World Mental Health Day

 "Real depression isn't being sad when something in your life goes wrong, real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right." - Kevin Breel 

Today is World Mental Health Day. What does that mean exactly? Well, it's a day dedicated to talking openly and honestly about mental health issues in an effort to raise awareness and educate people around the globe which in turn will help decrease (and eventually eliminate) the stigma associated with mental illnesses so people will feel more comfortable asking for and receiving the help they desperately need and deserve. 

It is important to realize that everyone experiences mental health issues differently. Just because I deal with depression doesn't mean I can relate to everything that another depressed person is dealing with. You can't make generalizations about mental illnesses because how one person suffers is individual to them. We all have unique brain chemistry which causes us each to act and react to things in our own way. There are certainly common traits among individuals which makes it easier for those of us suffering to understand each other, but you are the only person who truly knows what it feels like to be you. Because of this, talking about mental health is very complex, there is no simple explanation and no 'one size fits all' solution. But only by engaging in a dialogue on the subject can we come to understand mental health illnesses better. The only way to learn is through people's experiences and the only way to get people to tell their stories is by making sure they feel comfortable enough to do so. 

When you're depressed, one of the hardest things to do is to admit it. That's why it's so important for us to talk openly and honestly about depression and eliminate the stigma attached to it because when someone is brave enough to come forward and talk about their suffering, when they reach out for help, there needs to be a community who is willing to stand by them and support them, not one that will silence them and look the other way. 

Like Kevin Breel said:

"...unfortunately, we live in a world where if you break your arm, everyone runs over to sign your cast, but if you tell people you're depressed, everyone runs the other way. That's the stigma. We are so, so, so accepting of any body part breaking down other than our brains. And that's ignorance. That's pure ignorance, and that ignorance has created a world that doesn't understand depression, that doesn't understand mental health."

Kevin Breel is an absolutely beautiful soul. Like many of us dealing with a mental health issue, you wouldn't know it to look at him. On the outside he appears to be a strong, confident and intelligent individual. But on the inside he is suffering. I urge you to please, please, please watch his TEDtalk! It's short, only 11 minutes, yet it is so profound, so powerful and he really hits the nail right on the head. I promise you that watching this talk will give you incredible insight, it'll change your view of depression and it may even change your life. 

Educate Yourself

I came across this quote on Tumblr  the other day and it spoke volumes to me. It's really hard to describe to people the obstacles I face on a daily basis; the constant struggle I endure with myself. I've tried to explain my feelings on this blog before, but I think this quote says it best. Please take the time to educate yourself on how depression affects those individuals suffering from it so you can better understand them.

"Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. Depression is humiliating.

If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.

It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. Depression is humiliating.

No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged."

Telecare Peterborough - Defeat Depression Campaign

Well hello there! It's been a while. I'd like to apologize to all my avid readers for the lack of posts over the past month or so. But I guess that's expected when the girl behind the blog suffers from depression herself. I love to share my stories with you all and help you out in whatever way I can, but sometimes life gets a little rough for me as well and the motivation to sit here and write just disappears and I need to take a break for a little while. But that being said, I'm back now and ready to continue this journey with you. 

Just a little update: While I was unplugged from this blog over the past month, life has changed for me a little bit. Since I haven't been working I could no longer finance my living situation in Toronto and so I have moved back home to my parents' house in the Kawartha Lakes. I'm not a city person, and I don't think I was cut out for the Toronto life, but I do miss my independence. But for now, this is the right choice. It's nice to live at home with my family around for support and to be rent free so I can start to build up my finances again. 

Anyways, on to the point of this blog post... 

Tomorrow, Saturday October 4, 2014, Telecare Distress Centre of Peterborough is holding a run / walk-athon to help raise awareness and erase the stigma associated with depression. 

The event takes place at Jackson Park (610 Parkhill Rd. Peterborough). The site is open at 9am with the walk scheduled to start at 10am. 

"Telecare Peterborough is a free, anonymous and strictly confidential 24-hour call line for people in need of a friendly person who will listen. Our phones are answered by volunteers who are good listeners, enjoy talking to people and are trained to handle crisis situations. It is our vision that every person who calls will have access to a caring, empathetic and non-judgmental listener. Our mission is to support and strengthen Telecare services to our clients and volunteers by developing and maintaining effective crisis intervention and support."

To register for the walk or to donate please click on the link to visit the Defeat Depression Campaign website. 

