depression – Page 7 – Vraxx

Immunity, Awareness and Media

Sorry couldn’t think of a snazzier title, but I thought it good to highlight a recent CNN article regarding Olympian Allison Schmitt who came forward about her struggle with depression.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/health/turning-points-allison-schmitt-depression-struggle/index.html

I think for someone in her position, especially something as competitive as Olympic caliber swimming, her willingness to publicly discuss her diagnoses and struggle is a big deal. The first statistic mentioned in the article is that 6.7% of adults have had at least one depressive episode. Figures on how many people suffer from chronic depression or major depressive disorder are more difficult to come by. One of the sobering thoughts is that there’s no such thing as an immunity to depression. It can strike just about anyone. While physical activity is often suggested as one of the first ways to combat depression if it can befall an Olympian you realize it’s a multi-layer problem.

Comedians, business icons, every day people. We all face struggles, we all face the possibility that we may be suffering from clinical depression. If there is some solace it is that now people are coming forward and trying to get folks to seek help. I know I was probably on a very bad road leading up to my divorce and while it is painful and difficult taking those first steps to get therapy, to look at treatment options has made a significant difference.

Pancakes for One

I woke up on Labor day with no sense of wanting to do anything. I had next to no motivation, no desire to get out there and experience a ‘holiday’. People smiling, the muggy weather, none of it made me feel particularly like going out. So I found myself doing something I haven’t done in a while, making a breakfast for one. Usually my breakfast is pretty plain, some yogurt, maybe warming a left over or two. I rarely have motivation for much else.

I used to enjoy cooking for my ex-wife and her father. It made me feel like I had a place in their home. These days home seems like a weird thing for me to say. I don’t really feel like I’m home here either in my condo. There was a time I would cook to relieve stress, to eat with a purpose, now though it’s just for the sake of not eating badly. I hope that in the future I can find that fire again and want to cook for the joy of cooking but until then, it’s just pancakes for one.

Self Help Books and Perspective

As my therapy sessions are now more spread out I’ve continued to try to find books and other resources to help me maintain perspective and find ways to cope with my depression, divorce and all the small nuances in between.

One of the small aspects that I’ve found somewhat vexing lies in the approaches of both types of texts at times. Here’s the thing that I feel a lot of text misses. There’s depression and clinical depression. Everyone’s felt depressed, usually that’s situational with very specific events that trigger it. Divorce obviously being a big one. Clinical depression however isn’t simply triggered by any one thing at times. I find a lot of divorce books sort of gloss this over and the tone and approaches they maintain sometimes just feed into the negative loop of depression. On the other hand most texts about battling clinical depression don’t overlap with coping with major trigger events like divorce. So you’re sort of left with one book in your right hand, and another in your left.

Most texts about coping with depression share common tools with those that talk about recovering from divorce. Therapy, communication, meditation, exercise are all common tools. Most books on divorce don’t discuss neurochemistry or other dietary changes to help cope they just gloss over avoiding “bad foods”.

I’m not trying to say that self-help books are useless. There’s valuable wisdom and insight now and then but you have to take it with a grain of salt. Books can’t pin point anything specific to you, it’s broad strokes. I try to remind myself of for everything I read. Much like those books, I feel my blog may verbalize my own pain and my own trials and I hope that if anyone chances upon it that they understand that there are people out there struggling too. Hopefully some of the tools I’ve listed help others.

Milestones and Making it Through

I had started September fairly flat emotionally but as the first few days passed I found my depression getting pretty heavy. It took a day or so for me to realize what was weighing on me. The tail end of the month would have marked our five year wedding anniversary.

This year it just represents a day on a calendar. It’s sobering as milestones come and go. First birthday without the spouse, first Christmas, first Valentines. It puts things in perspective. For most folks holidays are a time to be around friends but as I am these days I feel too prickly and too sensitive to be around large groups of friends. Those circles I do still keep in touch with I’d rather just have a nice short conversation with on the day of. Eventually I’ll find ways to get myself to engage w/my friends more but for now there’s a lot of reworking of my own mental state first.

