It has been, to put it mildly, a rough few weeks. A lot of that waiting I talked about a few posts ago took a giant step forward, and instead of being relieved I found myself relapsing into a depressive episode on a level I honestly thought I was beyond. So, I can now personally attest to another truth about depression: it is entirely possible to experience a relapse. (For more information on depression, see my January 28, 2010 post, Taking Down Depression.) No wonder it’s known to be such an insidious illness.
At any rate, there has been a lot of “just making it through” going on, and that hasn’t left me with either the energy or desire for much of anything else. The tactics I’ve been using for the last six months to keep my head on straight aren’t as effective as they used to be. My patience for all this *waves arms around wildly* is waning. It’s time to step up The Reinvention Project. I’ve decided to try to think a bit further into the future; to look to the ever-nebulous “other side” I will supposedly come out on when everything making my life a whirlwind of discontent finally resolves itself. If I can visualize this new life of mine, maybe it will be easier to hold out for it. To that end, I decided to make a list.
I jumped on to http://www.tadalist.com/, a lovely website devoted to list-making, and created the following:
Adventures for 2010
~ hot air balloon ride
~ skydiving on my birthday
~ hiking to waterfalls in the spring
~ run three 5Ks
~ join a writers group
The first three items are things I’ve been dying to do for years, and the opportunities just didn’t present themselves in my old life (I have a specific state park in mind for the hiking). The last two items are geared towards personal improvement for the benefit of my new life. The important thing about this list is that each thing is completely do-able this year. Only the first two items cost any significant amount of money, and neither cost is prohibitive.
One of the facets of my new life that I’m most eager to incorporate is not waiting so long to do the things I truly want to do. One of the hard lessons I’ve learned is that life is unpredictable. You can have it all planned out one day, and not know which way is up the next. Life itself will get in the way of you doing any actual living if you let it. As I am rebuilding from the ground up, now seems like the perfect time to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. The things I want to do, the adventures I want to have, are going to take a much higher priority in my new life. That knowledge is getting me through when other distractions fail.
The above list-in-progress will seem inane to most people, I imagine. Plenty of people couldn’t care less about waterfalls, and relatively few have the urge to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. But are you prepared to deny that you have such a list in the back of your mind? If you sat down right now with a pen and paper, what small things have you been dying to do, or try, or see, that you keep putting off? Forget about expensive dream vacations (Rome is on my personal long-term wish list) or the desire to change careers. Think smaller. Is there a play you want to see? A favorite band in concert? Have you always wanted to try a particular craft? Maybe you have a secret desire to try an online computer game. Or go to a tasting at a local winery.
You think about these things from time to time, and each time you think to yourself, “Someday soon I’m actually going to make this happen. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.” But soon never seems to arrive, and the months pass, and the years pass, and life gets in the way of all your best intentions. It happens to us all. My list has been with me for years. But you know what? Six months ago that list was longer. I’ve already begun to check things off. And each checkmark is another completion of something important to me. Something that makes my life richer, more colorful. And isn’t that the point of life, after all? To live it?
Lesson of the Day: Life is for living. Make it happen.
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Taking Down Depression
Today, my readers, we are going to talk about depression. Why, you ask? Because depression is an insidious bastard and needs to be addressed. Because the more it’s talked about, the harder it is to see it as a shameful secret. Because it’s a reality for many, many people, and it’s important for those people to feel like they can speak up and get help.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults, or about 9.5% of the U.S. population ages 18 and older, in a given year. I am currently one of those people. That’s right, I said it, and I’m not going to hide from it. It’s part of my current reality, and I’ve never been one for self-denial.
So what, exactly, is depression? Well, the NIMH informs me that there are several different kinds of depression, and the reasons behind them, their scope of influence, and their effects are as varied as their types. I’ll focus on the type that closest fits the symptoms I’ve had, “major depressive disorder,” because that’s the one I can intelligently speak about, but the other types can be found here. Basically, depression is a mood disorder that affects you to the point that you have difficulty functioning normally. It’s beyond feeling blue or having a bad day. Symptoms vary from person to person, but here’s a round-up of indicators put together by the NIMH:
• Persistent sad, anxious or "empty" feelings
• Feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness and/or helplessness
• Irritability, restlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details and making decisions
• Insomnia, early–morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping
• Overeating, or appetite loss
• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
• Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment
I can personally attest to the validity of this list, as each bullet point has been something I’ve struggled with over the last several months. It’s damn difficult to function like a normal human being when you’re under the yoke of even one of these symptoms. Throw them together in combination, which is what depression does, and you’re talking about a full-on war against yourself. In the morning, getting out of bed is a struggle. Finding the will to do anything is a battle of epic proportions. At my very worst, I’ve found myself curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor, sobbing and unwilling to move for fear of what I’d do if I did. It’s not pretty, let me tell you.
