I’ve been compelled to write about my experience of depression. Here it is below.
At the age of sixteen this thing crept up on me and it felt like someone had come along with an axe and chopped my feet away from beneath me. Then, with that same weapon, they had hacked a triangle out of my outline. That was exactly what it felt like; both that the whole world had shifted on its axis and that something vital was missing. And yet, nothing had happened - there was no *external reason for feeling like this, but I was simply floored by depression. This depression wasn’t just immense sadness, it also comprised almost constant panic, I feared that I was going mad. Nothing felt safe, the sky was going to fall in any minute, the ground was dissolving and I couldn’t get a toehold, I was slipping away with all the cascading debris.
What this actually meant was I could be sitting at a table, talking to somebody but would then tune out and see myself, as if from above, looking down at this figure - who was she? (This, apparently is dissociation - I didn’t know the word then). I had a terrible world view: everything was shit; we were all doomed, there was no kindness anywhere. (It didn’t help that we were covering the rise of Hitler in ‘A’ level history, at the time!). A sympathetic teacher put it succinctly - ‘You are seeing the world through shit-tinted glasses’. Yes, Mr. T, you will probably never read this but yes I was!
What made it worse was that I didn’t feel that I had a right to these feelings.! What right had I to feel depressed when I had a roof over my head, enough to eat, good friends, was lucky enough to be able to pursue my education? I wasn’t a displaced victim of war, I wasn’t being raped by soldiers, I lived in a country with a welfare state. The knowledge of this compounded my depression - how much worse to feel that I was being self-indulgent, narcissistic, solipsistic (I feel all of those things in writing this post, actually!) The point was though, it wasn't a deliberate thing, I didn’t want to feel like this, I didn’t choose it - I couldn’t ‘pull myself together’, I was unravelling.
I searched for the missing piece constantly; I looked through old photos to see if I could find it there. I had my iron levels tested - perhaps there was a physical reason for this malaise? I had just turned vegetarian, maybe I just needed iron tablets.
Suicide seemed seductive - an end to the pain, if it got that bad then perhaps I could just check out? I sat in a travel agent with some family and friends and booked a holiday for seven months into the future; wondering if I’d still be around in seven months.
The only thing that helped at the time was that I had a group of amazing friends and we went out all the time. I know that this doesn’t fit with the traditional picture of the depressed teenager, sitting alone in their room all the time, but it was how I coped. I had to keep constantly busy, always doing something, always occupied; anything that would take me away from myself. And the great thing about these friends was; I didn’t have to pretend to be ‘normal’ with them and I didn’t have to pretend to be happy. It’s not that we didn’t have any laughs - we did! We went to gigs, we went to pubs, we went to seedy little house parties (I haven’t just stolen the plot of ‘The Perks of being a Wallflower’, this was what our lives were like too - only in much smaller houses!). We reeked of joss sticks and patchouli oil, we listened to great music and talked about how shit our home town was (again, seems like it was stolen from a film). I wonder now whether these friends saved my life. If nothing else, they certainly alleviated the feeling of acute isolation. But I still needed to talk to someone about the depression - I was still desperate to locate that missing piece; it’s absence was felt every time I was on my own. I went to the doctor, hoping that she would refer me for some counselling, I came away with a prescription for diazepam and anti-depressants. I didn’t realise that diazepam was the trade name for valium but I did know that it was addictive so I ended up flushing the tablets down the toilet. For someone who often dealt (deals) with things by eating too much, getting pissed and/or stoned, this was quite a wise move. I’d like to give my sixteen year old self - look at her there with her thick eyebrows, sullen expression and love-beads, a pat on the back for this. I was self-destructive, but this was an act of self-preservation. This is no judgement on anyone who has even taken valium and certainly not (a judgement) on someone who takes anti-depressants, but they weren’t the right thing for me. The right thing for me was therapy, I wanted to talk to someone, and I finally sought it out (and could afford it) eleven years later, aged 27.
*I said that there was no external reason/cause for my depression, I discovered that there actually was, but I’m not going to talk about it here.
What I am going to talk about is what therapy has done for me. If you are the sort of person who wants to see visible, tangible results then I will give you a concrete list of the benefits.
