Overcoming Depression

When your thinking is bubbling away just below the surface and hasn’t yet congealed into what ever it is destined to become… you can either wait in the hope that it will come together to make something complete and beautiful. Or, if you are a little impatient like me you can just lay all the pieces out and pick over them as they are.

As I read through this blog from the very beginning I am reminded of how so very much I have learned. As I reflect on recent days I am also mindful of how very little of that learning I have been using.

Reading over my posts, old and new, I am taken back into the world inside depression. It is an outwardly static world, where not much seems to be going on but for a few obvious signs of personal distress. Inside however, the wheels are turning at breakneck speed. It is as though the parts of the brain that you once used at school to solve problems in your maths class have turned their attention to your past memories and future hopes. Everything is being picked apart and analysed. Everything scrutinised so closely and relentlessly that the flaws become overbearing and the balance tips towards despair.

When I wrote Breadcrumbs all those months ago I had just started to make sense of that feeling that characterises depression; the feeling of turning on yourself. The act of attacking yourself. I was just beginning to understand fear a little better and comprehend why it was such a difficult opponent.

After that I got down to the heavy lifting of applying some of the cognitive behavioural techniques (CBT) that I had learnt in therapy. In Discipline, and Inside & Out, I recorded exactly what that looked like. It is heavy on the analysis which is an obvious reason for rejecting it. But anyone who is suffering with depression will tell you that the thoughts are already like a runaway rollercoaster… analysing them for myself just gave me a chance to apply the brakes and take back some control. To suggest, as some did, that CBT made me think and focus more on my thoughts to the detriment of my health was ridiculous. Rumination had already hijacked my stream of consciousness and diverted my energies into regurgitating and chewing over my flaws in a never ending cycle. Never ending that is until the part of my brain responsible for all this destructive work would tire and I would collapse into a sleep.

By the time I was writing Liquid Silver and subsequent posts I was beginning to recognise that depression was putting me on a path towards a life of genuine happiness. I know that sounds backwards, but depression had forced my hand. It had made me pull apart at myself until I really began to understand my frailties, bad habits and what really brought me joy. Before depression, I had no idea how to set my life on a course towards happiness… I just thought I knew.

Following a path towards happiness and leaving behind one that is susceptible to depression was full of its own challenges. In Small Change I would reflect on how my old bad habits would still find ways to the surface, even though we had begun radically changing our life. Things would improve and slip backwards. I still had demons to confront. Bad habits were still about because I hadn’t made the necessary changes from within. Sure, I had rearranged life on the outside a great deal. But whatever happened on the outside was still filtered to the inside through the same old cracked lens. In Untitled I was discovering that there was more work to be done and that I didn’t know how to do it alone. I had gone back to Judy for help and she did just that. By the time I was writing Forked Path I could see that addressing my own demons was almost impossible to do if I stayed in the flow of life as most of you lead it. I conceded that the flawed blue print had been put down inside me already… it was part of being human, and part of just being me. Alongside this, I had to deal with fears that had developed in the grip of depression. Despite the improvements, I was still operating with the conditioning of that fear, and that was preventing me from getting on with life in the way that most of us do. 

In The Truth, My Truth and Nothing But My Truth everything came together. This was a pivotal post for me and I’m sure when I wrote it I thought it was my blog’s swan song. All that learning about behavioural evolution, brain architecture, neuroscience, the influence of early childhood experiences and behavioural psychology was woven together to give a deep understanding of where my depression originated from and how to conquer it. I think at that point I felt I had closed my account with depression and had no plans to return. It isn’t that easy.

I think with the help of Les Floyd’s blog, I realised that I made the mistake of living as though I am well again. If you had a heart condition, to keep it in check you would expect to change your diet, may be exercise and medicate, avoid certain activities. I have the blueprint for depression in my construction, and in the same way I need to make lifestyle choices that keep me well. If I allow myself to dwell on the past of look pessimistically into the future I open the door to depression. I have to work on that. I have to work on that a lot.