On Depression

Originally posted 27 JUL 2016 - was my most popular post at the time.

 

I was disgusted with myself when I checked my old blog files, only to discover that I had accidentally deleted a post about mental health shaming that was frankly one of the best posts I've ever written.  //sobs forever//

 

The biggest reason I went looking for it is due to all the violence that has happened this month.  There's a lot of mental health shaming going on surrounding the acts of violence.  The problem is: the vast majority of people with mental illness wouldn't hurt others.  We're too busy trying not to hurt ourselves to even think about others in that way.

 

While trying to recreate it is ridiculous - because I'm clearly not in the same place emotionally today as I was when I originally wrote it in January, the topic is too important to ignore.  I'll start with the quote that had originally 'set off my alarm bells' and we'll see where we go from there.

 

CONTENT WARNING:  This post discusses mental health shaming, depression, suicide, bullying, etc.  Proceed at your own risk.

 

I came across this post on Facebook:

So many people today take anti-depressants. The despair you feel in your soul is not caused by a chemical imbalance. It is because you are so far from God. Turn to Him who loves you. Your soul needs God like flowers need rain. You will never be happy without your Heavenly Father. Do not turn to pills. Turn to prayer for the consolation you seek. In Him alone you will find peace and salvation.

 At best, it is misinformed, at worst, it is mental health shaming.

 

The speaker presumes to know what is in the hearts of those who take anti-depressants.  They presume to know whether or not those individuals actually have an illness or if they are the victim of 'over-prescriptions'.  They refuse to acknowledge that there are some people out there that are wired differently.

 

I don't often talk about the fact that I struggle with depression.  I think partly this is because I've dealt with it since I was about 10 or 11 years old (at least that was the first time I remembered 'never feeling like I'm enough').  The other reason is because I have learned to accept that my depression is no different from my chronic pain condition.  It's always there, everyday and I just have to do the best I can with it.

 

My journey with depression is complex. Because it's not just the depression I fight.  I was bullied in school.  Kids let me know in no uncertain terms that I was the scum on the bottom of the nerds' shoes.  They went so far as to use me to tease other kids or as the example of how not to behave: "Don't do that!  That's sooooo Katie." (No, Katie isn't my real name.)

 

They would pin me on the school lawn throw garden snakes or bugs down my uniform.  They would choke me, not to 'hurt' me, but just to exert their power.  (I was tiny, had they just stood over me, they would have been exerting their power.)

 

I remember the early therapy sessions starting in sixth grade with the school counsellor. One of the things she told me to do was imagine trash cans around me and to 'throw those bad thoughts away.'  Okay, now, so very many years later, I know what she was trying to say.  At that age?  I was surrounded by trash.  I carried the bins around with me everywhere I went.  And all those bad terrible thoughts were carried with me.  All day.  Every day.  There was no escape.  And worse, the rubbish bins were between me and everyone else in society.  So others encountered trash, before they encountered me.

 

What I know now, that I didn't (and couldn't) understand then: they were treating the symptoms rather than the actual problem.  Don't get me wrong.  Bullying is a problem.  But it wasn't the bullying that made me feel worthless.  It wasn't the bullying that made me interpret the 'throw the teasing away' as 'you're surrounded by trash.'  No.  That is depression.  That's how depression works.  It constantly eats away at all that is good about you, until only the ugly rubbish remains.

 

I was put on anti-depressants in the late 90s.  By then, some of the stigma about them had started to change.  The problem for me was they didn't seem to work right.  Oh sure, I was prevented from being 'sad'.  But, they prevented me from feeling 'happy' too.  Basically, they made me so I couldn't feel anything at all. I was told to just wait it out, that maybe it was the wrong dose, or the wrong medicine, that it can take months or years to find the right one.  I didn't feel like I had months or years to wait and figure it out.  Given the choice, I'd rather feel sad all the time than feel nothing at all.

 

I test as an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  One thing about INFJs is that we perceive the world through our feelings.  INFJs are known for having a 'sixth sense'.  This is because we're not only in tune to our own emotions, but the emotions of everyone else around us.  And that can be problematic. When applied in a healthy way, it means that we can be highly empathetic.  In an unhealthy way, it means we take the feelings of others and make them our own.  This is also why you do not want to piss off an INFJ, because all those dirty little secrets that you try to hide from everyone else?  We see them.  We know them.  And while we despise hurting others - because we only end up hurting ourselves - we will use that against you, if you force us to.

