Let's Talk Depression
Gloomy Sunday is a popular song composed by Hungarian pianist Rezso Secress in 1933, also known as "Hungarian Suicide Song." Billie Holiday's English version was even banned from airing by BBC radio, lifted as late as 2002. According to legend, Gloomy Sunday was responsible for many suicides in Hungary and United States. The claims could not be verified, but it's still called a suicide song.
You must be thinking why I am writing about something so depressing and suicidal. No! I am not thinking of committing one myself, nor do I want people to listen to this song and die! Rezso Secress wrote this song when his girlfriend left, and I guess he was depressed and stressed. The sad part is, 35 years later, Rezso committed suicide.
This article is not about Rezso or his song, nor about suicide. It's all about stress and depression.
According to a report, around 10 million cases of depression are reported in India each year. As the number suggests, it is categorized in the group CMD (Common Mental Disorder) and anxiety disorder. It is one of the top-ranking disorders globally, and organizations like WHO are constantly working to spread awareness amongst the masses.
The death of the beloved comedian and actor shocked many.?he described his highs and lows to NPR’s Terry Gross. “Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.”
Due to stressful personal & professional life, it is tough to guess whether someone is suffering from depression or it's just due to a disturbing daily routine. What are the factors or early signs of depression? When to know that it's time to seek professional help? That's not hard, and with little analysis, one can read early signs.
"Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards." Soren Kierkegaard said three hundred years ago.
It hasn't changed. Seldom do such astute observations lose traction with time. The ways we make sense of our lives, the stories we tell ourselves (and others), our memories and recollections, our pains, and our pleasures rarely remain consistent. Life cannot be experienced as a linear, continuously straight line. It is not neat and ordered but instead shifted around; it jumps backward and forwards, waltzes sideways, turns in on itself, and sometimes becomes stuck in one definitive point in time.
Depression is often only understood once it has retreated into the background but perversely is always experienced in the exquisite misery of the present. The suffering that feels intolerably stuck in one definitive point in time. It's a constant amongst sufferers of depression – we live with the memory of how awful it can be, knowing it could return, not sure if we can see it off next time it raises its head. As Virginia Woolf wrote to her husband and sister on March 28, 1941, before she took her life, "Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time."
Woolf was an extraordinary woman. One of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, a practiced dreamer – practiced as all women of her time had to be – secretly carving out a mind of their own. She was the founder of the notorious Bloomsbury Set and her sister, Vanessa Bell, an intelligent, imaginative, sensitive, and thoughtful creature, well-loved and well-liked. Although, the devastating cloak of mental illness was never far away from Woolf, suffering as she did from what we would probably recognize today as Bipolar Disorder. Sometimes, her breakdowns and periods of psychosis enhanced or aided her writing – the all persuasive romantic link between mental illness and creativity. But, as with all things, that which helps and aids the creative process in one moment can quickly become the thing that distinguishes our innermost flame in the next.
To accurately depict how depression works, we asked a group of individuals (Names kept anonymous) who have suffered from depression in the past or suffering from it. This is their story; I hope it helps if anyone is going through the same.
The viewpoint of a Zen Writer?- People do not believe that I have a mental illness
I am a Zen individual.
I have been told that I seem like someone that has never experienced heartache or any pain. Perhaps I emit some form of peace because everyone has the impression that my life is perfect.
It is my fault that people have this impression of me because I always act like I am okay. I smile during situations in which most people would cry. I withdraw when people present me with emotions that I cannot process without showing some form of distress. I hide behind pleasantries and try not to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I hide the fact that I take medication- or what happens when I don't take it. I don't tell people from the onset that I have bipolar disorder because I fear what they might say.
I am afraid because of the reactions that I have received in the past. A lady I thought was a friend told me that people with mental illnesses are weak. She reasoned that everyone goes through pain, so those living with mental illnesses have no reason to break. An ex-boyfriend, a medical student, laughed and told me mental illnesses do not exist, that they were created to make the weak feel less sorry for themselves
My family can't even say "mental illness" and often refer to bipolar disorder as a simple "illness." They rarely talk about the taboo of mental illness, almost hoping that it goes away. The idea that mental illness is hereditary is ignored, leaving me to feel like an isolated case. Many feel cold and disconnected because I do not involve myself in family politics. Few take the time to realize that I feel like the black sheep that nobody wanted but was forced to tolerate.
