Depression is not just a frame of mind. It is an illness but one that can be treated. I have been working on my weekly with my therapist. I am happy to announce that the visits will now start being every other week and will soon be even further apart. This does not mean there are not still issues to deal with or problems to work though.
Cross posted @ My Left Wing,refinish69
It simply means that I have reached a point where I am learning ways to cope with the depression and anxiety attacks that work for me. Each person is different and how he or she reacts to therapy and medication is different.
I started back to work this past Wednesday. Even though this means lots of explaining or not explaining why I was out 2.5 months, I am enjoying being back in the work place and trying to catch up on all I have missed while I was gone. I reached a point where if I stayed at home longer it would have been near impossible to get back “out” in the “real” world and knew it. I actually told my therapist please clear me for work before I go nuts. LOL
Different things work for different people when it comes to anxiety and depression. I am learning ways to recognize an anxiety attack as it starts and work my way through or out of it before it takes control. Some of the methods are as simple as deep breathing or visualizing the emotions and reactions as colors. As I have practiced these, they have become more effective and easier to do. The depression issues take a little bit more but are also getting easier as every day goes by.
I journal about my feelings but instead of just writing about being depressed or upset I try and delve into the reasons I am upset about a situation and what I can or can not do to change it. As corny as it sounds, sometimes just saying, “Oh, hell, this is out of my hands and I cannot do a damn thing about It.” will help left that dark veil that descends. I have opened up and started talking to my friends about what is going on in my life instead of trying to be the caregiver for everyone else. Sometimes even the strong need to admit they are not able to be strong and need help from others. It is not a weakness to admit the need for help. It is actually strength. This way a person can attain the help they so desperately need and recover a normal life again.
Depression
by Rich Maloof for MSN Health & Fitness
Depression is on the rise among the U.S. population, yet we’re only beginning to understand its weighty affect on our mental health–and how we might keep it at bay.
Sadness is not depression.
Sad is when you miss someone; depressed is when you lose 20 pounds from malnutrition and don’t get out of bed for two weeks.
Periodically feeling disappointment or sorrow, even to the point of missing work or losing a night’s sleep, is normal and natural. But depression is distinctly different and clearly defined.
The primary criteria include disturbance in sleep patterns; loss of appetite; difficulty concentrating and making decisions; loss of energy; poor self-image; and dwelling on suicidal thoughts. Depressive people exhibit several of the symptoms persistently for prolonged periods (two weeks and longer), to the point where routine functioning is impaired.Depressed people have more vulnerable immune systems.
Depression is a form of stress, and stress has been demonstrated to compromise the body’s ability to ward off disease. This is one of the most overt examples of the mind’s impact on the body’s health. It may also explain why so many elderly people, despondent at the loss of a spouse, pass away within months of their wife.
Changing diet and lifestyle can accomplish the same ends as antidepressants.
As far as it is currently understood, depression results from a disturbance in neurotransmitters, the chemicals that carry messages between nerve cells in the brain. Some people are able to correct the imbalance with high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets, stress reduction and exercise. Sunlight is also a proven mood enhancer. Antidepressant drugs correct the same problem synthetically.
More in this article available at MSN Health
Many good resources out there go into a lot more detail. If you are having a problem with depression or anxiety, please seek out help. There are free clinics and therapist who work on sliding scales for those who do not have insurance that will cover the treatment. I don’t want anyone to reach the edge of the pit I had dug for myself. If I had not finally gotten help, I would not be here today. Life is too valuable to throw away for any reason.
Thanks for writing this and congratulations on the milestone!
I have a friend who has been hospitalized on and off for the last month for depression. She’s such a strong woman – but has really struggled with this. A big part of the problem is that they can’t seem to get her medication right. She has had to be transferred to the medical wing on several occassions for complications. As far as we have come over the last few years in understanding this disease, we’re still very early in the process as far as I can see.
