Depression Update

In a continuing examination of my mental illness, I periodically try to make sense of my experience. It's my goal to share with others who might be experiencing similar things in order to support and comfort them. I am not interested in drawing attention to myself, except as just one of a million stories of mental illness. 

In case you need to catch up, here's my life in brief: I have had severe depression since my teens, if not before. It manifested in rage and anger, so I seemed to many who dealt with me to be an arrogant, snotty, angry, rebellious teenager. Mostly I just hated myself. Back in the 70s, in a small midwestern town, getting mental health care was fraught with stigma, and I wouldn't have known to ask for it anyway. In the 80s, I got married and started working. I was a mess inside, but trying super hard to hold it together on the outside, not always successfully. In 1989 I had my first child. 

Motherhood is hard enough, but so much harder when you have a mental illness. I had no time to focus on myself and my needs. Two  more children came along. The thing that saved me during this time was breastfeeding. As odd as that may sound, the hormones released when you nurse a child are calming and create feelings of well-being. I am convinced that if I had not breastfed my kids, I would have probably gone to a mental hospital. I was not at my best during those years, but the hormones helped. 

However, that didn't last forever. I reverted to my tactics of presenting a good mask to the world, while inside I was dying. Rage and anger were frequent. 

Finally, I reached a breaking point. I was in a deep, dark hole that only got deeper and darker. I was never going to get out. My husband, who was one of the few people who knew the true me and who never wavered in his support, suggested I seek out help and medication. (Until this point, I had a strong bias against the medical world, and a very strong bias against meds.) I started antidepressants and therapy. It was a rocky road, but it helped. 

That was about 15 years ago. Since then, I have been on meds continuously, went through years of therapy with a very kind and wonderful counselsor. I have an excellent psych nurse who has monitored me and guided me through this medical maze. If you are so inclined, you can read about those years in other posts on this blog. 

So here I am now. My psych nurse last year informed me that I am her most stable patient and she only needed to see me every six months. At one appointment she brought up the idea of potentially weaning off meds to see how I would do. I immediately squelched that idea. The mere thought returning to my darkness scared the shit out of me. 

Since then, I have taken a good hard look at where I am. In these 15 years, I have learned a lot about self care. I have learned where my limitations are and when I need to step off the runaway train of modern life to take a breath. I have supplemented with nutrients that help support my mental health and observed how much I need constant outdoor exposure to be well. In short, I have been able to put my own needs first. This is a hard thing. 

I realized recently that I have made friends with my depression. Sounds weird, but it's true. Depression has given me a lot of personal insight and growth. It's helped me have compassion for others, to have compassion for myself. It's strengthened me like nothing else. I have had to learn to accept things about myself. It's connected me with others. And, although I'm still working on this, depression has taught me how to strip off the mask and be authentic with everyone, especially myself. 

So I am ready for this step I'm now taking. With my psych nurse's blessing, I am weaning off my meds. It's scary to say. It's only been a few days. I don't know what lies ahead. It may not work for me. I have often said during these 15 years that if I have to take meds forever, I will. And I stand by that. However, in taking care of myself, I have a sense that now is the time for me to work with my mental illness in a different way, a way of not being in crisis, but in cohesion. I have no doubt that there will be ups and downs. I am stronger now and I hope I will be able to weather the downs. I have better support now, and the stigma in society is less than it was 40 years ago. 

I am not suggesting that anyone else should try this. I can't speak for others. And if you want to try, make sure to do it with medical supervision. I am not going cold turkey. I am going extremely slowly, so it may take more than a year before I am off entirely. (I was on such a high dose that I can cut by tens or twenties of milligrams and still be on a super high dose, so it will take time.) 

Why, you might ask, would someone do this when they are finally stable and in a really good place? My mental illness is stable, but my physical health is facing some risks that I believe might be exacerbated by my long-term, high dose of antidepressants. I feel like I am in a place now where taking care of my physical health needs to balance with my mental health. And I am ready to try to do that. I have spent nearly my whole life dealing with my mental state--either trying to hide it, live through it, or treat it--that my physical wellness has taken a back seat. That's not good for me any more than living with an untreated mental illness. So, before I get to some sort of physical crisis, I am going to see if I can find a balance to my physical and mental health so that I can live into old age with good health. 

I will continue to share my story, if only to honestly portray what one person's experience is like, if it helps someone else. 

