Depression Talk

Depressives have trouble with directions, especailly if they are directions to finding a new place like a doctor’s office, a friend’s house or a job interview. The reasons for the trouble are:

• Trouble concentrating
• Fear of messing up and getting hopelessly lost
• Thoughts that the person/website that gave you the directions was wrong

All of these are normal symptoms of depression. If you’re not sleeping well (common for depressives) than that just compounds the problem.

But, you can’t spend your entire life in your home. And besides, the mental and physical activity will be good for you, besides the self-esteem boost of actually finding the new place. Here are some tips on how to find a new place when you have depression or the symptoms are flaring up.

Double Check Directions When Possible

If you get the directions off of MapQuest or another webiste, actually phone the place or a trusted loved one who has been to the place and ask them their advice on how to get there. And, do the same thing if someone gives you directions. Check it against MapQuest (or wherever). If they are mainly alike, then chances are the directions are good.

Have The Directions Wrtitten Down For Both Ways

Beause you’ll be stressed and nervous, you may be more prone to getting directions like right and left mixed up. For example, in the days before I telecommuted, I was guarenteed to have a migraine start immediately after a job interview — even if I got there in time and the interview went well. It just never failed. Perhaps my body gets tense for so long that when it’s over, it finally falls apart like the car at the end of The Blues Brothers.

So, I have two sheets of paper with directions on how to get to the new place — and then directions on how to get back home. Even if I was desperate or flush enough to get a cab home, the cabbie would never know where I lived and I’d have to give him directions, anyway. It just saved me some stress.

When Driving, Use A Clipboard

In the days when my eyes were good enough to drive, I would write the directions in big block capitals and stick them to a clipboard and lay it on the seat next to me. Sure beats trying to interpert a map.

Hope this helps.

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.

If there’s one thing that sets me off, it’s puppy mills. This subject not only gets me angry, but extremely depressed, even for days on end. You probably have such a “pet peeve”, too. So, whenever I write “puppy mill” here, feel free to mentally substitute whatever burns you up. Pet peeves and big problems can smash down a person with clinical depression, making them believe that they are completely helpless.

Dog Fancy Sucks

I subscribed to Dog Fancy for a few months, foolishly thinking that the magazine would care about dogs. Silly me. It only cares about putting money in the pockets of dog breeders (both ethical breeders and unethical breeders). An editorial in the October issue where the editor denounced the Humane Society of the United States over proposed microchipping and neutering legislation (and then would not say which bill or law they were referring to). It ignored all the good that HSUS has done for dogs in the past and continues to do in its fight against puppy mills.

Then I looked in the ads in the back of Dog Fancy and quite a few look like they were from puppy mills, because they promoted shipping a young puppy anywhere in the world. The magazine also promotes ear cropping and tail docking (which I personally find sick). I sent an interesting email to the editor and she responded with another interesting email. Sufffice to say, we are not going to be on each other’s Christmas card lists.

Down Spiral

Anyway, my depression worsened. I didn’t want to leave the house, I couldn’t sleep, forgot to eat and designed all kinds of original tortures for puppy mill owners and breeders who only think of money and not about breeding a healthy pet. This is not a good thing to do if you want to keep good mental health.

Good Deeds

So, I went online to look at all of the people who help take in abandoned animals, feed hungry animals and even start their own non-profit animal shelters. The Cat House on the Kings is a shining example, as well as the work of the HSUS and the ASPCA.

When you get hammered by a huge problem and feel helpless, try to list out all of the things you do to help your chosen cause. For example, in fighting against puppy mills, I:

• Don’t buy from any store that sells puppies
• My dog is a rescue mongrel
• Give the money from my cancelled Dog Fancy subscription to the HSUS
• Slip in my anti-puppy mill message where ever I can get away with it in my job as a freelance writer

So, when you look at your list, you see that you are not so powerless after all. You are doing something.

Clinical depression is not a modern ailment. Maknind has almost certainly had it since we crawled out of the ocean and suddenly realized there was no going back. In case you wonder who the most famous clinically depressed person is, it’s a fictional character, Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, made infamous by William Shakespeare’s play, first performed around 1600.

On the one hand, it’s sad that so many people suffered from depression back then. On the other hand, if Prozac had been around in Shakespeare’s day, we would never had had Hamlet.