One of the things I’m grateful for is that just before she went into the hospital, I saw a woman on TV talking about the ongoing stigma attached to mental illness. Her example was that we don’t think about sending a “get well” card to someone who’s been hospitalized for a mental illness. So I sent her a card when she was admitted. But I must admit that finding an appropriate card was a bit of a challenge. Hallmark hasn’t discovered the market yet.
Thank you. I am sending your friend warm thoughts of Love and Healing. The stigma is very real but as more people talk about it and sgare their experiences maybe that will lift. I know some people have contacted me who can not discuss it with others cause of jobs. I am lucky that my company understands.
Thank you for taking us along on your journey. As someone who, fortunately, has never suffered depression, I have found that your diaries have deepened my understanding of the effects of depression and the struggles of those who experience it.
Your welcome Andi. Part of the reason for the dairies is to help thoise who have depression and anxiety issues and also to help educate those lucky enough not to have them. LOL
Thank you refinish for your diaries. I’m glad you dug yourself out of the pit and hope journey will be as you want. Take Care.
Thank you!!!
I’m glad you’re addressing your depression and getting help, refinish.
The description of depression you referenced above is a good basic one but it goes much deeper than that and symptoms can be different for different people. For instance, it is more correct to say a change in eating habits rather than weight loss as many people eat and eat as a way to cope with sadness. The same holds true for sleeping. Some people will be unable to sleep and some people will sleep endlessly.
Some of the lesser known or understood symptoms are anger and irritability, lack of sympathy for others because you are so wrapped up in your own pain, memory lapses, inability to concentrate, social anxiety and isolation, poor self-esteem, lack of personal hygiene and many others.
As you know you cannot tell a person suffering from depression to snap out of it or to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We know we have to do that but the idea seems so foreign and impossible you might as well have told us to sprout wings and fly to the moon.
Sometimes a bout of mild depression can be situational and in that case it’s trying to tell you something. It can be a good motivator to change something about your life that is making you unhappy, but that is usually when it’s a mild case. In severe cases your brain is sick, your chemistry is off and you need help.
With each person it is different. there are cases that are very mild or just a case of saddness that do nmot need medical attention. The main thing is if a person is not sure where they fit in the categories, they seek help. My case is not a textbook case except for me.
The key is a change from what is ordinary for the person:
Change in eating, so weight loss or weight gain.
Change in activity level, so agitated for some, slowed down for others.
Change in sleep habits, often trouble sleeping, early morning waking, or wanting to sleep all the time.
Change in moods. For most it is sadness, inappropriate guilt. For others, esp. kids and teens, irritability, short temper.
For most: loss of joy in things that ordinarily and previously were pleasurable – whether food, entertainment, sex, music, or what have you.
For most: rumination, feelings of guilt, difficulty making decisions, low motivation.
For some: feelings of worthlessness, thoughts of suicide, avoidance of negative emotion
This isn’t a complete set, but it is most of them.
man of these are things I am working on for myself along with the help from professionals. I have a feeling there will be more installments in this series as time goes by. LOL
That’s good (she says, in her shrink mode).
You are such a great role model, RF. You may not have seen these last political/personal battles end as you hoped – though the fight is still on.
However, you are reaching untold thousands here and at MLW, and you will help many personal battles be won that will help the fight across many places. That is the truth, and the great thing about your example in writing this.
Thank you seems so trite after these wonderful comments. I am working on getting myself back in the fray and being able to push forward and keep helping while also helping myself along the way.
If you have a chance, I think it would be helpful to add links in this diary to the preceding ones.
I will do that.
May I add my congratulations for your steps forward. Having been depressed since age 9 – most likely a chemical imbalance as SRIs have at least muted suicidal thoughts – I know what a burden it can be. The last three years have been stressful as, since my father’s passing, I’m responsible for my mother and at age 89 she’s showing signs of Alzheimer’s. As someone else mentioned, some of us sublimate by eating more – losing 20#s wouldn’t have been a bad idea, but I gained 35#s thanks to late night comfort foods. The last few weeks, with all that’s been going on in the outer world – the drumbeat of war against Iran, the massive number of job losses in this area, ad infinitum – I find that I’m sleeping over half the time. Even the occasional nightmare is preferable to reality.
