Depression Talk

OK, I’m going to do the YouTube Clip of the Week early this week because I barely know if I’m coming or going. In one sense, it helps my self-esteem to land such a huge web content job. On the other hand, my depression symptoms have worsened due to the challenges of the job.

I’ve landed a huge (and lucrative) assignment to do 664 biographies of Australian actors and actresses. (Yes, there are at least 664 of them). Doing the first lot, I’ve barely been able to scrape together passable yet mostly non-existant info on such Oz luminaries as Adam Cockburn, Aden Young, Alan Cassell and Alan Hopgood.

Now, the last one of that list, Alan Hopgood, is better known as a playwright than he is an actor. This scene I discovered on YouTube while trying to find information on Alan Hopgood’s childhood and schooling. It’s from one of his plays, “A Pill, A Pump and a Needle” which is about three women who suddenly come down with diabetes.

However, this scene is more about depression than it is about diabetes. Granted, the main character talking is not only going through Type 2 diabetes, but also menopause. The depression she describes was most likely triggered by her ill health and it may go away when she finishes her menopause and gets some control over her diabetes.

But it is still a good description of the lows you can hit when you are in a funk or (as I call them ) a jag. Hope you enjoy it:

I must confess: I’ve been ignoring my own advice and been self-medicating with my Mom’s old bottle Endocet for anxiety. I’ve been doing it for about two weeks. Now, I’m on Prozac (an SSRI antidepressant) and really should not be taking any medication ending in -cet. Otherwise, I could wind up looking like Tammy Faye Bakker.

But My Nerves Are Shot

So, why are my nerves more frayed than a tug toy after a session with a pack of Labrador retreivers? I’ve had three clients jerk me about by fooling with my payment. One client has paid and it was all a silly misunderstanding and that’s been resolved. (Thank you, client — you know who you are). But I still have two clients who owe me a combined total of nearly $1000 (US). (And you know who you are.)

One grand may not seem like much to some people, but for me it’s a hell of a lot. Especially since I used to be homeless and I’m not exactly eager to return to that condition.

Dangers of Self Medication

So, why am I confessing all of this? Besides to keep me from impaling my forehead with the computer keyboard? It’s to let any readers out there (both of you) know about the dangers of self-medication. For one thing, my depression has worsened. I don’t want to do anything except curl up with my dog and cry. But I only have one Endocet pill left and I’m saving that for March 31, in case my clients still haven’t paid up.

That, and it gives me a good excuse to stick this YouTube clip up of a somewhat decent rap song called “Self Medication Blues”. It does contain adult themes, so kids, make sure your parents are out of the room:

An unknown Canadian man estimated to be in his 30’s survived the 180 foot plunge over the Canadian side of Niagra Falls. He jumped about two in the afternoon with a heck of a lotta witnesses about, who were able to phone for help.

But the man didn’t want help. When he bobbed to the surface, he swam about 300 yards in the surface. Although he tried to loose his life in the jump, all he lost were his clothes. He avoided and fought all rescue attempts and was only rescued when he finally passed out in the water. Even then, a local helicopter operator had to hoover over the water and use the force of the whirling blades to push the struggling man to shore. He was rushed to hopsital to be treated for hypothermia and a head injury.

He jumped on 11 March and in that time I’ve been hoping to find some details on this guy. I have not found much of anything except for this NY Daily News post. Niagra Falls officials plan on not charging the man with anything, unlike the last guy to try to kill himself jumping over the falls and lived.

I guess he was not a happy bunny when he woke up. He’s probably furious that he was rescued. There’s nothing like recovering from a botched suicide attempt to watch what’s left of your pride and self-esteem fly out the window. Dude, I know what you’re going through (although I never went over Niagra.)

But, dude, your fortune is now made. Just get one of Octomom’s publicists to sell your story to the highest bidder and you’ll be set for life. (God — you’re not the father, are you?) But dude — it does get better from here. Trust me on this.

Many people with bipolar disorder, general anxiety disorder or major depression suffer from racing thoughts. It’s very hard to describe racing thoughts to someone who never experiences them. They do vary from person to person in their intensity, frequency and ability to incapacitate.

With me, for example, once the thoughts begin to race and jump from one thing to another, I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate. Sometimes, the thoughts make me so upset that my heart pounds, I throw up, I cry or my entire body tembles.

Now, I have it easy compared to other people with racing thoughts. Mine eventually go away. I was reminded of this when I did a post on David Berkowitz and have had racing thoughts ever since. I had to take a Benadryl (a decongestant) in order to get any sleep and I probably will have to do so again tonight.

