Depression — My Experience

Imag­ine you have had a good day. It doesn’t need to have been sen­sa­tion­al, just good. Maybe you had a nice meal out in good com­pa­ny, you made love, or your favourite foot­ball team won a big game. Just some­thing that had a feel good fac­tor attached and brought an aware­ness that things were going well.

Now imag­ine you wake up the next morn­ing and some­thing has hap­pened. You open your eyes and things imme­di­ate­ly look dif­fer­ent. Imag­ine that inside your head some­body has tipped over a bot­tle of ink that makes every­thing now look dark. You can still see, but every­thing is dark. Grey. Cloud­ed. There’s some new weight attached to you too. On your leg some­where, a death­ly cold heavy weight has been attached to you and it is now going to be your con­stant com­pan­ion in every­thing you do. You can actu­al­ly feel it. Slow­ing you down, pulling you down even, weigh­ing you down. And all the time the dark­ness.

You still have to get up, to show­er, to brush your teeth, to go to work and to get on with your life. Yes­ter­day still hap­pened and you know intel­lec­tu­al­ly that it felt good but the good feel­ing is gone. So gone that you can’t feel it or con­nect with it any­more at all. In fact it’s more oblit­er­at­ed than mere­ly gone.

Depres­sion has arrived.

Expe­ri­ence tells you that this could last days now, maybe even weeks or months. If you are my age and you have been sub­ject to these episodes for as long as I have you know the feel­ing. You have your tools, your resources, your books and your Coun­cil­lor avail­able if nec­es­sary. If you are lucky and han­dle it well it may be tol­er­a­ble and a bur­den sole­ly on your­self that lasts a few days. Through­out those few days neg­a­tive thoughts, only ever neg­a­tive thoughts, will seek to join forces with that dark­ness and with that heavy weight to pull you down even fur­ther. It’s like a bat­tle against grav­i­ty just to stay upright. If those thoughts get any momen­tum at all they will mul­ti­ply and try to destroy you and every­thing around you.

The impacts might go beyond your own head. It might affect your loved ones, even friends or acquain­tances. You might need to go to see that Coun­cil­lor and med­ica­tion, even in the very worst case hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion to avoid self-harm, may come on to the agen­da.

Depres­sion does not, in my case any­way, have an obvi­ous cause. But once it devel­ops and meets your ‘trig­gers’ you know well that it can get much worse. You need to learn what those trig­gers are and avoid them. And you need to try to muster the strength to fight it. Fight­ing it means try­ing amaz­ing­ly hard just to do very sim­ple things. Get­ting out of that bed, hav­ing that show­er, going out­side, talk­ing civil­ly to oth­ers instead of shut­ting down and becom­ing intro­vert­ed or push­ing peo­ple away. Tak­ing sun­light if it can be found. Eat­ing.

In most cas­es life can go on and oth­ers will have no idea what you are going through. Oth­ers will be bliss­ful­ly unaware that you are strug­gling. In this sce­nario cop­ing mech­a­nisms are work­ing and ‘the act’ of pre­tend­ing life is nor­mal is suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ing the nec­es­sary veneer of nor­mal­i­ty. Every­thing is dark and heavy and hope­less to you, but your cop­ing mech­a­nisms are work­ing well. You’ll make it.

Some­times the cop­ing mech­a­nisms don’t work. In my life­time I have had a num­ber of episodes of self-harm, some of them pret­ty dan­ger­ous episodes. I’ve also had peri­ods where I have been on med­ica­tion. I’ve been hos­pi­talised on two very sep­a­rate occa­sions and I have had a Coun­cil­lor who knows my very thoughts and per­son, my past and my present, for 18 years now. Don’t lie or hide any­thing to or from your Coun­cil­lor. Some­times I am in reg­u­lar con­tact with her and ses­sions are fre­quent, but more often now they are infre­quent ‘check­ing in’ events with the odd ses­sion just reg­u­lat­ing my thoughts, my trig­gers, my behav­iours.

Depres­sion should how­ev­er nev­er be con­fused with ordi­nary sad­ness, grief or the nor­mal ups and downs of life. Every life tri­al isn’t ‘depres­sion’. Every­one isn’t depressed. Inter­est­ing­ly I haven’t been on med­ica­tion nor had any of the more seri­ous depres­sive attacks since 2014. 2014 was the year my Father died. But that wasn’t it. In the last cou­ple of years alone I’ve lost Mum, Briege and Kay and I’ve fought can­cer.