You can also learn more about Telecare Distress Centre of Peterbotough by visiting their website - www.telecarepeterborough.org

For those of you closer to the Lindsay area, there is also Telecare Lindsay - http://www.telecarelindsay.org/

RAW Emotion

The following is an exert from a journal entry I wrote on Friday May 16, 2014. As you can tell from the entry, I was in a dark spot at the time and was really struggling to understand my life.

** Update: Since I wrote this journal entry I have stopped going to work completely as I found it too hard to focus on myself and getting better while also trying to force myself to work a 9-5 job where other people depended on me. How could I be there for others when I couldn't even depend on myself? I decided I needed some time to just figure out me. I also feel like my medication is starting to work a little better. It's taken a long time to truly start altering my brain chemistry, but I can say that within the past month or so I have noticed a bit of a difference. Remember, I started my medication in March and it wasn't until July that I really felt a significant change. That's five months! So medication isn't a quick fix option, this process takes time. I'm still by no means feeling fixed or better, but it is very encouraging to recognize some progress, no matter how small. 

RAW Emotion

"I really don't feel very much like myself anymore. I look like me, but that's really the only thing about myself that I recognize. Some days are better than others. Some days I know that the real me is hiding just beneath the surface, other days I feel like I'll never see her again. It's hard to look at myself in the mirror every day and to not really know who the person is staring back at me. It's upsetting. I act different than I used to, my mind thinks in a way that feels so foreign to me, everything I used to identify myself with, my education, my career choice, are gone; vanished, replaced by what, I do not know. Everything I used to enjoy feels distant; out of reach.

It's hard to tell whether I'm getting better. I suppose I am. I don't cry or break down as much as I used to, I can spend a night alone without panicking, I've been able to force myself out of bed in the morning and go to work more often than not - those are all good signs. But I'm not really sure that the medication is working. It certainly didn't last time Although I'm on a different type of medication this time, it seems to be the same story. I feel like it worked a bit at the beginning, my brain got a nice spike of serotonin and then it stabilized me a little, just enough that I was no longer going crazy, and then it plateaued, leaving me here, in limbo, stuck. 

Stuck. Not getting worse but also not getting any better, just staying the same. This 'sameness' is starting to agitate me, it's hard to push myself each day when I don't notice any improvements. I will never give up on myself, if there's one thing I am, it's determined. But the longer I stay in this one place, without seeing a meaningful change, the harder it is to conjure up the motivation I need to push myself forward. Why keep working so hard and get nothing in return? But I will, because I know otherwise I'll be swallowed up in a vicious circle - every time I miss work, every time I don't do something I had my heart set on, it'll make me feel worse and just continue to bring me down. 

Going to work seems to be the thing that stresses me out the most. I don't know why. I honestly enjoy my job, it's the type of work I've always dreamed of doing - working in an office, researching, writing reports - the old me would think I hit the jackpot, that I was given the opportunity of a life-time, and yet the new me isn't quite content. Again, I feel stuck in limbo, confused between the life I always wanted, which is the life I have now, and the life I now keep dreaming of. I'm not sure which path to take, which life I want more, I'm at a crossroads and I think that's really contributing to my depression. I always wanted the office lifestyle - the 9-5, the suits and briefcases, the desk, the business meetings, that was so appealing to me. Now, after living in England and travelling around Europe (especially Portugal) I'm confused. I want a more laid back lifestyle, more relaxing, I want to be in control. 

Matt asked me why Portugal was so special and as I told him, it's just because the people there live such a carefree way of life. It was a turning point for me, it was there that I realized that I needed to take life less seriously. It was there that I realized that there is so much more to life than all these daily hassles and work and stress. Life is an adventure, it is my adventure, mine to create, mine to live the way I want. Just because I have grown up in an uptight, serious society does not mean I have to continue to live my life that way. North American society has created these rules, these boundaries that we are to live within, these expectations that we are to live by. Everything is focused around who gets the best grades, who has the best career, who makes the most money. That's how I used to identify myself as well. But life doesn't have to be that serious, it can be so much simpler. I don't want to live within these confines that someone else created for me, that someone else decided was the way that we should all live. I want to be in control of my own life, to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, without having to answer to anybody. Other societies have adopted this more relaxed version of life and the people just seem so less stressed, so much happier. I want to live a life that makes me happy. 

