Depression: Seperate Your Thoughts & Remember It Will Get Better

The number one problem I see in myself and others is the paralysis of depression. The deep dark times come and it feels like we are suffocating, kicking and screaming for relief and as that depression intensifies, so does the urge to do whatever for relief, much like someone drowning will pull under the person trying to help them just to get air. In those times you’ll see self-destructive behavior or relationship destructive behavior. There is a feeling that no one understands and when someone externally questions our motives or will-power, like we are causing this our self, it usually results in a further isolation from those who can be of help in these times. 

Years of therapy have helped me in those times to do a couple different things. The first is to separate myself, or at least my thought process, from what I feel. I tend to try and be as logical and fact based in my thinking, based on past experience and on what I have taken time to pattern in my brains as to what I want for life when I’m stable. In my world, that is my wife and my son and a life with them and honesty to them and with God in all I do. When I feel deeply depressed I try to separate my thoughts from those emotions and into the past episodes I’ve had. What actions when I was depressed before were helpful and what weren’t? What gave me relief in that moment and maybe kept me from worse behavior and what were the consequences of those decisions after I felt better? It’s not a real black and white analysis but over lots of years I’ve come to create a methodology of good, better, best. Sure going and buying clothes or eating at some restaurant you really crave may help you feel better but what happens when the credit card bill comes? Obviously, there are much worse coping mechanisms and addictions and some that are not so bad, like exercise. It’s about finding what works and doesn’t create a lot of collateral damage that has to be cleaned up when you do feel better again.

Often we feel the only way to keep going through those dark time is to appease the needs of our emotions. I would suggest that that isn’t true. In fact, sometimes greater long-term strength comes from doing one or two things you should do but don’t want to do. I’m currently working on pushing myself to get to work when I feel deeply depressed. It’s easier to rationalize that staying in bed and waiting it out will make it last less time and will be more beneficial, as you won’t have to face triggers and stimulation and things that make it worse or tire you out more but I find that the confidence that can come from years and years of increase productivity despite severe moods swings has given me greater confidence in life and that just because my mood changes doesn’t mean I’m still not in charge. We don’t have to be slave to mood swings and mood disorders. We may not function as fully as we want but I believe if we challenge those internal notions of inability and try just a little to do one thing that makes us uncomfortable we will learn we have greater capacity and also gain confidence in managing the chaos in our mind without. That was a hard notion to swallow 10-12 years ago but today it has become almost innate in my life. It has been most affective in the way I father my son. He is a huge trigger at 3 years old during depression but I've come to know how to interact and show love to him and smile and play for an hour or so even when I feel terrible inside. I can't do it endlessly but I can put my emotions to the side for him for a period to make sure he know I love him. I couldn't always do that, but have learned how to set the emotions aside and have also learned the negative consequences of doing so are not usually as bad as I think. It usually just means a longer nap, maybe with the help of some medicine. 

To those who love and support someone with mental illness, please, please, please don’t question the motives of someone who is struggling. It is easy for you to look at their actions and see the irrationality in them, how they are self-sabotaging and making it harder on themselves. Just like marriage, no good comes from pointing out someone’s weaknesses. Your true value can come as someone to vent to, lean on emotionally and to build them and noticing and applauding the efforts you do see them making for good. If we could all get the mindset of looking at others difficulties and thinking about what kind of trauma would cause me to feel and act in a way as someone who is severely depressed. Maybe you can understand how anything they’ve experience could cause that, but that isn’t your judgment to make. If you could imagine what it would feel like, regardless of causation, you will come closer to them opening up to you and feeling like you are their teammate and confidant in this battle. As someone who suffers, there is nothing more desired by someone who is suffering from depression, than knowing they aren’t alone and that they will not be abandoned by God and those they love. Often, they feel abandoned by God emotionally, so if you abandon them also it will give emotional cause, justified or not in your mind, for further isolation and irrationality.