My friends read my writing, but they never hear me talk about the pain that fills the pages of my posts. They read about the distress and uncertainty but are always greeted by a smiling face. They do not wonder why I never come to events or cancel at the last moment. Perhaps they think I am selective or do not care about spending time together. They read about the social anxiety and shyness but are often confronted by a girl that loves to talk about anything and everything.
People at work say I am strict and capable. They see a young lady that walks through the doors at 8 am and does her job without question. They don't see the constant fatigue or the naps in the toilet cubicles. They think I am unwilling to communicate with those around me, but they do not know that I am unable to do small talk out of fear of saying something wrong.
People don't believe me when I speak of my mental illness because I appear "perfectly normal." They do not get to witness the daily battle with suicidal thoughts. They are absent when I cry myself to sleep on days I should be happy. They feel like I'm fun when I engage in reckless behavior. People do not see how I am unsure of who I truly am because my diagnosis has eclipsed my personality for so long.
The perspective of a working mom - Depression is part of who you are.
My first bout of depression occurred when I was fourteen. It should have been a happy time. School had been going well, and I had won awards for my writing. I admit my home life hadn't been going so well, but it felt like the customary antagonism between parent and adolescent. Life felt full of hope and possibility, full of teenage dreams. Melancholy seemed alien and implausible – a thorn in the germinating bloom of youth, a blade in the tenderfoot fledgling taking her first steps out in the world. It feels undeniably black, wretched, and heavy, a sizeable weight bearing down, so your every labored breath feels like an achievement.
Once depression and I had made acquaintances, utterly begrudgingly on my part, it would not slacken its grip. It was like a house guest who had outstayed their welcome – ransacking the inside of your house until it had reaped all its rewards. I needed it to leave, I begged and pleaded for it to go, but it remained steadfast and absolute. That's the thing with depression. It arrives with the conviction never to leave - just as we conclude, upon its arrival, that it indeed must if we are to survive.
I've never been a bouncy morning sort but stuck in depressions claw, I awoke each morning wanting to die, or perhaps more accurately, just not wanting to live. Are we hemmed in with angst due to being human? Kierkegaard thought so – angst is simply a consequence of being alive – with our minds and thoughts, our consciousness, and crushing self-awareness. I used to like having the choice – the dizziness of freedom, toes on the precipice. I suppose it's sad, wandering around with a fatalistic get-out-clause – it's almost like a sweetener to carry us through each long, dark day. But, sometimes, life makes one need an escape route, and it's only the knowledge of a possible end that keeps us moving forward.
My parents didn't understand my depression. How can a teenager become depressed? What do they have to be depressed about? Eventually, due to a suicide attempt, they did have to take my despair more seriously, whisking me off to a psychiatrist, from which I returned with a love letter from Lily. I'm not entirely sure the drugs helped. While they did perk me up for a few short weeks, the slightly raised mood would not come to an end. It kept on rising, the depression abruptly being replaced with something resembling mania and then eventually, when it did disperse, simply more filthy black moods. A clear line of demarcation exists in my life now – everything before that first episode of depression and everything that occurred after.
Depression changes us all in a myriad of ways. We are changed upon its arrival, after each new episode, and when it finally leaves. I don't think anyone returns from depression the same person as before. At its worst, we have a complete disintegration of the self, a falling away of all that we ought to be replaced with all that we think we are not. Who can walk away from the self-hatred, the hopelessness, the blinding misery, the inherent stickiness of melancholy without finding a piece of a new self within the fragile whole?
Who I am now is different than who I might have been. But, without sounding mawkish, I don't think I would change anything. It's the age-old question: Would you take a pill if you could be rid of mental illness? My answer would be no. Depression feels as much of me now as my green eyes or dark hair, and I don't think it morbid to accept it as a small part of who I am. Instead, I believe that accepting the existence of something and being prepared for its return helps us cope better in life.
Of course, when we are depressed, we never think we will get better. Then, when we get better, we always remember being depressed. It's the scars we all carry after being inwardly pillaged by depression claw. We know how utterly bleak things can be, equally how good they can be. But, we often greet the good with timid, hesitant legs. Although woven in between these anxieties and our rapid thudding heart, when depression leaves, it is often what feels like a bright, brand new world. It's the one aspect of depression I love – when it recedes, and I open my eyes and a new dawn slides into focus. In that precious moment, I am grateful I am still alive.