Even writ­ing that last sen­tence and read­ing it back is hor­rif­ic. It’s hard to believe it’s all hap­pened. I’ve been deeply sad, grief strick­en and stressed at times almost beyond belief. In fact nobody will con­vince me that any­thing oth­er than grief and work relat­ed stress linked to spe­cif­ic events gave me can­cer. Yet I hadn’t been depressed. We should not con­fuse depres­sion with sad­ness, grief or the cut and thrust of life, and even death. Depres­sion is dif­fer­ent.

Dur­ing my can­cer treat­ment I was encour­aged to see the Coun­cil­lor at St. Lukes and I did. A nice woman, she asked me if I had ever suf­fered from depres­sion and my response, ‘I’ve had depres­sion since before it was sexy’ made her smile.

Depres­sion is not a fad. I can’t trace when it began for me and, just because the worst episodes hadn’t hap­pened for some time, I nev­er assumed I’d beat­en it. I’d nev­er not have my coun­cil­lor on board. It’s a nec­es­sary resource.

I’m writ­ing this from my Broth­ers apart­ment in Spain and on the table beside me is David D. Burns sem­i­nal work ‘The Feel­ing Good Hand­book’. I haven’t opened it on this trip, or on sev­er­al trips, but I brought it with me and I always do. It’s a resource. Breath­ing prop­er­ly, long walks, med­i­ta­tion and con­trol­ling my thoughts are all resources, strate­gies to see off or fight depres­sion. I have used these for so many years now some of the respons­es feel auto­mat­ic. But still they don’t always work.

The dance with dark­ness can arrive at unex­pect­ed times yet can stay away at expect­ed ones. It can be incred­i­bly ran­dom. My first episode of self-harm occurred when I was 20 in Scot­land and result­ed in a short peri­od in hos­pi­tal. My worst and longest peri­od was after my mar­riage broke up in 2005. That was def­i­nite­ly a trig­ger­ing event but it was lat­er acer­bat­ed by my own drink­ing and abuse of my body and my own well­be­ing. I myself turned a sad event not of my choos­ing into a deep depres­sive peri­od very much of my own mak­ing. I hadn’t learned enough then about self-care and I was des­per­ate and reck­less. The most dan­ger­ous peri­od was in 2011 when I had a total break­down, sub­stance abuse and episodes of self-harm. This result­ed in a lengthy peri­od of med­ica­tion and a short peri­od of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion.

If there is a bot­tom to the realms of depres­sion, and I’d nev­er be so arro­gant as to think that there is, that’s when I reached mine. So far. Fin­gers crossed. That episode was the time it spilled over and my par­ents had to be told by Briege. Dad in par­tic­u­lar was very upset. It’s amaz­ing to think now that pro­fes­sion­al­ly I not only con­tin­ued to func­tion in this peri­od but I flour­ished. I was mov­ing into the ESB job, a big per­son­al suc­cess for me, and I was per­form­ing work relat­ed TV and Radio inter­views reg­u­lar­ly. Yet I was com­plete­ly bro­ken. You can nev­er be sure by a person’s appear­ance, or even by their per­for­mance, what’s going on for them so always try to be kind.

As I write this in 2022 I am sad, rid­dled with grief and regret, wor­ried about my health and stressed about my future work direc­tion and my chil­dren. All life chal­lenges of a seri­ous and fun­da­men­tal nature. But I have not been depressed. Depres­sion can be life threat­en­ing and a dread­ful bur­den but it can also be reg­u­lat­ed, con­trolled and met head on.

Can it be beat­en?

Who knows? One day at a time, one week, one year. Learn your trig­gers, devel­op your skills and resources, ask for help, and keep going. Go gen­tly.

Pho­to:

Explana­to­ry — The events of recent years, grief and ill­ness, have put me in reflec­tive mood and I’ve been putting my views, learn­ings and expe­ri­ences into writ­ing in recent months. It’s more ther­a­peu­tic than any­thing else and most of it will prob­a­bly not be pub­lished. I’m not sure I have the moti­va­tion left to seek out Pub­lish­ers and ‘sell myself’ any­way. I’ve put my views of a life spent in the ‘Irish Left’ down in writ­ing, as well as my grief and can­cer jour­ney. It would indeed be a ver­i­ta­ble ‘hotch potch’ of a book. But maybe most it will stay pri­vate. Men­tal health how­ev­er is some­thing that touch­es us all in some way at some time and I’ve been bat­tling with it for a very long time. 34 years. Once upon a time I was afraid to talk about it. Lat­er I was ashamed of myself for car­ry­ing it. Then still lat­er I was in denial about it. But now I want to set the record straight in my own way. If it’s helps a sin­gle per­son through a sin­gle minute of a dif­fi­cult day it will be worth writ­ing this. Go gen­tly with each oth­er, but most­ly with your­self).’