Depression (Part 4)

"Tell me about when you were 8 years old." he said.

My therapist isn't like what you'd picture. He wears cargo shorts and sneakers and t-shirts with various 5K and 10K runs he has been a part of on them. I don't think he wears them on purpose, I think they are just very comfortable. I know the shirts I wear when I run are like his.

He also doesn't sit in an armchair with a pad and pencil while I lie down on a couch. He has a little rolling chair that spins, and he often sails across the floor with it when he needs something from one side of the room or the other. My chair is a recliner, and it makes a funny squeak when you rock. Behind him on the opposite wall from me is a poster that has a grizzly bear dancing ballet, and below in huge letters "Be you. Always be you."

"The thing I said I wanted to talk about this time?" I said.

He nods.

For the next 20 minutes, I verbally recall the events that took place that day. He sits quietly, listening. He never interrupts. Even when I get to the parts I know he wants to comment on. When I get to the part where it happens, I look over at him, expecting him to have some sort of reaction. Instead, just a small nod and "Mmm." of concerned acknowledgement. This is something I know I will be facing one day, sitting in his chair, with someone else in my seat. Will I be able to sit as quietly and patiently without speaking out of turn? I don't even know.

When I finish, he says "You seem to have made emotional progress on this particular issue. Maybe this is something you've pushed past, or perhaps pushed back?"

I tell him I don't know, and we talk for a few minutes about it. The way he speaks to me about the memory I shared reminds me a lot of the episode where Mr. Rogers talked about bad people, bad memories, and how to deal with your anger:

The same kind of peaceful voice and calm demeanor show in his eyes as he talks about what I told him. About the person I was angry with. How it’s okay and healthy to be angry, but how it’s what you do with the anger that matters.

“So now we've covered the incident when you were 8. We've talked about what happened in the meeting a few years ago. We talked about what happened on your trip. The incident at work that made you angry. Is there anything else you want to talk about?" he says.

I think for a minute, then say "Nothing that I can think of right now, but can I ask something?"

He nods.

"It's strange," I say. "Let's say a genie popped out of a bottle and said he could make one of these events completely go away--not just the memory, but the event itself. So that I would never have to endure it, or the repercussions. In other words, I get a complete do-over of that day, and can change it any way I like."

He nods.

"Here's the thing: If that genie thing happened, I'd let the thing that took place when I was 8 stay, and instead change everything I said and did the day I went on that trip."

"You'd allow the event when you were 8 to remain, if you could have a do-over on the first day of that trip?"

I nodded.

"Most people would eagerly pick the first one to erase, why the other one instead?"

"Physical wounds heal." I say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it's important to understand that everyone deals with anger, pain, abuse, grief, and regret in different ways. I remember once reading an article where a woman who was the victim of daily spousal abuse, both physical and sexual, was more hurt by her father not listening to her about the abuse than the abuse itself. Another person who had been the victim of repeated rape at the hands of an abusive lover, was hurt by her best friend abandoning her when she was 14 infinitely more. People who have never been the victim of abuse often don’t fully understand this. To them, physical abuse is seen from the outside, and lines are drawn in black and white, when in reality, the human mind deals with these atrocities in infinite shades of gray.

It’s also important to understand the stigma that goes along with men and women who have been victims of abuse. While it’s difficult to wrap your mind around a little boy or girl being taken advantage of by an adult, it’s impossible to understand the horror that surrounds it. Most abuse victims never talk about the abuse. Girls are often made to feel as though they perpetuated the abuse by dressing inappropriately, acting inappropriately, or giving off  “mixed signals”. Boys are made to feel like they were badly behaved as a child, so they asked for it. (Also, discussing sexual abuse would make people question their manhood.) Thus, the perpetrator already has the cards stacked in their favor against their victim. (I never told my parents anything  about what happened to me, for example.) I could easily write an entirely new blog post (or five) about that topic. Perhaps I will in the future, if enough people ask. (Enough being even one person, actually.) For this one however, I want to stick to this important idea: There are many people out there who would gladly endure more abuse if they could fix this one thing in their life.

