depression – Page 5 – Vraxx

Of Mornings and Social Norms

For me the gradual build up of anxiety and depression was so subtle I hardly noticed it. I often chocked it up to getting older and being a bit of a curmudgeon. These days I realize that one of the things I always felt was odd were social norms and a great deal of expectation. There’s an almost Pavlovian response that we expect when we say things like “Hope your day goes well” or “How’s things?” It’s a conditioned response to say just positives so when someone actually says how they feel it can be a case of mental discord.

These days I don’t really smile. I’m used to it, going about my day with minimal contact and little to no expectation. When I do interact it’s a weird blend of automatic responses and trying to be honest. I don’t tell people I’m fine anymore. That word has been out of my emotional vocabulary for a while. When you stop caring about the mask and just say what’s actually going on it’s off putting to most. Those who can still tolerate me in this state, with the overhang of depression are the friends I still try to keep close.

I’ve had to make a lot of difficult choices about my social circle post-divorce, some of them likely interpreted as me abandoning former friends. In my eyes however it’s been as sink/swim choice. Keeping friends who’s presence reminded me of my ex was too much of a trigger. Trying to feign happiness or normality among them was draining and I felt like I was just constantly lying. I don’t lie anymore as I have no need and I don’t expect anything of the circles I have retained (even if their closeness is no longer what it once was). The paradoxical part of depression is that as much as you long for contact, it also makes you push away people. For me I know it’s been a self-awareness of that push/pull. I can see myself doing so, I understand it, there’s a rationale behind it but sometimes it does feel surreal. I’ve built up a tolerance for the pain of self-imposed isolation, of the emotional toll depression takes on a daily basis. I find ways to reach out to the resources I need to (therapist, friends, coworkers) as needed but sometimes it feels like it’s all I can do to maintain balance and prevent myself from sinking into a major depressive episode.

I’ll never sugar coat the difficulties of living with depression. It’s a daily juggling act between meeting social expectations while doing what you can to not send yourself over the edge. Every little bit helps in the fight and knowing when to pull the ripcord and reach out to friends is critical. If you find yourself having a rough time don’t be afraid to let folks know you’re in a bad place. Not everyone will understand that if you suffer from clinical depression that place isn’t something you just “get out of in a day or so” but the ones that do will be an anchor point.

Birthdays, Suicides and Navigating Difficult Times

The recent news of Chester Bennington’s suicide hit me pretty hard. I enjoyed his work with Linkin Park and even his turn as the lead vocal for Stone Temple Pilots.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7873783/linkin-park-chester-bennington-suicide

Like many in the music industry he had his share of demons. Abuse in his youth, substance issues later in life. He hanged himself on the birthday of his friend Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave) who also committed suicide in May. Their music spoke to me; even if only peripherally; when I felt down I could listen to their lyrics and feel like I wasn’t isolated. Pain comes in many forms and often it seems those who touch so many with their expressions of pain, challenges and sometimes redemption are the ones suffering the most inside.

The timing of it all is particularly painful for me. Today is my own birthday and I am reminded of two greats who share the same day as myself, Robin Williams and Ernest Hemingway. Giants in their fields, remember even today, but also struggling for much of their lives.

In my own life, I’ve often used humor as a defense mechanism. Preferring to see others laugh and be amused even when inside I felt isolated and empty. Slowly I’ve taken off my clown make up as it were and I try to present just the me that’s there. Sour attitude, sardonic to a fault and bare. Probably lost a few friends along the way but I feel like at least now I’m being more honest with myself and those around me.

A friend commented that I should reach out if I feel the pull of suicide ever creep back. I somewhat deflected, saying that I have a contingency plan in place for my firearms when that happens. I am far more mindful of my mental and emotional state when things like this happen though. I shift my diet to brace, I try to get a bit more exercise and movement into my daily routine. I avoid negative news where I can. It probably seems weird to someone who’s never dealt with a clinical diagnosis to see the myriad of small things needed to help cope. I often think that in itself is half the reason depressive disorders are so stigmatized. Do what you have to do however and do not let yourself sink. For me, it’s far easier to maintain a flat emotional state than to try to recover once I’ve sunken. If you’re going through a difficult time, or on the cusp of an episode, start the prepping now. Try to give your mind and body as much ammo as needed to deal with the downturn and the stressor responses you’re going through. It isn’t easy, depression never is, but we all have small things we can do to make it through.