                

The second point that every person in depression has to come to know as surely as they do anything else in life is that it will get better. No episode lasts forever. This is probably the most crucial aspect of improvement during episodes and improved choices as well. There is a reason that most suicides happen early on in the diagnoses of a mental illness. I attempted suicide about 6 months after I started having problems because back then I didn’t know that it would get better and that these episodes wouldn’t define my existence. Now I can more or less account for one major depressive episode every 3-4 months that will last from 2-4 weeks. I have rapid cycling bipolar so there are a lot of little ups and downs in between those major episodes, that can sometimes be annoying because you have to stop to assess every one of them to see if they will become something more or not, but I’ve come to understand that it will get better. I go into episodes knowing and believing that and then when I get to the end of my will-power two or so weeks into a really bad episode, I turn to my wife or parents or others I trust for reinforcement and encouragement to endure. Occasionally, when I’ve pushed myself for long periods of time to meet the demands of my family and a job I will fall completely apart and have a terribly bad episode that can last 3-4 months with variations of functioning levels during those periods. Those are the times it is most important to hold on to hope. In those times I try to pick one thing to do every day like exercise. I still won’t do it every day but if I can do it every other day, I’m doing more than I would if not. It helps give you something to hope for and to keep you going. I look at depression like something to beat. It is battle between a disorder and me and if it wins it ends in death via suicide. I win every time I face an episode with a different outcome.

What I’ve learned though is that there can be greater experiences and happiness than just enduring and not dying. We have the power to improve our choices every episode until we are becoming something more than we were to begin with. I’ve learned a lot in 12 years and though I still struggle to work and do many other things most people can easily do in life, I have come to know and understand the pain of those who truly suffer. My burden and most hated aspect of my existence has been the means of creating empathy in me for those who are in despair for a myriad of reasons, mental health related or not. The truth is, it’s probably the best aspect of my personality and I wouldn’t have it if it wasn’t for deep depression. So today, while I am writing this to distract and remind myself of how to manage the depression I'm currently feeling, I find solace and the desire to strengthen my resolve to endure and see my life beyond these emotional states. 

Beyond The Fog

I once heard the story of Florence Chadwick, a female swimmer who once held the record for swimming the English Channel. On a different occasion she attempted to swim the 26 miles between Catalina Islands and the California coastline. An excerpt from “Notable American Women” describes the experience as follows:

After about 15 hours a thick fog set in. Florence began to doubt her ability, and she told her mother, who was in one of the boats, that she didn’t think she could make it. She swam for another hour before asking to be pulled out, unable to see the coastline due to the fog. As she sat in the boat, she found out she had stopped swimming just one mile away from her destination.

That story came to my mind after reflecting on my most recent episode. It was about 3 weeks ago that I was in depth of an agitated mixed state. I was depressed and felt very little to no hope for the future. After, 12 years with this illness, it takes a lot for me to get to a point where I feel like there is no hope. Most of the time I feel pretty miserable but am able to tell myself that it will get better.  This was one of those occasions where those therapeutic skills were failing me.

I wasn’t helping myself either by not taking my mood-stabilizers consistently. I even told my Psychiatrist off a bit and let her know how easy it is for her to tell me to take the meds when she doesn’t have to fight through the haze and the complete lack of creative and intellectual thought process. When you’re on some of those mood-stabilizers, mixed with the anti-psychotics it feels like a miracle just getting out of bed and function on a decent level. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that’s a smart thing. As bad as all that haze is, I get a lot less impulsive and suicidal when I consistently take them. She finally suggested we try a liquid form of lithium which has since been really helpful, as it doesn’t make me severely nauseous, like the lithium does when I take it on an empty stomach.

Back to managing the feelings of the episode. This was a pretty bad episode. With my history, the first thing I have to work through is the urge to self-harm. I’m not sure why it is so strong, mostly because I’ve used it in the past a lot and probably because I feel it’s a way to force my emotions out and purge them and quickly re-gain emotional stability. It’s a horrible way to cope and it scares and stresses out everyone you love. It can also lead to more and more aggressive forms that can unintentionally or semi-intentionally lead to suicide. The number one job in those times is to keep myself out of those situations. During one period I hadn’t slept the whole night before and just kept trying to watch shows to distract my brain from thinking about how much I wanted to hurt myself. The next morning Teana was planning on going to very special day for my cousin but I walked in early that morning after pacing much of the night and told her I needed her to stay. I knew that if I had 3-5 hours alone that day after no sleep that my mind was ready to lose it and I may do something I truly regret. I did the right thing by letting her know where I was and how serious it was especially since it’s hard for her to gauge, as sleepless nights aren’t too uncommon and I’m agitated quite often.

The day and period passed with no occurrences of self-harm or any other major issues. I got focused on catching up on a bunch of movie’s I’ve never watched from a list I have and stuck myself in front of the computer on Netflix for the better part of several days. It kept my mind on something and then I’d drug myself up with a greater than normal dose of anti-psychotics (as directed by my doctor) and then I’d sleep.