Another important thing: Mental illness makes a person additionally vulnerable to abuse. We already see ourselves as damaged, so any new and foreign emotions are often questioned by the person experiencing them. (“Do I really feel this way?”) We can’t trust our mind to behave normally, so our feelings can’t be trusted to be accurate. Many days we want to just give up. Often, the only thing that gets us through is stability shown in another area of life. I don’t know exactly how to best end this blog post, because I have never been that organized in my writing. What I do know, is I recently saw a Twitter post that drove my point in this post home. When you look at the image below, I want you to remember something: It is literally a guarantee that you know someone who is a victim of abuse. The kind of abuse is as widely varied as anyone could imagine. They may have told you about the abuse, or maybe they haven’t. Regardless, in their life, you are a source of stability. With that in mind, be kind to EVERYONE, and never make fun of ANYONE. You never know who might be looking to you as the reason they go forward, rather than giving up.

FYI, I teach English Literature and Psychology to the highschoolers in our homeschool group.

I wonder how many attach(ed) themselves to me.

Depression (Part 3)

I teach social psychology to our homeschool group on a high school level. Last week we discussed social norms, and I had given the class a homework assignment: Pick a social norm, and violate it for a period of time. A day, a week, whatever, and note people's reaction. Examples of social norms are holding the door for someone who is following close behind you, saying "excuse me" when you burp, dressing in baggy clothes if you are overweight, or not encroaching on someone's personal space. These are accepted concepts that most people don't have an explanation as to why we do them, other than "It's polite." or "It's how I was raised." These responses are erroneous, because who determines what is polite? Why were you raised that way? In Italy, a burp is considered a compliment after a nice meal, and if you visit a large city on a busy day, you'll hardly see anyone bothering to hold the door for people. Social norms are not rules, they are understood ways of behaving that can greatly vary from place to place.

I asked my students about the norms they chose to violate the previous week, and about their results and observations. One student (a female) decided she would "not sit like a lady". Wearing pants, of course, she made a point all week long to sit with her legs apart. She said she got weird looks from people, and eyes directed at her crotch. Another student (a Latina) made a point to walk around with her phone to her ear and speak loudly in Spanish. She said people looked at her funny, and one person even approached her and asked her where she was from. (How is that relevant?) Another student wore formal attire all day long and visited McDonald's, the bowling alley, Walmart, and so on. He got odd looks and whispers.

Since I'm the teacher, I didn't think it was fair for my students to violate a norm and me not violate one also. So for the previous week, anytime someone asked me "How are you?" or "How's it going?", rather than give the expected answer, such as "Fine." or "Good.", I literally told them how it was going. I chose something that was happening to me that day, (good or bad) and proceeded to tell them all about it. As you can imagine, this really threw a lot of people. They wanted (or expected) me to give a one-word answer that would respond to the question politely. It made a couple of people very uncomfortable, and you could see the look in their eyes that said "Wow. Yeah. See, I didn't really want to know about your day, I just said it to be polite."

Now we all have good days and bad days, and most of us would agree that we usually just say "Fine." on bad days just as easily as on good days. We do this because we don't want to burden others with our troubles, or we don't want to discuss our problems with this particular person, or we don't want to admit life stinks today. We feel like expressing our problems is complaining, being ungrateful for our blessings, or just plain over-sharing.

People without depression know what it's like to have bad days. Days when nothing is going right, or days when you just feel a little "blue". You can usually count on there being activities and people you engage with that will pull you out of it, though. On days you feel "blah", watching a specific movie, seeing a specific friend, or going to a specific place would fix it, although you may not be able to do those things. You take comfort in "Gah, I feel so down today. I need some Starbucks!" or "This week has been horrible. I need to hang out with my best friend for a recharge." (Or maybe start planning your next vacation, or dreaming of Disney.)

But what if your down moments come without warning? What if you woke up feeling amazing, and on the drive to your first stop you suddenly felt like the world was crashing down? What if the place you looked forward to visiting all week long (because you can always count on it to make you feel on top of the world) became dark and gloomy the moment you walked in? The environment hasn't changed of course; you have. Everyone else is going about their time as they always have, making polite conversation and laughing. Meanwhile you want desperately to join in, but you feel so lonely and scared, and have no idea why. So you sit in a corner and play on your phone. People see you over there, of course, but they see your posture, and your mood, and think "They look like they need space." and so they give it to you. Your heart cries out "Come talk to me. Please!" but your brain and body say "I just want to crawl in a hole and hide for a week."

