Understanding
After years of living with its recurrence, I’ve finally started trying to understand my depression. Not from reading self-help books or online articles, but just by being brave enough to look inside and come to my own understanding. All understanding must come from within, otherwise it’s someone else’s understanding rather than your own, and therefore not really understanding at all.
I feel like I have two minds. One is the depressed, negative, fake mind that’s trying to control the other mind, which is my real mind, the rational mind and the one linked to my personality. The fake mind tends to dominate and confuses my rationality, but recently I’ve found that switching the processing of my thoughts from one mindset to the other is possible and works sometimes, despite the headaches. I’ve now realised that depressed me is different from the real me, and isn’t actually a part of me at all. They’re two distinct mindsets. It’s taken me a long time to realise this. That the negative thoughts, the guilt, the fear, the hopelessness, the social withdrawal and self-destructiveness are not a part of the real me. They’re just the symptoms of a complicated illness, but they’ve been so internalised I hadn’t made the distinction before.
I’m not a gloomy person. I am usually very smiley, bright, forward looking, and able to make people around me feel good. People say that the person you are is reflected by those who you surround yourself with, and looking at my friends, I’d be happy to be likened to them. I work hard to be positive and this brings me benefits.
I know when I’m becoming ill. I slow down, I sleep too much, and I stop engaging with people’s company. My concentration and memory start to go and I feel anxious about this and about everything else. I start blaming myself for everything, for all the mistakes and choices I’ve made that have held me back, for feeling so weak, for all the time I’ve wasted in my life. I become increasingly insecure about everything. I feel scared of the future, and blame myself for not having laid better plans. I feel paranoid about those closest to me, and guilty for all the times I’ve said or done something stupid and upset the people around me. I become self-destructive in my behaviour and feel sad, lonely, empty.
These symptoms get worse and worse until eventually I feel so confused and scared that I alternate between hysterical crying, and just lying in bed, staring lifelessly at nothing. I lose all my confidence for leaving the house or attempting to do anything - making a cup of tea takes me half an hour as I move so slowly or forget what I was halfway through doing and go back to bed. Then if I do start feeling better, I question the feeling. It takes me a long time to have confidence that I am really happy once again.
People worry when they feel they have no control over their finances or their children. Wait until you have no control over your mind.
Last time I was depressed was the worst it’s ever been. It lasted for about two weeks from the middle of March to the beginning of April, and was not helped by an awful chest infection I managed to catch. I don’t remember much from this time as I have had so many happy memories since then. But what I do remember is how Jez helped me.
He phoned up work, my singing teacher, my doctor, my university counselling service for me. He listened to me ranting on and on, getting into frightened circles in my own mind, and eventually once I was exhausted from hours of crying, just cuddled me and shh-ed me to sleep. He refused to be taken in by my brave faces. He drove me to the doctors and my uni and walked me around Manchester to help me face working again. He didn’t expect anything from me, but wished he could help more. When I felt guilty for lying in bed for days at a time, he told me that people have to go to bed when they’re ill. He kept everything simple for me. He didn’t mind that it took me an hour to prepare myself mentally for a trip to the takeaway, or that I went for three days without a shower. He soothed my fears over the lack of work I was doing for my exams. He planned our holiday to Budapest. Then when I was getting better, he took me to a concert. He took me out of the house for short periods of time - for walks in parks, for drives - and understood when and why I needed to go home. He was strong and quiet and loving.
Hopefully, now I’m reaching my own understanding of this illness, I will cope better with it. I’m not unhappy, as someone suggested to me. I can cope with being alone here, I can cope with the uncertainty of the next few months and years. I can cope with the fact I’m a bit overweight, I’m not earning any money, I have a lot of work to do this year, I have to start singing again - I can handle all this. I’m not unhappy. I have a lot of good things in my life, including the one thing that many people strive for but never manage to find. What I am struggling to cope with are these symptoms, this fake mind that tries to masquerade as my mind.
If you had a pain in your foot, you might try to walk as normal, but the pain, the illness, would intrude on your walking. You could sit down, abandon yourself to the pain, become miserable and go nowhere. Or you could get a crutch and learn to walk in a way that used the healthy foot more, until gradually the pain went away from your other foot and it healed. Then both feet would be healthy and you could walk like normal people and go anywhere and be strong enough to walk on any terrain.
But you can’t ignore the pain otherwise it gets worse and you silently become crippled.
My depression is just the same, it’s just a physical illness, and if I use the healthy mind more than the depressed part of my mind, then I am confident that my mind will heal. If I can take something to cure the chemical imbalance, to control and then erase the fake mind, then I will do. But I am proud that this time I am capable of living with this, and not just living through it.
