Depression Talk

Okay, I fibbed — these better sleep tips should be able to work for anyone who is having trouble sleeping, whether they have depression or not. But getting proper sleep is extra important for those with any type of depression, because being exhausted intensifies the misery and helplessness that you feel. Just being able to get regular sleep can help you learn new tasks, concentrate and make decisions better. When you can do that for yourself, you don’t feel so helpless and hopeless.

The Right Ammount

Remember — better sleep does not necessarily mean more sleep. In some cases, it may mean less. The average adult should only be getting seven hours of sleep a night for a man and eight hours for a woman. More than eight hours of sleep is not recommended, unless you are an infant or fighting off an illness like the flu. When you are first taking an antidepressant, you’ll often need to sleep more for the first week or two until your body adjusts.

Please check with your doctor to be sure of the right amount of sleep for you.

Turn Off The Television

Unless you are watching one something like Raising the Mammoth (perhaps the worst doctumentary ever made by Discovery Channel), it’s best to switch the boob tube off at least one hour before getting into bed and turning out the light. This is because television can be too stimulating or upsetting — especially if you watch the news.

Use The Bed Just For Sleep

If you can possibly help it, use the bed just for sleep. Don’t read in it, play with the laptop or … well… anything else you may often do in bed. By only lying down with your eyes closed in the bed, this conditions your brain into associating sleep with lying in the bed. If the sight of a rest room door suddenly makes your bladder complain, then you already know the power of subconscious conditioning.

Light Snacks Only

About two hours before going to bed, stop eating anything heavy, loaded with protien or full of sugar and caffeine. A bowl of lightly sweetened (or unswetened) cereal is one of the best snacks you can have before going to bed.

Sweet dreams.

Let me remind you, Gentle Reader, that I have zero in the way of political power and that there are no laws on the table to force those with depression to get neutered. I’m just thinking out loud here. But if you do have major depression or bipolar disoprder, you honestly need to realize that maybe you shouldn’t have kids or have any more kids.

Is Depression Genetic?

There is a lot of evidence that depression is genetic. Studies on identical twins (nature’s clones)that were raised apart have found that they both develop clinical depression around 70% of the time. Although that’s not 100%, that’s still pretty darn high.

Some scientists argue that only the prediliction to develop depression is genetic and not depression itself. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that my type of depression (endogenous recurring depression) is 100% genetic.

On the one hand, that means you can always blame your parents for your Prozac bills, but on the other hand, this means that any children you have will most likely inherit your depression. The main reason I’m not having kids is that I don’t want a kid going through the living hell I’ve had to go through and that the rest of my family has had to go through (on both my mother’s and my father’s side).

Well, that and I’ve never wanted kids. But anyway…

Which Got Me To Thinking

Could there be a cure for clinical depression if everyone with it stopped having kids or got themsleves neutered? Would clinical depression be wiped out once and for all? Come to think of it, if you got neutered, then your chances of getting cancer of the reproductive organs would plummet, too.

We wouldn’t know until we try, but of course, getting every single depressive in the world to cooperate in this grand experiement is not possible. Considering that many people haven’t been diagnosed with depression and are still swimming in the gene pool, well, that screws the experiment up, too.

Which makes me wonder why we don’t spay and neuter our kids. Could you just imagine going through your teenage years without any worry about getting pregnant (or getting someone else pregnant?) I know my life would’ve been a lot easier. Not getting periods would be wonderful, too. Although, I did ask my Mom why she didn’t get me spayed and she replied, “Because I think that’s illegal, dear.”

Just something to think about. Now, go argue amongst yourselves.

Granted, this YouTube clip is an advertisement for a book by Tina Zahn, but you don’t need to read the book in order to get the jist of the clip. In case you’re wondering what Tina was jumping from that July day in 2004 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it was a big-ass bridge. Could she have survied the 200 foot fall into the river? Possibly, but since she wanted to die, her motivation for not drowing was pretty slim.

And why was Tina jumping? She had just been laid off right after giving birth and had inexplicable chronic pain. But most of all she had postpartum depression. I suppose the cure for postpartum depression would be never having a kid, but I guess that advice comes about nine months too late for most women.

I haven’t read the book but the clip is hypnotic. I’m going to assume the book is going to be a bit gung-ho Christian, since the publisher is Revell, which specialises in Christian-themed books.

