thoughts on life and health of minds
This post contains some things that I've been thinking about for a while, and thinking about saying publically. However, these are personal things, and they have the potential to change your opinion of me, so this is a warning. I considered flocking this post, but, having decided that I want to say these things, I don't want to hide them away.
Nor is this post either a whine or a rant. It is a thought.
This post has been sparked by two boys in the zoology department. I’d never seen them before, so they were likely biochemists just there for a lecture (the other possibilities are psychologists or medics, but I really hope that’s not the case). While sitting at a table in the café next to the one I was working at, they were having a loud conversation, focusing on a girl in their group who’d been given a pass on a due essay by their tutor, apparently because of a depressive episode. This was being discussed by them in terms of how unfair it was, how everyone was depressed occasionally (apparently one of them had been depressed the previous night because their football team lost…), and how it was pathetic that people were given special treatment just because they ‘couldn’t be bothered to have a better attitude’.
At the time, this made me very, very angry. I wanted to walk over to them and tell them that depression is not a general feeling of unhappiness or angst, it’s when you can’t move from where you’re lying on the floor because the air above you feels as if its turning black and smothering you. It’s when you can’t even imagine succeeding at anything you have to do, so even the simplest things like sending an email or going to buy milk are absolutely insurmountable. It’s when you start carving lines into your flesh with a blade because the endorphin release from making yourself bleed is the only happy feeling available to you. It’s when you need a lot of time to recover from social interactions, even ones you enjoy (in this the internet is a godsend - I can talk to people at my own pace, without the physical encounters. If it didn’t exist I’d probably be much worse off). It’s most decidedly not something that can be fixed with a better diet, or exercise, or the power of positive thinking. It is an illness.
Of course, I didn’t say anything. I have thought about what I would like to say, as evidenced above. However, more than that, I’ve been wondering why it is that circumstances arise far more often than I’d like to which the above paragraph would be a reasonable response.
After all, I’m absolutely not a Very Special And Unique Snowflake. There are a lot of people suffering from clinical depression. There are people on my flist with chronic illnesses which cause them a lot of pain, and so I often feel intensely guilty whenever I otherwise would like to complain about how crap I’m feeling. I don’t feel that I deserve to complain. In a strange way, I don’t feel that I ‘deserve’ to be suffering. After all, it’s all in my head. Maybe if I just tried to see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty…
Yeah. The thing I actually want to talk about is the attitude that people with this condition, this imbalance in brain chemistry, should be ashamed of it, should be helping themselves, should, for god’s sake, try and smile a bit more. Because I am ashamed of it. I’m incredibly ashamed, and do constantly feel that I shouldn’t be affected by this. I should be ‘stronger’, ‘more positive’. Only a few people know about this part of me, and know that I currently rely on a very high dose of prescription medication to enable me to function at all. I’m going on holiday with a group of Taruithorn friends in the summer, and I’m terrified of the part where we’ll go swimming and they’ll see my scars. (Part of the reason for writing this post, I confess, is because some of the Taruith people are on LJ, so I then won’t need to explain this face-to-face to them.) And yet other conditions affecting the brain (i.e. Asperger’s syndrome, bipolar disorder), don’t appear to have the same stigma attached to them, this idea that it’s the sufferer’s fault. Of course, I only have an outsider’s perspective on those, so I might be mistaken, but it’s the impression I’ve gained. I actually wonder whether it’s partly because they have ‘proper’ names, instead of also being the name given to a mood, that depression seems to be taken much less seriously in terms of being an illness which requires medical treatment.
And now that you’ve read all of this, you’ll think differently of me than you did before. It’s inevitable, and one of the reasons why I don’t share usually share this information. But right now, I want to be heard. I’m tired of standing in a corner and pretending I don’t exist. I want to speak up.
Nor is this post either a whine or a rant. It is a thought.
This post has been sparked by two boys in the zoology department. I’d never seen them before, so they were likely biochemists just there for a lecture (the other possibilities are psychologists or medics, but I really hope that’s not the case). While sitting at a table in the café next to the one I was working at, they were having a loud conversation, focusing on a girl in their group who’d been given a pass on a due essay by their tutor, apparently because of a depressive episode. This was being discussed by them in terms of how unfair it was, how everyone was depressed occasionally (apparently one of them had been depressed the previous night because their football team lost…), and how it was pathetic that people were given special treatment just because they ‘couldn’t be bothered to have a better attitude’.
At the time, this made me very, very angry. I wanted to walk over to them and tell them that depression is not a general feeling of unhappiness or angst, it’s when you can’t move from where you’re lying on the floor because the air above you feels as if its turning black and smothering you. It’s when you can’t even imagine succeeding at anything you have to do, so even the simplest things like sending an email or going to buy milk are absolutely insurmountable. It’s when you start carving lines into your flesh with a blade because the endorphin release from making yourself bleed is the only happy feeling available to you. It’s when you need a lot of time to recover from social interactions, even ones you enjoy (in this the internet is a godsend - I can talk to people at my own pace, without the physical encounters. If it didn’t exist I’d probably be much worse off). It’s most decidedly not something that can be fixed with a better diet, or exercise, or the power of positive thinking. It is an illness.
Of course, I didn’t say anything. I have thought about what I would like to say, as evidenced above. However, more than that, I’ve been wondering why it is that circumstances arise far more often than I’d like to which the above paragraph would be a reasonable response.
After all, I’m absolutely not a Very Special And Unique Snowflake. There are a lot of people suffering from clinical depression. There are people on my flist with chronic illnesses which cause them a lot of pain, and so I often feel intensely guilty whenever I otherwise would like to complain about how crap I’m feeling. I don’t feel that I deserve to complain. In a strange way, I don’t feel that I ‘deserve’ to be suffering. After all, it’s all in my head. Maybe if I just tried to see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty…
Yeah. The thing I actually want to talk about is the attitude that people with this condition, this imbalance in brain chemistry, should be ashamed of it, should be helping themselves, should, for god’s sake, try and smile a bit more. Because I am ashamed of it. I’m incredibly ashamed, and do constantly feel that I shouldn’t be affected by this. I should be ‘stronger’, ‘more positive’. Only a few people know about this part of me, and know that I currently rely on a very high dose of prescription medication to enable me to function at all. I’m going on holiday with a group of Taruithorn friends in the summer, and I’m terrified of the part where we’ll go swimming and they’ll see my scars. (Part of the reason for writing this post, I confess, is because some of the Taruith people are on LJ, so I then won’t need to explain this face-to-face to them.) And yet other conditions affecting the brain (i.e. Asperger’s syndrome, bipolar disorder), don’t appear to have the same stigma attached to them, this idea that it’s the sufferer’s fault. Of course, I only have an outsider’s perspective on those, so I might be mistaken, but it’s the impression I’ve gained. I actually wonder whether it’s partly because they have ‘proper’ names, instead of also being the name given to a mood, that depression seems to be taken much less seriously in terms of being an illness which requires medical treatment.
And now that you’ve read all of this, you’ll think differently of me than you did before. It’s inevitable, and one of the reasons why I don’t share usually share this information. But right now, I want to be heard. I’m tired of standing in a corner and pretending I don’t exist. I want to speak up.