How I Fought Depression: From Denial to Treatment
"Alice, be sure to write about it! This is a mystery of domestic violence violence: few people dare to talk about it out loud, "a familiar editor advised me when I honestly answered why radar disappeared from the radar for six months and what happened to me all this time. I know that my confession will surprise me many may decide that I am exaggerating. But the fact remains: for less than a year I was sick with depression with a roller coaster of sudden enlightenments and new stages of despair. I write this text from the first person and don’t hide the name because the Russian Internet is full of echennymi depression discussions about the characters in the third person. "It happens to someone, but not with me." This creates a false picture anonymous diseases that afflict if only weaklings and losers, faceless crowd without names, surnames and professions.
I did not realize that I was sick, until one November morning I dialed the number of the psychological helpline for fear that I would do something with myself while my husband and dog were sleeping in the next room. After several months of sleep and memory disorders, I mentally inspected the house and literally
I was looking for a place to hang myself. The main signs of depression - inattention, irritability, constant fatigue, discontent with oneself and others - were not perceived separately, and within a few months became a part of my personality. It was simply impossible to continue living in this state, as well as to believe that this state could disappear somewhere.
In any uncomfortable conversation, you should always start first, from somewhere far away. As a teenager, I, like many children, tested the limits of my own endurance. My body was athletic and strong and therefore produced incredible results. For example, for two years I lived a double life, in the afternoon preparing for university entrance, and at night reading Gary and Eliade. After three days without a sleep in a row, I could have passed the exam and performed in public. To quickly make a difficult and unusual task, it was enough for me to drink a cup of coffee, and I learned the spoken foreign language by ear for 4 months.
Many young people live with a moving psyche, finally getting used to their condition: I had typical cyclothymia, as doctors say - a problem that affects from 1 to 5 percent of people, while the majority still do not receive any professional help during their lives. Strong periods of activity followed long periods of decline or lazy calm: one often occurred in sunny weather, the other - in cloudy weather. Gradually the periods became stronger and shorter, after one dramatic event in my life there were flashes of anger and long periods of unreasonably bad mood, sociability alternated with isolation, and for a person who lives without personal space (first with parents and then with her husband), this over the years has become a huge problem.
The causes of depression or factors of prolonged illness are often problems in your personal life and at work, illness and death of loved ones, life in an uncomfortable environment or lack of fulfillment, alcohol and drug abuse. But there are also a dozen additional factors that, superimposed on the type of personality, can trigger the mechanism of depression without any external triggers. Low self-esteem, long-overdue contradictions with relatives, hormonal disruptions, daily regimen - with predispositions to drastic mood changes, any of these factors can become a powerful anchor for depression.
It turned out that in my own case nothing happened to make my life a hell. At the time of my strongest nervous breakdown last summer, I was married to a loved one, lived in the center of my beloved city, surrounded by my favorite friends
and an understanding family. I had a pleasant freelance job and a lot of acquaintances. I loved everything: to read, watch movies, go to museums, study, communicate. And at some point I did not sleep for a few days, did not eat, and I understood that I hate all this from the bottom of my heart. I live wrong, pretend to be someone else, occupy someone else's place. And no one will be worse if I disappear. A little hallucination, a little bit of the novel “Nausea” and the movie “Interrupted Life” - at first, the depression pretended to be another existential crisis and a stage that just needed to be passed.
The nervous breakdown lasted only a few days, when I literally walked along the wall, was silent or answered questions unambiguously, missed calls and cried several times a day. My birthday was coming up with annual final questions about what I achieved, what happened, why I am where I am now, whether I live as it should be and how they expect it from me. These questions, if you read the psychological forums, suffer many adults right before the holiday. All missed opportunities stand in a row, as exhibits in the museum, so that they are more convenient to consider. My answers did not comfort me. I know that many are looking for joy in a fun rage, adventures, at the bottom of a bottle or at the end of a shoal, but all these methods have never worked for me. Such a familiar picture of the world, where I live in peace with myself, crumbled - and I began to hate myself: for laziness and weakness, for narrow outlook and features of appearance, for each awkwardly inserted word and missed call, for any mistake made.
