Shannon, I enjoyed reading this piece and, as always, I applaud you for your honesty. It takes courage to talk about our mental health struggles, but the more we do it, the more others who are suffering are likely to find the strength to open up about their own issues.

“Who am I, anyway, without depression?”

This is, of course, a question about identity. People with emotional trauma and/or psychological illness often define themselves, either partly or wholly, in terms of their pain and mental health issues. For some, it’s a mechanism for survival and coping. For others, it likely reflects processes of medicalization. Incidentally, your question reminds of something I once heard a graduate student say. Just before she completed her masters degree she said to me, “Who am I if I’m not a student? It’s all I’ve known for so long now”. We often find it ‘dizzying’ to have that which we’ve considered to be an essential part of ourselves disappear or crumble, even if it’s in our own best interests.

There’s one other aspect of your article on which I’d like to comment. Let me preface this by noting:

1. I’m not a medical professional; and
2. I have nothing but the kindest of intentions in saying what follows.

As somebody who has overcome chronic pain and depression, I’m a strong believer in the power of self-talk. By ‘self-talk’, I don’t mean any sort of pseudoscience silliness about manifesting your dreams simply by thinking or talking about them. What I mean is that the language we use to describe, make sense of, and process the things we experience in life, including mental health challenges and emotional trauma, can have a dramatic effect on:

1. Our overall happiness;
2. The quality of our interpersonal relationships; and
3. The physiological state of our body (as regards digestion, pain, sleep, etc.).

One of the most devastating effects (or characteristics) of depression is the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness about which people with depressive symptoms often express so much anxiety and sadness. For those of us who have dealt with depression, we know exactly what it’s like to believe our lives will never improve and that there’s nothing we or anybody else can do to make things better.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that our own self-talk can be the cause of these sensations of helplessness and hopelessness or, at the very least, it can significantly exacerbate them (or prevent them from dissipating).

When we say to ourselves things like:

• “I’m worried my depression is going to come back”;
• “My depression is currently in remission, but it could re-appear at any moment”; and
• “It’s not as if my depression is never going to show up again”…

…we effectively disempower ourselves.

That is to say, we construct a situation in which this external thing, depression, is ‘over there’ for now and leaving us be, but, without any warning, it could come ‘right back here’ and wreak havoc on us at any moment.

In doing so, we position ourselves as a sort of victim-in-waiting, one who is at the mercy of an uncaring illness over which we can exercise little if any control.

This kind of thinking naturally produces feelings of anxiety, fear, and, indeed, helplessness, because it leads us to believe we have a condition, depression, that has the capacity to rear its ugly head at any moment, throwing our lives into turmoil.

In contrast to the language of remission and relapse, what I have found (and continue to find) empowering is to say to myself things like:

• “Sometimes I experience depressive symptoms. I feel alone, isolated, and uninterested in what’s happening around me. Some days are particularly tough. Eventually, though, these symptoms pass, and I feel better, even if temporarily and even if I continue to struggle in other ways”;
• “I’m feeling angry, sad, and hopeless right now because [x] just happened. It’s natural for me to feel this way given how devastating [x] is. Anybody in my position would feel the same way. There’s nothing inherently wrong with me”; and
• “I can’t control what happens to me. What I can influence, however, is how I understand and react to what happens to me. Every aspect of my life necessarily gets filtered through how I choose to see the world. How can I make sense of this particular situation in the most productive way possible?”

What I’m suggesting is that, for some people at least, it can be personally empowering and psychologically beneficial to move away from essentializing mental illness — “I have depression”, “my depression is really bad right now” — in order to embrace more of an experiential view — “sometimes I experience depressive thoughts”, “I’m not feeling well at all today”.

To repeat what I said earlier, I mean no disrespect or unkindness in leaving this comment. I merely wanted to share my thoughts with you in the hopes that you might find something of value in them — even if it’s just some food for thought, so to speak.

Cheers :)