Depression



About one in six people suffer from clinical depression at some point in their lives, and most mental health disorders start before age 24.

Photograph by: Julijah, Fotolia.com

Depression

This is a subject that is very commonly known, but people either do not want to talk about it, do not want to believe it exist, or cannot believe that because the person “acts” in a certain way that he/she must not possibly be depressed and can live like everyone else. This is quite a bitter subject with me as I have my good days and my bad days and just because someone looks like they doing well does not mean that they are.

This was something that I said to my own classmate’s way back when I was going to college to learn about social work. My own sister looked as if she was high functioning, but she definitely could not function in this world the same way that she used to. I was in one of my classes and the subject came up about working with people that suffer with mental illness. Some you can point out really well with their mental illnesses and others you cannot. I pointed out to the students that just because one looks high functioning does not mean that they are.

I have always had one of these faces that people like to come to and either talk to me because I looked like I was trustworthy or they would pick on me because I looked vulnerable. They were spot on with both counts. I am a middle child of a large family and I always listen to my siblings up until a few years ago. There is also an attribute about me that I have had from a small child that makes others feel that I am trustworthy and vulnerable. This part of me I just started telling just a few people and some of my sister’s have known for some time now, but for the most part I keep it quiet. This other characteristic of mine also keeps me feeling somewhat depressed, but I am learning to not feel that way with more awareness of my gift.

I was born with depression. It was not something that just happened along the way. What did happen along the way was life all of life’s mishaps that kept me from staying evenly balanced; being verbally and mentally abused all of my life, a bad childhood, a bad marriage, a bad divorce, many bad jobs with more verbal abuse from bosses until I just could not handle life anymore.

I worked very hard most of my life trying to stay “happy”. I stayed away from people that made me feel less than adequate and I have very good friends. I tried my very best to ignore what was happening at home and got involved at school with plays and stayed over friends houses to “get away”. That no longer worked after I grew up. Life stares at you right in the face when you grow up. I got married too young and I had children, which the children brought me out of the depression for many, many years.

Years later are when the problems start. I am divorced, thinking that I am doing well, but many things are in my path making it almost impossible for me to dig myself out of this hole I am in. I am going to college and having a remarkably great first five years of studying with a 3.8 grade point average. I move from a community college to U of M and I am still going strong and suddenly…my health just took a nose dive. I go to the doctor and she sends me to a neurologist and I find out I have sleep apnea, pseudo tumor ceribri, carpal tunnel, low thyroid and who knows what else? No wonder I am sleeping between every class, I cannot concentrate at all, have to study 3 times harder than before and my grade point average is still dropping. Argh…can someone please help me out of this dream! It cannot possibly be real.

I still managed to get myself through college with honors after all of that, working mighty hard to hold back on the depression. It was there, I was just keeping it at bay with keeping myself busy. Mind you that is never a good way of holding back feelings. It just keeps building up until one day you finally explode. I did not leave a minute to think except for my driving to school, work, taking my children to school, going to my internship and home. I was on the road a lot so it was far too much thinking I had to do. The radio did not even help…it just reminded me of something and I cried. Blah.

During all of that I was trying, (Trying) to care for my boys and their needs and was not always doing a great job of it. My first one graduated and he went on to college and still was at home from time to time. My second one graduated and decided to go to the same community college that I started at, but instead of driving the long distances that I did he would move into his father’s house so that left me with really only one son to care for and he was old enough to take care of himself. He had his own car and could do what he wanted when he wanted. I just wanted to know where and when so I would not worry. By the time my last one graduated I was getting myself ready to sell my house so I was packing and still going to college and working. My mother and father’s 50^th anniversary came up in the year before I was graduating and I was swamped with work, my internship and homework. My sisters wanted a party and I was not happy because that meant that I would be doing most of the work…you have to understand my dysfunctional family to know how this works.

So – here I am full plate of work (40 hours), internship (16 hours), school (3/4 time of school) (and you count part of that home time for homework), trying to pack up a full house and housing my sister that is now injured because she fell and has bolts sticking out of her wrist. I am now responsible for finding all of the addresses of all of the lost relatives, making an invitation and printing all of them out on my computer and printer. My sister that is staying with me is of no help because she is in pain and is mentally ill herself. My other sister that wants this done works 7 days a week and suffers with anxiety disorder. My other two sisters are almost useless, but can make some of the food when the time comes and my brother...hmm I cannot remember what we had him doing.