This is my personal theory, but I believe that depressed people are generally more sensitive to the world around them and we internalize things that others can just blow off or keep in clear perspective.
Take care of yourself. The world will be fine if you take a break from worrying about it for a while.
I agree. I think if you did an study you would find thta many people who suffer from depression are the care givers in families or the “strong” one in their circle of friends who takes on everyone else’s problems and plays big brother or sister to everyone.
Depression definitely does make some people more sensitive to emotions of others. Being sensitive to others isnt’ bad, nor does it mean someone is prone to get depression. But it does mean you have to have enough good support systems to be sensitive to you.
Actually, a good support system helps people who are biologically – that is, innately – prone to depression, even more than it helps people who are depressed due to life circumstances.
If things are going badly for you, your friends usually know this and try to help. If, however, you get depressed when there is no obvious cause, people may not be so helpful. I think that’s why social support is particularly helpful in reducing or shortening or even preventing depression for that sort of depression.
I agree. The everyday stress in our lives can add up until we hit a point of abject depression. People who are care givers for loved ones can especially fall into depression as we have to be strong for everyone else. Been there- done that.
Thank you all for the warm thoughts and support. The wonderful folks here are the main reason that I hang out at the Frog Pond.
This is a great series, Refinish. I appreciate your openess about your own experience more than I can express. Depression and anxiety disorders are so very common, and so insidious: they are YOU. YOU are THEM – or so it seems.
That’s what makes it so difficult for a depressed person, and for those who love them, to see that they need help. I’ve written a couple of diaries about mental health problems, particularly for poor/hard to see kids & young adults. But your pieces are spectacular. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And I am most happy to see you feeling better. . . that’s the best word of all.
Thank you so much. As I work more on myself, I have been doing a lot of research on the issue and have found loads of information that is scary a times. I will keep sharing and trying to help myself and others understand. In the future I might do a dairy with more details and information and links, but I am also weeding through them as some disagree with each other.
Yes, there are more than a few snake oil types out there talking about these problems. Caveat emptor as always. The National Institute for Mental Health has the best overall information, combining both info for the general public and for scientists who study depression and anxiety disorders.
mental health information
One of the best resoureces for those first encountering depression or somebody diagnosed with it is the guidance from the UK’s National Institute of (Health and) Clinical Excellence or NICE. There are two sets of guidelines listed from on their web site here . One deals with the subject generally and the other with depression in children and young people. Both give best practice in a variety of scenarios.
Importantly the considered recommendation is that talking therapy should be used as the first line of treatment in all but severe depression. I have had long experience of a variety of drugs used to treat periodic deep depressions and can attest that this method is preferable. I would strongly caution anybody with a child or young person who they know is going through depression to strenuously avoid drug therapy unless it is so severe as to require hospitalisation. I found Prozac had physical side effects that are not acknowledged. In laboratory animals it was found that anal temperatures increased and throughout the year I was taking Prozac I had an “anal fissure” which is a bit like an internal pile. TYhe discomfort was more disabling than the depression in the end and the two fed on each other. I also had one of the symptoms of other SSRIs which are cautioned under the NICE paper and that is despite being in my 40s. In my case, it manifested as a violent outburst a couple of weeks into taking it for the first time. In young people the violent episodes can be even more profound and fatal. This can either be by self-harm and suicide or violence against others.
The most effective treatment is for the patient to take control of their own circumstances. This is not a “pull yourself together” but like the diarist is for somebody to develop series of techniques to cope and manage their depressive stages.
I agree completely. You also need to make sure you are working with a good therapistwho is well trained in working with depression and does not depend on drugs to be a “cure all” for anything.