I think a good way of describing racing thoughts is to look at Jack Russell terrier racing. Jack Russell terriers are small dogs, of which Eddie on Fraiser is a good example. If you’ve ever been ten minutes with a Jack Russell then you know the meaning of the word “intense”. I saw one show called Aftermath: Population Zero that wondered what would happen to the world if humans suddenly disappeared. They predicted that all small dogs would be eated by biger dogs. The makers of that show obviously never met a Jack Russell. I’m convinced they are secret leaders of wolf packs.

Well, watch the film and it kind of portrays racing thoughts. I usually have a frantic background soundtrack to the thoughts, too, like in the film.

The good news in this film is that reasearch on depression is being done. The bad news is that they are ticking off a lot of lab mice in order to carry out these experiments.

There’s very few creatures more depressed than a labratory mouse. Even Richard Lewis would seem bubbly compared to a lab mouse. What they go through if similar to what humans go through in that we learn to give up hope and quietly wait for death.

But how do you scientifically know when a mouse is depressed? Apparently, when they stop swimming in a pool of milk with smooth sides they are unable to climb out of. The more depressed the mouse, the sooner they stop swimming.

Scientists have given antidepressants to mice to see how long they’ll keep swimming. The mice did indeed swim longer. Then, they gave the mice behaviorial therapy, giveing out rewards when the mouse heard a certain clicking noise. Mice with both antidepressants and behavorial training swum even longer than the mice that were just on antidepressants.

Also, when the mouse brains were examined (the video never quite explains how this is done) they showed that new brain cells and neuiral pathways grew in those mice that had both antidepressants and behaviorial therapy.

Which I guess means that those of us who suffer from depression still nedd to keep taking the meds, but also need to go get a bathing suit because we’ll all soon be swimming in milk until we give up. I’m not sure if any researcher will be around to pull us out by our tails, though.

You can have panic attacks for many reasons — not just because you’ve been diagnosed with phobias, panic attack disorder or general anxiety disorder. For example, my migranes can trigger a panic attack. Panic attacks can be the sign of another illness that needs attention. And, of course, suffering a severe trauma like a car accident, mugging or finding your spouse in bed with your best friend can also trigger a panic attack.

Many people with depression do experience panic attacks or know someone who is afflicted with panic attacks. Although panic attacks suck, it can be even more terrifiying to watch someone else go through a panic attack rather than experience it yourself.

When I feel a panic attack coming on, I ask someone I know well to talk to me about anything. It helps distracts me from the whirling thoughts. I sometimes also put on a calming video or DVD to sort of self-hypnotise me back to tranquility (or my usual acidic version of normalcy.)

But my panic attacks are mild in comparison with other people’s. So it’s great that Expert Village did a little video series dealing with panic attacks in a practical ways. I found that the best in the series was “How to Help Someone Having a Panic Attack,” because it explains the difference between helpful eye contact and leering. It also explains when touching is appropriate.

I just want to add that you may also want to help the person breathe deeply and gently remind them that nothing bad is happening to them right now and that you know it’s not their fault that they get panic attacks.

If you suffer from any type of depression or general anxiety disorder, imagine what that’s doing to your dog. They pick up on thinks like that. Some dogs just shrug it off (”Oh, those silly humans are at it again,”) but some dogs seem to think that the cause for your shattered nerves are invisible monsters that need a brave dog to chase off — well, in a way, they’re right.

A stressed dog will perform a variety of actions to show you they are stressed. These actions include panting heavily for no reason, crouching, pacing constantly or flattening the ears against the head, trying to look like a puppy. Some dogs get so stressed that their tummies get upset. Dogs lick their lips a lot right before they throw up.

Massage is great not only for your dog — but for you, too. Massaging a dog is a bit like petting your dog. It soothes the both of you. I’m not sure who benefits most from a stress massage — you or your dog. Your dog will let you know if you’re not touching him or her correctly. But dogs will also let you know when you are massaging them in just the right way. If they fall asleep on you as you are massaging them, take it as a compliment.

This little clip is from Expert Village, which has about a jillion how-to videos up on YouTube as well as their own website. There’s a whole series of dog massage and people massage videos up on both sites, as well. Hope this helps.

“I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.” — Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) was an artist people either love or hate. There aren’t many in between. He’s classified as an “abstrct expressionist” but is usually called “the guy who does all the big paintings full of squiggly lines.” Whether you love or hate his art, if you have any type of depression, there is a lot to be learned from Jackson Pollock — namely, the right way and the wrong way to go about handling your mental illness.

What He Did Right

Pollock did channel a lot of his emotions into the creative process. His paintings are huge, incredibly complex and present a unique view of the world. His paintings could also be illustrations of what it feels like to be depressed.