Evidence of Depression

There are many things Hamlet does in the course of the play that is typical of someone suffering from the symptoms of clinical depression. These include:

• Not being able to make a decision about if and when to kill his uncle
• Can’t let go of the past
• Everyone who knoew him kept wondering if he were crazy or not
• Recites really, really long poetry
• Wonders if he should kill himself (and eventually does, in a roundabout way)
• Drives his girlfriend insane

But He’s Fictional

True, Prince Hamlet is a fictional character. Modern actors who have played Hamlet tend to purposefully overdo the misery bit. But Shakespeare had a habit of giving his characters very recognizeable emotions and problems. This is one of the reasons his plays still make money after four hundred years. If a depressed Hamlet was an anomaly or did not act like yourself or someone you know, then I don’t think the play would ever have become such a big deal. It would have been shoved into obscurity along with Titus Adronicus, instead.

The story of Hamlet is suppossedly based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, also a Price of Denmark, who lived in the 1200’s. Since England had been sacked by the Vikings so many times, it still had a strong Norse flavor in the 1600’s. It is possible that Scandinavian legends and would have been common knowledge. Prince Amleth also apparently knew his uncle killed his father and acted like a lunatic in order to keep his uncle from killing him. Whether Amleth actually lived, who knows.

Fictional characters become real people when they make an incredibly strong impression on our minds. In a way, you become as intimate with them as you would with a friend. It is only with people we can identify with can a fictional character like Hamlet become alive.

Although Hamlet met a sticky end, you don’t have to. Unlike in Hamlet’s day, there are now medications and therapy for you to deal with your crazy relatives.

Earlier this week, we looked at whether talk therapy was on the way out. Somebody who did go to talk therapy was British singer/songwriter Peter Gabriel. Although Peter has not been diagnosed with depression or bipolar depression (as has been often rumored), he does get down in the dumps. One particularly bad episode was in 1988 after his seperation and subsequent divorce from his wife of nealy twenty years, Jill. (Sorry girls (and guys), but Peter has since remarried. And his current wife is younger than I am, but we’ll skip on to the next paragraph, shall we?)

In many interviews, Peter has touted the merits of going to a therapist. We have our cars inspected yearly, so why not our heads?

Peter has a particularly brilliant gift for describing very complex emotions and storylines. He’s also gifted in singing, playing music and matching visual images to music, but he probably would not like me to describe him as “gifted” or “a genius” in such areas. In many interviews, he claims that if you work hard enough at a particular job, you’ll finally be good at it…even if the job is being a rock star.

“Digging in the Dirt” originally came out on Peter’s 1992 album Us. There have been many live versions floating around ever since.

Enjoy.

Joomy did an interesting post on taking a break this week, one that I read with fervor, because man, I really know what its like to need a frickin’ break.

I don’t know why, but I never feel really, truly good about myself unless I’m busy, busy, busy. I like to have a goal for each day, and I like to achieve it, and if I don’t feel good about the day, I feel as though I haven’t reached my full potential for that day.

I have this terrible habit of finding something to do, and then adding to it, and then adding some more to it just for the hell of it. Good times, all round.

Last fall was perhaps certainly the worst episode with depression I’ve ever had. I spent months desperately trying to pretend like I was happy when I spoke with others or when I wrote on my blog. The guilt that accompanies serious depression is perhaps one of the worst parts of it, for me at least. I always feel that I have everything in my reach to have a complete, happy, and full life: yet, occasionally I fall into the depths of despair and there is nothing that can get me out of it. Nothing.

Perhaps it was the fact that I lost my Grandfather rather traumatically, in a drawn out illness that took him away from us but kept him alive for a long period of time. Perhaps it was that my brother was sent on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, and that I couldn’t get him or his wife and child out of my mind. Perhaps it was that I lived with someone who I truly felt was going out of her way to make my life miserable, to make my home completely unsanitary and odiferous. Perhaps it was the fact that I was taking six university courses, working twenty hours, drinking alcohol in my spare time, and cut myself off from the world because I didn’t feel that I had the energy to cope with human interaction.

Believe it or not, I somehow managed to not be depressed through my father’s slew of medical tests after a couple scary episodes, through my mother’s diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer, my moving back home, one of my closest friends’ diagnosis with MS, and the final breakup with Dubai Guy. I blame that on drugs. Lots and lots of drugs, the good ones that keep the happiness in my brain floating around being happy.

But I digress. I think one of the most important ways to deal with depression is to recognize your own limits: You need to be able to find that perfect balance between busy enough to keep you from sitting on your couch thinking you’re useless, but not so busy that you lose sight of yourself, your goals, your life, and most importantly, your sanity.