So, there I was, 27 years of age, not actually depressed anymore but in a state of arrested development:
- I had a long term boyfriend but was still living at home with my Mum - lovely as she is, this was not a great situation for either of us. After less than a year of therapy, I finally moved out. (and lived happily ever after in a thatched cottage by the sea….ha, ha, ha.)
- My first job after leaving university was a part-time position in a clothes shop! I constantly undersold myself, thought that I was crap at everything and took jobs that I was overqualified for. I let other people undervalue me too - the manager at the shop used to tell me that i was lazy-minded!
O.K. so these days I am overqualified for the job that I am doing but the difference is that now I recognise this and it is actually a deliberate choice. (believe it or not, dear reader, I wanted to free up more time and headspace to write - and look at how well that turned out…)
3) When people said negative things to me, I believed them wholeheartedly.
Now, most of us get shit thrown at us in our lives and are perhaps told that we are: fat, ugly, weird, lazy-minded, useless, stupid! The difference is that if you are coming from the point of extreme low self-esteem, perhaps even self-loathing, you are less able to shrug it off, see it for it is (THEIR problem and NOT yours; they are probably projecting their own issues onto you and lack the self-awareness to see it). If you don’t have a core feeling of self-belief or even a zen like absence of ego then you tend to internalise all the negativity. If you have good self-esteem then you can mostly just ignore it and move one.
Post therapy - I’m working on it!
4) I thought of marriage as a kind of a death!
Now my life is like living in a puffy, marshmallow cloud of a Mills n Boon novel… ;)
5) I never wanted to have kids because I thought that I would make the worst mother in the world.
Hmmm - still struggle with this a bit and feel like the worst mother but sometimes look at the children, acknowledge that perhaps it’s not all down to their brilliant Dad and maybe am not doing such a bad job after all. The point is that, as someone who is still going to counselling, at least I have someone (non-judgemental, qualified, unrelated) to talk to about it.
The sort of therapy that I go in for is long term, psychodynamic. My counsellor is a Freudian practitioner. I found her by writing to the British Association of Counselling: http://www.bacp.co.uk/
Therapy/counselling is expensive but most practitioners work on a sliding scale; where they take your salary into account and charge you accordingly. You might be able to get a referral from a sympathetic G.P. for some free counselling. This will mainly be for short term counselling, possibly for C.B.T. (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - works for some, not all).
You also have to be receptive to it, to work at it and be prepared to feel like an open wound sometimes - buy a pair of sunglasses.
Of course there are the Samaritans:
There is NO SHAME in seeking out counselling - if you had a sports injury, you wouldn’t see anything amiss in seeing a physiotherapist so why not see a therapist if you are feeling consistently unhappy.
Why am I writing this now? Dunno really, maybe I am feeling a bit down - I still do feel like that from time to time but it’s never as bad or as long lasting as that first time (which lasted for about a year and gradually lifted). Perhaps I just needed to see how far I had come. Publishing this does feel like an exposure but, as I writer, I think that you owe it to yourself and to your imaginary reader to be honest.
This post is kind of a paen to therapy but please don’t think that I look askance at anyone for coping by using medication - whatever works best for you! I’ve become a bit of an armchair psychologist over the years and have read that if you are an introvert (like me) then you are more likely to suffer from depression (if you suffer with anything psychological) and be more comfortable with examining your feelings. If you are an extrovert, then you may be more likely to suffer from panic attacks, be less comfortable with discussing feelings and seek an external solution.
In no particular order, here are some good books, T.V and films on the subject:
Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes - yes, a chick-lit book but with the most accurate description/depiction of depression (my experience of it, anyway!) that I have ever read.
My Mad, Fat Diary - book and T.V series, both are ace. A young woman who has spent some time in a psychiatric ward; dealing with body issues, mental illness and family strife.
Inside Out - yes, I do mean the Disney Pixar film! How do Pixar do it? They deal with heavyweight themes with more sensitivity and alacrity than most adult films.
How to be Happy: Lessons from Making Slough Happy By Liz Hoggard. It only really scratches the surface but it’s a start.
Families and how to survive them - by John Cleese and Robin Skynner
Anyway, I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted now! Well done if you persevered with this until the bitter end. Go away and reward yourself with a hot drink, give yourself a hug and be reassured that you are not alone.
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