The Possession of Depression (Trigger Warning)
Preface: I am in no way qualified to speak on the subject of mental illness outside of my own personal experience that involves spending the better part of a decade struggling with Major Depression, Dysthymia, a Traumatic Brain Injury, and a Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I am not a doctor, and I do not cite any scientific research in this article as evidence for my claims. This article is only an attempt to clarify some confusion I’ve encountered throughout my struggle when dealing with people who may not fully understand what depression is or how it can present itself. Everything I claim is solely based off of my own personal experience with the disease. Everyone has their own experience with mental illness, and my intention is not to undermine anyone else’s experience.
If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1–800–273–8255 or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
In April of 2018, a story started circulating online about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opening up about his struggles with depression. Intrigued, I sat down and made sure I read this story as I have had my own personal experience with the disease. I was surprised to find an account of someone who had witnessed his mother try to commit suicide and consequently entered into a state of depression. The article states:
“Johnson recounted that he was 15 when he watched his mother, Ata, walked into oncoming traffic on Interstate 65 in Nashville shortly after they were evicted from their apartment.
He said he was able to pull her from the highway but then sunk into several years of depression that were made more difficult by injuries that halted his would-be football career and a breakup with a girlfriend.”
It was about here in the story that I had to pause for a moment and reflect on what I had just read.
I got the feeling that Dwayne Johnson was experiencing an understandable emotional state of trauma after witnessing his mother try to commit suicide and the subsequent end to his football career and loss of a girlfriend. But was he experiencing depression? My immediate answer is no.
I want to be clear- I’m not discrediting his experience or belittling his claims. I’m sure he was suffering. But there’s an important conversation and I believe a clear distinction to be made here.
There is a difference between grief and depression. There is a difference between sadness and depression. There is a difference between PTSD and depression. Dwayne Johnson found himself in situations that would quite obviously cause someone to feel sad, angry, frustrated, and confused. And all of those emotions can be symptoms of depression. But at what point does a normal, expected reaction to unpleasant life experiences become the disease of depression? For me, I think it’s important to understand the difference between the two.
Depression doesn’t begin and end anywhere. It isn’t necessarily triggered by something. There’s nothing that has to happen to you for you to “enter into a state of depression”. Depression is more equivalent to how we imagine a slow possession would feel. It goes way beyond feelings of sadness. That being said, there are situations and events that happen in our life that can effect the intensity of a “state of depression”, but the lines are usually pretty blurry.
When you are in the grip of major depression, you feel as though you have lost control of your mind. Things that you normally would have control over, you no longer control. Thoughts that you normally would have control over, you no longer have control of. You may know what you should be doing and thinking, but instead find yourself doing and thinking the exact opposite. Your ambition- lost. Your motivation- misplaced. Instead of feeling sad, you may feel absolutely nothing at all. Or you might feel pain. And only pain.
The excitement you once had about your hobbies and interests disappears. As a consequence, your whole identity is challenged. Your physical body begins to suffer as you become more sedentary, perhaps self-medicating with drugs or alcohol. Your joints and muscles ache. Breathing becomes a chore. Speaking of chores- your responsibilities and obligations in life get pushed to the wayside. And not because you don’t care, but because you feel like you don’t care. Physiologically speaking, the symptoms you may experience are often varied, but include: dizziness, headaches, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, pain in the body, and decreased libido. This is a process that feels relentless and never-ending. And by the time you notice that something has seriously changed, you may be too far gone.
Most importantly, depression is a state of being that does not react to the condolences of friends or family- no matter how hard they try. The words we hear from our loved ones trying to be there for us land on empty ears and cold hearts. It’s a state of being that taints the entirety of existence with mediocrity, with blandness. And once you’re in it, it’s quite possibly the hardest thing a human being could ever try to get out of. In fact, there is no “getting out of it”- once you’ve begun a battle with depression you will be dealing with it in some way or another for the rest of your life. And here’s where depression becomes different than grief or sadness.
Depression is a disease. Grief is a response. Depression is chronic, sadness is momentary and reactionary. Depression can happen for no reason. Frustration has a reason. Depression doesn’t care about fame or fortune. It doesn’t care if you have a good support group of friends and family. It doesn’t care that you have to go to work or take care of your children. It doesn’t care that you’re neglecting your spouse or significant other. The main point I want to stress here is this: reacting to life experiences that cause trauma by entering into a state of grief is normal and healthy. This state of grief is not depression. It can be, obviously, as everyone and every situation is unique. But the distinction still needs to be made. I personally feel that by relating Dwayne Johnson’s “struggle with depression” to the traumatic experience of his mother attempting suicide and the normal teenage angst of a broken heart and a sports injury, the writer is doing depression itself a disservice.
What we don’t need is a million people experiencing sadness thinking that they are depressed. What we don’t need is a million people pushing their sadness away because our culture has told them they aren’t supposed to feel that way. What we don’t need is people responding to unpleasantries thinking that there is something wrong with them. Part of the problem is that we are suppressing feelings of sadness instead of embracing them as part of the human experience and learning from them. When we suppress emotions like sadness they fester inside of us, creating stagnancy and, ultimately, disease (like depression).
I think the hardest part for someone on the outside of depression is that for the sufferer it’s not difficult to smile and answer the common greeting of “how are you” with the ever more common “I’m good.” That’s the entirety the conversation would ever be anyway. People generally don’t want to hear “I’m miserable. I’m depressed. I want to kill myself.” Revealing your suffering actually causes most people to want to distance themselves from you, in an attempt to not have anything interrupt their fragile lives. It’s also generally pretty easy for someone suffering from depression to continue on with their routine, or at least maintain the image that “everything’s fine”. I believe this is only due to the fact that we don’t really have any choice in the matter. If we want to exist in this world, we still have to find a way to go to work, interact with other humans, and “show up” for life in general. This can make it difficult to really know what’s going on in someone’s life. In our day-to-day routines we don’t often connect deeply enough with someone to talk about vulnerable topics.
So what do we do when we know those that we love may be suffering? What do we do when we know people that need help but might not be able to help themselves? What do we do when we ourselves feel the despair that comes from the effects of depression that seems to surround us these days? What do we do when the people we look up to kill themselves?
The only thing we can do- we keep living. We do what we can to get these people help. We do what we can to effect the change we need in the world to break the taboo of mental illness. More importantly, we focus our attention on our own personal development, because we can’t help anyone until we help ourselves. Those of us that can maintain hope maintain it, creating the space for those of us who need hope to step into it. The system we live in rewards self-destruction, so it is now our responsibility to rewrite the system.
Self-love is the most important thing that any of us can do to help others struggling with depression. I realize this may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. We can’t truly love and accept others without first completely understanding what that relationship feels like inside of ourselves. When we learn to have a fully-realized relationship with ourself, to treat ourselves with compassion, to listen to what our self wants and not what society wants, we break the pattern of systematic conformity and enter into a state of personal liberation. This state of personal liberation allows us to become vulnerable and connect with others in ways that were not possible to us before. In fact we invite it in.
And let me tell you something- this has a ripple effect. When you approach life from a place of self-love, people notice. They notice how easy it is to talk to you about hard things. They notice how inspiring it feels to be around you. They notice how much they can trust you. They see the state that you’re in and they see hope. And sometimes all a person needs is a little hope. And in a world full of people prioritizing self-love in their life, the possession of depression loses it’s footing and dies. And all of a sudden the future looks a little brighter.