This life I'm living now seems lonely, hallow. I feel like I'm living the same thing from day to day. In fact, I don't really feel like I'm 'living' at all. It is all so mundane, I'm just doing what I need to get by. I feel alone. I have no one to share this life with. I have my family, I have Matt, but they can't be my everything. I love my independence until I realize how constricting it is, how much I'm missing out on since that's really all I have. It's hard though, for me to carry on friendships. The friends I did have treated me so badly in the past. I was bullied, I was walked all over, I was used. How can I trust that that won't happen again? I lost touch with so many people because I focused 100% of my time on school work, I had no personal life. Or I felt too depressed to do anything so I never saw my friends and they eventually just faded away. Then there's the few friends I thought I could trust with my secret, that I have depression, only to find out that some of them didn't want to be friends with someone who was 'broken'. I had to watch them walk away, ignorant to what I was really going through. I had to watch, helpless, as this illness defined the limits of my life..." 

My Experience: Part II - The Suffering That Depression Has Caused Me To Endure

It’s really hard to put into words how I feel when I’m depressed. There’s no words strong enough to do my feelings justice and if you’ve never experienced depression yourself, you can only try to imagine how terrible it really feels. No one can understand the true horror of depression unless they’ve felt it first-hand. If you’ve never been clinically depressed your body just isn’t programmed to feel such strong negative emotions, to hit a low that reaches deeper than any low you have ever experienced. Lucky you.

I have panic attacks, anxiety attacks, full on mental breakdowns that all occur just out of the blue. I can literally be perfectly happy and not have a worry in the world one minute and then all of a sudden this rush washes over me and I feel scared, although I don’t know of what, my mind is blank yet racing with thoughts at the same time, I forget everything I was doing, everything I should be doing, everything I am and I just become overwhelmed with negativity – it’s like I’m under water, drowning, being tossed around by a giant wave with no way of knowing when it’ll stop, if it’ll stop, if I’ll ever get the chance to come up for air. My chest feels tight, it’s hard to breath. I start shaking and crying, gasping and hyperventilating. I need to get somewhere safe immediately – my bed, the arms of my boyfriend, my mom or my sister. It goes on for hours like this. Every time I start to feel a little calmer and the tears have managed to stop flowing then another rush comes over me. There’s no trying to stop it, to get a hold of myself, my brain can’t even fathom how to go about doing that. All I have to do is wait; endure the pain of it all until it comes to its natural end. Needless to say, I feel off for the rest of the day. I can’t shake the feeling of what happened. I feel sad, down, lonely, tired. I just want to fall asleep and hope I sleep right through until the next day.

I cry a lot. I’ve heard that crying may mean you’re not dealing with depression but simply grief because as I explained in a previous post (Depression vs. Sadness), your mood produces emotional symptoms, whereas the symptoms of depression are more physical. But I’ve always been a very emotional person, I’ve always turned to crying as a way to release the feelings built up inside me and so I think my excessive crying now is due not to the temporary mood of grief, but to grieving for the loss of myself that depression has caused. I don’t recognize myself any more, and sometimes no matter how hard I try, I can’t get back to the way I used to be and this scares me. So whenever people ask me how I’m doing, whenever I’m forced to talk about my depression, I get a lump in my throat and the tears start swelling up behind my eyes and no matter how hard I try, it eventually becomes too much and I break down crying.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting by myself and I just start crying out of nowhere. All of a sudden this feeling of frustration over takes me and I can’t escape it. I bring my knees to my chest, put my forehead on my knees, and grab at my hair with both hands, pulling on my hair because I feel so overwhelmed, so frustrated, so broken.

I get irritated a lot and lose my temper. When people do things that I used to find funny and playful, I now have no patience for them and they cause me to be annoyed. The littlest things set me off and I argue a lot more than I used to. I also can’t concentrate – my mind either feels overwhelmed and jumps from one idea to the next, making it impossible for me to make up my mind or I stare blankly ahead while my mind is off in la-la land, thinking of absolutely nothing, just wasting time away.

