depression – Page 2 – Vraxx

New Year, Same Depression?

Well OK that isn’t a particularly uplifting title but for me it’s been nearly three years since my divorce and my formal diagnosis of clinical depression. Some things have changed, some haven’t. There are still matters relating to the divorce that I need to attend to but mental health and my therapy course has made at least moderate progress.

I continue to work on my diet, exercise and CBT and for the most part, though I am not ‘joyful’ in any sense of the word, I am less prone to major dips in my mood. Essentially flatlined emotionally I’ve been more attentive to my mood shifts and adjusting my patterns as needed. I took up target shooting which has helped my focus (granted it is a somewhat dangerous combination). Began baking as something outside of my comfort zone with perhaps some mixed results (diet + baking is not a fun balance). I began this blog which I hope has reminded random readers that depression and recovery are a lengthy journey and one that takes patience. I know for a lot of bloggers the idea that I actually don’t go out of my way to promote my blog might seem weird. Really though this blog is less about getting followers and more about having a cathartic option for myself which if it coincidentally helps someone looking for information about depression, all the better.

I have a definite love hate thing with food. Like many folks battling depression, food for me often becomes an escape mechanism. It’s a tricky balance for me though as cooking has also been one of my forms of stress relief. I do genuinely enjoy sharing what I make and there’s a thin line between making a bunch of baked goods and not eating them all myself. As I’m terrible at gift giving, I wound up making multiple batches of cinnamon buns for friends at work and at the range.

With a more properly outfitted shooting rig, I am also trying to be somewhat more social and getting out of the house to do target shooting. I can imagine most mental health care professionals would cringe but I don’t keep ammunition readily available and agreed to safe-keep my weapons in the event my mental health declines.

Drop offset holster for competition shooting.

Perhaps trying to kindle my inner child though, I’ve also taken to LEGOs. Yes this sounds weird but I think being able to sit down and slowly build something provides a similar focus and my gun interests. I am able to see a result in a short order which prevents me from getting too frustrated and giving up too soon.

Everyone has a different treatment option, depression is such a wide spectrum with so many root causes and potential ways to mitigate them that I’d never claim to be expert. I can only share what works for me. If you’re starting off the new year and finding motivation is hard or consistency is not coming naturally. Look at some alternative options, maybe things that are just a little outside of the comfort zone or just variations on the things you’ve done. Novelty has its uses and you never know you may just find something you can become passionate about. Go at your pace, reach out to health care professionals, just remember it’s a long road but you got this.

Halloween and Dealing With My Depression

Halloween is an interesting holiday that has of course kids who love it for the sweets and adults who revel in being someone else for a day. For me though Halloween is not a time I find happiness in. My ex-wife loved it and for a time I enjoyed it. Following the divorce though I realized how little I actually felt towards the celebration.

I don’t begrudge children their fun, far from it. I think the idea of a fright but feeling safe is an important thing for kids to experience. For me it is the idea of masks that I have an uncomfortable relationship with. Anyone battling depression has probably in some small way felt a bit like going out into the world and being around others we are always wearing a mask. We pretend to be OK, the trick we give everyone is convincing them we aren’t hurting on the inside. May sound a bit dramatic to frame it that way but the reality is I wear a mask every day. I’ve learned to be slightly more open with my depression, I don’t pretend to be happy when asked and I’m probably painfully blunt when I am feeling low. My coping mechanisms may not fit everyone’s norm but I mix my activities (target shooting, baking) with more conventional treatments (CBT, fitness, diet). I continue to fight self-isolation and I try to find my release valves where I can.