When the party comes around my sister that is living with me is suppose to be helping my other older sister with the cake, but she takes off and is nowhere to be found. I drop my portion of the food off at the hall and am in charge of picking up my mom and dad that have no idea of this happening. We get to the hall and all of the food is there, but all of my siblings are missing. The cake is not put together and I am in charge of everything??? Yiks! Not only was I in charge of everything, but my sister was having a panic attack and was not able to make it out of her house to get to the hall to finish the cake. I was on the phone with her talking her through the panic attack and still setting everything up for the party…argh!

Now you have a good picture of my crazy family, my bad life, my bad heath and I am about to graduate and move clear across the states to Seattle, Washington. Why? Because it is way away from my problems…yeah, that is what I thought too. I learned a lot being over there as far as being a social worker. I got to work in areas that I never would have worked here in Michigan, but many of my problems followed me.

When you have a family like mine they tend to not allow you any space. They do not follow you in the literal sense; they follow you in the verbal sense. They would constantly call and beg for me to come home or mentally abuse you by telling you that Seattle is not the place for me because… This went on for the five years that I was there and I just kept getting worse and worse with my depression. I did not get the support that I needed and I did not have any family out there that I could turn to in the time of crisis. The last year I was there I even had my sister that never talks to me calling me to come home and live with her. By that time I was really having problems keeping up with the bills. I was working 2 jobs and still could not keep up. I owned my own condo, but it was in foreclosure and I was in the process of buying it back.

The pipe burst under the sink in the bathroom making it the second time I had to try to get money out of my insurance company and this time it flooded not only the condo below me, but mine as well. I found that at 8:00 in the morning and I threw my hands up in the air and said I have had it. My nerves could not take it anymore. I went home and found a Community Mental Health system that would help me because I was a mess by then. I told my story and I could not stop crying, rocking or shaking the whole time. I needed medication. I was a wreck.

In the middle of all of that, I sustained several jobs where the bosses were very abusive and that did not help my predicament any. When I came home I was still problematic and had yet to find another job while I was so unstable. I got one, but was leery about that. Later down the line I felt that I was doing good enough to get a higher position, but that did not last long, because I could not take the pressure. My boss was a tyrant and again I am abused, but this time I was let go and it left me confused and shaken up to the point that I do not know what to do at all anymore. I have had two jobs now working with people that I am trying to do the right thing and they let me go because they want something different? I am more than just perplexed now; I am petrified to go back into the working field. So far I have been belittled, yelled at, embarrassed and what is next? I do not want to know what is next. That is the problem that is my trepidation.

Other people have the stamina to take that kind of thing and let it roll right off their backs. Everyone has different levels of tolerating things. Pain is another way of describing how one tolerates things. I have high levels of pain toleration, but when someone wants to verbally and mentally abuse me I cannot tolerate it at all. I break down and cry very easily. Men on the other hand can take things such as verbal abuse, but usually cannot take high levels of pain without needing some pain medication. Now this is not saying that this pertains to all men and all women. It is just and high majority of men have low pain toleration and high toleration to being verbally abused and women are usually the opposite. In my family there is my mother, father, four sisters and one brother and the weird thing is all of us have high tolerance for pain. I believe it is a trade off for having been abused at some time in our lives. Although, I think my father and brother still can take verbal abuse better than me and my two older sisters.

 Some things that I learned in social work was to learn the difference between when someone was personally attacking you and when someone was attacking you because they are hurt and needing to attack someone just to get back at anyone. This happened to me recently when I had to go before the courts and try to get Social Security. The judge was attacking me with just about anything he could and was not getting a reaction out of me like he wanted. I understood what he was doing and why he was doing it so it was not going to get me crying. Just because I do not react at that particular time does not mean that I am still capable of going out into the world and working a full time job. Anxiety is still anxiety no matter how you look at it.

It is still very difficult to get someone to understand depression or any kind of mental illness unless you have had it. I just happened to be one of those people that have depression but also understand other kinds of mental illnesses. I am in tuned to other people’s feelings and emotions. That is one of the reasons that I chose the field that I was in, but it got to me too much and I was having a hard time keeping my own feelings in check.