The feelings are difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t ever felt them. The best I’ve been able to come up with is what I imagine possession might feel like. One minute I’m going about my business, making it through my day, and the next it’s like something else has completely taken me over. Before the events that make The Reinvention Project necessary happened, I was a pretty stable person. I didn’t really have highs and lows in mood, I didn’t cry a lot (or easily), and I was fairly balanced and leaning towards the happy side of the emotional scale. Now…well, that person is someone I hope to be again, but for now I try to deal with the dual personality I have developed.
I have heard people say that there’s only a certain type of person who ends up with depression. They’ve insinuated that intelligence plays some sort of factor, or that someone is “too strong” to ever end up struggling with a depressive disorder. I’m here to tell you that depression doesn’t discriminate. I never thought I fit the “type,” either. Now I know that there is no type. Given the right set of circumstances, depression can take anyone down. The important thing, I’ve learned, is to acknowledge the issue as quickly as possible, and get help.
Having depression doesn’t make you weak, and acknowledging that you need help is one of the strongest things you can do for yourself. I always felt like I could take anything on myself, that I never really needed help from anyone else. But realizing that what was going on in my head was not normal sadness, and finding the strength within to pick up the phone and ask someone for help, very likely saved my life. So I’m asking you, as one human being to another, to take a look at that symptoms list. Do you see yourself in it? Do you recognize a friend or family member? If you answered yes to either of these questions, get help. It’s okay to need it, and it could save your life—or someone else’s.
National Institute of Mental Health: information on depressive disorders, how to recognize them, how to combat them, where to go to get help for yourself or someone you know
Depression Resources: A list compiled by WebMD of various sources on depression information and help.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: A phone hotline dedicated to helping anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The National Hopeline Network: Vetted by PostSecret, this network provides a multi-platform help network for those in crisis (phone, email, online chat). 1-800-442-HOPE (4673).
If you have any other resources or information, feel free to comment on this post and add your knowledge!
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults, or about 9.5% of the U.S. population ages 18 and older, in a given year. I am currently one of those people. That’s right, I said it, and I’m not going to hide from it. It’s part of my current reality, and I’ve never been one for self-denial.
So what, exactly, is depression? Well, the NIMH informs me that there are several different kinds of depression, and the reasons behind them, their scope of influence, and their effects are as varied as their types. I’ll focus on the type that closest fits the symptoms I’ve had, “major depressive disorder,” because that’s the one I can intelligently speak about, but the other types can be found here. Basically, depression is a mood disorder that affects you to the point that you have difficulty functioning normally. It’s beyond feeling blue or having a bad day. Symptoms vary from person to person, but here’s a round-up of indicators put together by the NIMH:
• Persistent sad, anxious or "empty" feelings
• Feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness and/or helplessness
• Irritability, restlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details and making decisions
• Insomnia, early–morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping
• Overeating, or appetite loss
• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
• Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment
I can personally attest to the validity of this list, as each bullet point has been something I’ve struggled with over the last several months. It’s damn difficult to function like a normal human being when you’re under the yoke of even one of these symptoms. Throw them together in combination, which is what depression does, and you’re talking about a full-on war against yourself. In the morning, getting out of bed is a struggle. Finding the will to do anything is a battle of epic proportions. At my very worst, I’ve found myself curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor, sobbing and unwilling to move for fear of what I’d do if I did. It’s not pretty, let me tell you.
The feelings are difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t ever felt them. The best I’ve been able to come up with is what I imagine possession might feel like. One minute I’m going about my business, making it through my day, and the next it’s like something else has completely taken me over. Before the events that make The Reinvention Project necessary happened, I was a pretty stable person. I didn’t really have highs and lows in mood, I didn’t cry a lot (or easily), and I was fairly balanced and leaning towards the happy side of the emotional scale. Now…well, that person is someone I hope to be again, but for now I try to deal with the dual personality I have developed.
