Depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide will be discussed here.
First things first, here's my obligatory meme so I can really show off my link on social media:
As we've entered into a near year and we're all another year older, I can say that I've had depression for nearly twenty years now. That's a long fucking time!
Most people think of depression as this permanent fixture, as though you are always sad. This isn't true. Despite my long history of depression, there's been moments where I've experienced happiness. Hell, this blog started with showing me as a very happy, new, thin athlete. My year after I had bariatric surgery was pretty nice. There's been other times when I've felt pretty happy as well. My wedding day. The birth of my kids. The first days when I got home from war. But eventually, depression (and its best bud, anxiety) have always come back.
I've seen therapists and they didn't have a lot of help for me. I saw three therapists between 2015 and 2018, and I ended my sessions with them after each one asked me up front, "What are you hoping to get out of this?" Along with other things they told me, I understood that it was psychologist speak for, "I don't know how to help you." Some would put me on pills, and they would help for a while, but eventually, I'd be back at square one. I began to think I was broken. Three fucking therapists (as well as the VA nurse that I saw back in 2011) couldn't get me to be less depressed and anxious. I am just stuck living with extreme sadness and fear until the day I fucking die.
And that's when you start going to dark places. "What's the point of going on if I have to spend the next 40-60 years of my life feeling like absolute shit?" is a question I've asked myself more than once.
Mental health advocates have long been telling people that depression is something that's in your head. "You have a chemical imbalance in your brain", is what they like to tell you. A lack of serotonin or dopamine is why you feel this way. So when the pills eventually stop working, it makes you feel like shit to know that your brain is fucked up. You go back to feeling broken. Nobody can fix you.
And it's all bullshit.
Almost a year ago I came across a video in my Facebook feed that was interviewing a man named Johann Hari (shown below). The first thing he says is, "You're not crazy. Your pain is not a pathology. Your pain makes sense. We are depressed and anxious in this culture for perfectly good reasons." That is some very comforting words to hear when you've been told for years that you're in pain because you're broken.
After seeing that, I immediately downloaded Johann Hari's book, Lost Connections to my Kindle. I read the entire book in two days. The basic premise of the book is, You're not depressed because you have a broken brain. You're depressed because your life sucks, and it's (probably) not your fault.
After being told for years that I'm depressed because my brain is fucked up, being told the obvious-that my life sucks and I have perfectly good reasons for being depressed and anxious-felt like a breath of fresh air.
Johann Hari's book lists nine reasons why people in our society face depression and anxiety, and I plan on doing a separate post on each one of them, as well as a tenth that I'm adding in. Here's the list of those:
1. Disconnection from Meaningful Work
2. Disconnection from Other People
3. Disconnecting from Meaningful Values
4. Disconnection from Childhood Trauma
5. Disconnection from Status and Respect
6. Disconnection from the Natural World
7. Disconnection from a Hopeful or Secure Future
8. Genetic issues
9. Long Term Effects of Depression on the Brain
10. Poor Nutrition
The last one is the one I added, and I'll probably be discussing that first.
The biggest takeaway from the book is that there aren't any easy solutions for depression. For decades, self help gurus have made a fortune selling books with easy answers, because those answers were always solutions done individually. But they typically don't work, because the real solutions to depression are collective ones. Meaning, we as society need to make major changes. Major changes, that are going to have to be sold to the populace at large before they can be made.
The past three months have been really hard for me. Depression does come in waves, and for the last three months, it's been a rough one.
In my past, depression was easy to manage because I only had to take care of me. I'd wake up whenever I felt like it (I worked nights, so I didn't have to worry about sleeping past my work time), would get drunk and/or high, and spend my whole day playing video games. All the drugs and distraction kept me in a pleasant state of denial about my mental health.
The past few months, I fell back into those habits. I drank to excess almost nightly. I started smoking weed again. And I would spend my night hours playing old Xbox 360 video games. Problem with that now, is I'm a husband and a parent. I can't just wake up whenever and do nothing. I have adult shit. I have to cook food, clean, and spend time with my kids. I got tired from the depression and hangovers, and still had to do all that adult stuff (as well as my job). I would feel good when I was seven sheets to the wind and capturing my thousandth Man of War on Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, but being completely drained the next day only made my depression worse.
Depression literally sucks. It sucks the life out of you, and it makes being a responsible adult insanely hard.
Fortunately, I feel like my spell of depression finally broke a few days ago. It's too early to tell if I'm out of the woods (for now, anyway), but at the moment, it feels like coming up for air after nearly drowning.
Lost Connections is available at Amazon or your local library.
No comments:
Post a Comment