Some days I wonder if I believe in destiny, because I so often use the word in everyday life. I’m destined to be this, I’m destined to be that. Most often I use the word destiny to describe my status as single.

I often think that if I’m alone for the rest of my life, I’ll be fine, and other times I think… I can’t do it. Most often it is not on my mind, but every now and then I can feel my singleness weighing on me, and I wonder if something must be hideously wrong.

I waffle in my desire to be single or not single. Sometimes I think that because I’m such a Crazy Person, I should just be alone so that no one else ever has to deal with my issues. (Except my mother.) (And my cat.)

I can’t decide right now why I’m single, and I don’t think that I could ever meet and date someone until I’m sure as to why my romantic life has been in the state it has for so long. Am I single because I actually don’t want anyone in my life? Or am I single because I’m such a liberated, free spirited woman that no one dares to try and put an end to my free-living ways?

Or am I just so damn beat up from all the crappy-assed experiences I’ve had that I can’t bear to face it all again?

I like to tell myself that I am a content, whole, and happy person. I even mostly believe that I am. But every now and then, I think about relationships and I shudder. I’m revolted by the thought of getting to know someone, of the risk of finding myself once more in a broken-hearted, drunken stupor on my mother’s living room floor. It has happened far, far too many times to count at this point, and I’m not sure I or the people around me could really handle it one more time.

At the same time, I would just be so desperately thrilled if the phone would ring, if it were someone who was genuinely interested in how my day went, someone who cared to hear me prattle on about my horse. It would be grand to cuddle up on the couch with bad horror movies and popcorn and have someone just enjoy the smell of my hair. I take great care in selecting hair-care products, and I know for a fact that MY HAIR SMELLS GREAT, DAMMIT.

But then why is it that every time I meet a person, I’m loud and obnoxious about my desire to not be in a relationship, about my hatred for dating and all things commitment-related, and my love for single life that does not include ringing telephones? Is is just a stupid act I put on to prove to myself that I’m happy alone?

Or is there actually something wrong with me?

Regardless, every time I meet someone, even someone wonderful and grand and everything I want that someone to be — driven, focused, goal oriented, hard working, with something to show for what he has worked for — I boot it out of there like he’s got some kind of plague. I make up some dumb reason, like “Well, I’d like to be friends”, which is such a load of bull I can’t even believe I’m writing about it on the Internet. Or I say that I can’t date, or that I don’t date, or that I’m so busy in my life that it would be a physical impossibility….

But when I’m saying those lame, pathetic things?

I just feels like they are so damn true.

And once those things are said?

All I want to do is run out and take them right back and jump right into all that relationship-py type stuff.

But then the thought alone makes me want to shudder and hide under the blankets until Mr. WhatsHisFace gives up and wanders away.

And then I just start being confused all over again.

I used to work in a convenience store, and every now and then a trucker would come in for coffee. He would always stay quite a while, and after getting to know him more and more, I started refering to him as my ’shrink’. He was one of those people who you could talk to about anything, who knew about everything, and who was able to come up with a solution for all life’s woes.

I told him a few times about my fear of losing it. Whatever it is, I’m scared of it going far away. I’m scared of going to that place where the crazy people go, lost deep inside themselves and unable to process anything else that is going on around them.

He was a very wise man, and he asked me one time, where I was scared of going. I told him that I didn’t know, that it was a place that doesn’t have a name or a location, but it is going crazy and it is a very, very scary place to go. Downright terrifying, even.

And he said, No. You’re not scared of going there. He said that I go there on purpose, I go to that place inside myself, away from everyone and everything on purpose. He said that people go there because they need to escape, and that if we didn’t like being there, we wouldn’t bother going.

I don’t even know that man’s name, and at the time I have to say that I thought there must be something about what he thought about going crazy. If you didn’t like going crazy, you just wouldn’t go there. How comforting is that?

But the thing is, sometimes I feel like there is really no other place to go. I have to wonder if, deep down, people really do have control over whether or not they get to be crazy. Like, imagine, after all these years feeling like I’ve been taken over by something beyond my control.

And then, poof. Its all my choice. I can choose to go crazy or I can choose to not go crazy, and it is all really up to me.

How wonderful is that? I have a choice! I can choose!

And then I wonder, can I really choose?

I decided to give up drinking this summer because after a not-to-be-disclosed number of months, this is a portion of what came out of my bedroom last spring.