It’s definitely easy to fall into negative habits in holidays like this. Isolation, sweets everywhere are a quick escape. While I don’t have as much of a sweet tooth, I do prefer to shy away from crowds and I loathe holiday traffic. Still though I try to reach out to my friends abroad and email my well wishes. I still have friends who enjoy cosplay and of course Halloween is for them a time to show their skills, but I can’t smile with them anymore. I see people in costume and while I may see craftsmanship or creativity, there’s no joy in it for me as a spectator. So here I sit pondering what I will do, what mask do I put on as I try to navigate around crowds of people trying to be whatever their imagination desires? If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety or any form of mental illness, I know it’s hard to know just how to act when for others it’s a time of celebration. Find your own path with it. For me, I may hit the range and wrap my day with a good book or maybe even a simple Halloween movie like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Caliber or Quantity – Friendships and Clinical Depression

Shortly after my divorce one of the first things I did was shut off social media. Besides the usual barrage of questions I realized that most of my circle were really tied to my ex-wife and the stress of contact was too much for me to deal with.

As I’ve slowly reached back out to some of the people I felt close to I realized that there’s a trend towards quantity of friends versus the caliber of friends. As a target shooter I prefer using caliber than quality, so bear with me. Social media conceptually is a neat idea, I get that. Reconnecting, staying informed about distant friends is all well and good. Somewhere down the line though social media shifted and it became more about the idea of followers or a sense of external validation. Just about every social media structure is about who liked your post or how many re-shares or views you garnered. That’s never appealed to me. The idea that a post is worthy or unworthy of attention or comment has always seemed weird. While these days my social media foot print is extremely small and very curated. I’d like to think that now in my forties I’ve come to believe that it’s the degree of closeness with my circle that’s been more important.

Caliber of friends, not quantity matters more to me. It’s one thing to have 20 friends give you a one word “Nice” to a post and quite a different thing to have someone talk to you about what you wrote or what you re-shared. We’ve lost a bit of that in the social networking world of today. It’s rather ironic for me as I work in a tech related field. When it comes to friendships however even a two sentence followup to me feels better than having any actual number of likes. Don’t get me wrong, in Reddit i almost never down vote anything. If something is genuinely interesting and I think someone else might want to see it, I’ll up vote. Call me karma indiscriminate if you want but if that up vote makes someone else that I don’t know happy, then hey what’s the harm.

Navigating any social networking space with depression feels like a game of minesweeper. There was a time that I enjoyed reading about anime, photography etc, then I realized those environments would trigger negative thinking and memories of my married life. Things I had no want to revisit. These days I don’t think of just random people who engage me online as ‘friends’, they are contacts, acquaintances . Like minded they may be but we don’t have any deeper degree of interaction. This change in how I treat the online community has made a world of difference for me. I choose to engage people and it lets me focus on the content and sincerity of the conversations.

Life is hard enough juggling mental health in any form. While the online world can be a useful resource and sometimes an escape hatch, it’s also full of potential hazards. Finding an efficient way to navigate it will always be a challenge. If you’re finding those types of communities are pushing you into a dark place, take that step back, look at filtering the information you subject yourself to. Here’s hoping you are able to find a good corner of the net to call your own.

Stepping Outside of Your Comfort Zone – Trying New Things

Depression does a number of things to your sense of enjoyment and twists how you experience day to day challenges. At the darkest point of my last depressive episode anhedonia turned everything I used to enjoy into bland, seemingly meaningless activities. CBT/Talk Therapy helped me push through and being able to provide feedback to my therapist gave me a clearer picture of the things that began working and the things that weren’t. In the last year or so I’ve tried to do things that were related to my past interest but not quite.

I’ll preface here that as a hunter/target shooter what follows may or may not trigger negative reactions to some, so please if you are sensitive about firearms you can stop here. If not please continue scrolling down.

Before my divorce I thought my passion lay in photography but eventually I felt like I was hitting several artistic walls and I stopped feeling like I was really gaining anything. Social media made it much worse as there was always this weird sense that I needed to appease some stupid FB doctrine of likes. Following my divorce I realized anhedonia was perhaps the biggest symptom of my depression. Nothing I did felt fulfilling. All the old activities I did were bland and in some cases painful as they triggered me to remember my married years. My ex-wife was not a fan of firearms. She tolerated them for my sake I think but I don’t think she really enjoyed that I had an interest. Free from those concerns as I improved through therapy I looked to take up my side arms again.

