The face of high-functioning depression

So I struggle with depression. And I’m a therapist.

This whole arrangement is craptastic.

I help people with depression. It’s sort of (not sort of—it really is) my job. As in, people pay me actual money to help them claw their way out of this stuff.  So, it's pretty demoralizing to be grappling with one of the things that I went to school for umpteen years to learn how to treat. It feels shameful. It feels like I’m not supposed to have these kinds of difficulties, because I’m supposed to have this stuff all figured out.

Ha. As if being a therapist somehow makes me immune to human difficulties.  (Spoiler alert, therapists-in-training: You’re still going to be messed up when you’re done with school. Just sayin’.)

So I’m not a superhuman. I can accept that. And my training didn’t save me from this bullshit. I can (mostly) accept that, too. What would be unacceptable to me would be not using the insight I have gained from this bleak period to maybe help someone else. Possibly, by virtue of being trained as a therapist and HIGHLY experienced as a depressed person, I can shed some light on the subject for y’all. Here goes:

Depression isn’t all sadness and crying and moping and couch potato-ing, even your mental image of “depression” might look sort of like that.  True, sometimes depression looks like this:

But sometimes, it looks like this:

I hope you guys like my face in that top one. Also, my hair.
(Long story. Actually short story: the Mai Tais did it.)

Yeah! That cheerful, silly face is the face of depression, kids! These pictures were taken at the height of my misery. Many of us who are depressed are quite good at masking it. Especially those of us who have high-functioning depression.

What’s high-functioning depression? It’s the kind of depression that isn’t completely disabling—which means I can work and parent and play volleyball and other life things— but the tasks often feel harder, sometimes take longer, and they wear me out more than usual. I've had bouts of this stuff since college-- it comes and goes in waves, some keeping me underwater longer than others. The current wave has had a wicked undertow. 

For me being depressed is a lot about heaviness. Everyday tasks can seem impossible. For example, I’m someone who feels at home in the kitchen. Baked goods= love, in my book. In September, I had a friend who had a baby, and what better way to say “I’m happy for you” than chocolate revel bars?

These things are delicious. I’ve made them a million times before. Yet, making them this time was so hard. The reaching down into a lower cupboard for the mixing bowls, the measurement of dry goods, the having to go to the basement pantry to retrieve a bag of chocolate chips…every step took monumental effort. And this is so not me. On a non-depressed Saturday afternoon at home, I can bake two or three things, and maybe also rearrange the Tupperware cabinet and do some gardening and go on a 3-mile walk, and then whip up supper, and it’s no big deal. I like being energetic. I like getting things done. So this feeling that my body is perpetually moving through water? No Bueno. 

Even worse than the heaviness, though, is the thought parade….oh, the thought parade. If you’ve ever had depression, you know what I’m talking about. This is a rather soul-sucking phenomenon: when my brain decides to say really cruel things to me in a really convincing way. It’s like having Cersei Lannister living in my head. After that, my brain takes me down the Memory Lane of Failure. (With my clients, I call this part The Shitshow.) A sampling of Cersei + The Shitshow: You’re worthless. You’re never going to get your life together. You fail at everything you do. And the worst one, the absolute nail in the coffin: You are a terrible mother. And then I relive all of the moments that I have failed, all the ways I don’t have my life together, and all of the times I was a less-than-stellar parent. This is the part that makes me want to stay in bed and stare at the wall for hours at a time.

Art by Claire Jarvis

Here’s a weird thing I’ve noticed about me and depression, though— I’m a pendulum swinger. And what I mean by this is: depression will say to me you’re worthless and everyone hates you. And, in trying to shake this off, I’ll seek out my friends. Put on some pretty clothes and red lipstick, plaster on my most winning smile, and gravitate to wherever the fun is happening. Swing the pendulum. Try to find evidence that I am indeed worthwhile and that people don’t hate having me around. Also, alcohol provides a temporary reprieve from the crippling Cersei thoughts. And then they come back, ten-fold, the next day—because that’s how alcohol works. It depresses you the next day. #themoreyouknow  #friendlyneighborhoodpsychologist

Now, let me issue the caveat that I enjoy going out with friends when not depressed. That’s just me—I like people, and I like laughing—and, for the record, I like singing and dancing and not taking life very seriously sometimes. But when depressed, these times out of the house feel like lifelines in a way that they probably shouldn’t.  

