Stepping Back from the Edge of Depression

In the film version of my autobiography, this would be the montage. My mother died, things were not going well at home, work was a mine field of drama. As my medical doctor kindly told me, “You’ve got PTSD.” I hate it when they don’t say the words, but diagnose you with an acronym. He prescribed Paxil and I smiled my way through the next 2 years. Against his advice, I weaned myself off during year 3. I don’t recommend anyone do this. It worked for me. I’m not a doctor. I only knew what I felt I had to do. I lost a part of who I was on the anti-depressant. To me, it was worth the risk of a major body and brain chemistry meltdown to find her. I spent the next 8 years trying. The montage continues as I changed jobs, got advanced degrees, moved, and a host of other things. A break in the montage comes at the part of adopting a “rescue” yellow labrador retriever. The saga of the dog is a feature film in itself, so we’ll cut to the ending of the montage. She was diagnosed with cancer at age 8 and after two years of trying different things, she died. Fortunately, she showed me what happiness looks like so instead of crashing into a depression, I used her life as an example. I chose happiness. Yep. I made a definite decision that I was going to be happy no matter what or who or where or when-- just like my dog. So to test my resolve, my life fell apart. Actually, that’s when my heart and mind fell together.

The next montage is shorter so I don’t really need to describe it, but it culminates with my daughter telling me that one of her friends from high school committed suicide. She had five children. She felt hopeless not only for her future, but for her children’s future. Given the state of things, I completely understand. I also completely disagree with her choice. She didn’t ask my opinion and I wondered if she’d talked to anyone. My daughter said her friend’s attitude was “normal” for her generation, the 30 somethings. I cringed. 

With everything going on today (and the list is too long to get into here), I have to face head on that there are many people who are sinking into hopelessness. I don’t know if they talk to anyone. I’m pretty sure they go to their physician like I did and then they may or may not start taking an antidepressant or some other medication. In my years of teaching, I found fewer students who were not on medication than who were. I knew this because the medications allowed them to have certain accommodations in testing, lecturing, etc. Truth be told, when everyone needs accommodation, that becomes the norm. I digress; however, I do want to point out that these students would also voluntarily tell me why they were on medication and more often than not, it was some type of panic or anxiety disorder. Because I had close to 100 students in any given semester, I began to see a trend.

Many of my students were female and about the same age. They were being diagnosed at about the same time and for almost the exact same symptoms. That all makes sense if you haven’t had statistics. Statistically, there couldn’t be that many young women all becoming anxious who live in the same geographic location at approximately the same time regardless of age. I didn’t question the doctors’ judgment. I don’t know how many patients he/she had. I only knew that statistically I had way too many students on some kind of anti-depressant and/or anti-anxiety medication. I also knew from their stories that the medicine wasn’t really helping. My job was not to diagnose any medical or emotional condition of my students. I was their teacher. I was not at liberty to tell them what to do. I’m not a medical doctor or psychologist, but this week alone, I’ve received three messages from friends who knew someone who committed suicide. There aren’t numbers for 2011-2012, but in 2010, someone in the United States committed suicide every 13 minutes. I’m not a math major or a statistician, but this seems unnatural, not normal, statistically unbelievable. 

So I’m coming at this from an educator’s and personal perspective. I want to share the lessons I’ve learned from my bout with depression and the dark years of being on an anti-depressant and the hungry years of clawing my way back. These aren’t things that will help you during a severe depression. That requires medical intervention. These are the strategies that have helped me avoid the cliff and to continue stepping back from the edge. As anyone who has been clinically depressed can attest, once you’ve dropped down into that black valley, it’s far, far more difficult to pull yourself out. When I finally emerged years later, I still had all the grief work left to do and felt that vulnerability. Out of self-preservation, I decided I would do whatever it took to never go there again and to stay as far away from the edge as I possibly could. If you are on medication, do what your doctor advises you. These are the things I would add:

1. Get rid of the chemicals

Get the air, food, and water chemicals out of your body. You don’t know how you feel until you get rid of all chemicals. The air is polluted so just breathing will make you anxious. Your food is polluted so eating will make you feel funky. You may be intolerant: sugar, caffeine, milk, gluten, peanut, or any number of things, including all the pesticides and herbicides sprayed over everything and don’t get me started on GMO’s. If you can’t get tested for allergies, well actually even if the tests all come back with no allergic reaction at all, take the chemicals out of your diet for a month. Eat only organic fresh fruits and vegetables and see how you feel. It goes without saying, but I will anyway-- no alcohol. No tobacco products of any kind, not even around you. No drugs, even marijuana. Stop drinking unfiltered tap water. Get a chemical filter for your entire house because you brush your teeth and wash your face and other body parts with water that has chemicals in it. Stop using perfume and any kind of detergent or soap or deodorant that has a smell. I had a student react to hand sanitizer. One student opened the bottle and the reacting student flushed bright red from her chest to her forehead, had a panic attack, and literally ran from the room in tears within 30 seconds. That will get your attention when you’re teaching. You can’t do much about the air and the people around you, but you can do everything else. 

2. Get enough rest.

Get enough rest. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between fatigue and depression. It’s easy to get depressed when you are too tired. If sleep is a problem, figure out why. Too much noise? Not enough noise? Mind racing-- see #1 & #3. Maybe you’re on the wrong schedule. As I got older, my waking time has changed. Now, my body wakes up at 2:30-3:30 a.m. It doesn’t matter if I go to bed at midnight. I’m going to wake up. I fought this for years. Now, I go to bed at 7:30 p.m. Yes, that’s right. It’s still light outside. That’s why they invented sleep masks. And no, if you’ve been up since 2:30 a.m., you have no problem going to sleep by 8:00 p.m. If I didn’t work from home or if I had children at home, I’m not sure this would work. I just feel lucky to have figured out what my natural sleep rhythm is and be able to follow it. It isn’t just your body that needs resting. Give your brain a rest, too. Take 1 worry-free day a week or a month. If you don’t feel like you have a day, then take 1/2 a day or even 1 hour. Give it up. It’s an addiction. Take that first step for just an hour and see how much better you feel.

3. Get the toxins out of your head.

Get the toxins out of your head. Stop watching television. The less you watch, the better you’ll feel about yourself. I don’t know that it’s the shows themselves, but it is the commercials that will make you feel just awful. However, if you are watching violent shows (even sarcasm packaged as comedy is verbal violence), then you are diminishing yourself. If you are watching sexually explicit shows, you are doing damage to your brain. Your mind doesn’t tell the difference between what you watch on television, the video-games you play, and your real memories. So this particular “fast” includes video-games and if you watch a lot of internet youtube videos or engage in on-line games, etc. take time off from that, too. Take 90 days off from any media and see how much better you feel. Oh, and if you have people around you who are toxic, take 90 days off from them, too.

4. Pay attention to self-talk.

Pay attention to your self-talk. Do you say things like, “Oh man, that was really stupid,” when you make mistakes? Do you look in the mirror and think critical thoughts? Do you ever think or say things that even vaguely resemble “I’m not enough?” For example, I’m not thin enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not experienced enough. I’m not happy enough. Or do you say, I’ll do it when I’m older, thinner, richer, more energetic, less stressed, less tied to the kids’ schedule, less needed by my family? Do you even know what you say to yourself? Listen carefully. If it isn’t positive, uplifting, and supportive, stop. You are enough. Be your own best-friend and if you talk to your best-friend that way, find someone with enough self-respect not to hang around with a person who says critical things to her all the time. Say 100 times to yourself every day, “I am worthy. I am enough. I am valuable. I can do this.” If you experience rejection, say, “I am worthy of great love and attention. I am enough. I am valuable. I deserve this.” Reprogram yourself and see how much better you feel. Ok, I already hear the diva diving. If you need self-talk, you’re not a diva. If you are a diva, it’s because you really don’t have a lot of self-esteem. 