The occasional weekend at the range turned into real drilling at the range. Cleaning and getting out there to shoot became one of the few times I could do something and be totally focused. A year and half later after ‘getting back’ on the range, I find myself helping friends to rekindle their interest and me looking to improve enough to shoot in an amateur league. Two sessions down and I’m feeling great that while each league night poses some challenges and I’m certainly testing myself in skills I’ve never used, I am learning a lot. That in itself is a big win in my book.

By contrast my other exploration outside of my comfort zone will seem like a complete homebody. Bread. Baking was never my thing in my teens or as a young adult. When I was married my wife was the predominant baker in the household. It was something that in some ways seemed to be too involved for me (stand mixers, yeast, proofing) but I found it to be so far off from my normal types of cooking that everything was interesting. Every little bit of knowledge became novel and a potential thing I could grow from.

Working through depression is never easy and I find myself certainly walking a fine line with my choice of coping tools. Everyone has to find their own path, their own means to staving off the depression in a constructive, healthy manner. While my ‘bullets and bread’ approach won’t apply to everyone, I hope it gives you pause to think about something you might consider trying that’s just outside of your comfort zone.

The Most Difficult Question I Have Tried to Ask Myself — What Are My Passions These Days?

This would seem to be a simple enough question for someone to answer but for me, it isn’t. I suppose I could say technology is my passion, though really it’s more my vocation as there’s certainly a lot about the use of technology I don’t agree with. For a time photography was my passion, but that died off during my divorce. Hunting and marksmanship are gradually becoming a strong activity for me to focus and gain a bit of stress relief from but I’m not quite sure I’d call it my passion.

In some ways I’d like to think that ‘growth’ is my passion. For several years I felt like I was effectively stuck, going nowhere fast. An unpleasant divorce certainly punctuated that sensation. Two years post-divorce and I find myself trying to grow as a person and be better than the man I was. I’ve practiced target shooting, I’ve tried baking, I’ve tried to blog about the not-so-fun topic of mental health. I think for most folks growth might seem too vague a thing to call one’s passion but I think for anyone who feels trapped by depression, anxiety or any mental illness change of any kind can be tremendous.

So here I am today getting ready to do some competitive shooting for the first time. Being around guns is scary enough for most folks, being around other season shooters is intimidating for me to say the least. I haven’t drawn a weapon from a holster since I was in my teens but I’m trying to push myself to get out there, interact with people. Even if I fail utterly, I’m hoping this will serve as a learning experience and I can study other good shooters to improve myself, even if just a bit. If you’re struggling to find something to latch onto, I understand completely. It was a lot of trial and error and certainly a lot of going outside my comfort zone to find something that actually made me ‘feel’ anything. Start slow, it won’t happen overnight but gradual steps can help you find something that’s you or something that can help you become a different you.

Slow Days of Summer

OK that seems backwards right? Summer is supposed to be an active time but truth be told, for me summer has been a work slog punctuated by the occasional range visit.

I’ve been doubling down on two vastly different coping tools these last few

months. My focus time getting behind my guns at the range practicing and bread making. These two things have nothing to do with one another but they work for me. Firearms are always a touchy subject and especially with gun violence in the news it sometimes feels like I’m courting controversy on a nearly weekly basis. The gradual improvements and things I can try make it an activity I’m able to sink my teeth into and that is hard to come by with my anhedonia.

With bread making while there’s no controversy there’s certainly carbs. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find out that while the bread can go about three days outside it’ll last another week in the fridge meaning my efforts can hang around a while as a spare snack bread or quick-breakfast option. Anyone struggling with depression can probably attest that making a healthy breakfast in the morning can seem like a monumental task when an episode hits and that’s no different for me.

