Mental Health Monologues: How I powered through depression

I am keen to spread awareness around mental health and our continuing journey towards self improvement, and so this write up is intended to be part of a short series on my collective thoughts and experiences.

To start off, let me tell you a bit about who I am. I used to be a happy go lucky kinda guy. You know, the type who was everyone’s friend and always had a funny story to tell. I truly believed life is about the journey, and allowed myself to just flow along with wherever it took me. Then about 6 -7 years ago, shortly after I’d turned 25 things started to spiral downhill in my life. Sure, there have been a few bumps here and there before, and the occasional rough patch. This time probably wasn’t any different either, what changed though was how I appeared to be reacting to it.

Initially it didn’t matter, I wasn’t too fussed about a “few” bad events, but what I didn’t realize back then is that it would eventually change me as as person. A year ago, I was formally diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and social anxiety. Strangely though when I was told about it, I wasn’t particularly sad or even surprised, it just gave an identity to something that had become part of who I was as an individual. It was consistent with my attempts at qualifying the way I felt. I described it as feeling flat. Like the looking at an ECG when things have gone wrong, you expect it to have its spikes and bumps but mine felt like a flat line. My mood even on the best of days were subtle upticks, only to soon fall back to being flat or every now and then fall into a dip.

Coming from a conservative Asian family, growing up in the Middle East, mental health was taboo territory. You don’t really talk about it and no one really understands it. My attempts to talk about it would just be met with surprise or rejection. The most common response I was told was to just “get over it, stop overthinking your life and making it such a big deal”. Doesn’t quite work that way though, does it.

Over the last 7 years of this journey however, I didn’t take it lying down. I was always seeking ways to uplift myself. Hence this write up and the others to follow. I wrote the section below a couple of months before my 30th birthday. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my biggest train wreck of a life event was just around a corner. When it did hit however, rather thank sink in defeat I came out swinging putting forth my strongest foot yet.

I believe I held strong because somewhere the techniques I have noted below had started to work. And with this write up, and a few more to follow, I’d like to share with all of you the things I tried to hold my head high, those that worked and those that maybe didn’t. Everyone knows someone who seems to be running through a rough patch. If you found this write up useful, share it forward to them and hopefully when they get on top of the fight someday, they can add their own lessons here. And now, onward to my first attempt to pen it all down a few years ago:

August — 2014:
“I live a fairly normal, secure kinda life. Normal meaning I’ve got a great family, roof over my head, food in my belly and no serious financial worries. But for quite some time now I had been really really sad. For reasons I can’t really pin point I noticed I’ve been waking up feeling what I would call depression and a significant lack of purpose to my day. It took me a while to figure out that my so called reasons like not having the right job, not feeling productive, not this, not that, all of that weren’t really a cause but just manifestations of a deeper reason that was making me sad. I know a lot of you out there are living those feelings I went through with every day.
But that was yesterday for me. Today I am happier than, more content than and more physically fitter than I have ever felt or been before. And this is how I got here:

1. Recondition Yourself:

Watch this video. A huge part of the exercise is to mentally recondition yourself to re-evaluate your perspective on life and your evaluation of things. This is a good place to start. https://goo.gl/noxDCM

2. Look inward:

Let the benchmark for your success or happiness be yourself, not others. Put everyone you know together and collectively there will always be stuff you haven’t done or things you don’t have that someone else does. There is no end to that list and you will probably die trying to chase that list without realizing you are already there.

3. Stay off Facebook, and social media in general:

As rhetorical as it might sound, although social media sites often collate great information, no one comes on Facebook to post/ share the s*** they are going through. People only share/ project their happier moments. You look at it and you go, “wow look at his car”, “wow how does he travel so much”, “Woah! Look they are so rich” “why does only my life suck so much”, and you fail to see that everyone’s life is a fine balance of happy and sad moments. The guy driving the fast car struggled to save enough to buy it and the one who’s travelling to insanely awesome locations probably drags him/herself through a dead beat job. A.K.A unlike what you probably tend to believe after an hour with Facebook, your life probably doesn’t suck and you might even be better off than you realized.

4. Read the news, but as a skeptic:

Know that the news like everything else is a commercial entity and they print what sells. Bad stuff sells, good stuff not so much. But despite what the news tells you, the world today is better off than it has been in a long, long time. Don’t believe me? Ask Bill Gates: http://goo.gl/NDVlTu

5. Pick a hobby:

Spend time with family. And don’t cheat on your time with those two. Commit yourself because long after everything else is long gone and has moved on those are all that will still remain as reminders to who you are.

6. Stop, breath:

If you are in a tough spot remind yourself constantly that nothing in this world is constant. What goes up must come down and everything is temporary. Unfortunately this applies to everything that is great in your life as well, so learn not to cling too hard and to let go.

7. Eat clean, work out:

You can’t drive fast if your car’s broken. Feeling good about being in top shape has gone a long way to making me a happier person. On a lighter note, I might be feeling like crap but I look damn good (or think I do at least) feeling it.
And if you do occasionally let up and go for that Big Mac and Cheese or skip a day’s work out, don’t beat yourself up over it. Life isn’t a binary sequence of Yes and No’s and your health isn’t decided by one meal but rather your habits over time.

Be Happy. Stay Happy.”

So, that was me back in August 2014. What I didn’t know then is that in about 60 days from then, my wife and I would have our lives pushed to the ground and stomped on. Fear not though, its not all doom and gloom. We were very good at picking up the pieces and pushing back using everything we had learnt thus far. So if you found things helpful thus far, tune back in soon and we’ll continue to chat through the rest of the story, and note down a few more lessons along the way.

Lastly, if you feel like you aren’t making any progress despite your best intentions, please please seek professional help. I cannot under-emphasize the value of finding help at the right time.