The Dark Hole of My Depression

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. As someone with a mental illness, I feel qualified to talk about this subject. But, as I often do, let me start with a couple of disclaimers: First, everyone's mental illness or mental health is very personal and will likely be different from one person to another. When I talk about my mental illness, I don't pretend to speak for anyone but myself. Second, I prefer to use the phrase "living with depression" rather than "suffering" or "struggling with depression." While any illness is a struggle a lot of the time, I think life in general is a struggle a lot of the time. So why pretend that my struggle is somehow more than someone else's struggle. We're all trying to live as best we can, aren't we? Maybe I'm just nitpicking at semantics, but that's where I'm at.

Depression is a hard disease to describe to others, because all of us feel depressed at times, right? But for me, depression isn't like that feeling all the time--sad about specific things. It's more like being unglued from the rest of the world. I've described it before as living in a deep, dark hole, knowing that everyone else is out there in the light and you have no way to get out of the hole. I spent most of my life clawing to get out of that hole, scrambling, screaming, leaping, but to no avail. You cannot simply paste on a smile, do some self talk about how good you have it, and magically rise from the hole.

I'm sure it is different for everyone, but for me, medications and counseling were the first step out of the dark. But only the first step. They allowed me to function in my daily life, but did not erase my disease or the hole. They just provided a foothold on the wall.

People who meet me for the first time are surprised when they eventually learn I live with depression, because I seem happy most of the time. And I am happy. Happy is not the opposite of the disease known as depression. I have much that makes me happy--a great family, a supportive and patient husband, kids that do me proud, talents that I enjoy and share, three silly dogs, a miraculous natural world.

Depression is that invisible. Truly. You don't see the hole where I live. When you see me, you see a person actively engaged in the world around her. The hole is my reality, but not yours. If you know me, you know about the hole because I talk about it, but you never see it or experience it. It is my own personal hell. It's not a choice. It's a part of me that is permanently attached.

It took me a long time to realize this as a permanent state. It's hard to accept. I spent so much of my life wanting it to go away--and I think that might be a reason for the high rate of suicides in mentally ill people, the wish for it to go away. There is no other way to escape it. There is only living with it.

I have found living with depression to be worth it. While painful, it's not impossible. And this is a message I try to share as often as possible.

After all these years of treating my depression with an ever-increasing arsenal of knowledge about the disease and about myself, I don't feel like I am living in the dark hole anymore. It's still there, calling for me all the time, though. It tells me that everything is useless. All my efforts don't amount to anything being better. There is no point. The darkness of the world is so immense and powerful that no matter what I do, the world is doomed. Not only that, I have personally contributed to the problems, so I am to blame--I am guilty of hatred, waste, pollution, fear, apathy, and pride. I might as well jump back into the hole, wallow there at the bottom, and waste away.

I'm nothing if not a rebel, so I resist the call. Do you know how much energy that takes? I fight it every minute of the day. Even on meds, even after years of counseling. These have given me tools, but it still requires constant effort. So I have learned to give myself plenty of rest to combat this exhaustion. I sleep a lot, more than most people anyway. Not only does it help refresh me, it is also an escape; when I am asleep, I can't hear the dark hole's call.

Another escape for me is to be outside--my back yard is fine, but even better is to be out on the trails, or even better in the mountains and trees with no other humans around. Seeing the stars light up the night is, ironically, a balm of darkness and light mixed. Listening to the roar of a river does more than just drown out the call of the dark hole; it is the voice of a better place. A hawk's screech. A campfire's crackle. Waves lapping over rocks. These are voices of a different sort that speak of peace to a troubled mind.

But there is more to living with depression that trying to escape it. I want to be part of the world outside of the dark hole, which is even more difficult to me than being in the hole. See what a battle of the mind this is? There is always a niggling sensation that I'm doing it all wrong, that I will be revealed any minute as a horrible hypocrite and fake, that life is nothing but a wobbly house of cards and it is about to crumble any minute now.

And why do I tell you all this? It's not because I want your sympathy. I don't need you to pity me, console me, or try to fix me. This is my disease and I can handle it. However, I do want your understanding. This quest for understanding is reciprocal--my wish to be understood motivates me to try to understand others, and compels me to help others, because of our shared humanity and pain. As introverted as I am, I cannot manage without this human connection. My efforts are an expression of love and peace, which, while aimed at others, also finds its way back to me. And I guess that's where this all circles back to--loving and honoring myself through this expression of my truth.