Finding yourself through the storm
By Susan Page Gadegone
The storm
I got up to go to the bathroom after an hour of laying in bed. I looked at myself in the mirror: the person that I was looking back at was a stranger. She was struggling, tears flowed down her cheeks, and her eyes were red because of crying. The day before she was laughing during a game night and having a great time. Now, I looked to myself like an entirely different person.
I thought to myself, “Is this what it means to live with bipolar disorder? Am I doomed to experience deep depression on weekends where I’m supposed to be enjoying myself after a stressful week of work?”
Disappointed in myself, I walked back to my room, lay in bed holding myself in my arms and made a wish that this feeling would just go away. Depression swallowed me up whole and I did not know when it would spit me out. I fell asleep hoping I would feel better for work the next day, but I felt pretty hopeless inside.
Who am I?
You feel like a different person when you are depressed. There is a fatigue, a sadness that overcomes your body, and a penetrating darkness that eats every ounce of positivity in your being. It is too much to handle at times.
Depression can make you obsess over the question of who you are and doubt your intrinsic value in the world. It hits hard and can make you love yourself less and question the warmth of the people around you. Without a trustworthy sense of connection to others, depression can be a painfully lonely and isolating experience.
It is crucial to your well-being to be able to make sense of your experience during depression. For me, self-awareness is the start of the path to recovery. With self-awareness, you can begin to see yourself in a more compassionate light, and discover how you might begin to shift your mood in a more positive direction.
Making sense of your experience
I’ve started using Healify, a free app that allows me to measure my mood at any time of day. I turn to Healify for support in understanding how I am feeling. Healify helps me reflect by asking me ~20 mood questions designed to help measure my levels of sadness, anxiety, anger, and happiness. Healify outputs a single mood score and other insights that help me understand how severely I am suffering. It also helps me understand where the majority of my negative feelings are coming from.
Healify asks you to be really up front about how you are feeling in the given moment. It is not always easy to answer all of the questions accurately, since it can be hard to look inside when I’m feeling down. However, I can generally always answer the questions in under a minute. Seeing my mood score at the end is always validating and motivating.
The last severe bout of depression I had, Healify helped me confirm that I was feeling quite depressed. Armed with that insight, I decided to take some action. Connection and a sense of worth are the main things I need when I am depressed. Writing always helps me connect with myself and others, so I started to write this very article about my experience. In this way, Healify helped me reconnect with my intrinsic sense of worth and reminded me that I can always take action to help myself feel better. I feel that it may have helped save my life that day!
You don’t have to struggle anymore
Healify is a simple tool that helps you reflect and motivates you to help yourself feel better. Whatever works for you, Healify can be the spark that helps remind you to do it! Before using Healify, I spent a lot more time stuck in my periods of depression.
Do you struggle with your own moods? I’m always interested in connecting with people who suffer from bipolar disorder or other mental health challenges. I encourage you to check out Healify for yourself or share it with any loved ones that might need it. It’s 100% free to use and can be a life saver for people in need of help. It seems most of us need help from time to time, especially during these troubling times!
If you have a moment, please drop me a line in the comments below. I’d love to learn more about your experience — either using the app, or confronting your own mood journey. We are never as alone as we feel!
About Susanna Gadegone
Susanna is a peer health counselor / manager at Edgewood Center Drop-in Center North and works primarily with clients in the age of 18–25 helping them recover from challenges relating to mental illness, substance abuse, and overall navigating transitioning into adulthood. She combines her 5 years of experience in mental health advocacy/counseling and her own experience living with bipolar disorder to help people recover from mental health challenges every day. Susanna Gadegone has been writing for Healify since summer 2020 as the Community Advocacy and Mental Health Outreach Coordinator. Susanna lives in San Francisco, California and loves being with friends and family, playing with her dog Jaxxy, and hiking.
