With that in mind, I asked a handful of people with personal experience of depression to describe what it is to them and to describe the illness in a single word. Part 2 is coming soon.
Sian, female, 20
I’m more than happy to be open about my depression. Ask
me any question and I’ll answer honestly. I want to be open to help all those
people who are unable to find their own voice surrounding mental illness.
However, I’ve sat at my laptop for hours trying to express what the real fight
against depression is and I can’t. It’s not that I’m not comfortable speaking,
I just can’t put depression into words.
Depression isn’t just feeling sad. It isn’t the tragic
beauty sat with perfectly smeared mascara. It isn’t the poor woman who just
needs to find a man, or a cat (I won’t even start on how, according to the
media, it rarely affects men at all). It’s feeling almost devoid of emotion.
It’s having your mind cloud up with too many thoughts, all competing to be the
one you focus on and not one of them is a positive thought about yourself. It’s
not just emotional either, the physical aspect is just as big. My head feels
like someone filled it with rocks, my arms and legs turn to lead and I can’t
physically move, I have so many words to say, but my throat closes up. I become
paralysed in my own body as it tortures itself with incessant bullying. I want
to run away, but I can’t, because no matter where I’d end up, depression will
follow me there. I could be in the happiest place on earth, enjoying every
second and being the chattiest, most cheerful person in the world, filled with
child-like wonder then BAM depression
kicks in and I hate myself, I want to curl up on the ground and rot.
When someone asks me for one thing I like about myself, I
struggle. I can’t think of a single thing until I’m pushed and pushed to do so.
Even then I’ll mention something completely superficial such as “I like my
nails” (which incidentally, I use to self-harm, so I probably shouldn’t enjoy
their feminine length). Every day I bully myself. I’ll be making food and
listening to music, then notice that it’s burnt and I’ll spend the rest of the
night calling myself an idiot. I can’t even cook properly. What twat can’t do
that right? I may as well not even try. Not even be around. Bullying hurts. I
cry because I’m being bullied. But I can’t tell my parents or friends and make
the bully stop. The bully is inside me. Depression is my bully and I’m sick of
it.
Despite what movies and TV show you, depression isn’t
some big event that happens, then gets cured with a couple of chats to a
therapist. Depression is something I’m going to deal with for my whole life. It
happens every day. But I have happy moments too, moments where I forget every
negative thought, we’re not all crying and harming ourselves 24/7. Depression
is that annoying voice that speaks up every now and then, that shouts at you
whenever it feels like.
Depression is
tedious.
Anon, female, 20
My experience of depression unfortunately does not
concern only myself. Growing up my mum suffered greatly with the battles of
depression, one day taking me to the seaside ‘just because’ and the next day
being unable to get out of bed to help me get breakfast. Eventually a cocktail
of drugs allowed her to get on with it, sadly, even to this day my mum does not
enjoy life, merely endures it.
Looking back I have been depressed since I was a small
child, showing signs of anxiety at the young age of four, being terrified that
our house would catch fire and mum or my brother would die, not being able to
leave her at night for fear that she wouldn’t cope without me. As I got older
these feelings of persistent guilt and fear grew stronger and at fourteen years
of age I tried to end it all on a school trip in another country. Until this
point nobody had acknowledged my feelings, or if they had they felt powerless
to help.
The ‘support’ I received was dire. I was pumped full of
drugs which was wonderful in the short term, I had time to sleep and think,
both things I hadn’t done in a long time. Then I received counselling, my
initial assessment was brilliant, I liked the guy I spoke to, but of course
this wasn’t to last. My parents agreed for me not to be admitted as an
inpatient at the mental health hospital in the city and my treatment moved
closer to home. I hated the CAHMS counsellors and still maintained that I’d
rather not be alive. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone else this, just played the
system and was quickly discharged.
Recently I saw a psychologist for a road traffic
collision I was involved in, he used CBT and EMDR along with some other
techniques to take a look at my past and for the first time in 20 years I feel
capable. Capable of coping with some of life’s challenges. There are moments
when I still to this day believe things would be better had my plans succeeded
on that fateful day when I was fourteen, but most days I can appreciate who I
am and why I’m here. Most days the sun in the sky or a smile on a child’s face
really does light up my life, and I have learned how it feels to be truly
happy. Free of the weights that pull upon your heart when depression is present
in your life.