Although my birthday condition worsened and I even had to cancel a party for friends, I still didn’t realize my illness, thinking that it was just a black stripe that lasted too long. I was too accustomed to cyclotime and considered it not a disease, but an integral part of myself. Kurt Cobain was afraid that when he cured his stomach, all the songs would fall out of him and the poems would disappear and he would remain just an ordinary American zadrot, which was of no interest to anyone. I also thought something similar: if you take away my mood swings, lush summer euphoria and hibernation in winter, gloomy days when you don’t want to see anyone, and moments of despair when you want to crush the reflection in the mirror, it’s not quite me. Who then will wag ass at the dance, compose poems for any reason and cook fiery spicy curry at two in the morning? The same girl does the same.
At first, I shared a lot of experiences with my husband - a man who understands me the best and, perhaps, to those who are going through similar states. He and all the adequate friends confirmed my feelings: to doubt is right, to be afraid to make a mistake is normal, to do it in spite of everything — be sure to be open and accepting is the greatest luxury. Everything I shared with them, I heard in response. We are scared, we doubt, we do not understand what we are doing, but we cannot but do it, we have a huge responsibility for parents and children, we must try and force ourselves if you are on the right path.
In depression forums, most women are really, but there are also men. It is even more surprising to see men in the forums of women's sites, where they try to figure out what to do with their ever-crying wives, how to help them, what they did wrong.
Most say exactly what I felt - list the symptoms of banal, but from this no less acute suffering: it is impossible to get up in the morning from the bed, food through force, intermittent and restless sleep, constantly feeling out of place, insecurity in everyone in a word, light visual and auditory hallucinations, guilt, work poorly, shy away from every little thing - be it a bird flying by or a man talking on the street.
Many on the forums complain of many years of depression: work through strength, life for the family to the detriment of themselves, unloved activities, life on credit, domestic poverty, lack of friends. They are echoed in the comments by hundreds of sympathizers and share homemade dosages of sedatives and sites where any tablets can be bought without a prescription. Sometimes people come in the comments with ready-made diagnoses or verdicts: “You lit up there in big cities. Flood a stove in the village - and your depression will remove like a hand,” “I went to a neurologist — she prescribed me a new passport. She said, you don’t live for yourself and for a husband and children. If you live for others, it becomes immediately better. Everything is from egoism. "
“Selfishness” is probably one of the most common words when talking about depression. How else to call a person who constantly, over the course of several years, says that he feels bad? Attracts attention to yourself? Shouting "Wolf!" where nothing happens? The accusatory speeches were a familiar chorus of “I am guilty myself” in different ways: “no one forced you to give birth” - to postpartum depression, “I chose it myself, now to clear it up” - to an unsuccessful marriage, “where your eyes looked” - to a problem child turn on your head and look around to how many really unfortunate people are around "- about any complaint that is not related to a specific disaster.
Starving children in Africa, slaves in Chinese factories, victims of wars and sweeps are regularly mentioned as arguments - and as long as they exist, it means that everything is not so bad today. Real and potential suicides are condemned with the agility of early Christianity: "You do not have enough moral strength to deal with yourself, you do not have to be a rag!" Suicidal thoughts for many are in the space of sin, not disease, and even after the death of everyone's beloved Robin Williams sounded too much poison against a talented person who seemed to have everything.
Depression, especially in public people, is most often invisible until it is too late, and confessions of people suffering from it are almost always signed with fake names or published anonymously. There are not so many forbidden words, and "depression" is one of them. We can’t say that we are suffering - as if others will abandon their happy families and loved ones from this and begin to suffer. "Depression - from free time. Borrow yourself for 16 hours - and your legs will fall off, no longer up to depression." You can sigh as much as you want over a glass of wine with your buddies, but it is the “depression” spoken out loud that almost always becomes a stop word in any small talk. I said this word several times to almost outsiders, they began to clap eyes and just did not know what to say to me.