Cutting Off the Past/Divorce and Property

I’ve been pretty quiet the last few days. Between work and wrapping up real estate matters for my divorce it hasn’t been the best few days. Selling off a timeshare that my ex-wife and I had purchased when we were engaged has been a painful trip down memory lane.

I still have a few scant happy memories relating to our stay-cations there, but I also have painful memories just prior to us filing for divorce. It’s always a little weird having memories creep up from the last eight years. They don’t feel real for me anymore to be honest. More like that hazy feeling you get right after waking up and trying to remember a dream. I can’t picture the face of my ex-wife anymore, it’s always just a silhouette that I see, and there’s no voice, just murmur. I remember the sounds of water and kids playing, the smell of grilled steaks. That’s about it.

I shouldn’t really complain, the sale of our timeshare thus far has been fairly pain free but knowing that at one time we viewed it as an investment and something we would want to take our kids to makes everything very bittersweet.

While it sounds harsh, I admit, I do understand the logic in having a prenuptial agreement these days. Divorce can become a tangle of contention and he-said/she-said. To me nobody really wins in a divorce you just sort of go into the middle of the ring, throw punches at each other and retire to your corners until someone calls time.

I’ll be happy when the process is over, it will be on less thing tying us together. There’s still one large piece of real estate to be addressed but I don’t know how long that will take. The depression has been particularly strong in the last three weeks. To try and cope I’ve taken to upping my supplements, increasing my exercise (which I’ll be honest I was doing terrible at to begin with). Knowing the feeling of a depressive episode starting has been the principle gain from my time in therapy. “Solving” the issue isn’t quite there, I feel more like I’m muddling through. In truth, coping with clinical depression for me feels like a matter of survival. The rational side of me understands there’s underlying chemical reactions, behavioral patterns and learned responses all at work, but none of that knowledge makes dealing w/the weight, the anhedonia or the sadness any easier.

If you’re going through a similar in challenge in life find the small things with quickly attainable results, even if that thing is simple like “I want to take out the trash” as a goal. Achieving any degree of movement sometimes feels like enough victory to get you going to the next thing. I hope that as this timeshare sale closes, that will be another goal I’ll have achieved and one more step forward.

Memories, Fear and Post-Divorce Depression

When my grandfather’s mental state diminished I remember seeing the pain my family felt as his advancing Alzheimer’s and dementia took away who he was. My greatest fears include the loss my sight, death in general, and death of self, particularly in the form of memory loss.

Following my divorce I had to come face to face with a side effect of depression that sometimes feels just as painful as the anhedonia. The seven years I spent with my ex-wife started to fade after the first six month I left what was our home. Little by little, consciously or subconsciously I started to push the memories down or forget them outright. It’s been over a year since that process started and now I find I can barely see her face.

http://www.healthline.com/health/depression/depression-and-memory-loss#overview1

Depression has an impact on memory and sometimes the unsettling randomized loss or gaps I experience scare me half to death. Feeling like seven years of your life are simply gone is painful. The suppression in my case is very specific, isolated to those things relating to my ex and the marriage. The residual emotional currents are still there, sometimes I feel them as I wake up, like waking from a walking nightmare or a dream I can’t visualize. It’s weird to think that for me, I want nothing more than those echos to be gone so that I have no connection to those seven years.

Depression takes a lot away from you, sometimes because you need to protect yourself, sometimes because part of you is running from something. Figuring out what I can still hold onto and what has to go has been one of the most difficult choices I’ve had to make.

Anxiety and Dealing with the Summer

I’ll admit, while I may not suffer from seasonal affective disorder, with my dysthymia and anxiety I feel like I’m almost the inverse of the norm on SAD. I actually dread summer more than winter or fall.

This summer in particular has been a little rough. Legal and financial matters to tie up relating to the divorce have weighed on me, the weather here is humid and muggy making my usual days just that much more uncomfortable. I’ve tried to focus on short-goal projects as of late. A new VMware lab to tinker with, study material, the occasional game now and then.

When most folks are enjoying the outdoors and celebrating, I recoil and look inward. Maybe it’s because my birthday falls in the middle of summer and this year in particular I have no desire to celebrating getting older. Slowly managing to drag myself outside more as needed, but rarely for ‘pleasure’. I take no joy in going out to see what’s out there. As a close friend described it, life is grey. Sometimes I feel like summer turns me into more of a vampire as I’d rather venture out at night or in the early hours of the morning both to avoid the summer crowds and to avoid the heat. I can barely look back upon my memories and imagine that I ever looked forward to the summers off.