Several friends announced their engagements and it has at times been a difficult thing to hear. It’s weird knowing that while I am happy for them all, the prospect also gives me pause and at times becomes cringe inducing. It’s been over two years since my divorce and matrimony holds little in the way of appeal. Maybe some day I’ll be ok enough to attend a wedding again, but today is certainly not that day.

While people complain about the heat and make summer plans, I’m mostly looking inward. Another year older, a lot of things to reflect upon and change. I find my blog to be quiet as of late, with no real profound words of wisdom I can share, just the daily struggles and what’s worked and hasn’t. Here’s to hoping that for anyone else struggling this season with depression in any form that there are at least a few days of solace sprinkled amid the rest of the days.

Fourth of July — Some Self-Reflection and Thoughts Going in to 2019

The Fourth of July is an interesting time. In the past I’d spend it at some event with the family looking at fireworks. Being partially color blind though fireworks never really quite held the sway for me as those around me. This year I find myself just around the corner from the 4-0 as well. In some ways parts of my life are better, other ways not so much. Lot of regrets, lots of things I’m still angry about.

With 2019 not that far off I’m trying to focus on the really critical things. Leisure and pleasure are back burnered for a while, trying to key on the things I need for both mental health and physical wellbeing are first and foremost. My circle of friends remains a fairly small, but trusted group. Work is work I suppose, neither particularly positive and its negatives are about the norm for the last few years.

I hope to cook more balance my diet and activity. I hope to study more to give myself more options going forward. Realizing that I will start to slow down on my ability to keep pace has me reminding myself that I need to find better ways to do all the things I’ve done in the past.

Amid the fireworks and loud noises and the raucous celebrations for our country’s independence, I hope that folks aren’t forgetting to look forward at the things that have yet to be done. Here’s wishing anyone who follows my blog a very Happy Fourth and here’s hoping the later half of 2018 is a good one.

Bullets and Bread – My Unorthodox Approach To My Mental Health

Dysthymia is a weird beast. In most ways it allows me to function seemingly unaffected by the pull of depression. For most folks I think describing dysthymia as chronic depressive disorder or even high functioning depression gives a better idea of what it does. For me the daily grind is just background noise these days. I rarely feel ‘good’ about the coming days but I don’t necessarily experience the anxiety or dread I did during the lowest point of my depression. CBT, diet shift, increases in activity have helped to bolster me against its effects but obviously it’s an ongoing lifestyle change.

Some of my self-care approaches and coping tools will seem very odd. Most probably won’t work for others but I thought I’d outline them here. I’ve always enjoyed being a target shooter, there’s something about the focus that really works for me. I’m able to get out of my emotions, pull away from the looped thoughts and just focus on the activity at hand. That might not sound like much to some, but getting out of a state of rumination is extremely difficult for me at times. There’s also the old saying that there is no such thing as a bad day at the range. I also enjoy trying my hand here and there at cooking. Asian, French, Italian and casual American cuisine have all been things I’ve enjoyed making, be it traditional recipes or trying things with a tech slant like sous vide cooking. Being able to have a tangible product at the end of the process is something I still find very fulfilling. The one thing I had never tried however, was baking.

Baking was always my ex-wife’s thing. She enjoyed making desserts and sweets for friends. While I enjoyed the occasional sweet, I was usually more of a savory type of eater. Recently as stress increases at work were weighting on me, I decided to just try blending two things and seeing if the double-dose would help. So here I was on two extremes of my hobbies. In the early morning I readied my guns, cleaned prepped and packed up. Downing some coffee and a quick breakfast I headed out for some time at the range. My usual target practice concluded, I came home, hopped in the shower and immediately after I dried off, began my trial by fire in baking.