Only my husband knew about my condition. I was ashamed and strange to talk about myself in this capacity to anyone - no one saw me crying “just like that” for all 28 years of my life. However, several times in tears without reason, my relatives found me
friends and here already had to say everything honestly. It is disgusting to admit that you feel worthless and superfluous, but you had to somehow argue for the sudden departures from the guests, disappearances without farewell, unanswered messages. Then I paused with a couple of work assignments, which never happened to me. Then I didn’t leave the room for several days hoping to sleep anyway. It was the fourth month of my insomnia, and I finally realized that there was another such week — and I would set up my own fight club. Torture by lack of sleep is not in vain considered one of the strongest.
At 8:30 one such morning I wrote to a psychologist friend and asked for urgent psychiatric contact. On the psychological help hotline, a cold voice very soberly, balancedly and unemotionally tried to persuade me to schedule an appointment with two doctors: a neuropathologist and a psychiatrist. It is impossible to believe in it, but I was afraid to leave the house and talk to people. I was thrown into a sweat as soon as I went out into the street, I was choking in transport and hiding my eyes from passersby. The road to the pharmacy was a test, the husband could not make me take a walk with the dog for a week, although this is usually my favorite activity. In the Municipal Psychoneurological Dispensary, I was scheduled for a visit after 10 days. At that moment I could not even make plans for tomorrow and had to refuse from a planned visit to a state doctor. I began to look for doctors on my own through acquaintances.
It must be said that suicidal thoughts are an urgent red button and a signal that a psychiatrist should be treated directly tomorrow, without expecting that “it will pass by itself”. The choice of a doctor is a separate trick, and it is worth telling about it in more detail. Unfortunately, the state of psychiatry and psychological assistance in Russia is deplorable and it is terrible to contact a specialist - it seems that you will be forced into the hospital and pressed to the bed for all your thoughts. Therefore, confused patients most often seek the advice of psychologists and psychoanalysts who do not have medical education, and therefore do not have the qualifications and the right to treat suicidal patients. Their advice and training can be very useful in a normal situation for personal growth, overcoming crisis situations, but not in the case when you want to kill yourself and you are thinking about a specific way. A psychiatrist is a person with a long-term medical education who, in addition to a medical institute, can have additional education and internship experience, can work with medicines, and participates in research and experiments.
The first psychiatrist took me far from home, and it was a separate torture to get to him. Traveling to the Municipal Neuropsychiatric Dispensary on the outskirts of the city is a test for oneself. How I can not cope on my own? How deep I fell
in your illness? On the benches around there were a lot of frightened and sad young girls, several pairs of parents who brought their children under the arms. I calmed down a bit, that while I can move myself, without any help. The first psychiatrist treated me with hypnotherapy: I decided that I was too strong to resort to medication, and I could do everything through my own will and through work with the subconscious mind. After 6 sessions, the dream did not return, and the deterioration was catastrophic: over the last week I lost 5 kilograms, drank almost only water, could not read and remember a single long phrase.
On the birthday party of a friend on the eve of the New Year, I let it go, drank a record amount of alcohol, danced all my legs and flew away for the holidays. A plane ticket rescued me in the most difficult situations. Rescued and now. Without any pills in the sun among the palms, I instantly felt better, started eating normally and slept like a marmot. But three days before returning to Moscow, it again became terribly difficult for me to sleep and breathe. I could not think about anything, except that all the upcoming affairs would fail, I would disgrace myself, I would not succeed and my friends and family would communicate with me simply out of habit. In mid-January, I caught up with the next phase of dysphoria.