I have heard people say that there’s only a certain type of person who ends up with depression. They’ve insinuated that intelligence plays some sort of factor, or that someone is “too strong” to ever end up struggling with a depressive disorder. I’m here to tell you that depression doesn’t discriminate. I never thought I fit the “type,” either. Now I know that there is no type. Given the right set of circumstances, depression can take anyone down. The important thing, I’ve learned, is to acknowledge the issue as quickly as possible, and get help.
Having depression doesn’t make you weak, and acknowledging that you need help is one of the strongest things you can do for yourself. I always felt like I could take anything on myself, that I never really needed help from anyone else. But realizing that what was going on in my head was not normal sadness, and finding the strength within to pick up the phone and ask someone for help, very likely saved my life. So I’m asking you, as one human being to another, to take a look at that symptoms list. Do you see yourself in it? Do you recognize a friend or family member? If you answered yes to either of these questions, get help. It’s okay to need it, and it could save your life—or someone else’s.
National Institute of Mental Health: information on depressive disorders, how to recognize them, how to combat them, where to go to get help for yourself or someone you know
Depression Resources: A list compiled by WebMD of various sources on depression information and help.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: A phone hotline dedicated to helping anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The National Hopeline Network: Vetted by PostSecret, this network provides a multi-platform help network for those in crisis (phone, email, online chat). 1-800-442-HOPE (4673).
If you have any other resources or information, feel free to comment on this post and add your knowledge!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Who Am I?
I will never again be the person I was six months ago.
This is one of the more psychologically difficult truths to accept as I delve deeper into The Reinvention Project. In small ways, we are constantly changing. That’s the beauty of humanity—our capacity for transformation, for adaptation, for growth in every sense of the word. It’s a trait to be embraced—but I’m speaking on a much larger scale.
There have definitely been some surface changes in the sum of what makes me, me. My tastes in music have shifted in notable (and perhaps predictable) ways. There’s no telling how long it will be before I can listen to fluffy pop music again without sneering (and, really, what did Colbie Caillat ever do to me?). I’ve always enjoyed Breaking Benjamin, but I have lately found a connection to their undeniably apt lyrics that I find oddly cathartic. (Feeling angsty? Pull out Dear Agony, their latest album. It’s magnificent.) There are music groups I have always adored and now can’t stand, simply for their connotations. Hell, there’s an entire country that, when referenced (and it is, with appalling frequency), has the power to reduce me to tears. And movies? Don’t even get me started on movies. Let’s just say Bruce Willis a la Die Hard and Harrison Ford a la Indiana Jones are getting a serious workout in my DVD player these days.
But these types of changes, which can happen under a nearly infinite number of circumstances, some completely benign, are not the only differences I’m contending with. There are certain fundamental shifts in my very personality, in the deepest core of who I am, that could never have happened except under life-altering circumstances—circumstances I never anticipated, but am nonetheless dealing with. These are the changes I’m grappling with the most.
To be perfectly frank, this angers me to levels I didn’t even know I was capable of. I’ve always been quite sure of who I am. I liked who I was six months ago. I was a well-rounded, stable, compassionate, loyal individual who loved deeply and lived happily. That some force outside of me affected such changes so deep within me feels like the worst possible invasion of my being. It disgusts me, and in my darker moments I’m furious with myself for allowing anything or anyone to weasel their way inside me so completely that they were even able to accomplish such an utter destruction of the components essential to who I am. So I struggle, daily, with this concept of the now-gone “old” me versus the in-progress “new” me.
Yet another facet of The Reinvention Project, then, is the sometimes uncomfortable and almost always exhausting notion of figuring out who I am, of reacquainting myself with, well, myself. The opportunities for doing this seem to appear at the most surprising of times, mostly when I find myself reacting to something in ways my “old” self never would have. In class tonight, we were discussing the book “Thirteen Reasons Why,” a young adult novel that deals with the topics of teen depression and suicide. I found myself, in the face of several classmates who were less than impressed with the book, vehemently defending it. Their arguments revolved around the character who commits suicide. Her reasons, they said, were not enough. Surely someone as supposedly intelligent as this character would never have been depressed to the point of suicide over such tiny things. Their (obviously uninformed) assumptions about depression, which the “old” me had no personal experience with, as well as their comments on the “intelligence” factor of people who consider suicide, had my hackles up immediately, and I found myself having to refrain from an all-out rant on just what depression can do to a person.
