Experiencing depression

Some people are braver than others. This morning I read a text posted on the blog of a very talented photographer. He was talking about depression, a condition which he suffered from for most of his adult life. I found it very brave that he talked about such a personal thing, and this, along with my friends’ reactions when they know I suffer from it, prompted me to write this as well.

Not so unrelated: art is the best therapy, so is nature :)

Depression is a mental illness – although this doesn’t make you someone mental. Depression means that something is chemically wrong with your brain – not that something is wrong with you as a being. Depression makes you feel worthless, suicidal, out-of-place and sad most of the time. It can be triggered by several things: childhood traumas, break-ups, difficulties to cope with everyday life, there are so many reasons that can affect you. Yet asking for and needing help is ok. Talking about it with your friends is ok. Their reactions to it should be ok too. However, you might lose people along the way because they will think you’re nuts, people who won’t be as brave as you were when you told them you suffered from depression and who will just run as far away as possible from you because they can’t handle it and they don’t want trouble. You might even lose your job because you would be an easy target for unscrupulous bosses.

This year I’m suffering from depression for the 4th time in my life. Each time I thought I had finally managed to beat this awful and crippling feeling out of me for good. Each time I battled against it and refused to seek medical help because I wanted to be stronger, better than that.  But sometimes you’re just not strong enough and you have to admit it. Each time, people around me look at me with big round eyes because they couldn’t have guessed. Because to them, everything looked fine, and because it’s still very much a taboo in our society. The bad news is that, from my experience, I don’t think you ever really heal from it. But the good news is that there are some survival strategies to keep depression at a distance and be stronger than the morbid thoughts in your mind. The road to recovery is a tricky one, but you don’t have to be alone in this. 
It begins with surrounding yourself with positive people, people who do you good, people who won’t hurt you any further than you already hurt yourself. Each day, you can achieve something, even at a very small scale – for yourself or for others. If you set yourself small goals first, you’ll have the satisfaction to achieve them. I started very small during my first outbreak: I would consider my day successful if I managed to shower and go get the mail downstairs. That was about as much as I could possibly achieve in one day. I wouldn’t interact with anyone, I would open books and stare at them for hours without reading anything, the rest of the day would be spent thinking I was useless, stupid, worthless and what not. Little by little I lost all my friends because I would just stare at my ringing phone and didn’t have the strength to answer. Because I didn’t think I was worth the attention they had for me. I took my distances from other people who would simply not understand and tell me “you should just get out, do some sport, go watch a movie”. I do get out, I do some sport, I love watching movies. But these are unreachable goals when you hit rock bottom. One remark particularly hurt me, it was by someone who said that if I thought a bit less about my own person, I wouldn’t be depressed. That is entirely true: people being depressed can’t help but just think about themselves, as there is obviously something wrong going on there, but they don’t need being reminded of the fact that there are far worse situations in the world. 
However, there is some truth in that remark, in that I tend to think that only people who have time to feel self-pity also have the leisure of getting depressed (me included). So this hurtful remark did me good because it also helped me to get out of depression the times before by reaching out and trying to help others as much as I could. By listening to other people’s problems, helping them out when and where I could. There is always someone out there whose problems you can help with, and what means little to you can mean the world to someone else. That doesn’t mean that their problems are bigger, and that yours aren’t painful or legitimate, but helping someone else will help you feeling useful and, little by little, will help you feeling better about yourself. As long as you don’t give up reaching out – there will be a helping hand out there. Also, being grateful for even the smallest things in life, helps a lot. Being grateful for a smile, a word, an act of kindness, a sunny day. As this photographer put it this morning, it is a very painful process, but the journey is a life experience to go through and you will also know yourself a great deal better once you’ll have hit rock bottom and bounced back.