I was pretty proud of myself as I finally started to feel relief. Teana had a church camp to go to the next week and so I was going to have Zeke most of the time, except for when my Mom said she would help and he did have daycare some. I still had to take him from the time work ended until bedtime, as well as one full day, on top of that I planned on working 3 full days, per my usual schedule. I tend to not give myself as much slack as I need and to try and push myself when part of me knows I should slow down. I probably shouldn’t have worked much, if at all, that week but I felt like I needed to because they needed me and because I don’t want to be shown favoritism, even though I really could have chosen not to work if I wanted to without repercussion at work. Anyways, I got halfway through the week when I hit a wall and started to feel deeply depressed, as well as exhausted. My parents were already helping a ton and Teana was gone so I felt like I had to suck it up and keep going. It was at this moment that I was like Florence Chadwick. I was immersed in fog and I decided on some level to throw in the towel and say “Screw it! Screw God! Screw Life! Screw everyone who doesn’t get it!” The good and the bad of this was that I had to take care of Zeke. I knew I couldn’t hurt myself or anything because he needed me and so I turned to old negative coping mechanisms. Later that week Teana finally came home. I played off like everything was fine until she could tell it wasn’t. My mind filled with thoughts of suicide and anger and I deeply wanted out. I was tired and I felt like it was useless. Teana made me take a larger dose of anti-psychotics, like I’m supposed to take in troubled times and made me stay in bed with her until I fell asleep. The next few days were a little better but manageable. Finally, after a few more days the fog lifted and I felt relief.

Now that I am in a place of stability I look back and think, if I could have just seen the shore ahead or known it was there even though I was in the fog, how would I have made better decisions? I still did pretty well, all in all. I didn’t hurt myself but there were pieces to be cleaned up after some stupid decisions. The story of Florence Chadwick continues with her trying again but the next time she was in the fog, when she felt like she could go no further, she pictured the shoreline just a mile away as she had seen once she stopped before.

That may seem like a simple thing but to learn to see the end in sight when in the midst of an unbearable depressive or agitated rage or while experiencing psychosis, but I believe it can be learned.

It has been a long journey for me. 10 years ago I lived and breathed for my emotional states and acted out on whatever I felt like doing during those ups and downs. That led to emotional abuse, the beginning of several different addictions, a distancing myself from God, and a lot of reckless behavior. I didn’t care until the consequences caught up with me. You give someone an opportunity to end a relationship like that and they will, rightfully, leave to mend themselves. You realize that no matter what you do, where you go, what you buy that your illness doesn’t leave. You may find freedom from its cares for a period but you stay long enough in any environment and it will catch up. When your brain is the problem, lifestyle changes won’t create lasting solutions. So one day I looked myself in the mirror and knew I had to change. First it was finding God. Then it was overcoming addictions, which took years and years, eventually I added attempts to reincorporate myself into society. A simple job. A few college classes. At times, I’d get excited and try to bite off more than I could chew and then would come crashing down and have to slowly pick of the pieces again. The first few years it felt like you were building up and tearing down the same stuff and not making much progress but in time and when I stepped back far enough I could see simple undeniable progress. After 2 years, I finally worked part time successfully. After 3 ½ years, I got through some classes. After 5, I went full time to school and even though I only showed up 50% of the time I still did well because I got accommodations even though it was embarrassing. My relationship with God slowly improved. I went and met with church leaders more times than I care to admit and every time I made progress. I eventually found a confidence in who I was and how Heavenly Father saw me. There are times that the old thoughts creep in, especially when I’m cycling. Even today, with the amount of stressors in my life, I have a pretty significantly debilitating episode every 3-4 months, where I spend 2-4 weeks mostly in bed. I’m working on pushing myself to still show up for work at least part of those times or a few days a week during those times even if I’m horribly unproductive. My boss supports and encourages me in that and it has been helpful. Those days are very draining but they are also very rewarding because at the end even though you feel like you ran a marathon, you feel encouraged that you have greater capacity than you realize.

I have seen miracles in my life, or at least what seem to me to be such when I consider how broken I once was. I haven’t heard psychotic voices in my head in years. Nine years into these issues, about the time I graduated from school I quit feeling the everyday desire to kill myself. I now have a son that brings me so much joy and just last night I sat with my wife talking and felt as in love with her as I ever have. I am working now, when things are good, to prepare myself for the fog that will come again.

There are two sureties in my life. One, I’m Bipolar, so bad days are ahead and some of them will be close to unbearable and will take all I can muster to endure. Two, those periods are like a fog, they will entangle my mind into false precepts that their pain is never ceasing, but I am working at remembering that the shore is just a mile away.