5. Get up, get out, get going.

Get up, get out, get going. Movement is magic. It makes your heart pump and that’s where your hope is going to start flowing from. Get the blood out of your butt. Stop sitting on your dreams. Get out into the world. Caveat here: if the air is polluted, the temperature 100 degrees, or you have pollen as thick as I do today, don’t go outside. Go to an art gallery, coffee shop, gym. Don’t go to the mall. All those freaky mannequins in clothes that hang off skinny fake bodies are stressful to see, not to mention all the smells and people wearing way too much perfume. If you can safely go outside, that’s always the best choice. Find a friend, take your dog, borrow your friend’s dog and walk. Skip. Play fetch. It doesn’t matter. Move.

6. Pay What's the worst thing...

Play what’s the worst thing that could happen and come up with 5 things you could do to make it better. As a very young single mother, I learned this game from another very young, single mother. Her favorite was, “So I lose my job. If it’s winter, I’ll bundle the kids into the car and we’ll go live at the beach. If it’s summer, I’ll bundle the kids up and we’ll camp at a state park in the mountains.” It wasn’t realistic, but it helped her keep her priorities. She had her children and there was something she could do. She could take action. That was the main point of the game. The things you come up with might not be what you want to do, they might not be realistic at all, but it will convince your brain that you can do something. Whatever happens, you can do something. And oddly enough, once you start coming up with solutions, even really crazy ones, you actually see that there are things worth trying even without the worst thing happening.

7. Play What's the best thing...

Play what’s the best thing that could happen and come up with 10 things you could do to move toward that dream. My kids grew up seeing my mind maps all over the bedroom walls. I would spend a couple of days cutting out pictures and coming up with just the right words that would spark me into believing my dreams could come true. With an incredible amount of Divine intervention, most of them have.

8. Surround yourself with people who support you.

Surround yourself with people who support you. One of the most difficult things I faced when I decided to be happy was the realization that I had very, very few people around me who were actually supportive. Most of this was because I didn’t surround myself with supportive people. They had their own agendas. Now, the circle is much smaller, but I know who can support me at whatever stage I’m at. I also see a counselor regularly so I don’t feel the need to over-share with others quite so much. Get a dog. I have three. Dogs are amazingly supportive. The time gap between recognizing that the people around me weren’t actually supportive and finding people who are was excruciatingly lonely, but it also made clear to me that until I support myself, listen to my own guidance, and make my decisions based on my own authority, I would never have a support system. I also discovered that even when people don’t support me, when I’m doing what I know is right for me, Heaven supports me, and I’ll take that any day.

9. Surround yourself with beauty.

Surround yourself with beauty. You don’t need a lot of money to have beautiful things. Beauty can be cleaning up your space. It can be flowers on the table or in the yard. It can be ribbon strung around your wrist. I knew a woman who kept her Christmas lights draped over the chandelier in her dining room all year. They made her happy. She thought they were beautiful. I did, too.

10. Love yourself.

Love yourself. It’s great when other people love you, but one of the most important lessons I learned from that dog was not everybody knows how to love others. It feels different when you love someone because of your needs and expectations and when you love someone because that’s what you do. You can’t give from a dry well so start loving yourself unconditionally. Foibles and all. You won’t become egotistical. You’ll become human. You’ll become forgiving. You’ll find grace and you’ll be gracious. You will fill your well and from that full place, you’ll be able to love other people without expecting them to be or do differently than what they are. You will take care of yourself like someone who loved you would. It’s amazing how much better that feels. 

You can’t prevent life from giving you experiences that nudge you toward depression, but you can be aware that once you’ve traveled that path, it can become well-worn or you can do everything within your power to find another way through grief, anger, stress, disappointment, and yes, even climate change, the threat of nuclear war, economic meltdown, and environmental pollution. What you do matters. Who you are matters. The world needs each of us at our best now more than ever. You have the power to choose to be the answer to someone’s prayer. Living from that place feels the best.