Storied Mind

Hi John,
I’ve just found your blog; strangely enough, from a scraper blog which scraped both our sites. So I guess some good came out of it because I found this lovely warm place.

Reading through some of your earlier posts, my goodness, I can feel where you are coming from! Although I must admit that the prospect of fifty years suffering from depression doesn’t fill me with joy… but yes, I guess it’s going to happen that way for me too.

I have suffered from depression for as long as I can remember (although I didn’t call it that back then of course), soit’s nearly 30 years for me and I’ve managed to cope with it this long so I guess I can cope with it for the rest…

“Recovering means adapting to a life that includes depression but not letting it destroy me”
My thoughts exactly.

And yes, it’s true, you can recognise the symptoms of major depression creeping up, but as you say, that’s the very moment it’s hardest to find the energy or the inclination to stop them.

But reading your blog gives me strength. I know I am on the right lines myself in the way I address my own (mainly chronic) depression. I accept it and try to live my life with it. But it’s hard, I know.

What do I do to prevent depression knocking me flat? That’s a tough one. Most of the time I haven’t the energy to do anything to stop it.
Sunshine helps I guess, if I can drag myself out of the house… so does physical exercise if I can force myself to do it

But like you, I write, and that for me works better than anything else.

I won’t say anything cliched here, like ‘you are doing a great job with your fight’, because I know that, even though you are, on a bad day that would fall on deaf ears.

Just to say I’m pleased I stopped by. You have a beautiful place here.

This blog is a wonderful place. Your writing and visuals are a pleasure! That said, I’ve been in a 12-Step program for about five years, with four years of sobriety. The steps have you change the way you view yourself and your world. This almost identical to the Cognitive Behavioral approach the Doctor Aaron Beck brought to the world of therapy. My therapist was one of his first students.
Just as you, I fight my illness(es!) as an on-going battle. I’ve been living with a primary diagnoses of Bipolar II disorder for a while now. I’m forty-two and I started my journey into the wacky world of mood-swings when I was fifteen.
I find reading as a great escape for depression. I also paint, eat too much ice-cream, stare into space and/or sleep a lot. The last few days have been quite tough, but I managed to make myself work on my back-yard, laying bricks down…..They may be onto something with that exercise thing!

“All this requires attention and determination, and, of course, those are two qualities depression takes out at the earliest opportunity, like a military attack on command and control centers.”

Brilliant Perception !!!

I fight my depression with nutrition, exercise, creativity, and prayer.

BTW, your very creative and you may find this site interesting:

http://www.sengifted.org/

~ Alex

merelyme – I’m curious about rituals for helping at the worst moments – I’ll see if I can find more about this on your blog. Lists I depend on at work. Post-it notes sound exactly right. I’ve got to keep everything visible – like the character in Memento. Write it down when you’re well and then it’s staring at you when everything has been zapped out of consciousness. Thank you.

Zania – Thanks for all those kind words! (You know I still have to build those muscles that let me take in praise – this is a real work-out!) Your finding this blog is great because it means I’ve found yours – you’re a fine writer, and I agree that writing is one of the most powerful things for countering depression. I really look forward to reading your blog regularly.

isabella – Thank you once again. I plan to return to the creativity theme soon – that and spirituality are the most powerful forces I know to bring me back to life.

John

Dano – I’m curious if the twelve steps get at some of the depression issues for you. I’ve often wondered if surrendering to a higher power and working with others who have the same illness can make the same difference with depression as with alcoholism. The blog does something like the 12th step – describing my experience and having it connect with someone who shares a story back – this helps a lot. Maybe it’s a bad analogy, but reading the Big Book has always been a profoundly moving and helpful experience. Thanks for letting me know a bit about what this blog means to you. I’ll be at your site soon.

Jack – Thank you for your comment. I regret that I can’t read your language but hope we can share ideas across borders.

Alex – Thanks for the reference to the site and your kind comment. I like the four pillars you lean on – nutrition, exercise, creativity and prayer. Mind and body need to improve together!

Anon for Now – It’s interesting about Rescue Remedy. I too find that it works but haven’t the faintest idea what’s in that tiny bottle. I’m glad you’ve been able to make progress recently through appreciations and your other steps. I still haven’t gotten to the point where I can take my own appreciations as true. What is effective is cursing out the negative voice and stomping him down, Maybe that’s one of those guy/I don’t want to talk about it things. But it works! All love to you!

Evan – Exactly right – catching the early signs is so important. I can sometimes do that by immediately sitting down to write about the strangeness I’m feeling. That will give me just that bit of distance so that I don’t get taken into the darkness so completely.

John

Thank you so much, Denise! The book idea is something I’m working on – more on that later. I’m really interested in what you say about the kinds of depression and how you deal with them. Letting it role right over you is a new idea for me – giving myself permission to take it easy, I realize, is hard, very hard. I guess I can sense what the leading symptoms will be for different episodes of depression, but I rarely have the presence of mind to choose what I will do in response. The creative outlet is always one of the best things I can do, if I can get anywhere near my writing desk. Thanks for those ideas.

Great post. It’s certainly inspired me.

Cody – I realize that the 12 steps were never meant as treatment for depression, but many people with depression have found inspiration from the Big Book. As I pointed out, what struck me were the stories by the recovering alcoholics which take up most of the book. The lack of self esteem and need to escape a painful inner life are familiar to people with depression too. My understanding of the story of the 12 steps is more complicated that you indicate. I learned a lot from Bill W’s essay, The Language of the Heart, his Grapevine piece about the beginning of AA. There he emphasizes the power of one drunk talking from the heart to another as essential to his own recovery and that what he learned from his Oxford group friends was not enough to get through to him on a deep enough level.

As to depression being a medical condition – there is a world of controversy about that. Some base their recovery on the use of medication, others believe medication only worsens problems and that recovery depends on a combination of nutrition, exercise, spiritual practice and more. One of the major forms of therapy asserts that patterns of thinking distort emotions, and the solution is to change thinking. I wouldn’t quarrel with anyone’s path to healing. But it is too simple to say that depression is simply a medical condition.

And one of the breakthroughs of AA right from the start was its characterization of alcoholism as a combination of obsessive behavior and a physical illness, which was then described by Dr. Silkworth as an allergy. The group was at pains to educate newcomers that alcoholism wasn’t a problem of willpower but also had a physical basis.

John