We have a “running situational comedy/drama” here at home called the “Committee”. The Committee is a make believe group of people, (attitudes/feelings) who reside in my head. When I have unexplained mood swings, unexplained thoughts or words from my mouth, unexplained actions, partial sentences, verbal outbursts, etc, we always blame the “Committee”. It just sort of illustrates some of the complications within my own head. One point it was actually funny; my teenage daughter was at school in a mental health class, and they were talking about people who hear voices. My daughter had heard us talk about my committee and began to wonder if I was actually hearing different voices. LOL. She even came home and mustered up the courage to ask us, if I did in fact hear voices. LOL. So we had to give her the detailed explanation of the committee. Anyway, the committee seems to rarely want good things for me, and usually they stay “quiet”, but now over the past two years of depression, they’ve become pretty vocal, and even a little happy it seems that part of my mind has checked out. They like to feed me denial, and other thoughts and feeling that help keep me sick; it isn’t that bad, you’ll feel better soon, you don’t need anybody’s help, it could be worse, nobody can help you, you’re very much all alone, nobody cares anyway, and on and on. The Committee has voted, and they have all agreed that its important I stay sick as long as possible. (as some added comic relief about the committee, my wife has gone so far as to actually give names to a few of them-Grumpy man is Walter. Troublemaker is Billy. Etc,etc)
And so it goes with depression, anxiety, panic. Depression keeps you mostly paralyzed with a huge lack of energy and motivation, sadness, loneliness, dark ugly thoughts, and random chaotic feelings. Anxiety and panic add false fears into the mix which further run you into the ground. You fear things that aren’t true, have no basis in reality, and have no prior reason to be afraid of whatever it is. Your mind creates it, then your mind and body believe it, mostly without question. More parallelization. If you’re lucky, determined, and able, you can learn and practice grounding techniques to help minimize these mental traumas. But you have to work at it. And its best to start when the attacks start because if you wait until your in full blown freak out mode, you pretty much just have to ride it out at that point, and that’s hard on the whole family.
So this was pretty much all of 2014 for us here at home. My wife and I were not fully aware of what we were dealing with, and as such, had no coping mechanisms in place, or even any real communication about any of it. This makes it all harder on everybody; the family takes all the mood swings and such personally, can’t understand any of it, and as the depression sufferer, you can’t think or talk clear enough to explain yourself. So tensions mount. The very best thing that helped me was when my wife and I finally learned what we were up against, and began working together, but that was still several weeks away at this point.
I mentioned earlier I was making all my doctor appointments, but like everything else I did manage to actually do, I was simply going through the motions. So the doctor visits were short and sweet, and it was hard for me to communicate my issues, and my doctor at the time, seemed more interested in getting me out of her office than actually helping me. So she just kept increasing my meds-meds that were not working anyway, so I was just getting worse. (I think I mentioned this already too-sorry if its a repeat).
A couple things of importance, and this can be applied to all medical issues; its up to you, and/or a very close family member to be your own medical advocate. Ask questions, get answers, if you don’t like the answers, ask again, press for the answers, keep fighting for your self. Doctors are smart and mostly know whats up, but they are only human, and some are not really all too interested in health care or healing. Having said that, if you don’t like you doctor, find another. If you don’t like that one, find another again. Keep going until you find one you’re comfortable with. Its not about getting answers you want to hear, its about answers that make sense, and provide healing without unnecessary suffering and waiting. Do your homework, be your advocate, get healthy faster. We could have probably shaved 6 to 8 months worth of suffering off of our back had we thought of this or had it suggested to us sooner. Its hard to think clear in the throws of depression and its suffering, so if you’re not paying attention, the suffering lasts much longer than it needs to. Depression doesn’t clear up in a week or two, but I spent one whole year in the worst of it and continually dropping lower because we just were not educated.
The at home support system is very important too. I hate to think where I might have ended up if my wife and daughter were not caring for me, and for our home. It’s a strange paradox being depressed, you struggle, really struggle to function, and you’re aware that you’re not doing anything or much. Everyday you make a few plans in your head of what you’d like to do, then you spend the whole day doing nothing but thinking about how you’re not doing you “plan”, and that just makes you fell shittier overall, because you start to feel unreliable and useless. This all makes the depression worse. And this cycle just repeats itself daily. I was very, very fortunate, because my wife and daughter carried me and my responsibility’s which allowed to to just try to work on surviving my ordeal. It was an ideal arrangement, but again, given the info we had on hand, it was the best we could do at the time…..
Coming soon, PT 8, in this “I don’t know how many parts” series.