Let's talk about depression...

I have to admit that until about a few months ago, I had no idea what depression really was.  As a matter of fact I would be one of those persons who used the word depression very lightly.  I was also one of those persons who thought that depression was something you could just snap out of if you just started to think more positively.

I have to admit I was so very wrong!  And now that I have learned more about depression, I feel the need to apologize to those who suffer from it.  So here it goes: I am sorry guys.  I didn't know how an ill brain worked until I started reading about it.  I have to admit that I did not start involving myself in learning about depression until after I found out that someone I love very much suffers from a mental illness that has cycles of depression.  I decided to learn because I wanted to understand them as much as I could.  I figured that understanding them would better equip me to help them. 

What did I find out once I started learning about depression?  I found out that every time I have said "I am depressed" I really wasn't.  I was sad and I can say that I have had many periods where I have been sad, but being sad is not the same as being depressed.  I can tell you that because the depressed brain does not really snap out of the thought process.  The depressed brain is constantly thinking about what the person did wrong and how they did it wrong.  The depressed brain has an extremely hard time finding the good even when there is nothing bad happening.  The depressed brain does not like any kind of interaction, not because it is trying to sort things out but more because it does not feel like it deserves it. 

With that said, I have not ever been depressed.  The times I have been sad and wanted to stay in bed all day without any contact at all was because I needed to sort through my own emotions and thoughts.  It was because I needed to recharge myself before going back out there and talking to people again.  Each time I have been sad and have taken time for myself I have come back with solutions to whatever issue was the one that made me sad.  Each time I have been sad I didn't get stuck in feeling like I always do something wrong.  Each of the times that I have taken a time out from people, each of the times I take a time out from people is because I need to sort through my own thoughts and feelings and not because my thoughts and feelings are taking over my entire life.  

That's the difference with depression.  A depressed brain is an ill brain that takes over an otherwise healthy person.  The depressed person does not just simply snap out of the depression; if they force themselves to do things, they do so while constantly thinking that whatever it is they are doing is not good enough.  The depressed person cannot just simply grab a self-help book, follow its guidance and suddenly see life differently.  I know that they will want to and that when they can't often times they feel more of a failure.  I cannot possibly imagine how that must feel to someone because to me is very easy to find the positive in any situation.  I know that if I am not finding it, then all I have to do is stop talking to people about it and sort through my brain on my own.  A depressed person can't really do that... Being alone trying to sort things out only makes depression worse, not better. 

So, why did I want to talk about this today?  This is simple really... Because of stigma.  There is so much stigma out there about mental illness and there are too many people suffering from it.  The stigma we have about mental illness and our lack of education on it is making people not seek help for it.  The stigma we have about mental illness is making people suffer in pain alone.  The stigma we have about it is making us treat those who have a mental illness without kindness and compassion.  

Now, I am not saying that a person with mental illness does not have some responsibility in seeking help and learning to manage their illness, what I am saying is that a person with mental illness has a harder time seeking help because we stigmatize their illness.  In this sense, we also have a responsibility to educate ourselves and to talk about mental illness in a different light. 

Why I say this?  Because the person I love has tried to seek help in the past and was confronted with that stigma and with very little support.  Once I found out that they were suffering from a mental illness and I started to learn more about it, a lot made more sense to me.  I have to say that I offered help and I offered support.  I offered to be there... My offer was not taken and in turn what I have seen is a decline in their mental health.  I know that I cannot force them to seek help.  I know that I cannot make them accept my support and I know that seeing the path they were taking (as much as it pained me to do so) I had to do what they were asking of me (even though I didn't want to) and walk away.  This didn't make me love them any less, but it made me think about how society views mental illness and how stigmatizing mental illness is not helping many people. 

In learning about mental illness, I found that those who had good support from family members and friends have been the ones who have successfully learned to manage their illness.  Those whose families didn't stigmatize mental illness and whose families were open to learning about it are the ones who have had more success than others who did not have the same support.  It seemed like even though it was hard for them to get up and seek help, once they did (because they had the support of others) they stuck it out and led as normal a life as they could.  

So maybe we all need to make a little change in our lives.  We should all talk about mental illness like we talk about any other illness, because that's all it is an illness.  We should talk about it openly and focus on educating ourselves and others about it.  We should learn to separate the illness from the person.  Mental illness is the only illness that is used to describe someone.  I don't know how many times I hear people say "she/he is just depressed" or "she/he is bipolar" or "she/he is anxious."  Imagine what would happen if we separated the illness from the person, what would happen if instead we said: "he/she has depression" or "he/she has anxiety."  How different does that sound?  How easier it is to then see that it is not that the person is that way but that the person has an illness that they are dealing with and need to learn to manage.  If we did that, the person would be looked at with more compassion and more support. 

I imagine that if my loved one would have had more support.  If more understanding about the illness would have been there, then my loved one would have an easier time dealing with it.  Then maybe they would have an easier time seeking help, accepting their illness, taking responsibility and learning how to manage it.  They would have an easier time accepting help and support when it is offered and would not be suffering in silence and alone.  Yes, I am fully aware that once they have been offered support and help that it is their responsibility to take it and no one can force them to... but I am also aware that an ill brain that has constantly seen the stigma of mental illness being used against them has a harder time accepting the illness and taking the necessary steps to seek help and support.