 

The point about bringing this into the picture is this:  INFJs depend on our emotions and our ability to sense the emotions of others.  We need that.  It is a vital part of how we function in the world.  I, as an INFJ, was given an anti-depressant.  That medicine 'levelled out my emotions.'  That's how people saw it.  But that's not how it felt.  What it felt like was having one of my senses taken away.  I was suddenly handicapped.  I didn't know how to relate to the world around me, because the one sense that I depended on more than all the others had been killed off.

 

What do you think happens to a person when such a vital sense is taken away?  They become depressed.  My being on anti-depressants made me more depressed.  They cut me off from the world.  They made me feel like I couldn't ever relate to anyone.  In short, they made me suicidal, because that was the only way to end the suffering. 

 

I wish anti-depressants worked for me.  Some aspects of life would be a hell of a lot easier.  When my wrists ache so badly that I hide under my covers and try to force myself to sleep my way through it, I wish I could take a pill and make that feeling go away!

 

I saw a billboard the other day that said: "Depression is the #1 cause of suicide."  I laughed.  Because this is  perpetuating a lie about those who have depression.  The number one lie about those who have depression: We don't want to live any more.  Hogwash.  Of course we want to live!  We're just so sick and tired of living in this pain that nothing and no one can touch.  We're tired of people not really understanding or accepting the battle we face.  We want to live.  We just don't want to live with the daily agony we're forced to face.

 

When I was in high school, one of the anti-suicide campaigns told us that "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."  That's another lie.  Depression (real depression, not the 'oh I'm sad today' BS people use to 'be cool'), is life-long and permanent.  There's no cure.  There are some treatments, but those treatments don't work for everyone.

 

Another lie:  People die from suicide.  No they don't!  People die from whatever method of suicide they used (hanging, gun-shot, driving a car into the river, drugs, whatever).  If that person had depression, then they didn't even die from the method.  They died from their illness:  depression.  If a patient dies from chemotherapy, will the doctors ever say that?  No.  They say they died from cancer.  This is how it is with depression.  At least for everyone who knows anything about it.

 

The deep dark secret for me:  I fully expect to die from depression.  I expect that one day, I will lose my fight with depression. There's nothing any of you can do about it.  No matter how many people tell me I'm needed in their universe, no matter how much love and affection they show me, it does not win against the lies that depression tells me.   Every time I mention this to someone, their reply is always: "Oh, that's sick!"

 

YES!  It is!  That's exactly right!  It's sick.  Which is why depression should be acknowledged as an illness.  I know I have this illness.  I understand it as an illness, why can't you?

 

What I want every single person out there to know:

I FIGHT!

You all have no idea how hard I fight.  When my wrist ache so bad, I hide from my kitchen and my art supplies so that I can avoid sharp objects.  I will eat with spoons instead of forks and knives.  I will hide under my covers, curled up with my pup, because my dog reminds me that 'someone' is absolutely dependent on me for their livelihood.  If I were to die, who would take care of her?  I don't want depression to win. So I find every way to fight I can.

 

And yet.... Whether it happens tomorrow, ten years from now, or when I'm 105 years old, I expect that depression will literally be the death of me.  I'm okay with that.  We all meet our end sometime and someday.  And it actually makes the fight easier in some ways.  Because every morning I wake up, I can say "F--k you, Depression, I made it through another night!"  Every night when I go to bed, I can say "F--k you, Depression, I made it through another day!" And sometimes, that is enough to keep me going.

 

Writing is another way I fight.  Because it gives me another way to enter into my own mysteries.   Since I've written a lot about writing elsewhere, I won't expand on that in this post.

 

Finally, as with any other chronic condition, seeing doctors helps.  Sometimes I just need one or two visits.  (My last visit was 3 visits in a row last year, but it had been about 5 years before that since the visit before.)  I know myself well enough to know when I'm 'in trouble.'  And I take care of myself.  When I'm in over my head, I reach out.  I get the help I need.  Once I can breathe again, stand on my own two feet again, I stop.  Some people criticise me for my approach to depression, but frankly, I approach it like I do my chronic illness.  It's proven successful so far (I'm still here and I don't perform self-harm).  Besides,  you're not in my head, so who are you to decide what works best for me? 

 

The second part of the quote at the top of the page is that "God/faith is the answer/solution to all."

 

I've made no secret to the fact that I'm Catholic.  I practice Ignatian Spirituality in my daily life.  I would even go so far as to say that when I was 16 and actively attempting suicide, that God saved me.  Even saved me before I did any real harm to myself.  I thank God everyday that I can breathe in and out.  I pray and meditate.