I posted here about my optimism about my break with beer, and here about my failure. I don’t think it was an utter and complete failure, but I failed in this goal nonetheless.

I decided not to go further in my quest for sixty five days of alcohol free goodness, because the pressure it put on me was just too much. I was completely restricting any contact with alcohol, and I think it was a bit like being on a diet. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and the fact that it was on my mind worried me all the time.

I’ve since had beer on three occasions: twice after work, I had one, and last night I went out with friends on a social galavant around the city.

At this point, I have to say that I am completely up in the air with regards to my feelings on this subject. I was so certain that after I had gone a length of time without drinking, I would be positive as to whether or not I should quit permanently.

It is a bad habit, of course, and so obviously it would be a good bad habit to give up altogether. But at the same time, it is something I enjoy, a social habit that I partake in.

I suppose that at this point, I’m monitoring my behavior: I don’t want my bedroom to have a grocery cart full of bottles in it by the time New Years’ rolls around. But at the same time, I don’t think I’m going to consider myself the biggest loser on the planet if I indulge in a wakness now and then.

I posted yesterday about my challenges in the workplace. I’m back in school now to finish my diploma in the field. I already have my degree, but I figured that in today’s tough job market, I need every advantage I can get.

Or at least, that’s what the television commercials about saving up for school tell me.

At any rate, as a person dealing with anxiety and depression issues, I have to say that one of the most trying parts of my job for me is keeping my cool.

I am a person entirely incapable of keeping my cool. I know this about myself and I try to keep myself under control. So far at work I’ve had one shift that has sent me spinning and wanting to lay in my bed and weep: Not for anything that any one person did, but because I hate feeling like there is any aspect of my life that is not within my grasp. I hate feeling like I am not one hundred per cent in charge of every situation.

The classes I’m taking at school right now focus on finding out who you are. I think this is mostly because we need to be sure of ourselves before we can teach youths how to be sure of themselves.

I was discussing with a professor today the ups and downs of working in this field. And I’m beginning to think that everything I’m giong through is part of an ongoing process.

The fact is that I must go on in this field without spiraling into one of my infamous fits of hysteria. I may not cry, weep, scream, or lay on the living room floor howling for hours at a time.

When I think of the events that have gone on in the past weeks that have not caused me to lose my cool completely, I’m actually quite impressed with myself.

And I suppose that this is the point, this is part of the end goal. Not only, knowing myself, putting the positive aspects of myself out there; but also recognizing and accepting the negative aspects of myself and working on controlling them so they won’t impact my professional self.

If you scroll down here, you’ll notice that it was seven days ago that I posted how great I felt about giving up beer.

I’ve had a number of failures in my lifetime. Some of them have been fairly big failures and some of them took me months, and even years, to move past.

One of the hardest parts of accepting that you’ve been a miserable failure in some areas is being able to not sit at home and weep because you haven’t succeeded. I find it incredibly easy to sit at home in a heap of self-loathing without giving anything other than my sad little self a single thought. I can do this for weeks.

In fact, I’ve got it down so well that even the dog knows when I feel like this: When I do, she can typically sleep with the entirety of her body ON TOP OF MY PERSON and I don’t notice.

I’m beginning to think that perhaps even being a failure takes learning and practice, because this time, I’m doing my best to not engage in these self-loathing behaviours. Sure, I may have eaten half a bag of Chee-Tos and an entire tray of Oreos for dinner. With a can of diet pop. Because that totally makes sense.

But I ate my Chee-Tos and Oreos WITHOUT feeling miserable.

I’m growing as a person, I suppose, because without failures I would never really know what success feels like. The successes I’ve had in school, in educating myself, in starting a new job, in my barn and with my horse: These are all little tastes of a very, very big something I hope to have one day.

If giving up beer, if being petrified of a relationship that goes beyond the third date, if my whole history of running from anything that gets too tough weren’t a part of me, perhaps the successes I do get to taste now and then wouldn’t be nearly so sweet.

And I really don’t want the things I love most to lose any of their sweetness in my world.

When I started out this sixty five days of not drinking, I didn’t know where I wanted to go with it. I thought that my mind would be clear and made up: I thought that at the end of that period of time, I would have a definite idea of how I feel about alcohol.

I think that at a certain point in my life, I became defined by being the one with the beer in her hand. I have an entire circle of friends who don’t know the other sides of me that even exist: The quiet, pensive, serious, studious side of me. They see the Saturday Night me, the me without a care in the world.