Message by an Introvert - The social depression
Those who already know me can easily guess that I am an introverted person. I don't gel up with people quickly, and I love being alone. I have been like this since childhood, and all had seemed fine until last year when I realized my behavior had been changed, and the change wasn't good. I deleted Facebook; I removed WhatsApp, I stopped calling even my closest friends & my parents, and I started avoiding being social.
For me, it was simply a sign of maturity and self-control. I was so wrong. In reality, I was looking for a way out to avoid people. I convinced myself that I could give more time to my family and work by preventing social circles. The real problem started a couple of months back when I realized I could not communicate appropriately with people in the office or with clients on calls and with the general public. I started experiencing neck pain, headache, and pain in my shoulders whenever there was work pressure or mental stress. I started fumbling and experiencing mental blocks quite often. I always knew I was stressing myself too much, which could lead to depression, but at the same time, I was confident I could handle this. But when it started seriously affecting my professional life, I thought it was time to seek help from experts.
Finally, I consulted a psychiatrist for help, and she confirmed that I have mild depression and social anxiety disorder. I always had a social anxiety disorder, but depression worsened it. As a result, I stopped being social. Depression can go unnoticed, which can affect your personal and professional life. It involves the overall thinking process and the ability to make decisions that ultimately cost you in the long run. Another issue with depression is that a person can get addicted to alcohol or even drugs in extreme cases.
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There are a lot of misconceptions about psychiatric treatment and medications. Most people think that once you start taking anti-depressants, it is hard to get out of it. And thus, people avoid seeking professional help.
Medication is an essential aspect of the treatment and daily routine changes. A moderate amount of exercise and anti-depressant pills can pull you out of depression ASAP. The biggest key, however, is to accept your mental sickness upfront. Let people around you know that you suffer from depression so they won't judge you for your behavior. As I said earlier, it's the most common disorder, and there is nothing to hide about it.
Depression and anxiety disorders can be cured within months with proper treatment and medication. There is no need to depend on these pills all your life with modern-day science. A good doctor won't continue it for a more extended period and instead would suggest an effective daily routine for lifelong results. Exercise and meditation are two critical factors in fighting against mental illness.
In short, if you find anything unusual in your behavior…. See a doc! Drinking a couple of vodka shots might temporarily solve your problem, but in the longer run, it will only worsen your condition. A professional treatment can save your personal and professional life, and it will also fix your physical and biological problems.
It's time to overcome the stigma of mental illness and look forward to leading a healthy life!!
Outlook of a Student - Rockbottom
I thought rock bottom would be a jail cell. I never pictured rock bottom as good grades and a cleanroom.
Rock bottom for me became an over-packed schedule, planned down to the smallest of details as a means to ignore my constant anxiety.
However, it didn't take long to transform into the type I had been raised to recognize since childhood.
My rock bottom tasted like unbrushed teeth.
It felt like heavy, greasy hair. The trip to the shower was a journey that I could never find the motivation to take. I once saw a package of year-old Halloween chocolates and a half-empty soda in my room. That was my dinner.
I was starving, dehydrated, and unclean in a first-world country. The people around me were baffled. They would shake their heads and resort to tactics such as criticism or prayer, support or absence.
I didn't know that I had hit rock bottom until one day when I went to the break room at work. My eyes traced over my hair, stiff with perfume and dry shampoo to hide that it hadn't been washed in days. I saw the way my smile was stiffened, clearly forced. My voice had cracks and hoarse tones, straining against itself, begging me to give it water. My eyes had bags under them, large enough that they almost had an existence of their own.
Rock bottom looks and feels different for everyone. The only way that I knew that I had hit rock bottom was when I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. This isn't me, I thought. I was alive, but I had no other evidence of it besides my heartbeat.
With depression, it's easy to give up fighting. It's easy to keep sheets on the bed for too long, give up showering, and settle for dry shampoo and heavy perfume. It's easy to forget to drink water, to find an old package of stale chips and call it dinner. It's easy to lie down on the bed and stare at the ceiling for hours, finally reaching a calm heartbeat at an hour too dark to go out again.
It's easy to hug rock bottom. But the problem is, rock bottom isn't always painful enough to make you want to leave. Rock bottom is when you don't want to take steps to make your life more functional, leading to a dysfunctional life.
