I'm not a Blogger, well not in the realms of experience anyway..
Up until today I hadn't even glanced at my profile in 4 years, In all honesty I wasn't even aware that I still had one! But that aside, I came on today with the intention of making a change. I have been too down and too depressed for too long. I have tried medicines, counselling, CBT, informative reading, self help techniques; from meditation to hypnosis, yoga to abstract African rituals. You name it, I've given it a go.
To no avail.
It's hard. It gets harder each day. To be motivated enough to climb out of bed each morning, knowing this day won't be any different; knowing you will still have the same crippling, self loathing recurring thoughts that disable you endlessly. And the worst part? It is entirely cycle based, meaning it will just keep going and going until you can hopefully one day, break that loop.
The cycle starts with the trigger. Now, the trigger is tricky. It could have been a childhood experience, a trauma in adulthood, it could be genetic, it could have been a poorly learnt behavioural pattern, it could even have been when Sarah Holburn* called you fat once in the middle of the school playground one day, or when you failed your driving test.
Truth be told, sometimes there can be seemingly no reason for it at all.
But the trigger is what begins the cycle, causing the dysfunctional thoughts;
'I'm useless' 'I'm worthless' 'No one really cares about me or if I'm even here'
'What's the point?' 'Everything fails!' 'I screwed up.'
You get the idea...
The thoughts, if continually repeated and dwelled upon, then develop into what I can only describe as dysfunctional feeling, which is entirely different from the above because this is when a fleeting thought extends to the point of genuine belief, when you really start to feel and believe these grievances. Everyone has dysfunctional thoughts at some point or another, it's what makes us human, we're fallible. They usually occur after a failed exam, or a derogatory comment from someone. But to someone who's generally OK in all aspects of their life, they will let these thoughts occupy them for a day or two maximum, then forget or choose to move past it and continue with their lives. It is when someone truly can't seem to do so that dysfunctional feeling occurs, which then progressively begins to externally affect them..
Abnormal External Behaviour
Now, I probably should have spent a little longer talking about dysfunctional feeling, as it is arguably the entire premise of depression itself, but instead I'll write a more in-depth post in the near future and keep this as an overview for now.
Abnormal External Behaviour (I'll shorten it to AEB for future reference) is the next stop on our messed up journey of a complicated mind. By now as I'm writing I'm picturing one of those old circular train tracks you used to get as children, with each station stop being another point in the cycle. The way I see it, if you were one of the lucky ones, you made it in time for the fast train, you didn't have to stop at any other stop, you just got off at your destination, and sure as hell you were lucky enough to live one stop away. Those that aren't so lucky, have to ride the whole way, calling at every single one in order to get home after work, and just wake up and do it all again the next day. Depression itself is pretty like a journey, if you intercept it early enough, you might be lucky and hop off at the first stop, but the longer you deal with it, and the more it consumes you, the more stops you meet along the way.
AEB is when the beliefs we have now seemingly ingrained into ourselves start to affect more than just our concious mind. For instance, we now genuinely believe we're useless, and unloved, and we'll never succeed in life because, well.. we just won't. We don't even need to have logical reasoning. In fact, whenever I'm not having one of my major downers I can quite logically say there is no substance to my feelings. No reason as to why I should feel this way, I've always been loved, I've always had good grades at school. But when you're in the midst of what you will soon realise I call 'The Haze', logic evades you, and when people try and highlight it, it just makes you feel even worse.
So anyway, we've started to let it impact our external lives. We don't believe we deserve to succeed for whatever reason, so sure enough, we won't. Our own minds are acting as roadblocks, stopping us from achieving...anything really. The longer it goes on, the worse we feel, and the worse implications it has on our lives; hence the cycle.
To put it into context, I'll describe my current situation. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety aged 12. To this day we've never uncovered a concrete cause for this, which in truth I find unbelievably frustrating as I'm someone who likes to have a reason for everything and I believe that knowing is going to be essential for my recovery. Over the years I've tried numerous 'remedies' as I mentioned at the beginning, and gradually as time went on and nothing changed I started to notice the impact it was having on my life.
I always kept myself out of the limelight. I was never without friends, but I kept myself on the outskirts of a large friend group, I would only meet with them all together and never one-on-one with people. I kept views and opinions to myself and just spent most of my time at school listening instead of talking. This particular trait has extended to my adult life and it's only now that it's become clear I do so because of the subconscious belief that these people wouldn't really want to be my friends. They don't really care about me or want me there, they're just being friendly out of pity.
Again, these are thoughts that, in my Lucid Mind (the polar opposite to The Haze) I can say are totally unjustified and people have never given me reason to think these things. But I do.
Just as I've kept myself the last 4 years, working at manager level for minimum wage and a horrendous amount of unpaid hours, despite working so hard at school to achieve As at A-Level, I seem to reside myself in jobs where I'm unappreciated, because my brain tells me I'm being selfish for wanting more, that I don't deserve it, that I should be lucky I've got a job and stick with that.
Depression and Anxiety have stripped me of all ambition. I fail to see the beauty I once saw in life, I have no faith in myself, or my future. I'm paralysed by a sense of 'Why Try?' so badly that I even get physical repercussions when I try and make a change. (Stay tuned for a new post 'Mental illness and Physical Side Effects) Even when I try and job hunt now I don't even bother sending my CV, despite consciously knowing it's strong and well-written, because my subconscious thoughts of self hatred and inferiority overpower any logical concious thought.
And this is where the cycle loops. Mental illness won't just go away. That I've learnt the hard way. It'll just keep on going. The more the thoughts that develop into feeling, the more abnormal external behaviour you will display. In turn, take my example from above. You don't apply for the jobs because you feel like you won't get them, you're punching above your weight, you don't deserve to aim high. But by not applying, you're still left jobless, and the longer that goes on, the more down you'll feel, and the more dysfunctional thoughts you'll get and so on.
I've learnt now it's about breaking the cycle. And I'm not going to give up. I have regular break downs, I self harmed for years, overcame it, and relapsed again recently. I've made numerous attempts on my life over the years, and I'm only still here today out of some guilt complex that stopped me from, putting it crudely, 'finishing the job properly'. I hate asking for help, again mainly because of these feelings that I'm bothering people I suppose.. so I like to try and tackle things on my own. I want to believe there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And I think, if people pull together a bit more, we can help each other. I have a friend who suffers with depression also, and he is truly one of the nicest, kindest people I know, and I hate seeing him suffer knowing what a good person he is and that he has no need to feel so badly. It's proof that depressed people aren't bad people. And we don't need to feel the way we do, we have no reason to hate ourselves as we do. We just need to find a way to change how we think. Everyone's different and there won't be a 'one thing cures all' response, but I've tried the do nothing phase, I've tried the do something phase. But in truth, change can only come from within, not some counsellor telling me what to do or think, not some bizarre African dance that brings about self-love.
So I'm going to go forth with this blog, even with my current following of 0. Each post will be a specific topic, be it relationships, physical effects, the science of change; I'm just going to write. And with writing, maybe eventually will come confidence to create some change. I can see the light, I've got the logic, it's the actual getting to the other side which is limiting me. But, I know I'm not alone, and I hope in time this blog can attract some followers so that we can aid each other, hear each other's stories, and use our own experiences to help where possible.
I'm all typed out for the moment, and my hamster's gnawing at her cage bars in a loud protest for some attention. But I'll check in again soon.
Hang Tight.
- Amy
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