Father’s Day and Introspection

Father’s day is coming up later in the month and given the events of the last two years, divorce, depression it’s made me a bit introspective. My own relationship with my father is non-existent and I realize a sizable chunk of that stems from my own childhood experiences with divorce.

Seeing my parents drift apart and eventually divorce was a painful experience in my pre-teens. Sometimes I wondered how much of it was my fault, I wondered how my father felt about the whole process. Having gone through it myself, I have an idea for the challenges he must have had. Mercifully my ex-wife and I didn’t have children. I doubt I’d be writing today if kids were a factor in my divorce. Looking back I realize just how often I questioned my own fitness at the prospect of becoming a parent. I honestly don’t know if that will ever really be the case for me or if maybe I’ll just serve as a cool uncle for the remainder of my days.

Never been one for holidays but this time around Father’s day has weird sting for me. Maybe I’m just over thinking something that may never be or dwelling on things I can’t change. The weight of it still sits with me but I try to focus on the things I can change for now and not the ones that have passed.

Depression, Nutrition and Shortcuts to Taking Care of Your Dietary Needs

The process of my last major depressive episode involved me dropping weight at a very unhealthy pace (then conversely gaining it all back at an equally unhealthy pace). The reality was I stopped taking care of myself and the biggest and fastest slide was in my diet. I rarely ate and when I did it was often food that wasn’t particularly good for me. In the end it made an already bad problem that much worse and harder to get out of.

I still battle with depression daily but I try to make a few shortcut choices in cooking to help with the days where motivation is a chore. While it sounds fancy, sous vide cooking is nothing more than a water-bath slow cooking method to keep your food at an exact temperature for as long as needed. This means that you can get very accurately cooked steak or very tender pork as an example. I personally use an Anova 800W sous vide to make steak, chicken and pork dishes. Quickly cooling and freezing some of the meals means you can warm up the item and it will have already been ‘pre cooked’. As an example, below is a basic use for chicken breasts.

Cook Once, Eat Five Times: Five Easy Sous Vide Chicken Breast Recipes

When I’m feeling like rewarding myself, I personally prefer steaks. The upshot to using a sous vide however is that while the steak can be cooked to just the right doneness there’s another benefit, being able to use cheaper cuts of meat. You don’t need to splurge for the full rib eye, a flank steak done right can be almost as tender. Buy a few thick steaks from your local Costcos or Sam Club and the price comes down even further.

Besides protein, I try to find vegetable dishes to cook that can last. One of the easiest dishes to pair with any kind of protein is ratatouille. Sure ok if you watched the Disney animated movie you might think “but that’s too fancy”. You don’t need to be as fancy. Ratatouille is fundamentally a ‘poor mans vegetable stew’.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ratatouille-12164

So why put all that effort up front? Ratatouille goes well with a lot of meats and keeps for several days in the fridge. Make a large batch and you don’t have to worry about thinking “what’s for veggies” at the end of the day.

The weekend’s are always hard but if you’re able to get yourself motivated to cook at least once in the week, it will help you for the remainder of the work week when things may be even harder. It sounds like a massive hurdle and I admit it isn’t easy, but eating fast food constantly or dosing up on canned, instant meals high in sodium and low in other essential vitamins doesn’t help you body. We often think of depression as being strictly ‘mental’ but part of that is still tied to our overall health. Autoimmune system, vitamin and mineral levels all contribute to neuroplasticity. While they aren’t a total cure all, they can help you get out of the low-points a bit easier. It’s the same logic as engaging in exercise to improve your health. Personally I find getting out and working out harder than cooking a healthy meal. Depression takes many tools to deal with it, but finding efficient ways of going about it can help.

