Dealing with Depression

We all have our demons to battle many of use share a common demon, depression. With that demon often follows anxiety like an unwanted guest that just won’t leave or a rash you can’t get rid of. It’s a constant debilitating problem that if not dealt with properly can result in tragedy. 

Armchair Psychology Does Not Help

If you’ve ever seen those memes or comments that try to portray depression as just being sad. If you suffer from depression as I do, you might find such comments as ignorant and infuriating like I do. It seeks to marginalize people and label them as weak. This type of armchair psychology is reminiscent of the kind of tribalism that refuses to die. If you are one of those people, please do yourself a favor. Keep your ignorant opinions to yourself, you are not being helpful and you do not know what you are talking about.

What Does it Feel Like

It is difficult to describe how this mental disability feels as each person is unique. But here is what it’s like for me others may have similar symptoms. Imagine waking up in the morning and you are angry that it’s morning and you don’t know why. Yesterday might have been a good day, but today as you wake up you are mad as hell that it is morning. No reason you are just mad, or maybe you are afraid. So you lay there and hope you can go back to sleep rather than deal with the sudden emotion.

Eventually, if you are able you get up to face the day. But that emotion is still there so you shove it aside and try to make it through the day. Because you woke up with an unexplained emotion you are on edge and irritable. You feel the gnawing of anxiety creep up your spine. All of this causes your blood pressure to increase so you desperately reach for you medications for the day and swallow them. Hope they will calm things down in your mind.

There’s a knock at the door and the meds have not started working again, so you grit your teeth and answer the door. The person at the door is looking for someone that isn’t here. You’re annoyed and it takes every ounce of your will not to bite their head off. Once that is taken care of you try to get some breakfast, in the middle of that task the phone rings. The meds still haven’t started working and you take the Lord’s name in vane at the top of your lungs. It’s your brother, taking a deep breath you answer trying not sound irritated. He needs your help, you aren’t doing anything that day so you agree because he’s your brother and you love him.

Finally you get to eat breakfast and you distract yourself with your cell phone while eating. When you get done you are feeling somewhat better so you go and help your brother. Maybe the day will get better, maybe it won’t. If it gets better you have a good day despite the rocky start. If it doesn’t get better you have a bad day and no amount of medication will stop it. The day is ruined so you retreat to your bedroom to avoid the world.

Medications Roll with Depression

The roll of medications are to help manage your depression and anxiety, but they are not a cure-all-end-all. Combined with a proper diet, exercise, and coping techniques as well as communication with your doctor treating you. Then you can hope for more good days that bad days. However, that is the best case scenario. Sometimes medications just don’t help, and sometimes you just get tired of taking them so you stop. Not the best of ideas but it is what it is. There is no magic cure.

How to Cope with Depression

Coping with depression even when the medications aren’t helping can be as difficult as grasping a new concept your are trying to learn. Like medications no one thing does it all, for me it’s writing. Whether it’s an article like this one, a poem, or a complete work of fiction such as satire. For others it might be mountain biking, hiking, and sports. But understand that these alone are not enough.  Sometime even when you are doing everything right, eating healthy, exercising, taking your medications as prescribed, and doing the things that help you cope you can just have a bad day.

More Than Just Feeling Sad

While sadness can be felt during a depressive episode, it’s more likely to be much more nuanced that than. I am rarely actually sad when depression has me in it’s grip. Anger, frustration, fear are much more common than sadness. It sometimes causes me to question my sense of self worth, but more often I tend to withdraw and neglect the important things. Such as hygiene, eating, taking care of the four legged critters. Fortunately my for legged friend is a forgiving one and she won’t hesitate to tell me she’s hungry. But during a depressive episode it can be quite irritating, her unconditional love more than makes up for it though.