When you have depression, it can be very hard to explain how you feel to someone who does not have depression. It’s like trying to talk to an alien from another planet. Depression affects all areas of your life, including the way you think, feel, make decisions and just about anything else. These feelings can be seemingly incomprehensible to someone who has no clue as to what depression feeels like. Even with all of those funky “Depression Hurts” advertisements from Cymbalta, many of the non-depressed still haven’t a clue.

So, if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t know what you are going through (the non-depressed), you can print this post out and shove it under his or her nose.

Picture If you Will…

Imagine you are lockined in a pitch black closet and can’t find the door. Then, imagine that this house gets caught up in a F-5 tornado. So, depression feels like you are in a locked, pitch-dark closet caught inside of a tornado.

And you feel this way all of the time.

Get It Now?

When I was homeless in England, I had a lot of time to come up with metaphors to describe what deprssion feels like. Not all of the other homeless I met had depression. Many were addicts, which is not the same thing as depression. I remember one white-haired fellow pulling on his can of Special Brew who asked me skeptically, “So, wuzzit feel like to ‘ave depression, then?”

I told him the above description.

He nodded, blinked for a while and then said, “Wow. I had to go through twenty years and thousands of pounds worth of chemicals to get to feel like that. And you were born with it!”

Varying Degress

The tornado you’re in slows down every now and then when you have depression. Sometimes, it even stops and you finally get to see that there is a way out of the closet. But, eventually, you somehow seem to get back in that closet in the middle of Tornado Alley. It ’s the feeling of not being able to find a way out is what it’s like living with depression day in, day out.

Well, it’s not a perfect metaphor, but hopefully this will help those without depression understand what depression feels like.

From the “Man, Does Someone Need A Part Time Job or What” Department:

A Canadian study done at Queen’s University in Ontario that’s been published in The New Scientist claims that Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain has clincial depression. The study also suggests that if McCain doesn’t have clinical depression, he better do something to perk up his public speaking behavior, becuase he gives off the impression that he’s clinically depressed.

How Can They Tell?

Queen’s University researcher David Skillicorn watched over 150 political speeches by McCain, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. If that form of masochism wasn’t enough, he had his computer analyize the speeches again and again and again. What was that poor, demented computer looking for?

• Changes in pitch or tone of voice
• Patterns of word usage
• How many times the canidiate would say “I” compared to how many times

According to this criteria, McCain did really badly. He used lots of words like “enemy” and “hate”, didn’t change his tone of voice much. When McCain gives a speech, it does sound as if he’s just taken a dose of Xanax.

What’s The Big Deal?

These findings come out of a larger project Queens University is trying to do to see if politicians give visual or verbal clues when they are lying. Although I haven’t seen Skillicorn quoted as saying, “And we all know that the clinically depressed are a bunch of liars, don’t we?” that is the vibe I’m picking up.

It is a shame to see that, in between the lines, the study is promoting that having depression is a bad thing. Well, in a way, it IS a bad thing, but not as bad as say … not responding right away to Hurricane Katrina, starting a war over oil, supporting puppy mills, that sort of thing. (Those are things Rebublicans have been known to do, not McCain in particular).

However, it’s thought that Republican President Abraham Lincoln had clinical depression and he’s considered a demigod in America. Dont beleive me? You try and tell a Lincoln joke in America. Better wear a Kevlar vest before you do.

Although I have major (clinical) depression, I’m still not going to vote for McCain.

If it’s natural, it has to be good for you, right? Wrong. Herbs and supplements are just as powerful on the body as man made drugs. They still can give bad side effects and interact badly with other medications. Herbs like St. John’s Wort (also known as hypericum) need to be treated with repsect.

What is St. John’s Wort?

St. John’s Wort is a little herb with yellow flowers that blooms on midsummer’s day (also known as St. John’s day, hense the name). It’s very common in Europe. In case you’re wondering where the “wort” part of the name comes from, it’s not from “wart”. “Wort” is derived from “wyrt”, which used to be the English word for herb…until it changed to herb.

You don’t have to munch the plant like a cow. St. John’s Wort comes in a really foul tasting tea, capsules and tinctures. However, it is imperative that you talk to your doctor before taking St. John’s Wort for depression in any form. In Europe, doctors can even write prescriptions for St. John’s Wort.

