In this missive I will explore my personal experience with mental illness.
Disclaimer: All experiences, views, and descriptions apply only to my specific individual journey. No two people experience mental illness in identical ways. Even if two people who are alike in every conceivable way develop the same mental illness, their experiences are likely to differ, sometimes significantly.
I suffer from depression. Looking back, I feel that I have done so since eight or nine years of age, although I was not diagnosed till I was about thirty.
I am just going to throw out a list of descriptive words and phrases concerning my experience of depression as they come to mind, rather than make an attempt at a couple of nicely written paragraphs.
Feeling lost
Seeing no way forward/out
Believing myself to be worthless
No motivation
Lethargy
Apathy
Feeling generally unworthy
Believing myself to be useless
Believing myself to be stupid
Who could possibly love such a useless person?
Experiencing little or no joy
Faded colours, sounds, and tastes
Not fit to live
Feeling like a burden to everyone
Possessing no ambition
Lack of confidence
Low self esteem
Addictive personality
All of this tends to be wrapped up and experienced as an all encompassing, crushing and suffocating darkness. Depressive episodes may include thoughts, sensations, and experiences from part or all of the above list, and may vary from mild to mind crushing.
Stephen Fry once said of the depressive phase in his Bi-Polar cycle, 'there is a silent, yet clearly apprehended voice in your mind, telling you over and over that you are a useless c**t'. For me this captured something very clearly in my own experience. So much so that I shed a tear when he articulated my experience so clearly. Imagine this voice starting up when you are a young child, and not letting up until adulthood, and even then continuing to return on a fairly regular basis.
Today it is thought that depression can have a genetic basis. My own battle with depression comes out of eleven years of bullying by my peers, and everything ranging from cold indifference to bullying on the part of many adults in my life.
By the time I was seventeen I was seriously considering making an ending. I saw no other way forward.
At this crucial decision point in my life I met an extraordinary girl who took me for who I was. The sun came out. I came to understand that I could love another, and even more significantly, that it was just possible that I could be loved in return. She is still by my side nearly thirty years later.
In addition to meeting someone my own age who entered my life in such an amazing way, I then met her parents. Adults who treated me with respect, and also took me as I was. Many years later I told my Mother In-Law of the impact they had, which kind of blew her mind a little. The one piece of sadness I have here is that my Father In-Law had passed away before I got around to speaking of these things.
The depression did not magically go away, but moving into my young adult years I had the emotional backing to work at learning to be myself, and learning to live life. The arrival of our children gave me further focus outside my own head. In a way, my ambition, my career, became being a good husband and father. My actual work has always been a means of aiding me in doing this.
There continued to be struggles, and after a bank robbery where I had a pistol pointed right at the tip of my nose by one robber, and another tried to take my head off with a metal bar, things came to a head. During a period where I began to suffer the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress, I went to see a psych. It was here that depression was diagnosed.
You would think that this would be the big 'ah-hah' moment where we now know what's wrong and treatment could start, right? Wrong. At this point in time, treatment was way beyond my financial means, so I continued to cope by myself, with the support of my family. Trying to seek treatment with the financial assistance of the bank who had employed me at the time of the robbery led to five years in court. At least now I had a name for what was wrong, and this in itself made some difference.
In addition to my wife and kids, I found release in music, reading, and Football (both playing and coaching). I also began to think through what I was feeling, and started a process by which I made the conscious decision to get out and do what needed to be done, regardless of where my mind was at. As I matured and got more practice at this, I found that I had a greater degree of confidence in making my way each day.
Today I have still not been treated. I have had other events and health problems which have triggered major depressive episodes. That voice is still there to greater or lesser degree depending on what triggers I find in my daily life. It has far less power to dictate how I respond. I still struggle from time to time to understand that I add value in this life, especially when I stuff up at home or make a mistake at work. Again, I seem to have developed enough life experience and maturity to work through this.
The big surprise is that events in the last six months have not triggered a major depressive episode. Sure, I am heart broken, tired, and stressed, but my response has been to work to support my kids and family rather than sinking into the darkness.
The struggle goes on, but with love and support at my back, it is a war that I can fight.
These days there are a lot more resources available which give sufferers of mental illness an avenue to at least talk, even if acute care facilities are somewhat lacking. I intend to devote my next post to listing some of these.
