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Are you living with depression?
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Psyched Out
For the longest time I believed that depression, and many other ilnesses which cripple their victims in day-to-day life, were simply excuses used by feeble-minded individuals who lacked the self-control to "man up" and face life's problems. That is, until I found that I was one of these people.
I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life, but did not bother to see a therapist, or address it in any way, until the beginning of this year. I was considering suicide every night, and my anxiety made it impossible to sleep. I questioned the purpose of getting out of bed most mornings, and when I got home from work I would simply sit on my couch, numb, until the cycle repeated itself.
But going to therapy, and even being medicated for a short while, did not include being told I could excuse myself for my behavior. It was learning techniques to handle the heavy, uncontrollable vacuum of depression, and being prescribed medicines that compensated for an underproduction of the chemicals that make those emotions.
True depression isn't something a person can control. You will hear many times from depressed folks that depression is almost another being that lives inside of us. We have thoughts, of suicide, self-hatred, loneliness, uselessness, that do not feel like our own. Growing up in my typical southern family did not make it any better. Therapy was something for "crazy people," not good children from homes of relatively good repute. That sort of thinking doubles the self-hatred and depression in and of itself.
These hard times, it seems, have inflicted an even larger part of the population with this mental disease. Whatever the root of the depression, it is tantamount that we each attempt a better understanding of the condition, and encourage anyone who might have this problem to go and seek help. So long as we allow these subjects to be labeled taboo or fabricated, we will only see victims of suicide and self-mutilation on the rise.
I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life, but did not bother to see a therapist, or address it in any way, until the beginning of this year. I was considering suicide every night, and my anxiety made it impossible to sleep. I questioned the purpose of getting out of bed most mornings, and when I got home from work I would simply sit on my couch, numb, until the cycle repeated itself.
But going to therapy, and even being medicated for a short while, did not include being told I could excuse myself for my behavior. It was learning techniques to handle the heavy, uncontrollable vacuum of depression, and being prescribed medicines that compensated for an underproduction of the chemicals that make those emotions.
True depression isn't something a person can control. You will hear many times from depressed folks that depression is almost another being that lives inside of us. We have thoughts, of suicide, self-hatred, loneliness, uselessness, that do not feel like our own. Growing up in my typical southern family did not make it any better. Therapy was something for "crazy people," not good children from homes of relatively good repute. That sort of thinking doubles the self-hatred and depression in and of itself.
These hard times, it seems, have inflicted an even larger part of the population with this mental disease. Whatever the root of the depression, it is tantamount that we each attempt a better understanding of the condition, and encourage anyone who might have this problem to go and seek help. So long as we allow these subjects to be labeled taboo or fabricated, we will only see victims of suicide and self-mutilation on the rise.
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