Bad Interactions

The reason why you have to talk to your doctor first is because St. John’s Wort interacts so badly with so many other types of life-saving medications. Do not take St. John’s Wort for depression if you are already on:

• antidepressants
• blood-thinning medications like Wafarin
• oral contraceptives
• Loperamide
• Digoxin
• immunosuppressive drugs
• asthma medications
• blood-pressure medicines

Any Clinical Trials On This Stuff?

There have been many clinical trials done with St. John’s Wort for depression and other kinds of medical disorders. But for every clinical trial you can find in favor of using St. John’s Wort, you’ll find another that’s not in favor of it.

This is a common problem for most herbal medications and alternative therapies when done under clinical trials. Herbs so not behave in a predictable fashion. What works for some people might do diddly squat for you.

In Conclusion

Overall, St. John’s Wort is not recommended for major depression, anxiety disorder or bipolar disoprder. It can help with the mildest type of depression, which is the usual temporary sadness you get after going through a trauma.

I do not recommend organized religion for anyone with major depression. Organized religion is a church or some faith that has some kind of generally agreed upon doctorine and a heirarchy. Example of organized religion would include Christianity, Islam and Philadelphia Eagles football fans. If however, you have have major depression and find the only comfort in your life is organized religion, then never mind. Skip the rest of this post and go have a cookie. See you tomorrow.

Are They Gone Yet?

Okay, now that we’re alone, let’s get to basics. Spirituality is not the same as religion. Religion is the rules, the regulations and the regalia. Spirituality is your relationship with whatever spirit you have a relationship with. I’m all for spirituality in the life of someone with major depression.

Spirituality can help you to find a personal meaning to the suffering that you are going through, even if that meaning seems to change every fifteen minutes. As someone who’s had major depression for nearly 40 years, I know that you have to do whatever mental or spiritual trick you can to keep you from going over the edge into complete despair and suicide.

The Yardstick

The problem with organized religion for a person suffering from major depression is that it presents a yardstick that you have to measure up to. Everyone in your religion knows this yardstick and mentally measures you up against it every time you meet.

Take, for example, farting. Everybody has to fart. But it’s not considered polite to do in front of God or in the congregation. So, you’re stuck in Church, synagogue or whatever and fart. Now, everyone knows you farted. You’re really emabarrassed. You then get down on yourself because you failed to not fart yet again.

This may seem very silly, but this is how people with major depression think. We have trouble making decisions, so having religion make decisions for you can seem comforting, at first. But we need to make deiciosns for ourselves. The more we do it, the more self-confidence we get.

We don’t like ourselves very much and by looking at the laws of organized religion, we can see exactly why we are such failures. I once had an email exchange to a 12 year old who was thinking of committing suicide because she was “such a bad sinner”. I don’t know what ever happened to her.

Although organized religion can seem to benefit some people, it can do the opposite to those with major depression.

I’ve tried to commit suicide more times then I can remember. My last attempt was in April, 2003. It’s been over five years without the urge to die. That’s the longest gap I’ve had since childhood. I’ve tried to kill myself in different ways but all of them wound up the same — me on my hands and knees, throwing up.

So, if you are contemplating killing yourself ask yourself — how much do you like throwing up? There’s also that whole death thing, too, but let’s just stick with tangilble elements here. If you’re going to try and commit suicide, especailly if you are a woman, chances are all you will do is wind up throwing up for hours on end.

Overdose Attempt

Sometime in 2001 (I can’t remember what month), I found four boxes of painkiller in the trash. They were massive. They looked like horse pills — combinations of opiods and paracetamol (acetominophen in the US). Now, I can’t even read the word “paracetamol” without my stomach rolling over. I naively assumed that by taking as many as I could, I’d fall asleep and die. It all made sense at the time, trust me.

No such luck. I wound up puking for 36 hours straight. And the guy who’s trash I’d gone through had found out and was really angry with me and threatened to call the police. Not that I cared at that point. I remember the only thing that distracted me from the pain was watching Air Force One with Harrison Ford, which for some reason was on TV. I know that movie gets panned (”Get off my plane!”), but I’m forever grateful that it was made.

The Lesson Here

When you are deeply depressed and life seems that it can’t get any worse, well, you’re wrong. Life certainly can get worse. You could spend 36 hours throwing up and thinking about how you are so stupid that you can’t even kill yourself.

And then, somehow, you will laugh. Take that laughter and hang on to it and then go get help. Things do get better. They don’t get better right away, but eventually they do.

