Friday Five; Depression
Friday, March 10th, 2017 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthLet's talk about depression.
A conversation with a friend got me thinking about what has changed -- what I have changed -- since my twenties, when my mental health was very bad.
Of course, in my twenties it was a lot harder to talk about mental health, and there was no easily-accessible forum in which to discuss it.
1. I have medication that works for me. It took 25 years to find this: 25 years of trial and error, arguments with GPs who told me to learn to live with unpleasant side-effects, who insisted that the drugs were working and I just needed a higher dose, who assumed I expected to be happy all the time, who discounted my experience because I wasn't thinking clearly ...
Medication isn't the answer for everyone. But it has turned my life around, and I will stop taking it when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
[20-something me says 'I've tried LOTS and NONE OF THEM WORK and I WILL BE LIKE THIS FOREVER']
2. I spent many years believing that other people -- to be specific, a long-term romantic relationship -- would solve my mental health issues. I'm not sure when or how I moved past that stage: is my current 'happily single' status a function of age, or medication, or of the various (sometimes unhappy) relationships I've had in the past?
Having a cat has helped immensely. The simple presence of another living being, with whom (with which?) I interact daily, has minimised any sense of loneliness.
[20-something me says 'I just want someone to love who loves me, I don't have anyone, even horrible people find that special someone so there must be something badly wrong with me']
3. Like many people with depression, I was very hard on myself. 'Lazy cow,' I'd soliloquise, 'laying on the sofa all day reading trash and playing computer games and not achieving anything.' Nowadays, when I have days like that, I am as kind to myself as I would be to a dear friend. 'Oh, you've spent a day on the sofa? You probably needed that: it did you good to rest: you can achieve things when you have more energy.'
[20-something me says 'I am so useless, not fit to live, it's no wonder nobody likes me because I am such a failure and lazy with it.']
4. I am much better at knowing my own limits and respecting them. No, I cannot do multiple late nights any more, and I will feel low and miserable and without energy if I don't get enough sleep. No, exercise does not always help, because if I can't do as much as usual -- for physical or mental reasons, or just because of weather -- I will exhaust myself and have to work on fending off feelings of failure. (See above under 'Kindness'.) Yes, sometimes I need to spend a day in bed with pleasant reading matter and something restful on the stereo. And sometimes I need to decline invitations, or avoid social situations, because I have had my fill of interaction with humans.
[20-something me says, 'I must go out and have fun! Desperate fun! To fill the empty void of my life! Also I might meet that Special Someone. And meanwhile I can fend off the angst with cigarettes and booze.']
5. Friends are important: I can be massively energised and cheered by dinner with a good friend, or sharing a cultural experience with someone. And it goes both ways: I also feel good about myself -- a sense of purpose, of achievement, of making a difference -- if I am helping someone or lifting their mood.
That said, I have also learnt to prioritise my own wellbeing: 'fit your own life mask before helping others'. You cannot help others as effectively if you are a mess. I do still have some social anxieties, for instance not coping well with crowds. I have developed ways of dealing with these that work for me, but may seem weird / controlling to others.
[20-something me says 'None of my friends understand me, and they probably don't really like me anyway'. (insert long catalogue of imagined slights here.)]
TL;DR?
JUST SAY NO. Say no to medication that makes you feel worse; to demands on your time or energy that are likely to exhaust your resources without benefit to yourself; to self-criticism and self-loathing; to frantically keeping up with the outside world when it exhausts and infuriates and upsets you; to anyone who dismisses or condemns your experience of your illness; to 'should' and 'shouldn't'; to depression itself (and / or other mental health issues) for telling you lies about yourself and your world.
A conversation with a friend got me thinking about what has changed -- what I have changed -- since my twenties, when my mental health was very bad.
Of course, in my twenties it was a lot harder to talk about mental health, and there was no easily-accessible forum in which to discuss it.
1. I have medication that works for me. It took 25 years to find this: 25 years of trial and error, arguments with GPs who told me to learn to live with unpleasant side-effects, who insisted that the drugs were working and I just needed a higher dose, who assumed I expected to be happy all the time, who discounted my experience because I wasn't thinking clearly ...
Medication isn't the answer for everyone. But it has turned my life around, and I will stop taking it when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
[20-something me says 'I've tried LOTS and NONE OF THEM WORK and I WILL BE LIKE THIS FOREVER']
2. I spent many years believing that other people -- to be specific, a long-term romantic relationship -- would solve my mental health issues. I'm not sure when or how I moved past that stage: is my current 'happily single' status a function of age, or medication, or of the various (sometimes unhappy) relationships I've had in the past?
Having a cat has helped immensely. The simple presence of another living being, with whom (with which?) I interact daily, has minimised any sense of loneliness.
[20-something me says 'I just want someone to love who loves me, I don't have anyone, even horrible people find that special someone so there must be something badly wrong with me']
3. Like many people with depression, I was very hard on myself. 'Lazy cow,' I'd soliloquise, 'laying on the sofa all day reading trash and playing computer games and not achieving anything.' Nowadays, when I have days like that, I am as kind to myself as I would be to a dear friend. 'Oh, you've spent a day on the sofa? You probably needed that: it did you good to rest: you can achieve things when you have more energy.'
[20-something me says 'I am so useless, not fit to live, it's no wonder nobody likes me because I am such a failure and lazy with it.']
4. I am much better at knowing my own limits and respecting them. No, I cannot do multiple late nights any more, and I will feel low and miserable and without energy if I don't get enough sleep. No, exercise does not always help, because if I can't do as much as usual -- for physical or mental reasons, or just because of weather -- I will exhaust myself and have to work on fending off feelings of failure. (See above under 'Kindness'.) Yes, sometimes I need to spend a day in bed with pleasant reading matter and something restful on the stereo. And sometimes I need to decline invitations, or avoid social situations, because I have had my fill of interaction with humans.
[20-something me says, 'I must go out and have fun! Desperate fun! To fill the empty void of my life! Also I might meet that Special Someone. And meanwhile I can fend off the angst with cigarettes and booze.']
5. Friends are important: I can be massively energised and cheered by dinner with a good friend, or sharing a cultural experience with someone. And it goes both ways: I also feel good about myself -- a sense of purpose, of achievement, of making a difference -- if I am helping someone or lifting their mood.
That said, I have also learnt to prioritise my own wellbeing: 'fit your own life mask before helping others'. You cannot help others as effectively if you are a mess. I do still have some social anxieties, for instance not coping well with crowds. I have developed ways of dealing with these that work for me, but may seem weird / controlling to others.
[20-something me says 'None of my friends understand me, and they probably don't really like me anyway'. (insert long catalogue of imagined slights here.)]
TL;DR?
JUST SAY NO. Say no to medication that makes you feel worse; to demands on your time or energy that are likely to exhaust your resources without benefit to yourself; to self-criticism and self-loathing; to frantically keeping up with the outside world when it exhausts and infuriates and upsets you; to anyone who dismisses or condemns your experience of your illness; to 'should' and 'shouldn't'; to depression itself (and / or other mental health issues) for telling you lies about yourself and your world.
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