What have I learned from Depression?
While my aim is to make this article as general as possible for it to resonate with the greater number of people, I believe that I should provide some context on my experience prior to diving into what I have learned from it. My depression started two years ago. Day by day I would find less and less joy in literature, studies, dancing, travelling — all the things I used to love. They seemed meaningless. I spent less time with my beloved people as I felt guilty for being passive and uninspired. I was desperately looking for a rational reason, for an explanation… and wasn’t finding it. I could find many tangible things but they felt not enough. Therefore, I was stuck in the circles of self-blame and apathy. Yet, it was only the suddenly occurring panic attacks, that made me seek for professional help. This led to the diagnosis of clinical depression. I have attempted various ways of treatments: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, antidepressants, mindfulness techniques etc. All of these had different success levels and were mainly working as a combination.
I will be honest, at the time of writing this article I am not sure that this is behind me. This is another reason why this is not an article about how I was dealing with depression. First one being that I don’t believe in the existence of a universal treatment.
By no means I want to claim that depression belongs to this special category of experiences that are unpleasant, but everyone has to go through them. No, depression is a condition caused by the chemical changes in the human brain and so as with any disease, it is better to go on without it. HOWEVER. I don’t think that it is something that you can prevent by healthy diet or regular exercise. My only claim is that even from this devastating, exhausting condition, one can learn a great deal. Therefore, I would like to discuss each of my personal discoveries in turn.
1. Awareness of mental health problems, their prevalence and importance.
In Ukraine, where I am from there is a tendency to consider mental health issues on a very bipolar spectrum. They are either believed to be a whim of a person who a) has too much free time, b) creates excuses for the lack of accomplishments appropriate at their age (yes, such mindsets still exists in my country), c) is weird (this one is a very broad category and one of the favourites of our people). On the other hand, a different end of the spectrum includes people with severe conditions which means that they have a considerable degree of difficulty in engaging in the social life and performing tasks which are considered to be normal at the age of that particular individual e.g. if it is a child — study at school or university. But there is a caveat here. These cases have two possibilities: they are either again ignored, with parents pretending that their child is what the rest of the society believes to be normal. They probably think that this attitude will help their child to get better. And become like their peers. But I have seen numerous times how this attitude had the opposite effect. Children can be extremely cruel, especially to someone who is different. Therefore, kids with special needs often end up being very miserable in the average schools, despite the hopes of their families. Moreover, often even teachers themselves have absolutely no expertise in addressing the problems that these kids are facing. Another scenario is a different type of ignoring — hiding the problem, and therefore hiding the children who are considered a burden for the parents.
But I digressed. The perception of mental health in Ukraine deserves a whole separate article in itself which I don’t think I am qualified enough to write, at least not yet. Nevertheless, the very first thing that I discovered for myself is the whole scope of the problem. This introduction was to give an explanation as to why I used to consider mental health a topic non-grata since it is so deeply personal and intimate that you wouldn’t want to talk about it in public. And it is true, at the times you are most fragile you feel as if you are balancing on a very thin edge of your sanity, so it is very easy to lose your balance from what you judge is an inappropriate comment or a question. At the same time, this problem cannot be solved on your own or without understanding the nature of the problem. So the very first thing I learned was what depression is and isn’t.
Andrew Solomon in his excellent talk on depression said: ‘The opposite of depression is not happiness, it is vitality’.
And I think it is something that a lot of people don’t understand when they carelessly use the term to describe the feeling of extreme tiredness or pain. It is neither of these, it is just emptiness. Depression forced me to re-invent for myself things that I took for granted, most importantly that constant drive which makes us get up in the morning and do something. And I am not saying get up and go to work/school/ university etc but do at least something, make yourself good breakfast, go for a walk, watch a movie, meet with a friend. Because depression doesn’t make a difference between work and leisure it robs you of both of them.
2. Dangers of self-help literature
As many of us are I am a book worm. It comes as no surprise that in the times of my struggle I also turned to written word. My problem with the self-helping literature is that it often falls into one of the two categories: it is either too detailed and rigid or too wishy washy. In the latter, they simply tell you how you should/shouldn’t feel, without an explanation how or why. They don’t give you a tool to deal with depression, but present you a desired result. In the former, the author(s) essentially create some sort of a recipe or a step by step guide for you to follow, based on their particular philosophy, which is in turn based on their own experiences and beliefs. They recommend you healthy habits which you should adopt, ways of thinking that you should try etc. I can understand the motivation behind this and the reason why they are popular. They trick you into believing that someone knows the answer. Besides our claims about freedom, we often like being told what to do, it saves us mental energy and time. Especially when you are depressed and struggle to trust your own judgement. But the truth is that I personally don’t believe that a perfect all-encompassing ‘answer’ ‘’ exists, that there is a right and wrong way of living your life. These recipes work for a proportion of people but don’t work for others and those for whom the solution provided doesn’t help, are often looking for reasons for it in themselves, whereas it just means that they need a different recipe, their personal recipe, they are not better or worse they are just different in some crucial ways.
