One of the ways that depression works to gain control of a person's life is to instill a perception of changelessness. You always felt this way; it's not a disease so much as it is who you are. Nobody ever cared and you should not waste anybody's time by telling them your problems. Happiness is not meant for your life. The dark cloud that surrounds a depression victim makes it impossible to see things that are positive, helpful, promising.
Now comes a tool from the Families for Depression Awareness that can help remove that metaphorical blindness. It allows a victim to see progress that is made in treatment by carefully tracking it. It's a simple concept but a very important one. It breaks that perception that nothing has ever changed and nothing ever will change by showing, in the victim's own words, what things were like yesterday, last week, last month.
By involving family it also helps break down the belief that you're alone in this journey. Solitude is depression's friend, and it withers if you convince the victim that they are not alone. Mind you it takes a consistent effort to make that point, and even minor setbacks can bring you all the way to Square One, but this tool is a good way to involve the people that care about the victim and help them reinforce that fact.
Showing posts with label denial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label denial. Show all posts
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
It Sneaks Up
What are the early warning signs of depression?
Not as easy question to answer.
For starters, the early signs of depression are entirely internal. Lack of motivation. Lack of pleasure. Lack of focus. Maybe lack of sleep. So if you don't share your life with an incredibly astute and empathic person, nobody else is going to have a snowball's chance in Hell of noticing.
Secondly, symptoms of depression are incremental, and creeping. They build like the lengthening darkness builds after the summer solstice: gradually, naturally, so that it doesn't seem for quite some time that anything is different. We are creatures of routine and habit, so it's easier to believe that nothing has changed by subconsciously adapting to these new circumstances than it is to identify a problem and change to resolve it. Change causes pain, right now. Depression also causes pain, but not right away, and since you can build up a tolerance, it doesn't seem so bad. It's easier to ignore it, deny it, forget it.
Of course, that's the amazing thing about depression: it works within the psychic immune system to maintain its own invisibility. It uses our own adaptiveness to hide the destruction that it's wreaking for as long as it can. If and when it's noticed, there's very little chance that the victim can do anything on their own to fix the problem.
When I was first diagnosed as having depression, in my early twenties, I was able to trace the symptoms back over ten years. I didn't know what it was and I didn't get concerned, because it happened so organically I just assumed it was life unfolding in the ordinary way.
The next time I succumbed to its darkness I again tricked myself. I should have known what it was and actively worked to abolish it, but it managed to slide into my spirit and insinuate itself into my life, again without my noticing. We are a prideful and stubborn creature, and we don't like to admit weakness. Depression masks itself as a weakness, so we hide it rather than treat it like the disease that it is. We accept the social stigma at face value and cluck over the sadness of it, rather than recognize it as a strategy of a willful, malevolent disease that will do whatever it takes to inculcate itself into our lives.
Not as easy question to answer.
For starters, the early signs of depression are entirely internal. Lack of motivation. Lack of pleasure. Lack of focus. Maybe lack of sleep. So if you don't share your life with an incredibly astute and empathic person, nobody else is going to have a snowball's chance in Hell of noticing.
Secondly, symptoms of depression are incremental, and creeping. They build like the lengthening darkness builds after the summer solstice: gradually, naturally, so that it doesn't seem for quite some time that anything is different. We are creatures of routine and habit, so it's easier to believe that nothing has changed by subconsciously adapting to these new circumstances than it is to identify a problem and change to resolve it. Change causes pain, right now. Depression also causes pain, but not right away, and since you can build up a tolerance, it doesn't seem so bad. It's easier to ignore it, deny it, forget it.
Of course, that's the amazing thing about depression: it works within the psychic immune system to maintain its own invisibility. It uses our own adaptiveness to hide the destruction that it's wreaking for as long as it can. If and when it's noticed, there's very little chance that the victim can do anything on their own to fix the problem.
When I was first diagnosed as having depression, in my early twenties, I was able to trace the symptoms back over ten years. I didn't know what it was and I didn't get concerned, because it happened so organically I just assumed it was life unfolding in the ordinary way.
The next time I succumbed to its darkness I again tricked myself. I should have known what it was and actively worked to abolish it, but it managed to slide into my spirit and insinuate itself into my life, again without my noticing. We are a prideful and stubborn creature, and we don't like to admit weakness. Depression masks itself as a weakness, so we hide it rather than treat it like the disease that it is. We accept the social stigma at face value and cluck over the sadness of it, rather than recognize it as a strategy of a willful, malevolent disease that will do whatever it takes to inculcate itself into our lives.
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