With noticeable deterioration, I changed the doctor and decided to try the treatment again - without pills and hypnotherapy. Attentive, intelligent and very indifferent, my doctor was not much older than me and suffered from cerebral palsy. For the first few minutes, I tried to hide the surprise with which I watched his walk. Unlike the first doctor, he asked a lot of personal questions, remembered well what I was saying, and tried his best to help me cling to all the good things that were in me and around me. In the meantime, he told me how he had been learning to walk for two years without any hope that in principle he would go - day after day he methodically tried to get on his feet, although the doctors predicted that he would be chained to the chair. Now he is swinging in the gym and walking on his own. I felt ashamed for my two whole legs and for the fits of blues and rage near this man. "That's why I tell you my story. Even there was a way out of my situation. From yours, it's much easier."
All psychotherapists warn that the healing process is painful and long work. At this stage, I literally heard the gears spinning in my head, how hard any unusual thought or atypical action is given to me. We did exercises to acquire good habits, I told him about the long-standing conflict with my own inner voice, that I was afraid of old age and the illnesses of my loved ones. I had to teach myself not to return home the same way as usual, to read unusual books, to do non-standard actions, to overcome their own shyness ten times a day.
I eat longer, the more I realized that it was time to speak honestly about what was happening. It was painful for me to confess my illness to my parents. But when I shared my anxiety, my mother talked about how antidepressants took a long course.
at the age of three, when she burned out at her work. I was 11 or 12, my mother never spoke about it. I vaguely recalled seeing my mother lying in one place all day with a wandering gaze full of tears. How she woke up in the middle of the night and came to visit me, how she exploded and wept out of the blue, but I was angry, called me and did not understand what was wrong with her. Мы действительно сильно похожи, но как страшно услышать собственные сожаления и опасения в устах своей мамы, которой 53. Как неприятно понимать, что наследуешь чужие страхи и проблемы. Оказывается, склонность к депрессиям часто наследуется нами у родителей, даже если мы сами этого не осознаём, так же как и в жизни мы часто повторяем жизненный сценарий родителей, не отдавая себе в этом отчета.
Когда я начала открыто говорить о своей болезни c окружающими, привычный круг беззаботных знакомых открылся с совершенно другой стороны. I remember how one of the funniest parties in my home ended up with my friends starting to discuss loneliness and antidepressants: I found out about some of the sweetest and most active friends that they had been sitting on prescription pills for years. They talked about it so casually and so cool as about household precautions: two in the morning and one at night so as not to smear something in this spirit. I was seen crying or grim more often than usual, but I also saw old friends by others — anxious, anxious, afraid to live life halfway. More recently, I stumbled upon an article that most modern children, instead of ghosts, are afraid of failure — it was as if all these children surrounded me in the flesh of old friends. Many vied with each other about fatigue from unloved work, lack of confidence in their abilities, in a partner, in the future. The crisis was in the juice, and even the most peaceful began to worry, thinking what their salaries and plans for the year were turning into, how to live further and how to change their lives for the better.
When my insomnia passed over half a year, another nervous night, I asked a friend who had once been depressed for the contacts of another doctor. For a start, I needed a good sleeping pill to just sleep in the six months of my dangerous life. My third psychiatrist met me in a public place when I was at the bottom again. I was tired of counting these times and quietly arrived at the meeting at 9 am, not having slept at night. Hypnotherapy and a five-hour conversation ended in a terrible vision and a very unpleasant discovery: that despite the fact that I seemed to allow myself to be myself, all my life I can’t really love myself. Accept the shortcomings and start working on the pros, invest all your strength in your beloved and not be afraid of failure. Most people have these phobias, but if they prevent you from waking up and getting out of bed, in any case you cannot do without a specialist.
After the first visit, I experienced a tremendous surge of strength, which I had never felt at all in my life. Well, that is, never at all. There are vulgar metaphors about grown wings, but I would rather say that my power has physically and morally tripled. I was aware of the syndrome of the first visit to a psychotherapist, but I could not even imagine such relief. The six-month lump in my chest disappeared, I began to sleep normally and stopped worrying, in five days I did things that I could not do for two months. But another acute moment of dangerous insecurity came about, connected with work. Insomnia and appetite disorders again appeared in my life, and for the first time I decided on pills. These were the most simple and well-known antidepressants under the supervision of a psychiatrist with 30 years of experience, who work in the rehabilitation of suicides and in packs in one shift pulls people from the next world.