Because of my pendulum-swinging means of trying to cope, it isn’t always obvious to myself (and others) that I even am depressed. That’s the thing: depression can be a sneaky, insidious little beast. It comes for me in camouflage, lays in wait, sniping, throwing grenades—full on guerrilla warfare—and I can’t see it until it’s bad.

It doesn’t help that I’m pretty good at denial and avoidance, i.e., “I’m not depressed, nosiree, I just suddenly hate myself and feel like my life is going down the shitter.” I either couldn’t or wouldn’t look at the evidence: I sucked way more than usual at making decisions—and this is bad, because I always suck at decisions. I hated all of the music that I usually love. Food sounded gross and made my stomach hurt, so I didn’t eat much. I couldn’t fall asleep at night. (Very uncharacteristic. I usually sleep like a boss.) If a client reported these experiences to me, I’d know right away what was going on. But despite the astounding, staggering amount of evidence of depression, I couldn’t see it. Its camouflage was too good, too complete. It blended in with the colors of my life, and I just assumed that the lies of depression were true. (i.e., I really was a terrible person, and people really did hate me, etc.).

Here's the thought that blew my depression’s cover:

“Wouldn’t it be easier on everyone if you weren’t here?”

Whoa. I’d never had that kind of thought before. 

Thankfully, I stopped and self-reflected. For one blessed moment, my internal voice had my back, and she said, “Hold up, sister. What did you just say to yourself?”

Then I knew what was going on. And to therapy I went and to the doctor I went and to the gym I went. Yep, the gym. Because honestly, I’ve never found anything as effective for my own personal mood management as good old fashioned gym torment. 

I’m slowly getting better. I wish recovery was as easy as a few grueling hours at the YMCA or a few weeks of therapy or a few months’ worth of pills. It’s not, though. Healing from depression is like slogging through a field of deep mud. One foot held up and striving forward, one foot sinking down into the goo. Repeat, repeat, repeat. 

So I cope. I read a lot. I do the gym thing. I go on walks. I watch The Office and The West Wing, two shows that comfort me. I attempt to be emotionally present with friends and family. I try to remember that the Cersei Shitshow thought parade isn’t the truth, even though it feels like The Truth when it’s happening, but rather, that these thoughts are depression being a little bitch.

And I write like I need it to survive. This too is a coping skill. When I write I attempt to understand myself, to be understood by others. It’s mightily gratifying to have some thoughts out of my head and on paper instead of rattling around on the inside. If I get to make myself or someone else laugh, that’s a bonus.

I want y'all to know: I’ll get through this. I already am. And I always have. 

I’ll keep putting one muddy foot in front of the other until the ground underneath me dries up again. And it will. It always has. 

And for my functionally depressed comrades-in-arms out there: I’m with you. I’m here for you. We’re all gonna make it. Take care of yourselves, do all the things that help, and the ground will dry. Just you wait. 

***

Author's note: Suicidal thoughts are serious and should be treated as such. If you're having thoughts of ending your life, get yourself to help. Call a parent. Text a friend. 
Call this hotline: 1--800-273-8255. Go to this website: The Hopeline.
Find a therapist. 

You matter. Trust me. 

Tales from the directionally-challenged: How I got lost in my neighborhood. Again.