Bread always seemed like a mystery to me. I had tried here and there to use simple batters in things like brownies or cakes but dealing with a yeasted bread was a whole new thing for me. I decided to try out a Hokkaido bread, which seemed easy enough as it didn’t require a lot of intricate activation of the yeast. So here I was, stand mixer, whisks and flour replacing my pistol, protective gear and gunpowder. I found myself second guessing a lot, which I suppose is to be expected. Did I reduce the starter down enough? Did I over-knead the dough? In the end, after allowing the dough to proof and then the oddly satisfying cutting and portioning out of the dough, I slapped everything into the oven and waited… and waited. Patience has never particularly been one of my strengths but I hoped I hadn’t fouled up anything. The timer finally went off, I opened up the oven and hey… it looked like bread. Waiting to have that little mound of dough cool was probably the most frustrating thing as I could smell the results… which seemed right, but the final test would be tearing into the rolls and seeing if the texture worked.

To my relief it was actually good! Soft, fluffy and not too-sweet. I had the chance to share my creation with my mother (who is herself an excellent cook) and I was pleasantly surprise that even she approved of my end product. We got to talking about it, things I could try the ‘next time’ I made a loaf.

So here I was, morning to early evening, having gone from bullets to bread. Tired but satisfied and unlike my ‘range days’ where all I had to show were targets with gaping holes, here I had something that you could touch, smell and best of all eat. Everyone’s treatment course for their depression is bound to be unique. For some folks that means a mix of psychotherapy, medication and a mixture of lifestyle changes. For me, it’s been about retraining my thoughts, feeding my body things I was probably neglecting and working through my stressors in ways that were ‘me’ and not destructive. If you’ve followed along with my blog or are finding me for the first time I hope you are able to find your ‘Bullets and Bread’ activity that helps you best.

The Public View and Celebrity Suicide

The past few years have seen the number of celebrity suicides increase considerably. The deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain has been very heavily covered, some of it has been useful discussion some of it not so much.

The media has commented about both celebrities struggling with addiction, depression and various martial issues. Kate Spade’s death and some of the indications that she was possibly nearing divorce hit me pretty hard. Divorce and depression is a combination I would not wish upon anyone. It can break you from the inside out, affecting you mentally, physically and financially. Regardless of social standing, economic standing the impact of depression and the stresses of divorce are brutal for anyone. No matter how well off someone seems the loss is intense and it doesn’t simply go away with the wave of a hand. In many ways the finalization of divorce is really just the start to the battle.

On one level, media coverage is helpful in the sense that public awareness is raised. On the other, I’ve found that some of the salacious headlines and click bait paint a terrible picture of the public’s seeming need to know the ‘why’ of suicides. There’s always questions, even in the case of Kate Spade in which she left a note. In both cases the press has often discussed the family left behind the ex-wives, the daughters, the girlfriends.

As someone living with dysthymia and a target-shooter, I’ve had to stay on top of any feelings of major depression or suicidal ideation. For me at least, the effort is like forever being on guard duty. You are required to be vigilant at all times and know how to respond when the warning signs flare up. That’s certainly easier said than done. Feeling next to nothing, being emotionally flat all the time is rough at the best of times and I can understand how for some it feels like an endless slog. I’m not saying I have answers for anyone in that regard, we all have to find out own path when dealing with mental health but try to be mindful of your mental state. If you start to have thoughts of taking your own life, take that step back, contact a hotline, close friends anyone to act as a sound board.

Suicide Prevention: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Tell Free: 1-800-273-8255

TED Talk Commentary Jonathan Schoenmaker — Conversations and Depression

Dutch physics student Jonathan Schoenmaker presented at a TED Talk and I felt others might benefit from the frankness of his discussion. One of the most difficult things to understand about depression is that the means to treating and coping with depression vary greatly.

In his presentation, Schoenmaker makes note of four types of ‘helping’ that his friends tried and what worked and didn’t. The honestly of his responses might be off putting for some but I think necessary to hear. Go through the video (~9 minutes). You’ll see some of my commentary below.