Depression is a topic on which the me of six months ago would have had nothing informed to say. The new me, however, apparently has a lot to say (fodder for future posts, no doubt), and my reaction in class has been food for thought all evening—and, as you can guess, prompted the theme of this post. Yes, I have changed, in ways I’m only just beginning to recognize. I’m trying to take such revelations as they come, without letting them overwhelm me. It’s not easy—but what about rebuilding yourself from the ground up is?
Lesson of the Day: Being in the dark makes the sudden beams of light that much brighter, and sometimes the most you can do is throw on the sunglasses.
This is one of the more psychologically difficult truths to accept as I delve deeper into The Reinvention Project. In small ways, we are constantly changing. That’s the beauty of humanity—our capacity for transformation, for adaptation, for growth in every sense of the word. It’s a trait to be embraced—but I’m speaking on a much larger scale.
There have definitely been some surface changes in the sum of what makes me, me. My tastes in music have shifted in notable (and perhaps predictable) ways. There’s no telling how long it will be before I can listen to fluffy pop music again without sneering (and, really, what did Colbie Caillat ever do to me?). I’ve always enjoyed Breaking Benjamin, but I have lately found a connection to their undeniably apt lyrics that I find oddly cathartic. (Feeling angsty? Pull out Dear Agony, their latest album. It’s magnificent.) There are music groups I have always adored and now can’t stand, simply for their connotations. Hell, there’s an entire country that, when referenced (and it is, with appalling frequency), has the power to reduce me to tears. And movies? Don’t even get me started on movies. Let’s just say Bruce Willis a la Die Hard and Harrison Ford a la Indiana Jones are getting a serious workout in my DVD player these days.
But these types of changes, which can happen under a nearly infinite number of circumstances, some completely benign, are not the only differences I’m contending with. There are certain fundamental shifts in my very personality, in the deepest core of who I am, that could never have happened except under life-altering circumstances—circumstances I never anticipated, but am nonetheless dealing with. These are the changes I’m grappling with the most.
To be perfectly frank, this angers me to levels I didn’t even know I was capable of. I’ve always been quite sure of who I am. I liked who I was six months ago. I was a well-rounded, stable, compassionate, loyal individual who loved deeply and lived happily. That some force outside of me affected such changes so deep within me feels like the worst possible invasion of my being. It disgusts me, and in my darker moments I’m furious with myself for allowing anything or anyone to weasel their way inside me so completely that they were even able to accomplish such an utter destruction of the components essential to who I am. So I struggle, daily, with this concept of the now-gone “old” me versus the in-progress “new” me.
Yet another facet of The Reinvention Project, then, is the sometimes uncomfortable and almost always exhausting notion of figuring out who I am, of reacquainting myself with, well, myself. The opportunities for doing this seem to appear at the most surprising of times, mostly when I find myself reacting to something in ways my “old” self never would have. In class tonight, we were discussing the book “Thirteen Reasons Why,” a young adult novel that deals with the topics of teen depression and suicide. I found myself, in the face of several classmates who were less than impressed with the book, vehemently defending it. Their arguments revolved around the character who commits suicide. Her reasons, they said, were not enough. Surely someone as supposedly intelligent as this character would never have been depressed to the point of suicide over such tiny things. Their (obviously uninformed) assumptions about depression, which the “old” me had no personal experience with, as well as their comments on the “intelligence” factor of people who consider suicide, had my hackles up immediately, and I found myself having to refrain from an all-out rant on just what depression can do to a person.
Depression is a topic on which the me of six months ago would have had nothing informed to say. The new me, however, apparently has a lot to say (fodder for future posts, no doubt), and my reaction in class has been food for thought all evening—and, as you can guess, prompted the theme of this post. Yes, I have changed, in ways I’m only just beginning to recognize. I’m trying to take such revelations as they come, without letting them overwhelm me. It’s not easy—but what about rebuilding yourself from the ground up is?
Lesson of the Day: Being in the dark makes the sudden beams of light that much brighter, and sometimes the most you can do is throw on the sunglasses.
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