When you are diagnosed with any type of depression, you have a lot of questions and fears. One of these questions is if you have a split personality. If you have bipolar disorder, you can be excused for wondering if you have spilt personailty or multiple personality. If you have one kind of head problem, you could have another, right?

Incredibly Rare

Someone who actually has split personalities or multiple personality disorder is a very rare person, indeed. With a true split personailty disorder, you blank out when your other personalities take over. None of the other personalities are conscious of the other personalities. It’s also known as dissociative identity disorder (DID).

Then again, the very existence of DID or multiple personality disorder is the subject of much controversy. We can’t get in the heads of the patients. We can only assume that what they tell their doctors is the truth. There is also controversy over how many people are walking around with split personalities and whether it’s over diagnosed. And if it can be proved that there are more than one personalities living in a body, can you claim your other personalities as dependents on your income tax?

Other facts include:

• Women get DID more than men
• There aren’t any reliable statistics on how many people in the world or in America have DID
• Childhood trauma is usually considered the cause

One thing is clear — those suspected of having DID also suffer from depression. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone with depression also had DID.

Also, leading psychologists think a diagnosis should be based on a minimum of six years of showing symptoms and not just one visit to atherapist.

Bipolar Disorder

It can seem that people with bipolar disorder are indeed two people in one body. The one is hyper and super-positive and feels great while the other is, well, more human. But a person with bipolar disorder still has a sense of self during both highs and lows and everywhere in between. There may be memory laspes, but they are the memory lapses that we all have — especailly if we have missed a lot of sleep or have been self-medicating with alcohol or recreational drugs.

So, if you have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or another type of depression, the odds are really good that you do not have split personalities.

If you’ve come to this blog, then most likely you are searching for a cure for depression. It would be great if this cure for depression was easily available, made you feel better and natural.
Well, keep on looking.

But laughing at yourself can certainly help lighten the load, at least for a few minutes. For some of us, a few minutes is more than we usually get.

One of my favorite living comedians is Chris Rock. He has the gift of taking very serious issues like depression and making you laugh until you pee. There also are some serious messages underneath, such as the illogic of self-medication. Here, in this classic clip back when he had his own comedy show, he talks to a doctor about depression. It’s far more memorable than most video clips on depression.

WARNING: The clip contains adult content and the f-word. (”A Chris Rock video with adult content and the f-word in it? How rare!”) Enjoy.

If you glance on over to the right of this post, you’ll see the usual listing of categories most covered in the blog. A lot of them have pretty strange names. The ones that don’t were ones just recently added or were required categories by 451 Press (this blog’s host). I’ve only been the blogger for Depression Talk a short while and I’m struggling to understand how to interpet these categories.

No Knock Against Amanda

The categories were named by the previous blogger for Depression Talk, Amanda. She was a good writer and had her own unique blogging voice about she saw the world through the eyes of her depression attacks. She was terribly hard on herself, calling herself crazy, but that is typical of anyone with any type of depression. Heck, I do it to myself.

Let me make this perfectly clear — although I may eventually figure out to get rid of some of these category names, I’m not trying to insult Amanda. Readers of my other blogs like Dealing With Headaches know without a shadow of a doubt when I’m being insulting.

Why Am I Banging On About This?

People with any type of depression have a tendency to try to read between the lines and try to find hidden meanings to things. We keep turning a scene in our minds over and over, wondering what we’ve missed and if we were only like normal people, we could’ve spotted it by now. I do this, too.

So, if you find yourself wondering about the hidden meaning in a small detail change, like why the new blogger is changing or totally ignoring cateogies started by the older blogger, stop. Take a deep breath. This is a great time to recognize and spot a symptom of your depression, make a calm note of it and move on to something else.

Hope this helps.

If you’ve had depression for more than ten minutes, you’ve probably noticed that you have to do a lot of lying in order to talk to other people. Lie whenever they ask you how you are doing or feeling. Just say, “Fine”. There is a method to this madness. If all you do is complain, you’ll soon find yourself with fewer and fewer friends to complain to.

Social Support

It’s recommended to interact with others when you’re depressed. But how can you talk to others when all you really want to do is whine and rant? Even the most loyal of friends will suddenly remember a root canal appointment. So, depending on the friendship, try to keep a time limit on your complaining. Then, ask your friend how they are doing and listen to them for at least the same amount of time they’ve listened to you.

If they say, “But how are you really feeling? You can let it all out. It’s okay,” then winge away. They’ve given you permission. But it is still polite to let them talk about themselves for some parts of the conversation.