 

All that being said: God isn't curing my depression.  That's not a slight on God.  I'm sure that God has some plan for me to have depression that I don't understand.  (Heck, maybe it's to give me the insight to write posts like this.)  But to say "Your depression is because of your distance from God." Is frankly insulting.  It might be true for some people, but it can't be used as a blanket statement about depression.

 

Ignatius talks about consolations and desolations.  Consolations are periods where you feel movement toward God, and Desolations are when you feel movement away from God.  The thing with that is:  even within my depression I have experiences of consolations and desolations.  What I've noticed over the years is that neither of these movements profoundly effect my depression (either making it better or worse).  However, my depression has a massive effect on my movements toward or away from God.  This is because I don't really treat my relationship with God as different from any other relationships.  It takes work.  When my depression is at it's strongest, I pull away from everyone and everything.  God is no exception.

 

Depression is an illness.  Nothing more.  No different from cancer, or MS, or heart defects.  It's time we start talking about Mental Illnesses the same way we do incurable illnesses and end the stigma that surrounds them.

 

So, what can you do to help those with depression? 

(This list might apply to other mental health issues, but I can only speak properly to depression, since that's the one I have.)

• Accept that depression is an illness and it has no cure.
• Accept that we want to live.
• Accept that most of the time, we really are doing the best we can.
• Be willing to 'ride the waves' with us. (We might try to isolate ourselves, especially on days when the depression is really strong, don't let those times drive you away.)
• If you say you will be by our side, then DO IT!  (Too many of us have had people say that to us only to later abandon us.)
• Accept that we might lose our battle with depression (we might die).
• Stay with us within the fact that we might die.  Not in spite of or because of it. (We know the difference).
• Don't expect us to be able to explain our thoughts/feelings when you want us to.
• If we start to share any thoughts/feelings, listen to us.  Don't interrupt until we've finished.
• If we share things you don't understand, ask us questions (If we're sharing, then we don't mind questions.  'Sharing time' is the time to ask!)
• Don't assume we're having a good day just because we're acting positive - for many of us, that's a defensive mechanism.
• Sometimes sitting in the same room with us is enough - it reminds us we're not alone in the world.
• Only hug/touch us with permission.  If you don't know us well, or aren't sure about our mood that day, ask first. (Some people with depression have issues with touch, respect it!)
• Don't judge us for how we choose to deal with our depression.  (IE: don't critique those who take meds for taking them, don't shame those who don't.)  It's a deeper and more personal fight than you could possibly understand.
• Stop us when we need to be stopped - sometimes a knowing glance and a head shake of 'no' is enough. (Seriously, when I was 17, a friend caught me using a plastic knife to 'scratch' at my wrists.  I didn't even know I was doing it.  He knew exactly what I was doing and all he had to do was look at me and shake his head.  He probably saved my life that day.)
• Don't make a big deal of it if you have to stop us.  You don't know all the times we've had to stop ourselves.
• Accept that 'drama' happens with us.  We do what we can, but we can't always control it.  Do not feed into it, make it worse (by reacting in a dramatic way), or judge it.
• Accept that sometimes, we might suddenly change our minds.  Setting up plans to go out on Saturday night might sound like a great idea on Thursday morning, but by Saturday night, it might be terrible for us.
• Know that you can't fight this battle for us, but sometimes we (even those of us that seem the strongest) need to be vulnerable in front of someone else.  Be that person we can be vulnerable around.  
• Don't view or treat us as if we're weak. (We are so used to hiding our illness because of the stigma that being vulnerable takes an incredible amount of strength.)
• Support those who are trying to end the stigma (see an opportunity below)
• Love us.  Don't just tell us you do, show us you do. (I don't mean with chocolates/flowers, I mean with your daily actions and words.)  We might not believe you, we might reject it, we might fight against it, do it anyway.  There might be that one moment on that one day where we do believe it and it is the greatest gift in the world.

 

Given the violence the world is experiencing at the moment, I'm honestly surprised that there aren't more suicides.  (There probably are, but they're not 'important' enough to make the news.)  That said, I might make another post where I talk about how I deal with my depression without meds in my daily life.  We'll see.  My problem with doing all of this writing is my play is sitting there untouched.  That's all right, I know it's percolating in the back of my head.

 

William Dickerson (@WDFilmmaker) is producing a film called No Alternative that confronts many of the stigmas surrounding Mental Health issues.  If you want to help him make his film, it is being funded through crowdfunding.  FROM THE HEART PRODUCTIONS is the company managing this project.  If you want to see a film focused on ending the stigma surrounding Mental Health Issues, click the link and donate today!