I do a lot of fairly stupid things. Generally, I’m well-intentioned, so it’s not like I’m trying to be stupid…but intention isn’t worth shit when the outcome of what I’ve done is completely ridiculous. I swear, if ever I write a memoir, all it’s going to be is a compilation of all of the weird-ass situations that I’ve gotten myself into. Like the time I walked into my friend's house-- a house I'd been to many times--without knocking, set my purse down by the door, and then slowly realized I'd walked into the wrong house. (There were strangers sitting in the front room, staring at me…so I said “just kidding,” grabbed my purse and just walked back out the door without further ado. That’s how I handle shit.) Or the time I sucked laundry detergent out of my washing machine with a straw (read about that here). Or the (two) times that I got lost walking around my neighborhood.

Yeah, that’s right.  I got lost in my neighborhood. Twice.

To be fair, we live in a strange little place. It’s a tiny housing development that currently has one large block with a circumference of .5 miles. This neighborhood has been carved out of the middle of the Nebraska countryside, bounded on three sides by farmland and pastures. 

So we live in this weird (yet awesome. Don’t underestimate the awesome factor; I really love it out here) little enclave, and I like to go on walks. Especially in the Fall, when the combination of crisp air and golden sun is so incredibly alluring—so much so that I’d go as far as calling it delicious. If Fall could be bottled, I would drink it every day. I imagine it’d be tasty.  (And no, Fall DOES NOT taste like a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. You are unoriginal.)

Anyway, where I was going with this was: walking the same half-mile block over and over can get boring, and also, people get tired of looking at you. So every now and again I get a little wanderlust and strive off of the pavement and into new territory.

There are paths where new houses are going up, and some of these paths connect us to another nearby housing development—so we often use this method to get from our development to the other. It involves walking through some brush and over some pounded dirt paths, and in some places, hopping a short barbed-wire fence. It’s really not bad. (Yeah, if you’re reading this and thinking that I’m trespassing at some point on these journeys, you’re probably right. Shame on me for trying to be fit and adventurous.) Those who are less directionally-challenged than me have no problems on these off-the-beat walks. I’ve been on walks with my neighbors, so I know it is possible to stray off of our block, see some things, and get back to our block, no problemo. One of my neighbor’s dogs is even able to accomplish this.

The problem (for me, anyway) is that one of the roads back from the nearby development ends abruptly, cut off by barricades and, if that wasn't enough of a deterrent, a soybean field. Yup, the road literally ends in a beanfield. Welcome to Nebraska, y’all.

Small roadblock between me and home. 

The first time I encountered this field, I was pretty sure that the route home was through it. So I navigated through the beanfield, and when I came out the other side of it, there were two roads—one going left, and one going right. I chose to go right. Long story short, by the time I consulted my phone to figure out where the hell I was, I was several miles away from home. I had to call my (non-impressed, directional superstar, born with an effing compass in his brain) husband to come pick me up. “Why didn’t you look at the sun?” he said. As if that works.

The road I ended up on. It's pretty, right? I mean, at least there was good scenery. And mile markers.

My neighbors really do pity me, and so after I told them about how I got lost, they took me out to try to help me find the error of my ways. Under their tutelage I realized that my beanfield jaunt had been the CORRECT directional choice, but I should have turned left after I got through the field.

So you can imagine my excitement yesterday when I encountered the same beanfield.

This one! I know this place!

(For the remainder of those post, I’m going to give you the insides of my head in boldface blue italics, like this, because it is through seeing what happens up in there that you can start to appreciate how truly frightening my decision-making can be. [Side note: Is anyone else stoked that I have a super-serious big girl job in which other people PAY ME to help them figure things out, including decision-making? If you’re not jazzed about this, you should be.])

Oh yes, this field! I know what to do here. Walk through the field, turn LEFT, and I’m home free.

But then I noticed that the field, while dry, was still unharvested. This means that there were grasshoppers everywhere, and I hate grasshoppers. I wasn’t in the mood for dealing with their crunchy, sassy little asses. As I surveyed the field, I noticed that there was a large swath around its perimeter that had been cut down.

Oh, someone has cleared a path for the construction guys, so they can drive their equipment through this field. If I walk on it in this direction, I will hit a road that I know, and I know this because I see a big cement silo that I’ve walked by before. Yup, that’s the ticket!

