Depression Is A Liar. Don’t Listen To It.
I don’t know the work of Kate Spade or Anthony Bourdain well. Designer handbags aren’t really my thing. I do like food and travel, but beyond the occasional interview with Bourdain, I have never watched one of his shows. Yet, I do know a bit about depression.
Depression is a Liar
In the aftermath of the news of Bourdain, a friend posted that depression is a liar. It tells you no one will care. That the world doesn’t give a toss about you or your problems. And she’s right. Depression is a liar. It keeps us from seeking help. Depression tells us we are unworthy, that everything would be better if we just quit trying. And while society’s view is slowly changing, the stigma surrounding mental illnesses prevails. Depression is seen as a weakness. Something to be hidden and kept quiet about.
I don’t know the circumstances surrounding Spade or Bourdain’s battles. I can’t say how the slow burn of depression finally made them want to extinguish their light. I can only speak to my own battle.
Coming to Terms with My Own Mental Health
In the beginning, I didn’t know I had depression. That realization wouldn’t come until years later. I knew I was sad, but I thought the emotion stemmed from living in another country, far from family and friends, from being an isolated stay-at-home mom with a special needs child with no support network. It never occurred to me that I suffered from postpartum depression exacerbated by an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. I had never had depression before, and I didn’t recognize the signs.
To me, depression was something that kept you from getting out of bed in the morning. It made you unable to leave the house or get dressed. Depression was crushing and lifelong. Depression was something that didn’t just show up. It was something that people struggled with all their lives. I was just sad, and rightfully so. Who wouldn’t be sad spending most of the day alone with a baby that cried and cried and cried with no family or friends for 1,000 miles? You’d have to be a robot to not be sad.
My misunderstanding of depression is pretty common for those who haven’t been directly or indirectly impacted by the illness. Most of the general public’s schooling on depression comes from popular media. Clinical depression gets the most screen time. The crushing weight associated with clinical depression, usually stemming from a chemical imbalance in the brain, is what we get. For me, it was situational depression, which I didn’t know existed. I also had no idea that postpartum depression can last for years when untreated. I figured the baby blues lasted only a few weeks, then I would be basking in the glow of motherhood.
The Baby Blues – Battling Postpartum Depression
When the prophesied glow refused to appear, I started to think that I’d made a mistake in ever becoming a mom. I wasn’t boding with my baby, the urge to shake him was so great a times, I had to leave the room and cry into a pillow while he screams his tiny head off. My anxiety was so great, I thought I was suffering from a heart condition. My heart would race and then hammer, in what felt, irregular, out of sync beats. The sensation was so painful and took my breath away. I made an appointment with my physician. She ran some tests, but her questions revolved around whether or not I had enough help. Raising a baby is not suppose to be a solo or even a duo endeavor. New parents need a community because this shit is hard.
It wasn’t until we moved back to the states and my sadness stuck around. Here I was, close to family, we began to receive help for our son’s disabilities, and I even had a bit of a social life. I had almost everything that was missing from my life in Vancouver, so why was a sobbing for no apparent reason? Why was my temper on a hair trigger? Why did I still regret becoming a mom? This latter thought brought me great shame.
After four years of escalating feelings of self-loathing and hopelessness, barely suppressed violence against my young child, and bouts of rage. I told my husband I needed help. I was spinning out of control and needed someone to talk to about these dark thoughts and feelings. Ever the supportive husband, we tightened our belts a little more, and I found a therapist.
Road to Recovery
My therapist was wonderful. She was nonjudgement, she sympathized with my emotions of feeling trapped, she gave me a new prescriptive of motherhood I hadn’t thought existed. I discovered that’s it’s okay to not like being a mom 24/7. That sitting your kid in front of the television so you can get some necessary me-time is all right. That it’s okay and even necessary to lower the bar on our parenting and just let some days be a throwaway. I had been holding myself to an ideal of motherhood many of us buy into, and I couldn’t obtain it. Most of us can’t. I came face to face with the myth of the supermom and started calling her on her shit.
I had allowed motherhood to swallow me and I was drowning. My therapist thew me a life vest and taught me how to swim in this new sea. Being a parent isn’t easy by any stretch, but then throw on a special needs kid and postpartum depression, and it’s nearly fucking impossible.
I don’t know what demons Spade and Bourdain had leaching away at their happiness. I don’t know if they suffered from clinical depression or clawed through bouts of situational depression. Either way, the end result for them, and for so many others was the same.
Suicide is the leading cause of death in the United States, and the National Institute for Public Health has suicide listed as a major public health concern. And when you think about it, it’s easy to see why. The history of mental health in the western world is horrendous. From the selling of tickets to the wealthy so they could gaze at the freaks in the lunatic asylum to husbands have the ability to commit their wives to shock treatment to lobotomies, seeking assistance for mental instabilities was a terrifying endeavor.
The idea too that mental illness is a weakness is prevalent. “You need to handle your shit,” was a common phrase I head growing up. In fact, I heard it so often that I began to believe it. When a friend would tell me they had anxiety, I’d roll my eyes and think, you just need to suck it up. I had no idea that I too suffered from anxiety. I just thought I had a bad temper. The thought of seeking the help of a professional made me feel degraded. I should be able to do this on my own. Therapy was for the weak.
Thankfully now, our culture is starting to lift the stigma associated with mental illness. All too often when I mention that I was in therapy, I get a knowing nod. They too had been in therapy at one time or another, they had been depressed, they suffer from anxiety.
Finding Help
One of the big reasons I waited so long to seek help was the cost. I had this misconception form popular media that therapist charged exorbitant fees. Since my son isn’t neuro-typical, I stayed home with him. On a single income, going to therapy seemed impossible, until I did some research.
I popped onto Psychology Today and it turns out that lots of therapists charge on a sliding scale. Others take insurance. My husband and I looked at our finances and decided that my sanity was worth at least $80 a week. I saw my therapist once a week for around six months. I employed the parenting techniques she suggested, talked about my messed up childhood, did a lot of crying, and figured out why I would lose my shit when I lost socks in the laundry room. Recently, I left my son’s scooter and helmet at the park. I got upset for about a minute, took a couple of deep breaths, and shrugged it off. My reaction stopped me in my tracks. Before therapy, I would have flown into a rage. I would have berated myself at my stupidity, only to become emotionally drained by the time my personal Mt. St. Helen petered out. Now I have more acceptable reactions to everyday events.
We Are All Individuals and Deserve Individual Treatment
I am not an expert by any means. But I do know there’s no magic cure for depression There isn’t one treatment to fit all. With clinical depression, medications may be necessary. Situational depression, like mine, can usually be treated with therapy. I’m also not saying that I don’t still have occasional bouts of hopelessness, because I do, but now they’re manageable. They don’t linger for days or even weeks. When they show up, I can find the light behind the clouds. I also know some of the triggers and try to avoid them. I spend way less time on social media than I used to. It was too painful watching my friends go off on adventures, adventures I was no longer a part of since having a child. So I avoid content that makes me feel sad. I can’t even begin to tell you how liberating it is to cut my FaceBook time by more than half.
If you can relate to anything here, and you have as of yet to seek out help, please do. You owe it to yourself. You are a special and unique voice in the world and we want to hear from you. We do care. Don’t listen to depression. It’s a liar, remember? Nobody likes a liar.
Important Links:
References:
Benser, Lucy (2014). Lunatic Ball. Hazlitt.net. https://hazlitt.net/feature/such-laugh-one-might-fancy-satan-uttered
Wu, Brian, (2016). Situational vs Clinical Depression – Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314698.php
National Institute of Mental Health. Suicide. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml
