As promised: A practical approach to "holding on to hope" when you have Depression
Let it be noted that I am not a doctor of psychiatric care, and if your symptoms are so bad you find yourself in a crisis, don't be an idiot- get some help immediately. There are things that can be done to help your brain chemistry immediately, and I like I talked about in my last post- momentum is everything. That being said, I've lived this for close to 10 years. I've been on all sides of this disease, seen all the potential symptoms and experienced all but one personally (the worst one, obviously).
No, little coffee drinking, hat wearing, google-eyed dog, it isn't.
A Google search for "How to cope when you have depression" yielded hundreds of thousands of sappy, emotional articles which all pretty much say the same thing: "If you're depressed, just try and hold on to hope, or the possibility of hope, or even the possibility that hope could someday exist again in your life." or "All is not lost, it's not as bad as it seems" etc etc.
This is idiotic.
Now before you start YouTube-style rage commenting, pay attention.
Hope is a feeling- a positive, joy-related one- and even in the best brain situations... good feelings can be fleeting. Depression is a condition where the chemicals that let you feel joy-related feeling are in low quantities, or nearly non-existent. This means the chemicals that induce negativity reign supreme. Many of these articles say things like "it will get better" and "hang on," but offer no advice on the process by which someone who is chemically unable to feel hope should take to survive/change their symptoms.
Shut up. You don't even have thumbs, cat!
To those of you reading who are fortunate enough to never have felt the effects of Depression- it's like when someone tells you to stop crying. You can suppress the tears, but the feeling takes time to go away (aka, your brain takes time to re-balance your chemistry). Telling someone whose brain is not releasing enough chemicals to induce hope, joy, or even motivation to be hopeful, have joy, or get to work is an exercise in futility.
So how can you maintain hope when your brain doesn't have any to offer?
Simple: start doing things that force your brain to offer some up (and start re-balancing your chemicals).
A lot of people with depression run around wildly searching for ways to make themselves feel better. Some turn to addictive behaviors- like drugs, sex, or violence. Others seek some pseudo-scientific therapeutic emotional cleansing- like circling up to talk about feelings with strangers. Not to say that these kinds of things don't help to bring balance to many people, but with regards to my depression I found these activities to be mostly emotionally taxing and largely irritating. Others turn to emotional dumps- running from friend to friend for lengthy, tear-filled conversations that the friend is unlikely to understand or appreciate.
In truth, I've tried all these things (well, not the drugs, sex or violence parts), and for me- they did nothing to solve the long-term issue. I wanted a step by step process to get better, not the promise of healing followed by an hour of endlessly searching for an emotional reason for my physical problem.
It's very frustrating. Everyone wants to point to an event in your life that caused your depression, as if knowing the cause fixes the current issue. That's like going to a cancer ward, holding up a pack of Marlboro's and saying "YOU GUYS! GOOD NEWS! WE KNOW WHAT CAUSED YOUR CANCER, YOU CAN ALL GO HOME!" Gee, thanks.
So, enough ranting- what can you do to start re-balancing your brain chemistry and work your way towards recovery long-term? There are 4 rules for long-term success, when combined with the short-term strategies I detailed in my last post:
1: From this time forward, you will not feel guilty for anything negative caused by your depression. This will take some practice, and you should try and compartmentalize things caused by the disease and things you should feel guilty for, like if you punch someone, pretend to have symptoms on a good day, or steal things. You will not feel guilty for needing to take time to recharge, slipping down a depression symptom hole, missing a deadline, being grumpy, not being there for someone else when they needed you, anything. You are sick. There are consequences. If they are truly caused by your disease, they are not your fault. Period. Placate publicly if you must (you probably will have to), but internally you will feel no guilt for it. You don't have room in your brain for more negativity.
2: You now live in the present. You don't worry about the past, and you don't worry about the future. This will also take practice. Since you are never sure when you won't have enough of the right chemicals in your brain to have a normal day, you need to start focusing on the now. I spend a lot of my time internally asking- "how am I feeling now?" This will help you better self diagnose and act before things get bad, rather than trying to pick up the pieces later.
3: Accept your current mental state and work with what you have. Don't fight it by yelling inside your own head. Feeling miserable? Do things that make you feel less miserable. Feeling angry? Channel it into something positive. Stop trying to make instant brain chemistry changes by sitting and arguing in your own mind. Whatever you can do to improve, DO. Whatever you can't do, don't worry about. I remember a job I took cleaning a building at 5AM. One of my symptoms was insomnia. I would go to work many times feeling very negative after not sleeping at all the previous night. I learned to channel the negativity into motivation through sarcasm. OH OF COURSE SOMEONE PUT A HANDPRINT ON THE WINDOW I JUST CLEANED. It wasn't always pretty, but it kept me at a job for as long as I needed it to.
4. All advice about your depression is subject to your own analysis. This one is important. You know what's going on in your head. Your friends, your family, your teacher, the homeless guy who tells you to "cheer up"- all have your best interest in mind, but it isn't in YOUR mind. You make the decisions about what advice to take, and what advice to ignore. *note: this does not apply to the advice given to you by your MD. #note 2: if you're wondering about the homeless guy- I gave him a dollar, told him "No" and kept walking.
Making these rules a part of your life will help your brain to re-balance. It also helps you survive the storm of symptoms and gives you a better chance to not slip into symptom vacuums. It does take practice. Keep at it.
In my next post, I think I will talk about how folks without depression can help a person they know who has it. It's not as tricky as it might seem.
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