Rock bottom is the lowest you can be. Because it can be so consistent, devoid of the fear of failure, it can be comfortable. Rock bottom is a security blanket that can take the life out of being alive.
Some people build their whole lives from rock bottom. That is the scariest part of all.
I hugged rock bottom because it was easier to embrace the option of not trying than to try and fail. I have since realized that my time at the bottom wasn't spent living but dying.
It took a lot of hard work to move from rock bottom to the life that was waiting for me. I could go from not sleeping, eating candy for my meals, skipping out on school assignments to a sleep schedule, completing assignments, healthy eating, and perfect results.
What I quickly learned is that progress isn't perfect. It isn't failing or succeeding. There is a grey area, and in that grey area are good days and bad days. Sometimes I can work on my homework, sleep enough, and eat three meals a day. Sometimes, I resort to turning in blank assignments or asking the barista at Starbucks to add a triple shot of espresso, "Please and thank you."
But the beauty isn't in action or the result. The beauty is in being alive and having the opportunity to wake up every day. I have more good days than bad days now. I can look back at how I lived in a depressed, unhealthy state and see a sharp contrast between the before and after.
Regardless of how clean my room is and how good my grades are, I am grateful to be alive, whether living on rock bottom or living to my fullest potential.
I am grateful to try again after each failure, to accept each success as something I worked hard for.
Take the first step. You're allowed to love your life.
Point of view of Tedx Speaker - Learn to Live with it
Anyone who has ever experienced depression knows how hopeless it can feel. It's like a tunnel of nothingness that can't be penetrated by anything light or positive. You're simultaneously in pain and numb, as paradoxical as those things sound to someone who hasn't felt this way. This hopelessness makes you feel like you'll never achieve anything in life. I'm here to tell you that your mind is lying to you.
There's nothing wrong with feeling like this, for having depression, because depression is an illness as valid as anything physical. No, the part of you accepting this lie is the amount of your depression telling you that you're alone, that you're unloved, that you'll never achieve anything. You can achieve so much, and I'm an example of that.
I was about 13 when I developed depression, from what I can remember. It started as a self-esteem thing, and I established a chain of self-loathing thoughts that wouldn't leave me alone. I became irritable around my friends and family; I started isolating myself from everyone and convinced myself that everyone would be better off if I died. Each day was a struggle to stay alive. The worst part is… getting better terrified me. I didn't want help.
I'm so happy to say this didn't last. It doesn't.
I still have depression, and I still have terrible days. I have days when I don't want to talk to anyone when I can't get out of bed when the world feels like too much to face. But generally, I'm considerably better. I've stopped isolating myself, found a way of doing things I enjoy again, and taken steps to get better. I'm writing this as someone who's been in a terrible place but has worked through it. So, believe me when I say that from personal experience, things can get better.
I turned to self-harm as a coping mechanism. It was a way to get through the days when I first developed depression but didn't know how else to cope. Self-harm is something that, for a long time, I thought was the only thing that could give me any relief from the way I was feeling. I would frequently hurt myself whenever I felt like I couldn't cope with my feelings, and eventually, it became a kind of addiction for me – it would be the only thing I would immediately turn to for "help."
It is for a lot of people. But, eventually, I started relying on it less and turned to paint my skin as a way of coping instead. I started creating beautiful images on my skin instead of damaging it, leaving me with something I could be proud of and show people. I still have the self-harm scars, and I will likely have them for most of my life. But, I can look at them now, knowing that I made it past this phase of my life and found a much more positive method of coping.
I am telling you that depression lies. It lies and tricks you into believing it's telling the truth. Trust me, and I've been there. But I'm proof that you don't have to accept these lies and that there is hope amidst the darkness. I spent most of my teenage years hating myself, believing that I wasn't worth anything and that I'd never amount to anything. Now I am 27 years old. How bad you feel does not dictate your ability to achieve great things, so don't pass up opportunities that come your way because you don't think you'd be any good at them.
Now that mental illnesses are beginning to get more awareness, we have to keep talking to each other about them. Ask people how they are with sincerity and concern. Tell your friends you love them. Say yes when people offer you opportunities. You don't know how much you can achieve until you force yourself to open up, to accept that you are strong because, to quote , "Being mentally ill is not synonymous with being weak."
Health and Fitness Specialist /Behaviour and Habit coach/Personal trainer/Lifestyle and Weight management specialist
2 年Lovely article great initiative sir.