It is time we stopped looking at mental illness with fear and looking down at people who have it.  It is time we stopped stigmatizing it.  It is time we stopped making it controversial.  All we are doing by that is making things worse for everyone who suffers from it and making it worse for those who have a genetic predisposition to it.  There are great things that can happen when you are open about it and educated on it, therefore it is time we all learn about mental illness and became more educated about it. 

Communication and Relationships

I have been thinking about this picture lately... A while ago, when I first started college and I was just 17 years old I had to make a presentation for Speech class.  My presentation was about what made relationships work and last a long time.  Everyone was baffled when I said that it was not the amount of love that people had for each other but how well they worked on communicating with each other.  By this time I have seen relationships fail because of the lack of communication.  My biological father's first wife and him would always argue and throw things to each other, eventually they would physically fight and hurt each other.  During high school, I had had two different relationships.  The first one ended because he was jealous and instead of telling me how he felt he would just react.  I would try to talk about it without arguing but it was pointless.  I couldn't stand it, so I broke it off.  The second one ended up kissing someone else, talked to everyone about it except me... I remember not hearing from him for a few days until someone else told me what everyone was talking about.  I was more upset at the fact that he didn't come to talk to me first.  We used to talk for hours him and I  and in a way I expected to be told, not be kept in the dark.

Those were my high school relationship experiences, neither of them lasted too long.  I had tried it again with the second boyfriend, but it ended when there was an issue with mutual friends and instead of asking about my side of the story, I was told off.  On each instance, there was no effective communication.  It was either only one person talking or both not talking at all.  It didn't matter that I loved both of these guys, I truly did, because in the end love was not enough.  As I grew older and I kept seeing how my biological father behaved, this communication thing became of utmost importance to me.  You see, my biological father is an abuser (I think I gave that out earlier when I pointed out how he fought with his second wife); one of the things abusers do is that they will use words to hurt you, they will physically hurt you, and then they will gaslight you.  An abuser will hurt you one day and then come back the next day pretending nothing happened.  They will act completely different and not ever want to talk about what happened before.  Then later on IF you bring it up, they will either tell you that it never happened or they will blame you for it.  Back when I was younger and around this individual, I did not know that was it.  But still, I despised that he did that too many times and because of that, I made it a point that when I got into a relationship the person I was with would be someone with whom I could communicate effectively.  It could even be someone who didn't know how to communicate effectively but who was open to learning and growing with me in that regard. 

During the first serious relationship, we were great at communicating with each other at first and everything worked out great.  We would talk about what bothered each of us and we never really fought.  As the relationship progressed we started to not say to each other what was bothering us and so the communication stopped.  Instead of coming to each other to communicate what we needed from one another, he started to go to his parents and I would just keep it all to myself.  Until one day he was ready to leave and didn't tell me.  At that point we actually talked, but because he had spoken to his parents about what he didn't like about me, now his parents didn't think we should be together.  That put a strain in the relationship and after that it was just all downhill from there.  Once again, lack of effective communication ruined that one.  I loved him and we tried to work on it, but the communication factor was pretty much gone and that made things extremely difficult.  We ended up as good friends, who eventually drifted apart but I always left the door open if he ever needed someone to talk to.

Relationships, any kind of relationships, whether they are romantic relationships or friendships, require people to communicate.  There is no relationship, it does not matter how much love there is for one another, that will work without two people knowing how to effectively communicate with each other.  Today I was wondering why it is that we stop communicating effectively with another person.  I know in my experience it has been because I was hurt and couldn't find the right words to say to the other person in a way that I would not hurt them in return.  Sometimes it was fear of how they would react to what I said and that was just me remembering the relationship I had with my biological father, who would always lash out and get defensive when you told him you felt something he did was not right.  That ended up being the same with the guy I ended up marrying, he is also an abuser and while I had learned to communicate more effectively even without really having good role models, I took a few steps backwards with that marriage.  Of course, I knew that would end because there was a lot that was hidden and a lot that was never said. 

As far as other people go, I think it's similar reasons... Some of them feel like they would be ashamed of saying something they feel, or telling someone about an experience that might explain their reaction because someone else reacted back at them and so now they want to avoid it.  It is trying to avoid confrontation, avoiding a fight, avoiding doing things that might make things worse.  And so instead of communicating, they withdraw, they stay quiet and then all those feelings just get bottled up and shaken around like a soda bottle... until eventually someone opens the bottle up and everything comes out bursting...

So how is it that one can change this?  By being aware... In your relationships, any of the ones you have, you have to be aware of how you feel and you have to make time to speak about it.  Both people need to be receptive to the other, and not take things being said as an attack because as soon as you do that, you will stop being receptive and start being defensive.  Both have to be open to growing and set fear aside, and talk from a place of love.  It seems something that is very easy to do, but I have found many times it is not.  There can be an extreme amount of love between two people and instead of using that love as a driver to continue what made the love grow in the first place, they use that love as the only basis to the relationship and they forget that is not what made it work to begin with.  I have lost many relationships in the past, and they have all been lost because of that lack of communication, I know some of them could have been saved if communication was opened but I also found myself in a place where there was only one person willing to do so... And so I realized it would not work.  Some of them have hurt losing more than others but, in the end I think I have learned from each of them and I have taken comfort in that.  They have helped me grow in many different ways and understand myself a little better, and for that all I can do is say thanks.

Effective communication is to a relationship like a good balance between water and sunlight are to a plant.  They are needed in order fora plant to grow, just like it is needed in order for a relationship to flourish.