And that bothered me.

The Saturday Night me is not a me who I dislike. Quite the opposite, I love that now and then I can get up and dance, laugh and look like I’m loving it. Typically, I’m not even inebriated when I hit the dance floor at a club. But if I’ve got the beer in hand, people think that I am. As a result, I’m covered. If I trip and fall over my own two feet? I’m a drunken fool, rather than a really bad dancer.

A bad week, an asshat doctor, an exhausting wedding, no date, a painful hairstyle, confusion about my work and my position at school: I ended up drinking on Saturday night.

Are those lame, pathetic excuses? Or is it a matter of me not caring enough to continue with my beer-fast? Does it really speak volumes about my character that I hate being in public next to the woman who is the centre of attention?

I don’t know what it says about me that I didn’t make it. I had a few drinks on Saturday. It didn’t lead to a bender. I still made it forty days and I plan to go another twenty-five days from there.

I don’t know what it means, but I failed on my mission.

And I’m trying to be ok with that.

Depression makes you feel like there is nothing you can do to make anything in your life better. I think that everyone goes through phases in their life when everything seems bland and hopeless, and most of the time, we don’t know what to do about those feelings.

My mother frequently feels that the way to feel better about yourself or your life is to clean something. A dear friend and I were discussing depression today and she’s received that advice from four or five people now. Just clean the sink, and your life will magically turn itself around.

I’ve been a firm believer of the clean sink philosophy since I was quite young. When I first moved away from home to go to school and live in Hell, I could lay happily in the depths of despair for days, content to know that my sink was clean and so clearly, all was not lost.

Of course, like so many things that we do in this life, it is not actually about the sink being clean. Its about having gotten up, having made yourself a goal, and having achieved that goal before collapsing back into bed.

So, clean the sink. Your life may be a shambles, you may have no clue as to what you are doing with yourself, and you might be fucking up royally at work every time you go there.

But hey! The sink will be clean when you get home.

I posted a while back about breaking up with beer, and our breakup has gone well so far. The first three weeks were the hardest, and I wondered if I needed to seek out some outside help to talk it through. I mean, I have a number of people I can talk to at any time with regards to drinking, but I strongly doubt that any of them realize how I feel when I want a drink. (How bad does that make me sound? Bad, bad, bad.)

It has gotten easier as time has gone on, and I’ve found myself thinking of a beer at the end of a few rough days this past week.

I think the most surprising element here is that even though I do want one, I’m not feeling as though I am in need of one.

Stranger still, I am actually feeling turned off by the thought of beer lately. I’ve been feeling much better about my physique since I gave it up: I don’t wake up in the morning with an air-filled beer belly any more, and I never have that belchy feeling that you have to try and hide because you’re just such a damn lady.

The wedding is this Saturday and initially, I was terrified of being in a crowd without a bottle in hand to keep me company. (Hey, if you’ve no date to hold hands with…)

I’m feeling more and more confident as time goes by, more and more happy with my decision to stop with this unhealthy habit before it gets the better of me.

I still can’t decide if I will celebrate with a drink when my 65 days are up. I don’t know when they will be up, for that matter.

Did you read that? It is on my mind so infrequently that I have stopped counting the days and I am not rushing to my calendar this moment to find out.

I’m so proud of myself this week. So very, very proud of me.

I accomplished one of my major goals for the summer today, which you can read about here and here

I have to say that making concrete goals and setting out to achieve them leaves me feeling very satisfied. The whole day I worked side by side with my mother, and all day I felt nothing but thrill and happiness. Oh, and sore muscles because I did all of the cieling and high-up places.

I almost wish that every day could be a day like today, despite the fact that it took a LOT of work to get there and even more work to get to where I want to be. It actually took about twenty-five bags of garbage, fifteen wheelbarrow loads of various debris, a nasty lung infection from the dust and mildew, and hours upon hours of backbreaking labor.

I feel satiated on days like today. I know that I can go to bed and sleep well. I know that I have accomplished great things. I know that this is all part of working my way to the life that I want to have.

But days like this, where everything goes right also make me sad. Because I know that not every night will be an easy night for sleeping, and not every night will leave me feeling like that day was worth the while because so much got done.

At any rate, I am enjoying the rush right now from achieving my goals, despite the fact that I’m not celebrating with a beer. Hell, a caffiene-free, carb-free, calorie free cola beverage beats a cold beer any day!

Hurrah!