Brief vent on depression and the peeps who don't get it.

I have no idea where this came from. I am non-clinically depressed and anxious at the moment. That is, I have reasons for both!

When you’re depressed every act of will requires an extra push, like a low impact excersie routine done in water because the water provides resistance. With depression everything requires more effort, only you’re not wading through water, your universe has taken on the viscosity of a gel toothpaste. Everything you do is pushed through that medium, taking orders of magnitude more effort than the same actions when you’re not in a depressed state. But how to explain this to the happily unaffected?

It is very hard for those who are unaffected to related to the experience of having a brain that is not under their control. But I’m nothing if not tenacious so here is my attempt to explain…

Almost every one has had a crush on another person, right? It seems that everything they do is perfect, you are besotted, and most importantly, you can’t seem to stop thinking about them. Everything you see or do seems to relate back to them somehow, they are the last thing on your mind before you go to sleep, they may provoke stalking behaviour (especially since it is so easy to do these days!), their presence may equate with dizzying happiness accompanied by bouts of invincibility, they may also cause crushing anxiety and the misery associated with unrequited love. During this experience, you probably could not stop thinking about them even if you wanted to, the thought of the person interferes with your work and play. If you are lucky, this interference is painlessly seamless, if you are unlucky, you are unable to concentrate at all. This person, whoever they are, seems to have hijacked your thoughts, taken some of your mental liberty away.

The same could be said for worries, ever lost sleep because you could not switch of your brain for worry? That is an example of your mind being out of your control, you want to sleep, but you can't for worry. Surely if you had control over your emotional state this would not be a problem?

The main message is: Normal folk do suffer from periods when their mind/brain does things that they cannot control. That is a no brainer really, but I claim that it is these experiences that may help them relate to people with mental illness. So, assuming you believe me that normal people can suffer periods where their mind seems to be out of their control for some reason, try to imagine what that would be like without an object, that is without a crush on someone, without a worry to occupy your mind, without a reason to be sad.

Try to imagine a perpetual state of worry without an object of worry (this can be called anxiety).
Try to imagine a perpetual state of sadness without a reason to be sad (this is called depression).
Try to imagine extraordinary happiness, so happy that you believe nothing could ever hurt you, but without a reason to be happy (this is a symptom of bipolar disorder).
Try to imagine that switching off this worry, sadness or happiness is not an option, try to imagine that these feelings do not shift according to what is happening in your life. This is quite like the times when switching off for you is not an option.

What makes you different from the anxious or depressed person is that you have the comfort of a reason. We think you are so, so lucky. But please try to understand how unlucky we are. We have by accident, injury or design brains that will plunge us into the depths of despair, engage a dire apprehension that will gnaw at our guts or provoke swooping episodes of happiness where we become a danger to ourselves and others. Our brains do this for no reason at all and it can be terrifying.

Please also believe that we do not want to be like this, that we would not wish this state of being upon anyone. But we are tired of the labels of self-absorbed, or lazy, or paranoid, as though we were doing it on purpose. We are tired of the lack of understanding.

So next time you hear about or meet someone with a mental illness, when you read about suicides in the paper or are unfortunate enough to know someone who has attempted it. Try, try, try to remember the last time your mind was out of your control, and try to imagine what kind of hell it might be to be stuck there without a reason. Please.

The new age(d) me?

Those of you who are following my Twitter feed will know that I've been helping out in 13yo's high school play. Those that aren't following me know now!

On the second night we had a bit of an incident involving a middle aged woman, unhappy about the sound quality of the production, stalking up to the bio-box at interval and venting her anger on a fourteen year old boy. Classy eh? Said 14yo (lets call him little Johnny) and I were the only people in the room at the time.

It was a fairly odd thing to have happen but that wasn't the odd bit, the odd bit was my reaction. I think as little as two years ago I would have cowered over my script until it was over, offered the kid sugar and sympathy and wallowed in anger about it for weeks. What I did, however, was walk right up, stand between her and little Johnny and tell her that I was sorry, I knew she was upset, but I couldn't let her take out her anger on a child. I'm quite sure my heart was pounding much harder than either of theirs, I could feel my hands sweating and was worried that my knees were going to begin to shake because Ms Yell-a-lot was not looking like she wanted to stop her tirade. However, after a little bit of too-ing and fro-ing she finally believed me when I said her message would get to the right person and that she really wasn't allowed to be in this room, and she consented to leave. (Or maybe I really did start to shake and she took pity on me. Who knows?)

I've been wondering what on earth happened there? What galvanised me into action? am I just more grown up? are other grown ups simply not as scary any more? (though I was plenty scared!). Did I see my mother taking out her frustrations on her own teenage daughter? Or maybe what I was seeing was simply SO unjust I couldn't sit still - little Johnny wasn't entirely responsible for the sound quality after all.

Whatever it was, I like the new me. She kicks butt. :)

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