“Good Life”
I sometimes think of this as the ‘Grass is Greener’ fallacy. There’s always a friend that will try tell you how much you have to look forward to, that tells you how good things are in your life, thinking that somehow you’ve forgotten these things. For me at least it’s never been about comparisons or thinking how much worse something could be. I’m already a cynic and mostly pragmatic about things. Knowing my life could be worse is simply a reason for frustration. As Schoenmaker noted, it often just feels like people are raising the issue of “Why are you being a crybaby”. People suffering from clinical depression know that there’s always a ‘worse’ thing that could be right around the corner. The opening statement of Schoenmaker’s talk probably echoes it best, depression isn’t necessarily wanting to die, it’s sometimes no wanting to live. It isn’t about what’s good in your life, sometimes it is imply that you can’t feel or connect to any of that.

“Oh, Thanks I’m Cured Now”
This is perhaps the most frustrating for most people when they try to open up. While I won’t diminish the influence of ‘positive mental attitude’ it isn’t a cure-all. I’ve often found this to be something of a semantic debate as people associate ‘being depressed’ with ‘clinical depression’. As Schoenmaker reminds us, clinical depression is an actual illness. Saying to ‘unthink’ your way out of it is like saying ‘Just don’t have the flu’. Folks will always have an ‘answer’ to your depression, they’ll suggest ‘try this exercise’ or ‘eat this herb’ or ‘read this book’. From medically minded folks ‘take this pill’. There’s no one-size fits all remedy and that’s the hardest part about living with any form of clinical depression. Each thing can contribute to being able to cope with your state but there’s no single thing that immediately wipes away depression.

“Here When You Need to Talk”
This is a weird case, and perhaps the most well meaning type of help which sometimes goes awry. I experienced this all the time during my divorce and it was disheartening and frustrating to no end. Often your closest friends will want you to be able to speak about what’s going on but I found and what wasn’t mentioned in Schoenmaker’s speech is that the same friends who want to know how you are doing will often fall into the traps of the earlier two types of helping. Friends mean well, they want you to be able to get through and process your depression but most people have no idea how to be a sympathetic listener. It’s oddly passive and I think that is a bigger challenge than most people realize. As a guy it’s probably the last thing we want to do before our friends. To show vulnerability, to show weaknesses isn’t an easy thing to do. It’s sometimes back-sliding when as we try to vent or show our frustration that the response becomes a “but your life is so good” or “just try not being depressed”. For me at least it was that very loop which caused me to withdraw from a lot of my old circle. It’s also one of the reasons I feel that therapists and psychologist provide a useful outlet. Friends who are able to listen empathetically are my anchor and in concert with therapy have been my main outlet for coping with my dysthymia.

“Just Sit Here With Me”
This seems like the most counter intuitive but for some people it’s a bedrock. For Schoenmaker other outlets provided him a chance to vent. Music was his creative outlet but what was lacking for him was simply to sit and be there with friends. No judgement, no prodding, just being able to be there in the moment. While that works for some it isn’t always a good fit. For me this sort of half worked. There are certainly groups of my friends that I can still just hang out and feel comfortable in my own skin. Others however I can only handle in small doses. Sometimes I wonder if that’s because I feel as though I can’t be frank about what I am or am not feeling. It’s like that knee-jerk reaction we all have when someone says “How’s it going”. How often have you ever actually answered that question in truth? Disconnection and loneliness are certainly one of the most dangerous parts of depression. While I don’t think trying to be a massive social butterfly is necessarily going to work for everyone, having a core that you can interact with honestly I think is vitally important.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. As I said at the start, different methods work for different people and you may have to gradually teach your friends what works and what doesn’t. For me it lead to a lot of self reflection about who I could and couldn’t be that brutally honest with. It isn’t easy to tell someone “I know you mean well but you’re actually making me feel like shit.” Find what works for you, work on incremental improvement. That’s been my approach thus far and I hope that others are able to find their treatment path as well.