Most of the time I have zero motivation to do anything. There’s lots of things I’d like to do, and often I’ll sit there staring at things, willing myself to just pick them up and start doing something, but I just can’t. There’s no explanation for it. There’s just this force within me that is holding me back. It’s terrible, because I’m so bored, but no matter how strong the boredom, I can’t bring myself to do anything. Sometimes I can’t even read or watch TV or do mindless tasks. I just sit there, staring off in the distance. Sometimes I go days without showering because it just seems like such a huge chore. I love to cook but I barely eat decent meals anymore because I just don’t feel like making them. I live for nature and the outdoors but most of the time I can’t bring myself to get dressed let alone leave the house, even to just go sit in my back yard for a bit. It takes me hours to fall asleep at night, usually I’m not asleep until 4am and then I never want to wake up and get out of bed in the morning. By the time I’m up it’s almost lunch time and I’ve wasted half my day just lying in bed. I used to be extremely active (sports, gym, yoga, zumba) but now I do none of that; it’s just too much effort. I’ve become lazy, but not a kind of laziness I can control. It’s not like I don’t want to do these things and rather sit around doing nothing, definitely not! I would love to be my active self again, but I just can’t. Again, there’s that imaginary force holding me back.

Most days I get out of bed and go sit in my recliner, I drink a tea and spend the whole day reading. I only get up to go to the bathroom, snack on something that doesn’t require time to make or to refill my tea. I feel like each day just blends right into the next one, it’s all a blur. My life is passing me by. Days have turned into weeks, into months and now into years of me doing absolutely nothing with my life. It saddens me that I’m missing out on so much, that I’m missing out on being a regular 24 year old girl, that I can’t hold on to a job and don’t even have enough money to live off of let alone go out and have a good time with my friends doing all the activities I dream of one day doing again. I try to get things done each day to change my situation, even if just a little, but it’s terribly hard to notice any progress. I’m determined to turn all this around and be my happy self again but sometimes I just feel stuck. 

Depression vs. Sadness

As I mentioned in my last post, there seems to be a misunderstanding within our culture as to the difference between being sad and being depressed, and this misunderstanding creates a disconnect between those suffering from depression and the people they interact with on a daily basis (family members, friends, employers, teachers, etc). This disconnect is troublesome because it can create more stress for the depressed person since they find themselves constantly having to explain to people that what they’re feeling is not just sadness, it’s not something they can just snap out of. And if people don’t understand this it can have a negative impact on the depressed person, for example by ruining relationships or resulting in job loss and this just reinforces the person’s depression, digging them even deeper into their hole.

Depression is NOT sadness.

Unfortunately, when people feel really sad, they often say they feel depressed and this makes it confusing to differentiate between the two. Sadness is a temporary state of mind; a temporary mood. You may feel sad for a period of time, but the feeling eventually passes and you forget about it or it isn’t strong enough to affect your daily routine. Sadness is an emotional state. When you’re sad, for instance, if you’re experiencing the death of a loved one, you may cry a lot and feel grief, you may spend more time in bed, you may take a break from your normal rituals and just allow yourself to mourn for a few days, but even then, you can still function as a human being, it may be uncomfortable to go to work or cook your meals or socialize with others, but you have the ability to do so, you can still bring yourself to do these things if you have to.

Depression differs from sadness in that depression produces physical symptoms. People dealing with depression may experience heavy shoulders and other body aches and pains, they feel extremely fatigued, they have a loss of appetite, a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, an inability to sleep or excessive sleeping or they may have a hard time concentrating no matter how hard they try. They have an extremely difficult time dealing with the minute details of daily life. It’s almost like having a cold or the flu but the symptoms never go away. And since these symptoms are constantly present, the person feels worse day after day. The depression prevents them from being themselves. Everything they used to take for granted now becomes a chore. The littlest of activities, such as showering or walking to get the mail become stressful and overwhelming and can cause a panic attack or mental breakdown in the depressed person because they are so frustrated that they can no longer perform these simple tasks. Depression is just a vicious cycle. People experience the physical symptoms and since they never let up the person starts to feel worse because they get frustrated with the way they’re feeling or they feel like a failure because they can’t function as they feel they should be able to. This causes them to just avoid socializing or going to work or participating in activities altogether because they’re so tired from the lack of sleep that they have no energy to do things or it’s easier for them to just not do them than it is for them to try and not succeed, thus reinforcing the feeling of failure.

It is important to recognize the difference between depression and sadness so people can understand that the depressed person is not just lazy, that it’s not their fault that they can’t do certain things that come so naturally to other people. Without this understanding, people may make comments such as “it’s not that hard, you can do it, you just have to try harder” or “you’d feel better if you just got up and did things”. Although the intentions behind these types of comments may be harmless, they only serve to reinforce the depression by making the depressed person feel inadequate or guilty that they’re not able to do things or cause them to give up trying because they’re told they should be able to control the symptoms but no matter what they do they can’t reduce the feelings of depression.