So I started down the cut-down path. I had some indie station playing in my earbuds and was walking in time to a song. I turned a bend and this allowed me to see further up the path—and what I saw was movement. One…no, two…figures.  

Must be someone from the neighborhood walking their dog. Which means I’m on the right track.

More walking. More fiddling with my phone, in an attempt to find a non-sucky song. I was getting closer to the person and his/her dog on the trail.

Wait, that dog is really huge. Like, really, really huge. Is that a mastiff? No one in the neighborhood has a mastiff. Or a great dane.  Hmm, this doesn’t make sense, this is weird, maybe if I just squint hard enough I’ll be able to see…Oh Good Lord, that’s a DEER. And that person walking the dog is ANOTHER DEER.

You don't realize how big deer are until you're really close to them. 

Do male deer ever charge at people? Who’s more scared, me or them? Do they feel safety in numbers?

I’ve had staredowns with animals before, but none who were bigger than a breadbasket (if you really insist on knowing, previous staredowns have mostly with cats and dogs and once with a mouse while I was pregnant, and coincidentally, naked. Which is another GREAT story).  Thus, I found this intense eye contact to be mildly unsettling. The deer stopped moving and went still, probably having a similarly shocking experience to what I was having (“Oh, there’s something big coming, probably another deer like us, maybe we can hang out, eat some soybeans and stuff…oh wait, no, it’s making way too much noise and the hair is all wrong, that’s an EFFING HUMAN and THEY KILLED BAMBI’S MOM so RUN.”) 

They ran. I didn’t get my camera out in time to document this, but man do I wish I would have. They were probably 100 meters away from me when they bolted. And the reason I know this distance is because I remember running 100 meter dashes in junior high track. Which when I ran it looked less like a dash and more like a medium-paced trudge, because I’m slow and because starting blocks confuse the shit out of me. But, it was the shortest distance race that we ran so it was my favorite. Because less is better when it comes to running.

Which is, weirdly, a great segue into what happened next.

The deer-staredown incident behind me, I continued down the path. The indie song playing involved a woman singing a plea for someone not to leave her, and I was thinking about how this is yet another pathetic cog in the anti-feminist wheel of destruction that is our modern music industry. If I hadn’t been listening to music and thinking so hard, I might have seen (or heard) the next thing coming.

Which was a combine.

For you city folk reading this, a combine is a very large piece of farm machinery, used to harvest both corn, and in this case, soybeans. It’s like a ginormous tractor with a rotating head (when it’s cutting beans at least. The corn head is spiky and doesn’t rotate at all. But I digress). Here’s what they look like:

With a beanhead, doin' work. 

Would you want to see this coming at you? I don't think so.

I’m a pseudo-farm kid. Meaning that my dad was a farmer but we lived “In town,” and by “in town” I mean in a village of 700 people and in a house that was two blocks away from a cornfield on three sides. In any case, I’m farm kid enough to be appropriately scared of being on foot in the same field as a combine. I’ve seen what a bean head can do to a deer, and it ain’t pretty. (Note: The staredown deer from this story did not, to my knowledge, die by beanhead. The poor mangled deer I’m referencing was something I saw another time, because remember, my dad is a farmer and encounters all kinds of gruesome shit. Which you might not expect, depending on how much you know about farming, but which is absolutely true.)

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. Is this seriously the last song I’m going to hear before I die? THIS?

And at this point I was running. I mean, as soon as I saw the combine, it was off to the races. (Which you know from above treatises could not possibly have been THAT fast, but rather, as fast as a slow girl can go.) Now, granted, the above set of thoughts about my impending death was admittedly a bit histrionic, as the combine was pretty far in the distance and I wasn’t even sure it was coming towards me at that moment. Didn’t matter, though—I’m pretty sure that a moving combine moves faster than me, and so if there was ANY chance it was headed my way, I wanted out.