That happened to me a couple of weeks ago. The place I was at at that moment was a place I look forward to all year long, and instead, I found myself sitting in a corner, screaming internally that here I am in one of my favorite places, and I'm wasting this precious time hiding in this dark place. I wanted so badly to go over and interact, because this was a moment I knew would be gone in just a few short hours, but my body was frozen in this place of despair. What made it even more difficult, is that this was a place I already felt like the world saw me as an outsider in. "What is that guy doing there? This is a place for moms, not dads."

My point in this blog post is that people with depression are violating a social norm every day. We are consciously aware that we are violating it, and also that there is seemingly nothing we can do about it. We know that when we go to this place, or do this activity we should be happy. In fact, we may have looked forward to it all day (or all week, or all year) and now we are here and just want to hide in a hole. We have no idea why, and we just want it to be fixed. We want to run over and join in and feel the same joy we have felt in the past, but we remain rooted to the spot we stand in, and feel the darkness encircle us like a cloak of night.

I want to come up with some sort of creative little way to write the conclusion of this post, because there is already a part of me that says "Why are you writing this? Nobody wants to hear it. You're bringing the mood down. Instead of saying "Fine", you are oversharing, and making people sad. That's not what social media is for. If you post this, people will hide you from their feed, because they want pictures of kittens and puppies, not to read about your problems."

And I'm right on that. If I post a photo of a puppy, it'll get many more likes than this post will. Because who doesn't love a puppy? It takes no effort to love the photo of a puppy. It takes one click. Reading a blog post takes time, and who has that? I remember a friend telling me once "I saw your blog post. I didn't read it, though. Too long." and I thought "It took me about 3 minutes to read it when I double-checked it. I bet you spent at least three minutes looking at memes after you scrolled past it."

What I want you to take away from this blog post is this: A lot of people on Facebook (and social media) are dealing with clinical depression. Most of them won't actively discuss it, for the reasons I've discussed here. What they will do, is post a picture of a puppy.

Remember that as you scroll.

Depression (Part 2)

I heard someone say once that depression is becoming trendy. This was someone who didn't understand depression, and saw that one of the teens they knew was regularly posting depression memes on social media. They said "Oh goodness, depression has become trendy among these kids today, just like being gay or bisexual**. They latch onto it and it becomes something they use to get attention with. They aren't really depressed, they just like having an identity, and depression becomes that identity. Some kids are good at this, some are good at this, and some have this going for them, and those that don't often have that become their identity. Depression is the new "emo" if you ask me." I wanted to say "Dear God, I hope you never have to personally empathize with one of these kids. I hope you never become the only person they have to turn to, because you will F--- them up so bad."

**Also, news flash, the LGBT youth of the world often know more about who they are than you do about who you are, so sit down and shut up if you have anything to add other than love and support to that. 

Anyhoo...back to depression.

Are there people who don't have depression who are claiming they do so they can get attention? Of course. What you should do in this case is let them. If they aren't dealing with depression, they will get better, and move on. But if they are...and you are the type to trivialize (or ridicule) a person's feelings who has found a way to express them, you are one sorry excuse for a human, and you can do me a huge favor and unfriend me and stop talking to me, forever. Thanks in advance.

I remember very vividly the moment my depression became real to me. Up until that moment, I had only seen it as me being in a funk. Granted, it had been a three-year-long funk, but I didn't see it as depression. Depression is the "D" word. Nobody wants the "D" word. Just like nobody wants the "C" word. (Cancer)

In 2014, something very unfortunate happened to me as I was standing in front of a church. My words were misunderstood, and I lost something that meant everything to me.

In early 2015, I went to Emmaus, and on my 4th day, I asked God to lead me where I needed to go.

In late 2015, something very unfortunate happened to me as I was standing in front of a church. My actions were misunderstood, and I lost something that meant everything to me.

I decided at that moment that I hated the church. Not God, not Jesus, not Christianity...the church. I wanted no part of them anymore.

(For the record, we are back in church now, and God is healing me in that area, slowly.)

Back to where I began: My depression became real to me was one day as I was sitting on a park bench, looking at a school playground. Recess was currently going on, and kids were all over the place. I had always wanted to be a teacher, but those dreams seemed empty and useless at that moment. How could I teach a classroom full of kids when I was barely able to deal with my own life?

