Part 1: De-pression

I read in this book called “Living Juicy: Daily Morsels for Your Creative Soul” by SARK that De-pression is the opposite of Ex-pression. Well, that left an Im-pression. Let’s investigate. This is part 1, looking at Depression.

This is what my intermingled Stress, Anxiety and Depression (notice that acronym? S.A.D.) looks like –

Waking up - I wake up, exhausted, not wanting to get out of bed, dreading the day.

Joyless - I drag myself out of bed because I have to. There’s work to be done. It feels joyless.

Overwhelm - There’s so much to be done. I’m overwhelmed looking at it, thinking about it.

Decision-making - It’s so hard to figure out what I should do first. I spend a lot of time organizing what needs to be done, but it takes forever because as I make the unending list, I keep going off on tangents trying to do easy/quick bits and pieces here and there, without accomplishing anything or really prioritizing.

Stress - By lunchtime, I’m dejected at the lack of progress, and now fewer hours to do the same amount. Stress level heightens.

Nutrition - So I delay lunch so I can “do something”, now I’m not eating on time, and probably eating crap. Feeling more tired and under-nourished as a result.

Life balance - In this overwhelming day, I cannot even get back to my therapist or schedule acupuncture. Let’s not even talk about yoga, or vitamins, or getting my car fixed. It’s working, the accident didn’t damage anything inside (self-diagnosed, since I haven’t gotten it inspected yet).

Getting by - The week drags on and every day I feel like I worked hard, did not get enough done, so must work harder the next day, and so I leave work with a tired sense and “tomorrow will be different”. But I don’t quite believe it anymore.

Connections - Now I look at my “Personal - Things to do” list and my heart sinks. I forgot to keep my phone date in the tight window between leaving work and driving to my next appointment. Yikes – I’m a bad friend too.

Consumed - The family and friends I am still regularly talking to – all they hear about is me being stressed or tired. Or when I’m really depressed – they don’t hear from me at all.

Self-judgment - And this whole time, I’m either venting or isolating, but either way I’m judging myself for being consumed with my stress, or for not responding enough, on time, or being really present.

Sleep - At some point of the night, probably 2 hours later than I should have, I crawl into bed to sleep. Or I should say, attempt to sleep. Now I’m stressing about the fact that I will only get 6.5 hours of sleep and I know I really need 8.5, every night – not to overcompensate on the weekend.

Body - Now I really feel the pain too. My lower back is killing me. I cannot get comfortable, forget pain-free. The frustration is overwhelming. My long day of unhappy uncomfortable postures is catching up.

Rest - I fall asleep at some restless point, wake up a couple more times in pain, too early for my alarm.

Groundhog Day - And when my alarm finally rings in the morning, I groggily try to open my eyes, unhappy about the rest-less night, and already tired at the thought of the long day ahead. A dreary deja-vu.

The motivation behind telling this story is – I have learned to recognize My Depression. It helps. And when you recognize it as Depression, you can begin to see it as an entity with a force of its own.

You’re still depressed, which means your energy is still zapped and the mind is a muddy lake. But now you can see the depression as the fog hanging low above the water. It is confusing things and making it hard to see/think clearly. But the fact that you can see it as fog means it is separate – it is not You. It is in you, with you, over you, on you. It is something you carry around, that is attached, sometimes when we don’t even know it. It talks. It talks all the time. Listening to it is frightening and exhausting. But hearing it makes me understand “It” as a Thing that I am dealing with. I can’t always switch it off – the voice that tells me things are hopeless and will never change, that I will not get anything I dream of or hope for, that I should just give up. It tells me it’s okay to eat popcorn for dinner because I have it so bad, that I can let go a little more. So I do eat the popcorn dinner, but don’t quite forgive myself for it - self- hate to garnish the lack of nutrition, ensuring I do not have the energy to shift things.

Depression plays on a set of circumstances bringing you down, AND, I say this next thing with ultimate compassion - it also furthers a victim identity. It makes us feel powerless, and then we become attached to the idea that bad things are always happening to us and we have no control or ability to change things. It gives us some relief – a reason to stop working so hard. So we stop trying. It feels like ‘letting go’, but really it’s giving up.

My friend gita once said “Sometimes its fucking radical that I get out of bed and have my day”. I agree, it really feels like that sometimes. And when it does, I just admire myself for being so fucking brave. And I treat myself, by writing about it so I can confess “I’m hurting. I need help”. That is more like letting go.

Once that happens, healing is inevitable.