For several days we worked carefully on the daily routine to remove chaos from life. One failed case could confuse me and spoil my mood for several days. It turned out that fear had large eyes, and I did all the difficult and even intolerable things in a short time. Clenching my teeth and tears in my eyes, I suddenly realized how little I knew about things and the people around me, how I exaggerated my significance. After I once again got drunk to overcome my awkwardness, the psyche ricocheted in the most terrible way - once again losing my voice and the desire to live for a couple of days, I vowed never to drink, to make it easier to start a conversation or feel out of place. So I gave up regular alcohol, a well-known depressant, which I, like many, drank with or without, to remove barriers to communication.
With my doctor, we especially discussed procrastination and domestic laziness. When do you need to be lazy? And when laziness is fear? And what if one is present and the other? In my case, it turned out that being lazy and relaxing is the opposite. And there are much more time in days than it seems at first glance. To be honest with my usual day, there is a lot of space for work and favorite activities, for books and walks, for socializing and loneliness, as well as the sudden things that I have been postponing all my life. For a hundred years I wanted to sing and dance and learn Spanish, but put it off with excuses, that I have a lot of work and I don’t have time to spend time with my husband and friends. On the advice of the doctor, I immediately signed up for all the classes that I had been postponing for a long time, and the schedule shifted, freeing up a lot of sudden time on something that relieves stress, trains the brain and strengthens the body. Gone silly series and procrastination in the network, there was a time for sports and meeting with friends. Putting aside simple and necessary things for myself, as it turned out, was undermining my well-being as much as regular cocktails and a sedentary lifestyle.
A few weeks ago, I finally recovered, although since the beginning of March I have been steadily on the mend and easily did what I could not do before. During this damned year, I wrote quite a lot of texts, held lectures and opened two exhibitions, went to interviews, met
with friends and even made some noisy parties. I met hundreds of new people, none of whom, most likely, didn’t know what was happening to me and what I should just say hello to them and give my name. During this time, my husband simply turned from a best friend into my bodyguard in the literal sense of the word, and those close friends whom I trusted trusted to take turns with me when I was on the edge, and became practically family members.
What was this condition? Why did it happen to me? And will I get into it again? My doctor says that you can push off from the bottom and now I have a lesson forever given me to distinguish seasonal blues from a real disease. “Now you will know what is really bad,” he finally told me and demanded to constantly monitor the sleep and food regime and not postpone the day after tomorrow what had to be done the day before yesterday. I was really lucky to get out of this pit with those who believed in me. And I realized how little, deceitfully, quietly we talk about this oppressive feeling of despair that haunts us when we live without love for ourselves, our surroundings and our cause.
A few years ago, I also thought that depression was “grief from the mind” and that it was enough to believe in good and be good so that this disease, like many others, avoided you. It was easy for me to imagine that we ourselves, with rare exceptions, are responsible for our illnesses. But depression cannot be cured only by good thoughts and a ticket to a warm country, a bottle of wine from Friday to Sunday, or occasional sex. Like any long and disgusting disease, it sits very deep and comes out in all its ugliness when you really decided to end the eternal anxiety once and for all. If the time has come to deal with it, it will not seem a bit, I’m just saying that. And no one guarantees that depression will not return again on another turn and in another situation. On the other hand, having won it once, you already know for sure that you can do it in principle. That this is not a part of your personality, without which you cannot survive, but an affectionate illness, from which it is necessary to get rid of with all your might and with outside help. And if there is a person next to me who says: “I know how you feel, I was sick of depression and it seems you are also sick. Let's show you to the doctor?” - it is worth listening. Perhaps he knows what he is talking about and extends his hand to you when you don’t even understand that you need it.