Depression is the
unknown.
Ed, male, 20
Imagine there was someone in the world who truly hated
you. I mean real, spiteful, violent hatred. Someone who persistently told you
everything you did was awful, your life was amounting to nothing, and it would
be better simply to kill yourself than carry on the charade that is life.
Now imagine that person is inside your head and won’t
leave. That’s depression.
It’s hard to describe the experience of depression
without resorting to hyperbole. It is a very melodramatic disease – and a
disease is exactly what it is. It has been described as “cancer of the soul”,
which is dramatic too, but at least it does something very important. There are
all too many people who doubt the existence of mental health issues, which is
truly incredible. Using a phrase like “cancer of the soul” doesn’t really help
because you could deny there is such a thing as a soul. It’s more like a
cognitive cancer, a deterioration of the mind if you will. But the idea of the
“cancer of the soul” is that is bridges the gap between the physical and the
mental. It’s like you’re eroding from the inside, and that can have a serious
impact on the body.
My depression affects me in bouts; I can go a couple of
weeks without feeling particularly bad and then have a whole week in which I
don’t have the energy to lift my head. That’s the physical manifestation of
depression I feel – the heavy head. Bad moods come over like a fog, and my head
feels like it weighs a ton. I can’t lift it, I can barely speak, and that’s
when the depression takes over. Self-harm manifests itself differently too. I
tend to punch myself or slap myself on the head, because I have a perverse
sense that I deserve it. People who haven’t realised I have depression have
laughed at me hitting myself, because often I don’t realise how publicly I’m
doing it. Frankly, I don’t blame them.
It affects the things I love too – I play a lot of sport,
and watch it too, and every defeat or sub-standard performance makes me want to
beat myself into a pulp, even when it’s only me who perceives it as being so
poor. Supporting my football club triggers it too, and that’s worse because I
cannot control what they do, but the emotional attachment I have means I’m
deeply invested in their fortunes. For anyone who knows football, I support
Everton, so you can imagine what that feels like.
Logic goes out the window too. I can imagine it’s
maddening looking at someone with depression from the outside, because they are
prone to saying really stupid and illogical things. Things that nobody in their
right mind could ever think. But that’s exactly the point. Depression closes
your mind off from logic. Being someone who tries to act by simple logic as
much as possible, depression essentially rids me of my ability to function as I
should. Try writing an essay when everything inside you is stopping you from
reading or writing as you should, or working to get the money you need to get
by when your body feels like lead.
In this desolate, sepia-toned world, it’s easy just to
give up, and many people do. Every single one of those people didn’t realise
that there were friends and family out there who loved them, co-workers and
team-mates who valued them, even acquaintances they met once who thought they
were nice. The key is finding the thing that saves you. For me, paradoxically,
it’s sport. The thing that makes me feel worse also in a way makes me feel
better. Going out and playing football, I’m part of a team, working towards the
same goal. My legs aren’t made of lead and my head is clear as I focus on
playing the right pass, anticipating what an opposing player is about to do, or
scoring a goal. It’s a fantastic release. I also play darts for my university,
which may sound a bit sad, but it’s a place where I feel valued. It turns out
I’m not bad either. Not where I want to be, which is my depression talking, but
not bad.
My advice to people suffering from depression is to find
something that drags you out every week, or even more regularly. For me it’s a
football team or darts society, but for others it will be an art class, a
society that embraces something you have a passion for, or even a bunch of
people who get together to play games and get a takeaway once a week.
Depression tells you not to be around people, but of course it’s going to say
that. It’s that person inside your head that hates you. The best thing you can
do is disobey them, even though it’s so hard. Find people, and find a
distraction, and the dark mood will fade.
What I would say to people who know or live with a
depression sufferer is just be there. You aren’t obliged to lift them from a
terrible mood, nor can you in most places. When someone is suffering with depression
they feel trapped and isolated, so even if you’re in the same room but doing
your own thing, reading a book or listening to some music, it’s a reminder that
they’re not alone. Actually, it’s better to talk about completely superficial,
random or silly things instead of trying to tackle the depression, because in
that rut a depressed person cannot find the cure. The distraction helps them to
escape though, and that’s the best thing you can do.
