself wishing I could have spent more of that trip skiing—and I remind myself how badly I needed to not ski at the time, and that had to take precedence.
The fact is, it’s very easy to say that one should be self-aware, but it’s extremely difficult to actually be self-aware. There is no self-help book and no other person who can teach you how to look into your own mind and truly know yourself. It is an excruciating process of trial and error. And that process of trial and error will always be ongoing, because there’s no one cure that fixes it, and no end point in this journey.