I love children, and teenagers, more than anything in the world. I got to thinking about how prevalent school shootings had become, and how deeply that hurt my heart. I remembered stories of teachers huddling with their kids in classrooms, praying the shooter wouldn't come in theirs. I thought about how wonderful it would be to save a child. Even just one. I started planning this out in my head. If I became a teacher, and heaven forbid we had an armed assailant come into our school, and I could take a bullet for a child..... That would be wonderful. My life could mean something. Not because I'd died a hero, but because I'd saved a child. 

(This was my train of thought. No lie.)

I was preparing to die. In a way God would approve of. In a way that meant something. In a way that would leave a legacy rather than shame. INFP's especially latch onto things that inspire them, to the point that they will devote their entire heart to them, for years. I hade devoted a huge part of mine to children, and I could think of no better or more beautiful way to go than to lay down my life for a child. Was I hoping a shooting would happen at a school I taught at? Dear God no; but if it did, I know where I'd be: Shielding a child.

This was the moment I knew something had gone wrong. My brain was not ok. I was actively looking for ways I could die. Ways that were noble and kind. Overdosing on pills is what messed up celebrities do. Poison was for Romeo and Juliet. I wanted to die for a child. Which was basically just saying "I want to die."

The reason I am going into all this for my second post, and leaving it here for today, is to go back to what I was saying at the beginning of it. If you see someone, especially a young person posting depression memes or poetry, or talking about depression, for the love of God above, take an interest in their heart. Do not trivialize their pain, make light of their feelings, or (heaven forbid) compare it to that ridiculous movie Heathers. 

Depression is real.

And somewhere in your life there is a person (young or old) who is sitting on that park bench. They may have all the reason in the world (externally) to live and hope for the future, but in their hearts, and in the mind, they are looking for any reason to hang on one more day. 

...for someone to understand.

Be that someone. 

Be that reason.

Depression (Part 1)

I'm an INFP in everyday life. 

I'm an INFJ at work.

I'm an ENFJ when I am shooting portraits.

I'm an ENFP when I'm teaching.

That "NF" part of my MBTI makes me very intolerant of and uncomfortable around conflict. It also makes me detest bullies, and people who say things like "Aw, you gonna cry little snowflake? Well, time to grow up and be a man! Stop being pathetic and useless and quit expecting people to sympathize with your social justice war. Waaaah wittle baby!!"

Those are the kind of people who need to be phased out, in my opinion. So when we elected their pompous windbag of a leader to the highest office in the land back in 2016, I was absolutely disgusted and livid. I immediately made my opinion very plain and clear on social media, and my liberal ideas and progressive views made a lot of my ultra-conservative friends unfollow me. (On Facebook, you can unfollow someone and still be their friend, which is the equivalent of stopping saying hello to your neighbor every morning and asking how their day is, but not deleting their contact info in your phone. Because you never know, you might need to call them one day and ask a favor.)

Because a lot of people unfollowed me, the blog posts I wrote went unseen and unnoticed by a lot of people. People who regularly interacted with me, and said I should write more about this or that suddenly stopped reading. So I gradually just stopped writing. Writing about things I care about takes a lot of energy out of me, so I pick and choose what to blog about almost as carefully as I choose what I want to have for dinner on my birthday.

At my last therapy session, my therapist asked if I ever took the time to blog or write about my depression. Many people do, whether publicly or as a private online journal. He pointed out that since my degree path in college is to work with children who have experienced trauma, that I need to get used to speaking about my own journey openly. He's right, I know, and while I'm not embarrassed to talk about it, I feel like I need to start at the beginning. Just an abbreviated version of that beginning, anyway. I've made a lot of new friends since 2016, so it's possible some of you only know about me because of my portrait photography. My therapist said that artists are often deep sufferers of clinical depression. Not that art causes depression, but that depression inspires art. We feel so much "ugly" from the outside world on a day to day basis that we try to create beauty to balance it out.

I'm going to divide this up into 5 posts..maybe more. This one may be a little longer than the others because of the need to introduce myself and the ideas I'm going to cover. So here we go:

Hi, I'm Daniel. I have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD), clinical anxiety, panic, and PTSD. Most people who meet me for the first time would never believe any of those things, but it's because like most people who deal with these conditions, I am very good at hiding them. We've been doing it for years though, whether we were aware of our diagnosis or not.

Let me dispel a few myths and misunderstandings about each aspect of my diagnosis. Maybe you know someone with one of these issues, and this will better help you understand them.