Art therapy is highly recommeded for anyone with any kind of depression. It doesn’t have to be painting — it could be cooking, or gardening or just about anything you choose. The requirements for this creaticve choice are that you have to move your muscles and show tangible results.

As this clip shows, Pollock would move his whole body in order to paint.

What He Did Wrong

Pollock lived at a time when most medications for mental illness were not developed. Often, treatment back then consisted of a combination of shock therapy and talk therapy. But still, that would have been preferable to what Pollock did do.

He chose to self-medicate with alcohol. Not suprisingly, he became an alcoholic. Although an artisitc genius, he had a miserable live that ended short when he became drunk and got behind the wheel of a car.

Don’t self-medicate.

People with depression can get bad dreams, nightmares and night terrors. There is a misconception that night terrors are really bad nightmares. No — nightmares are nightmares, no matter how bad they are in intensity and frequency.

Night terrors are much worse — well, at least for anyone else in the room. This is where you actually get up and act out your nightmares. I used to have a boyfriend that had night terrors in his twenties. I eventually made him sleep in a seperate bedroom, because I was sick of dodging fists in the wee hours of the morning.

But, I’m not a doctor or therapist. This YouTube clip is a much better explanation of the difference between nightmares and night terrors. This is an explanation from a pediatrician, but night terrors, nightmares and bad dreams can happen at any age.

By the way, “bad dreams” are not as bad as nightmares — more annoying than anything else. Some doctors and therapists do make a distinction between bad dreams and nightmares, which is why I seperate bad dreams into their own category.

If you’ve started a new medication and you’ve never, ever had night terrors in your life and suddenly get them, please contact your doctor. Ditto if you suddenly start sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking is sort of like night terrors, only it’s a heck of a lot more benign. You don’t go around punching people. My family has this storu of me sleepwalking as a kid. All I did was lower all of the blinds or pull the curtains in the house, then I went back to bed. Of course, I don’t know if they’re making this story up or not.

If you’ve been online for more than ten minutes, you’ll know that there is a lot of conflicting information on just about any medcial condition, especially depression. Anitdepressants have been especially targeted with misinformation campaigns. Just type in “how antidepressants work” in YouTube’s search function and you’ll come up with hours of detailed and empassioned explanations why antidepressants are the biggest con since W was declaired President in 2000.

Antidepressants are big business and I am no fan of Big Pharma, but there are synthetic medications made that can be life-saving. (Unaffordable medication is my beef with Big Pharma — not he quality of some medications like Prozac). Just because it’s made in a factory doesn’t mean it’s no good for you.

Prozac has been around so long that it now comes in generic form, fluoxetine. In fact, I’ve only taken the generic form and never the brand name, but “Prozac” is easier to say. If you have depression, post traumatic stress disorder or are going through a prolonged state of grief, then you may be prescribed Prozac.

So, here’s a little film made by Illumistream, which is one of the more reputable medical YouTube channels. It just gives a basic description of how Prozac works or how it works for many people.

However, I’ve never had a “state of well being” produced from Prozac, as mentioned in the film. All it did for me was regulate my appetite and sleep patterns. But for me, that was enough to get my body stable and really listen to and apply cognitive-behavior therapies.

Hope this helps.

People with depression are often encouraged to learn how to manage their stress through non-chemical ways like light exercise, yoga, creating some art or meditation.  The point of mediation is to give your racing thoughts some rest.  Eventually, you can learn to slip into a meditative state of mind even in moments of stress.  Meditation isnt a substitute for medications, but it certainly can make the medications work more effectively.

For people in the West, meditation can be a pretty mysterious thing.   Trying to figure out what you are to be doing can be pretty stressful.

First Step: No Expectations

When you hear the world “meditation”, what image comes to mind?  Probably sitting in the lotus position admist clouds of incense for hours on end.  But I think that’s too limiting.  I think we all meditate every day without realising it.

If you ever get really caught up in something so that you loose all track of time, that can be a form of meditation.  Fully keeping your mind and sense in the present moment can be another form of mediation.  And, sitting on a pillow in the lotus position contemplating your navel is another form of meditation.

Don’t worry about getting it “wrong”.  Just keep on meditating.

The Dalai Lama

Surprise, suprise — I can’t mditate in the lotus position.  I can’t count my breaths or stare at a candleflame or any of the popular methods used in Mediation 101.  But I can concentrate on one thing at a time, when need be.  I think one way I do this is when watching any video of the Dalai Lama.  There’s something about him that’s captivating.

So, for mediatation practice, just sit and watch the video and try to do nothing else.  Hope this helps.

Depression is a deadly disease. Most people with depression will act suicidal at one time or another — although not to the extreme that this poor sod does. He probably thought that killing himself was his only alternative. One thing that depression and the down phase of bipolar disorder does is that it severely narrows your decision-making process so that you can’t see any of the choices around you. And if you are affected by other symptoms of depression like sleep deprivation, chronic aches and pains and all-encompassing fatigue, then your thinking processes are even more narrowed.