In the times when speed is the most important quality, efficiency becomes a virtue number one, and its price is increasing every day together with all the books about how to make you sleep less, how to organize your routine, how to track your life etc. All of this is directed towards one single goal — make you more efficient, more suitable to fit in with the requirements. But the truth is that these changes take time and by the time, we get where we initially wanted, the world around us sets the goal even further, so it becomes like a horizon, which is impossible to reach. And the achievements that are already there don’t give you a feeling of satisfaction because a priori they are outdated by the time you get there. Constant need of keeping up with the requirements of the world, leads to the discipline and framework of our life being imposed on us from outside, whereas it has to come from the within.
My whole life I felt like I am not enough, not smart- hardworking- fit-beautiful-kind-caring-attentive-organized etc. Therefore, I made an impression of the person who constantly strives for development. People complimented me, but they didn’t know how deeply ill this attitude was. The drive behind my efforts towards improving myself was coming from the lack of self-acceptance. As a result, with time tremendous amount of pressure and aggression accumulated within me and turned inwards, resulting in self-hatred.
3. Importance of motivation behind self-development
The thing is, we are enough. Not in some ghostly future but now. What about the development one might ask? Of course, we have to constantly continue to learn and improve but we should do it because of curiosity, because of desire to do that. The important part of self-confidence is to be able to trust the decisions that you make and know that you are able to make the most of your life. In order for this to happen, you have to accept who you are and *here comes another mainstream idea* love yourself. Weirdly, despite the fact that we commonly think that egoism is something innate to us, egoism is different to loving yourself.
Deep introspective requires a lot of effort. It requires you to stop lying to yourself, step out of your comfort zone of ignorance and look soberly. Self-acceptance is impossible without understanding of all aspects of your personality, starting from the ones that you present to the outside world and to the small ugly ones that show their sly eyes when no one is looking; the ones you are ashamed of; the ones that make you feel guilty. All of that complexity has to be embraced and only then you will be able to create a path for yourself which will not be dictated by momentary requirements of the society but by your own personal needs. One can argue that the individual is inseparable from the people among which they are living but I believe that some of the things brought to us from outside resonate with who we are, and some don’t, we have to pay close attention to be able to distinguish the two.
4. Separating the shining from the golden
My openness about my state led to another important discovery, some of the people in my close circle were not ready to accept it. Everyone likes to be surrounded by positive, successful and fun individuals who are able to distract us from the routine and bring joy to our lives. But there is a catch. Some of us treat depression (sometimes unconsciously) as almost a contaminating disease which can harm seemingly perfect lives. They are afraid of the unpleasant and ugly sides of depression: tears, moaning, weakness, fear, infantilism etc. This list is endless and everyone has a unique combination of these due to their state which is not at all like a romanticized image of a depressed individual who somehow manages to recycle the negativity into something creative. That simply doesn’t happen. Grief, pain, sadness — these are the things that might sometimes be sublimated into an artwork. Not depression. This discovery, despite being painful, helped me to get rid of people who were not ready to accept me in this difficult period of life.
5. Looking beyond the surface
One of the big struggles which I faced at the beginning was my inability to ask for help. Very few people were aware of my state initially, I decreased the time spent in public and when it was inevitable managed to stay well composed and ‘normal’. Of course, there were small details that would give me away but it was astonishing how no one would ever notice them (to my sheer satisfaction at the time). Nevertheless, this experience of internal suffering meanwhile making an impression of a successful and accomplished individual, taught me to look deeper, to observe people more attentively, to read between the lines, to notice change of usual patterns of their actions. It led to scary discoveries of my own ignorance of problems and struggles of those whom I considered my friends and to who I was scarily blind. We underestimate the amount of personal catastrophes unrevealing before us, catastrophes which require our help.
6. How NOT to talk to people
Through analysis of hours of conversations with those who stayed to support and help me, I learned how to talk to people who share my experiences. Never try to reason with a depressed person. Being surrounded by people who got used to the very analytic approach to thinking and solving problems, those who knew about my condition multiple times tried to address my problem by talking about it, trying to make me formulate the definite reasons; pinpoint the events and problems that make me depressed. But the thing is that depression is a very complex state, it is intertwined with many many different things that probably won’t make sense to the outside observer, therefore when we try to articulate them, we end up in a situation when we feel like creating a problem out of thin air. Which is further emphasized by the comments of the people trying to help and telling you that all our issues are not worth it and are easily solvable. Tada, you just contributed to one of the biggest problems of depressed people: feeling of weakness and self-worthiness. By thinking that their problems are not real or are unimportant they further increase their frustration with themselves.
I was asked multiple times, how should one support someone suffering from depression? This question puzzled me for a long time. As I mentioned before, every case is extremely individual so there is no pattern of correct behaviour. Nevertheless, I came to conclusion that one thing that seems to be generally helpful is empathy. And while this sounds obvious, it is not an easy thing to develop. Instead of trying to build a logical story behind the sufferings of the person, understand the roots and cause-outcome relationships, just try to listen to how they feel. While the reasons behind their feelings might be alien to you or seem irrational, most likely you have experienced similar emotions in your life, you have felt fear or anxiety, lack of confidence or despair. These can very easily overwhelm and when there is someone who knows exactly how it feels, somehow sharing makes it a tiny bit less devastating.