Depression is a medical condition. People may not feel like they can control the symptoms associated with depression, but with the support from people who understand and with a willingness to make changes in their lifestyle, the person does have the ability to make an impact on their way of life by reducing or eliminating symptoms and finding routines and solutions that work for them. Each approach is individual, you just have to go through the process of trial and error until you find what works best for you. 

What is Depression?

Unfortunately, depression is something that is often misunderstood. I, myself, never really understood depression until I encountered it firsthand and I think that’s part of the problem. Most members of society are ignorant to the true meaning of depression, so unless you’ve been there, and experienced the depths of depression yourself, it’s impossible to fathom what it really is. I think this problem stems from the fact that society has come to misuse the term ‘depression’. You’ve probably heard people say “I feel depressed today”, maybe you’ve even said that yourself to describe your mood, however there’s a huge difference between an actual illness and just a temporary mood. It’s like using the same word to describe apples and oranges – it’s confusing, and can easily create a whole host of misunderstandings.

If people attribute their mood to ‘feeling depressed’, they may believe that they understand what it feels like to be clinically depressed. But they don’t. I’m not saying people don’t try to understand, many do, I’m just saying that no matter how hard one tries, there still exists a boundary that prevents many people from seeing the entire picture. I think that’s what makes it so hard for those of us suffering from depression to get the help we need. Obviously doctors and counsellors are trained to know the difference between a temporary mood and a clinical state, but if the people treating us haven’t felt the effects of clinical depression themselves, they can only guess at what might make us feel better. Sometimes the treatments they prescribe work and sometimes they don’t. I know for myself, I find it hard to trust the advice of someone who doesn’t exactly ‘get me’ and so I’ve taken it upon myself to be my own cure. What works for me may not work for you, after all we’re two totally different people, but I want to try and help you because unlike someone who has never experienced depression, I deeply and truly understand. I’ve been there before, and I’m currently there now; suffering but determined to overcome.

Those of you dealing with depression or who have dealt with it in the past don’t really need me to define it for you, you already know. But for those of you who may be unsure if what you’re feeling is depression, or if you’re reading this to broaden your knowledge to better understand a friend or family member who is suffering, I’ll do my best to put my feelings into words.

There are different types of depression (which I’ll elaborate on in another post - Types of Depression) but they are categorized by many of the same symptoms. Imagine living your life, you go to school or work each day, you may get stressed from time-to-time, you may have days when you feel sad, you may wish you had more time to indulge in your hobbies, but these feelings pass, and overall you’re happy and you know you’re living a pretty good life. Now imagine waking up one morning and feeling like the weight of the entire world is pushing down on your chest, preventing you from getting up. Your bed is warm, it’s cozy, it’s safe, and nothing can get you there, so that’s where you stay. You start sleeping more, you stop going to school or work – you want to go, but you physically can’t get out of bed and face the day because of this imaginary weight pinning you down. You can’t be bothered to eat, or clean, or shower. Your friends want to hangout, you want to see them, but you blow them off because it just seems like too much effort to get ready and go do something. You lose interest in all the things you used to love – you used to love making crafts, now you stare at your supplies but have no motivation to pick them up and make something, you use to love going for walks outside, but just the thought of stepping out your door seems like a huge chore, it’s easier to just sit at home and let the laziness overcome you. This is depression. A lack of energy, a depressed mood that never lifts, fatigue, lethargy, restlessness and annoyance at the situation you’re in but no motivation to change it, wanting to sleep but sometimes laying awake for hours, a loss of interest in activities / hobbies that were once enjoyable, an inability to concentrate, feeling worthless – this is how people dealing with depression feel on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, thoughts of suicide are also a symptom of depression.  Some people just feel too overwhelmed and believe death is their only escape. Others see themselves as a burden and think that everyone would be better off without them. Although many people may experience these thoughts at one time or another, not everyone reacts on them for a variety of reasons – personal, religious, etc. However, if you or someone you know is experiencing this state of mind, it is important that you seek professional help. Your life is valuable. I know it may seem like there’s no way out but I promise you there is. We’ll get through this together, just believe in yourself, you’re a strong person and I know you can pull through. I believe in you.