Depression is an illness, not a mood. Yes, someone without depression can become depressed, but they usually find their way out of it when their mood improves. A child whose dog dies may become depressed for a few weeks, but the wound heals, and they get better. Depression on a clinical scale does not just automatically go away. It's not a mood, it's a chemical imbalance in our system. Medications can help, but nothing will actually fix it. (Not even all the love in the world.) Also, (and I know this is gonna piss off a few people) believing in prayer and church and God and Jesus doesn't automatically fix things. This is a medical condition, and if you want to say "God will heal your depression if you let him! Bask in the love of Jesus and you will feel that depression wash away!" then imagine saying that same thing to the stage 4 cancer patient in your church. If you wouldn't promise them God will heal them, don't tell us that if we focus on Jesus, our depression will go away. It doesn't mean we don't love Jesus, or trust Him, it's just that we have the same realistic expectations as the stage-4 cancer patient. (One day at a time.)

Anxiety Disorder is not being nervous or anxious. This is a part of our brain that isn't wired correctly. We can become terrified of our surroundings for no reason. We crave stability and routine, even if that routine is a job with a lot of social interaction. Never tell a person with anxiety "There's nothing to be nervous about. Just calm down." That's like telling someone with a paralyzing fear of heights that there's nothing to be afraid of, just climb the 12-foot ladder and don't think about how high up you are. See how silly that is? I promise you, we are as uncomfortable with our anxiety as you are frustrated by it. We are trying.

Panic disorder can strike at any time. One minute, we are fine. The next minute, we can be seized by a horrible feeling of dread, complete with heart racing and the need to run away. Does it mean we will? No, because we have learned to cope with this as best we can, even to the detriment of our own health. Also, running out of a room just because you feel you must just doesn't work in 90% of life situations, such as work, church, social gatherings, or elevators. (Look up Agoraphobia. I have it, and it's a real thing.) But again, remember, we are trying.

Most people have heard of PTSD. I have a little silicone bracelet that denotes mine that I wear every day. The band on my Fitbit is teal in color to even further call attention to it. Because I live near an army base, and I'm in my 40's, people who see my bracelet immediately interpret it as my being a veteran who has been on the front lines. I'm not, though. I've never been in any branch of military service. I'm also not a first responder like a police officer, firefighter, or EMT, nor have I been held at gunpoint, or any other thing many people associate with causing PTSD. Some of us with PTSD were hurt in other ways; ways we never want to talk about. Moments of physical abuse, intimate betrayal, or even sexual battery. And those only scratch the surface of what can cause PTSD. We are surviving them, though. One day at a time.

People with depression often cling to moments in our life where we remember being happy. For those of us who have loving families and strong support systems, that statement may feel like a punch to the face. I promise you, we know you love us. We know you care about us. We know you want our happiness and joy, perhaps even more than your own. We wish with all our hearts that the support and love you give would make it all better. It helps; my God it helps. Most of us don't have any idea where we would be if it weren't for your love and support. So few people have the emotional strength or mental energy (much less personal investment) to deal with us for longer than a day or so.

Still, we focus on these moments of happiness not because we see them as more important than the people we love and who love us, but because it is a reminder of a time when we didn't feel the depression. Those moments are often so rare that when we lose them, it feels like one more shred of who we could be in the joyful sense has been torn away. We may often mourn the loss of those things in/parts of our life. Maybe it was a job we loved, that we wish we could be back doing once more. Maybe it was a journey we went on (geographic or spiritual) that we feel we won't ever have again. Maybe it was a specific time in our lives that is gone now. Maybe it was a position we held, or a group we led. Maybe it was simply a moment we felt like we had found our purpose on this earth, and then it got snatched away from us. Regardless, we cling to those things. It may seem like an unhealthy act to do so, and perhaps in many ways it is, but it a reminder of when we felt (what we imagined was) normal.

It's all too easy for people without depression (or people who have advanced in the healing process quicker than others) to say "Well you need to just get over it. The job is gone. The journey is over. The position is no longer yours. The group you led has moved on. The purpose you felt you had in life obviously wasn't the right one, so it's time to find a new one."

I promise you three things in regard to that, and then I will close for today.

One, there isn't a day that goes by we don't hope with every bit of hope we have that we will find that new direction you want for us. We think about that every day.

Two, there isn't a day that goes by we don't hope with every bit of hope we have that we will regain those same ones we had before. We think about them every day.

Three, we are trying.

Every day.