Depression is like putting horse blinkers on so that you can only see one direction and not everything else around you.

Many depressives make wrong life choices in diet, exercise, sleep and chemicals that don’t kill you as quickly as a plunge ten feet from the edge of Niagra Falls. They wind up killing themselves in a far slower fashion than this fellow did.

I did do some Internet research tryng to discover who this fellow was, if he left a note behind or if his body was ever found, but I haven’t been able to find anything. Niagra Falls is so powerful that a body can never be found, such as with the case of a stunt gone wrong when, in June 5, 1990 a man named Jesse Sharp paddled over the edge in a kayak. His kayak was found, but he wasn’t. It’s thought he wasn’t trying to commit suicide, because he had dinner reservations for later that night.

In other words, if you feel depressed, get help. And don’t go to Niagra Falls.

Sometimes the best way to learn about and deal with any subject is to write/listen to a song about that subject. If you have depression and think that no one knows what it is you go through, then have a look at this. “The Sexy Antidepressant” by Eizolis. The song that it’s based on is called “On A Good Day” by Above and Beyond. I really like the lyrics “I’ve never, never seen the sun shine brighter/ And it feels like me on a good day.”

Warning

The type of music is “trance”, although I thought at one point it was called “dance” oir “techno”. Why don’t they notify me about these name changes music genres? (Probably because I’d be too depressed that it wasn’t Peter Gabriel contacting me to get back to them.)

There are large white credits that hang on throughout the whole video, unfortunately, but that’s a good metaphor for the symptoms of depression. It’s like going through with huge subtitles you just get rid of.

What Was This Video About?

Apparently, there was a contest held to make a video to go along with this song, to be released in February, 2009, a single from their forthcoming album Sirens of the Sea. Details are at another YouTube video clip. The contest is now closed.

I happen to like Eizolis’s version best, espcially the trippy way the chemical formultions for some major antidepressants fly across the clouds. Kind of makes them look like flowers. Which then makles you wonder what one of the subjects is wearing on her head — flowers or antidepressants?

Enjoy.

This is just a clip of a guy in his undershirt (I assume he’s wearing pants, too) sitting with his guitar and emoting into a webcam. However, although he looks a little like Justin Timberlake, he sings better than Justin Timberlake and has a song that won’t drive you crazy because it’s played over and over and over again. The fellow is Jay Brannan and the song is “Christmas Really Sucks”. Despite the title, it’s a gentle folksky song with the requisite pop overtones and very good lyrics.

It’s rare to find a song that perfectly captures a moment in time — modern Christmas in the real world. This time of year, my depression symptoms really flare up (both physically and emotionally) and it seems as if I’m the only one who feels this way, even though I know many other people do, too. This YouTube clip could be an anthem, in a way, for those of us who hate the holidays but suffer through them anyway for whatever professional or social reasons we have.

Enjoy, and keep on taking the meds. Spring is only a few months away.

One of the most upsetting aspects to depression is that you feel a complete loss of control. Everything is the most horrible thing that ever happened in your life and you are incurable. This sense of being completely out of control is an illusion caused by depression, extreme stress or general anxiety disorder (GAD).

In 1937 (long before Prozac), Austrian doctor Abraham A, Low develpoed a method by which the patient could identify a true emergency from their symtpms. This eventually became called Recovery or “the Recovery Meathod”. He helped start an international organization called Recovery, Inc. (but is now called Revovery International).

There is some squabble over whether Dr. Low predated other cognitive-behavior therpaies. When his works were published, they were generally ignored by the psychatric community. Dr. Low was appreciated by his pateints, but not from his on peers.

Anyway, the group finally has a channel on YouTube. Here’s their first video:

Recovery (or RI) is NOT a substitute for doctors or medication. You will still suffer relapses every now and then, but that’s normal.

Basically, all you do is learn to take a deep breath and get some perscpective of everyday events that can really get under your skin. For example, say you’re convinced you can never be cured. That would be called “imagination on fire” — you really don’t have evidence that you can’t be cured. Then you know that you are exhibiting a symptom — the fear of not being curable — and your fears are not facts.

There’s a lot more to it than that. You’re encouraged to go to weekly or monthly meetings because it gets you out of the house and socializing with others as well as learning when to spot fears that you mistake as facts.

Also, just a quick announcement that in addition to Dealing With Headaches, I’ve taken on another 451 Press blog, YouTube Digger. I’ll try to keep the depression-related YouTube clips to this site, though. Well, I’ll try, anyway. I’m not promising anything.