Ooohh…so that “path that was cleared for construction” was a swath of harvested field IN A FIELD BEING CURRENTLY HARVESTED, you dumbass.

My feet found pavement relatively quickly. I was safe. The only thing left at stake was my pride, which I could have totally preserved if I wouldn’t have decided to go ahead and post this whole debacle on the interwebs. Who needs dignity when you can completely (and intentionally) embarrass yourself in front of all of your friends, and probably even some people you don’t know? Pride is totally overrated.

You might be pleased to know that once I doubled back the way that I came, I easily found my way home—which is a step up from the first time I got lost. Also, I wasn't even gone that long:  the whole 3.75 mile round-trip ordeal only took about an hour. SO THERE.

And that, my friends, is the story of the second time I got lost in my neighborhood. Look for it in my upcoming debut memoir, Good at school, bad at life: How having a PhD did not save me from myself.

On body image...and donut sex

Note: Originally published in 2011 on my old blog,  ideclarelifecrisis.blogspot.com, revised and re-published 2015.

9/21/2011

I ate a donut last night. My taste buds nearly imploded from all of the deliciousness. It was one of my favorites, a cream-filled longjohn (the fluffy white cream! None of that nasty Bavarian cream business). Granted, it didn't have nuts and its frosting was white rather than chocolate-- but these were forgivable shortcomings. Besides, it was a gift, and I don't look donut gift-horses in the mouth. I just shove the donuts in my mouth. Much easier.

So I’m sitting there, caressing my donut, devouring it with ardor. I rather paradoxically demolished that donut in the most gentle, most caring way you can imagine --think “food sex," that's how it is with me and donuts. Yet in the midst of my pastry lovemaking, this soft but audible thought pops into my mind, “I wonder how thin I could be if I didn’t eat this donut. Or if I never ate donuts.”

This thought came unbidden, just about as welcome as when "Oh damn, I forgot to put on deodorant today" or "Gotta add peanut butter to the shopping list" pops up during actual sex. (C'mon ladies. You know this is a thing.)

Those darned thoughts, they do what they want sometimes. The particularly villainous anti-donut notion of being thinner— and numerous variations of it—tend to come spilling out of the recesses of my psyche, often midway through eating something mouthwatering and not particularly healthful. In the past it was pretty easy to give in to the thought—to accept that yes, I’m supposed to be perfect, and yes, thinner is better, and Yes, I should feel guilty and shameful about eating donuts and YES, I'm a food/body failure, I suck at life, etc. Then I'd wallow for awhile.

I am pretty stoked to report that last night, something different happened. I'm eating my donut, and the thought about never eating donuts and being thinner occurs to me. But then my resilient mind bounced back with, “Heyyy....maybe thinner isn't better. Maybe I'm a worthwhile person, no matter what's going on with my body." Whoa.

This has not been an easy place to get to. For one thing, I'm curvy. Not like "curvy in all the right places" but like "curvy in a bunch of haphazard places where my body has decided to curve"). When I acknowledged that the wayward bumps and lumps weren't going away, I had no choice but to make friends with them.  I mean, we're not friendly every single day or anything, but I try to be kind to them even when I'm annoyed. Also, I've got stretch marks and sort of weird boobs and a big long scarred up place at the bottom of my abdomen (because BABIES) -- yet when in a good mood I'm able to see those as badges of honor. I healed from two major surgeries and got two kids out of the deal. My body has not failed me in doing its essential functions, so I'm striving for détente with it, rather than being a hater.

Furthermore, I love donuts. I really do. I’m not going to give them up to chase some illusion of perfectionism. Granted, I’m not going to eat one every single day. But I’m probably not going to pass one up if the opportunity presents itself-- I mean, that's insane. I don't recommend it.

So, if there's any point to all of this, it is this couple of things: 1) Work towards making peace with your imperfect body. It's totally worth it in the long run, and 2) Buy me donuts. I also like donut holes. And apple fritters.