Depression and Personal Care — Mini-Review Philips Norelco OneBlade

One of the most embarrassing things about depression, for me at least, has been that during the worst of an episode your personal health takes a nose dive. All of the personal hygiene tasks become heavy and loathsome. (Full disclosure the Feature photo above is just a stock photo)

I won’t attempt to say I understand how difficult it is for women living with depression in that regard but I can say from the male perspective one of the things that usually made me cringe was shaving in the morning. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not equating clean shaven or bearded with a degree of depression. I look terrible with facial hair so I try to look clean shaven as a matter of taste but that process becomes more and more of a drag the deeper my depression. On good days, I can run through a full routine of a wet shave with an old school safety razor. It takes a bit longer but it helps to get me moving in the morning and the quality of the shave makes the exercise fulfilling in its own way. Bad days on the other hand being close to a razor becomes an unsettling effort. So now and then I try to use an electric razor. Recently tried the Philips Norelco OneBlade and if you find it difficult to start your morning routine you may want to give it a once over.

Rechargeable, under $40 and with blades that last several months they are a nice alternative to disposable razors or more expensive 3-head shavers. While not nearly as close a shave as my safety razor, I think it’s a helpful grooming aid. It’s possible to use the OneBlade as a dry shaver or with your choice of shaving cream for a wet shave.

http://www.usa.philips.com/c-m-pe/oneblade-face-style-shave

Irritation wasn’t an issue and I don’t have the best skin to begin with. The unit also includes guides for beard use. Taking care of yourself often seems like the biggest waste of time when depression hits hardest so every little tool which helps lessen the burden of taking care of yourself is useful. The cost is also more reasonable than other options.

Navigating the World of Media with Anxiety/Depression

One of the challenges I’ve had on a near daily basis is juggling my general desire to still enjoy TV shows, movies and books without it adversely triggering a depressive episode or ramping my anxiety.

It’s a very fine line I have to juggle yet some times, some themes and depictions pique my interest. Released in Japan in 2016, the anime feature film Koe No Katachi deals with some very mature subject matter. The themes include deafness/disability, bullying, anxiety, depression even suicide is discussed. Unfortunately while the film had a limited theater release overseas, it has yet to have a US release date. I’m contemplating reading the manga but run the risk at utterly spoiling the movie. The few clips that I have seen and the trailer and reviews from other fans point to a very powerful story and an interesting depiction of some of the lows that are experienced by people who have suffered bullying or a sense of being ostracized.

Other recent shows have also touched upon similar themes. Manchester by the Sea, Thirteen Reasons Why come to mind. Knowing a bit of my sensitivity to these types of shows makes navigating popular and award winning shows a delicate balance. While I was able to finish Manchester by the Sea, it was a difficult viewing. Thirteen Reasons I had to stop by the second episode as the focus on suicide was becoming too much for me to comfortably sit through. While some folks are intrigued at the exploration of the types of sadness and depression shown in such works, I understand that for folks like myself who are living with it day by day it’s a very fine line between respectful artistic discussion and glamorizing it.

As you pick and choose the shows you view always try to keep a sense of perspective and know when to step away. There are still a number of shows from my past that I can’t watch due to various memories and triggers and shows that I actively avoid going forward due to how they impact me. It’s an extra layer of thinking that goes into things but with practice navigating them becomes easier.

Occasional Tone Shift For the Blog — Being Less Clinical and Slice of Life Focus

Depression itself is a serious topic but I also realized that my blog is very focused on the clinical side of things so I thought periodically it would be a good idea for me to break from that and just talk about less serious topics.

Food plays a pretty big part of my day and food related routines became one of my coping tools. To that end though I do try to find snacks and things that can be portioned and controlled so that I don’t go crazy. One such snack I’ve enjoyed are Daelman’s Stroopwafels (see link below)

https://www.stroopwafelsbydaelmans.com/en/

More specifically I should say the Mini-Stroopwafels which to me are far easier to portion control. If you’ve read my blog you may have seen that part of my routine to stave off depression is to make a nice hand pour brewed coffee. Stroopwafels, especially the caramel variety go great with a good Kona or French roast. They are small enough that 2-3 will give you a nice little sugar boost without being too sweet.

Normal sized stroopwafels are around four inches in diameter. There’s even a whole process of warming them over your hot coffee to soften them. As fun as that may be, I find the full sized stroopwafel a bit much. Being in my late 30’s I don’t want to get too crazy with the sugar or impact my weight adversely. Indulging in a little snack isn’t terrible but it is an exercise in self control. As I only buy a bag or so at time and only if I’ve been eating healthy otherwise it hasn’t become habit forming. Besides online you can find them at Walmarts (usually individual packages) or at coffee shops. Give them a try if you’re looking to add a little fun to your morning or evening routine.