Depression is very, very real. It hurts people badly, using
them as a weapon against themselves. And it doesn’t make any sense at all. I’m
telling you all this so the next time you see someone with their chin tucked
into their chest, trying to avoid everyone, you’ll understand what the problem
is. Maybe it’s you, and either you know it or you’d never really thought about
it that way before. The fight is long, and tough, but there are so many great
things in the world that it’s much more worthwhile to fight than give up. I’ve
rambled on for a long time now and only touched upon the issue – if that
doesn’t prove how complex mental illness is, nothing will. But it can be
suppressed, and it can be beaten. It just takes the right attitude. Fuck you,
mental illness. Fuck you.
That’s the spirit.
Depression is
illogical.
Joss, female, 21
The media’s image of depression is actually what I wish
it made me look like – a pretty girl, crying with eyeliner running down my
face. But that isn’t how it feels.
Over the past few years depression has made me feel
upset, angry, scared, tired, numb and many other things. The one thing it
rarely does is make me cry, and I really wish it would. There is nothing worse
than feeling nothing at all.
The real fight against depression that I experience is
finding the energy and drive to actually do anything. It makes it incredibly
hard to get out of bed, go to lectures, and do my assignments, let alone enjoy
life. It makes me feel selfish – I have amazing family and friends, I’m
fortunate enough to be getting a fantastic education, and I have a roof over my
head, yet some days none of it is enough.
Depression is
emptiness.
Robin, male, 20
Although it is nothing compared to what they go through,
It’s been difficult to watch what mental illnesses, particularly depression,
have done to a number of people close to me. It’s hard to watch not just
because they feel like they are incompetent, worthless, irrelevant, or
sometimes lack the motivation to feel anything - but because they can’t muster
the push they need to start getting better. It’s a cruel irony that a condition
so associated with lack of self confidence produces in its victims absolute
faith that they cannot and will not be well.
Depression is
deflating.
Stormme, female, 26
I think if I was asked to describe depression in one word
a year ago, I would have used "unending". But after the year I've
had, and the things I've over come, I think I might see it a little
differently.
I've had depression since I was around 14. It was
triggered initially by bullies. Those bullies taunted me for my looks, my
weight (which is stupid as I was, at the time, a completely normal size for a
tall girl), my intelligence, my background, the fact that my mom was a single
parent, basically anything. I was then further bullied by a teacher, all of
which caused me to start self harming. When my mom discovered this she took me
to my doctor who put me on antidepressants and I saw the school counselor.
Eventually I came right but it has been an on and off battle. Depression
rearing it's head and then easing off. It comes in waves I always say.
Last summer was the start of the worst bout of depression
I've ever had in my life. It brought with it anxiety, panic attacks, self
harming and suicidal thoughts. I lost my appetite but also started binge
drinking, I even ended up having to take time off of work. I left work at
Christmas and only just managed to have my first full day back this week. It's
been a very long and very difficult journey. I've lost many friends, some
family members don't talk to me anymore, it even nearly cost me my relationship.
I finally started to reach out to people and it's only now, 12 months down the
road that I finally feel I can beat this. My head is above water and I'm wading
through the fog. I've gone from being unable to leave the house, unable to
shower, unable to even get out of bed, to being able to go out with my friends
and even doing some public speaking. I still struggle with anxiety and don't do
well in crowded places or with more than just a couple of people, but I do
believe that I can get back to my old self. The self that was confident and out
going. I have less friends but that's okay. The ones I have are true friends
and have shown themselves as such. I have less money but that's okay too. This
past year has taught me that health must always come before wealth.
It's a long, hard journey, and it's only when you realise
that you won't ever get rid of your depression that you can start to get
better. Depression doesn't ever go away. But you can learn to live with it. You
can control it. And, after a while, you can even keep that fog at bay. I just
remember that you don't ever know what the future holds for you. So I'm going
to stick around and find out.
Depression is
beatable.
No comments:
Post a Comment