Comparing Yourself to Others

Another reason that it’s good to listen to other people’s problems is that, in comparison, your usually aren’t too bad. You listen to your friends and family and think, “Thank God I’m not this person.” That might seem a little crass, but when you have depression, you need all the help you can get. You may find yourself feeling a lot better, even if only for a few minutes.

Talking to Your Doctor

These tips are only for talking with friends, family and aquaintances. When talking to your doctor or therapist, be as brutally honest as you please. They’re getting paid to hear you complain. Get your money’s worth.

Hope this helps.

No matter what your gender, sexual orientation, nationality, medical condition or musical preference, we all face that moment in our lives when we suddenly transform into Gloria Gaynor. This is my absolute favorite version of “I Will Survive”, done in a weirdly classical way by pianist Richard Hyung-Ki Joo and violinist Aleksey Iguedesman. The sparks don’t start to fly until about a minute and a half into the video, but then you (hopefully) won’t be disappointed.

“I Will Survive” was written by Freddy Perren and Dino Fekaris. Although it seems like the world’s first paramecium sung it, it was only released in 1978 and was one of the select handful of songs that made the tragedy of the Disco era worth while. Although the lyrics are about a love break up (and that’s depressiong enough to think about) they are flexible enough so that you can kind of make the song fit to whatever meaning that you need it to fit.

This is a song you can shout at to those little nagging voices in your head or to the disease of depression itself. Or you can do it to annoy the neighbors or your co-workers, which can be uplifting in and of itself. Enjoy.

Hypnotherapy (commonly called hypnotism) is a complimentary and alternative medical treatment that can benefit some people with major depression. A lot of people immediately shy away from hypnotherapy because they don’t understand what it’s really like. They have only been exposed to stage acts featuring “hypnotists” (usually comedy acts with actors as “volunteers”). You can find a licensed hypnotherapist with the help of your doctor and the National Board for Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists.

It’s Not Brainwashing

Unlike brainwashing, no one can make you do anything you don’t to. Any behaviorial change on the part of the patient has to be voluntary. A hypnotherapist can’t make you do anything, from quitting smoking to robbing banks, unless you really want to do it. What a hypnotherapist does is plant suggestions in your subconscious as reminders. You can learn to do this yourself, but many people like to learn the techniques from a hypotherapist first.

Suggestion Examples

When one of those little voices starts running you down, this can be a trigger for a planted hypnotic suggestion such as “My opinions are valid,” or, “I’m a good person, really,” or “I will survive.” Hypnotic suggestions are usually short and worded positively (such as “I’m a good person” rather than “I’m not a bad person.” Even though those two sentences mean the same thing, the subconsiocous does not seem to realize that and often hooks onto the “I’m not” more than the “I am.”)

How Many Sessions Do You Need?

This is different for each person. Some people will only need a couple of sessions, while others need a few months’ worth of sessions. You really need to check with your health insurance company to see if they will reimburse any of the sessions or any portion of the sessions. For those in the UK, the NHS will cover some hypnotherapy sessions. No matter what country you live, you’ll probably need to have your doctor or therapist communicate with the hypnotherapist and share your medical history.

“Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and illusive in the way it becomes known to the self …” — William Styron

Arguably one of the best books ever written about depression, the late great author William Styron (Sophie’s Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner) tells it as it is about what life with depression is really like. Although Styron will claim that depression is nearly undescribeable, he does a pretty good job describing it.Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990) is especailly recommended for people who haven’t a clue as to what depression is all about.

They have no excuse to not read it, as it’s only 84 pages long in huge print and big margins.

In The Days Before Prozac

William Styron touches on his depression weaving in and out of his life until 1985, where he tried to commit suicide. He finally considered himself well enough in 1989 to lecture on clinical depression (still called clinical depression then and not major depression or endogenous recurring depression). The lecture went so well that Vanity Fair wanted an essay based on the lecture, which Styron provided (Proving that good writers never turn down a job offer). Eventually, it was published in book form and until recently was still in print.

How he got better without the help of Prozac is amazing. For a while, he was on a tranquilizer called Halcion (trizolam) and then on another called Dalmane (now known more as flurazepam). Writing and seeing a therapist were his main treatments. Although he doesn’t try to dissuade people from going to a hospital, he notes that he couldn’t tolerate the atmosphere. “For me the real healers were time and seclusion.”

And writing this book.