Depression and Suicide

One of the other things people cannot or will not understand is that the feelings of depression can go so deep that it can cause some of us to have feelings of suicide. It is usually not a thought that comes and goes; it is a thought that plagues you every single day and every single hour of your life. It eats away at you and you think constantly about how you are going to do it, what you are going to do it with, where you are going to do it, but the when just never pops up until the day when someone or something pushes you over the edge.

I was suicidal for 20 years and it was the worst feeling in the world to have weighing on your mind day after day. Starting at the age of 17 I had the urgent need to cut open my wrist and there was never a thought of anyone else that I would leave behind when I would do this. This need subsided some while I was having my children but only a bit. My children brought me back to reality every time I would have even one thought in that direction. They were my saviors at the time and I do not regret it one bit. Once they were out of my life and I moved way far away from them, it came back tenfold. My first year in Seattle I was 6 months trying to find a job, I was again having relationship trouble and I found myself swallowing pills, pills and more pills. I lay down and was ready to die, but God had a different plan for me. He made me throw up and I did not have any more pills to swallow to replace those I just threw up. It was just as well, my stomach would not keep them down anyways. I have a very sensitive stomach and it would never let me put anything into it that it did not like.

Two years later I was still having the thoughts and I had a miracle happen and they stopped instantly. The suicidal thoughts are gone, but not completely. When days get really, really tough I cannot help but think that I am broken and I want so badly for the pain to stop. While people stand at the top making decisions for you and telling you…you are not sick enough. NOT SICK ENOUGH? Why would I want to be sicker than I am? I cannot have major depression disorder and be smart because according to their profiling I am not mentally ill and can still function. Yes…I can still function inside the home, sometimes. I can go outside the home, maybe. There are still days that I have to fight to get out of bed. Fight to get out of bed, take a shower and show up to my appointments.

Writing these blogs are about the biggest things I have done in 2 years and they are holding this against me also. Writing sometimes is my only outlet. I have worked many years with people that suffer with mental illnesses and some of them are brilliant. I have seen some that could paint in water colors beautifully and play the piano wonderfully, but they could not function outside of a group home without being assisted.

Telling someone you have anxiety with depression is not something that they understand either. They usually work together, but not always. If I have something to do tomorrow I will always have anxiety about it no matter what. I will not be able to sleep well and will fall asleep just in time for the alarm to go off in a few hours. I go to my appointment and I am extremely tired when I get there. I get home and have to take a nap because of not getting enough sleep. I wake up in time that it is now night time and my whole sleeping time has turned from night to daytime. I try very hard to turn things around only to have another appointment and to have it happen all over again. This would happen to me when I was working. I was not functioning properly and therefore my production was terrible. I would get a bad report and this would go on until I would be let go. It is not the best environment for me. I cannot predict what will happen for me and when I am tired now days, I do not know what is going to happen. I have a hard time keeping my eyes open anymore.

Oh…and never do what I did and bury your depressed feelings by keeping yourself busy. I got myself on medications, but I never sought out professional help until after I came back from Seattle. I might have saved myself a lot of problems if I had gotten help before I had gone, and while I was in Seattle and then maybe I wouldn’t have been under so much stress. Then again who knows, I might have still had a breakdown, but still had a different ending. Your medication is on trial and error until you get the right one. I was on one medication when I went to Seattle, but it was reduced once I got there (something about Washington not allowing me to have the same high dosage that Michigan does). Depression does not only cause mental problems but is causes physical ailments also. Your body starts feeling like it has many problems that you cannot figure out.

           So this is my story of depression…I am hoping that some of you have come to a different understanding of the illness and what it may look like including suicide. Be very careful of people that are suicidal. I was suicidal for 20 years and never told anyone until it finally stopped. I never even told my family until recently even that I tried to commit the act. It is a deep and dark secret that can tear a family apart if lines are crossed. Do not think that you can handle it yourself. You need medication and a professional. If you do not feel comfortable with that professional you have the right to find another. Do not argue with the person that has the suicidal feelings. They are his/her feelings and they are real. Just because you do not understand them or do not believe in them does not mean that they do not exist. The more you argue, discuss, ignore, demean is more time that the suicidal person has to plan and commit the act. Just get him/her help and leave it up to the professionals.