Unsocial Media — Spoken Word “Look Up” by Gary Turk

Have a quick view of this YouTube spoken word piece by Gary Turk.
This actually came up during a session with my therapist but I think the message is a sobering one. If you are sensitive to pieces about depression please take appropriate measures before viewing this clip.

I commented yesterday about social media being a double edged sword but I feel like this piece speaks well to the changes that ‘social’ media brought about to people actually being social. I am more guilty of this than I’d want to admit, it affected my family, my spouse and a good chunk of my friends. When I disconnected from the social media word I realize I’d be isolating myself but at the same time I made interaction more real when I did engage. As much as technology is a part of my life, do try to let go of it now and then. Food for thought.

Technology and Depression — Double Edged Sword of The Connected World

I make my living in IT, which for the most part has been a positive but I think the industry as it’s become more mainstreamed in some ways has brought about a lot of the negative parts of itself into the lives of basically everybody. The irony here is that the sheer level of connectedness we have w/the Internet and real time communication has in some ways fed into the fears and triggers for people who suffer from depression.

Social Media’s Flip Side — There was a time I thought FB and other forms of social media were interesting and as the years drew on, as people popularized the social media platforms; whatever they were; I started to feel like the whole concept was becoming mired in an “ooh look at me” popularity contest like back in high school. The most painful personal experience for me was that I realized that FB became more important than face to face time. Maybe it was a symptom of the other problems in my marriage, or just another facet but I realized at times my now ex-wife would rather catch up on her FB feed than really talk to me. My depression and attitude were certainly a factor, I doubt I was pleasant to engage. I was never big on wanting to be popular, I shy away from the lime light, but I do enjoy being heard for opinions and discussions. Key word, discussions. These days I’ve killed off most of my mainstream social media and instead work through smaller networks or environments where managing who I communicate with is much more an elective choice.

Cyber-bullying and the Anonymous Culture — This to me might be the biggest pain point about social media and the connected communities out there. It used to be that you had to endure the possibility of being harassed at school for being different, for being an academic, how you looked, how wealthy you were. Now with the digital age though the torment doesn’t stop just because you’re outside certain walls. I can’t imagine being a parent, wanting to protecting your kid from negativity only to realize the world out there isn’t built that way. I won’t say that you need to isolate your kids in a protective bubble, since everyone’s kid is a precious snowflake but somehow parents and kids need to take responsibility for the negative things they say and do. The anonymous nature of the net has bothered me in that the minute responsibility and blame are thought to not exist, we see the absolute worst in people. But Vraxx you say, your blog is anonymous. Well sorta, I won’t divulge my full name though it’s easy enough to lookup. My first name is Addison, I’m male, 38 and a recent divorcee. That’s about all the world needs to know about me. Other than that I am just one of many voices out there. I hope that as laws and the systems we use to communicate improve that we find ways to allow for the freedom to communicate but at the same time the ability to hold each other responsible for the things we say/do. It might sound like I’m shitting on the first amendment but it’s a global culture now and folks have to realize that there are boundaries that we need to start drawing somewhere.

Art Therapy, iPads and Pigment

One of the things that I began using as a coping tool which surprised even me, was art therapy. I’ll be the first to tell you that before really coming to grips with my depression I had written off ‘adult coloring books’ as a weird trending idea drummed up by someone who thought they could market something to the multitudes of people suffering from depression.

I can report however that art therapy does have a place in helping with depression, stress and anxiety. I am generally not a huge fan of iOS apps outside of those used for media consumption. However, I took a chance on an app called Pigment after I saw the UI design. (Pigment — http://apple.co/2brP9MI) Handy for when I’m working or just having trouble sleeping, the application provides an easy to use interface, the option to backup your creations and reset them. Recently (much to my surprise) they even added a feature to import photos you’ve taken and try to covert them into usable painting canvases. I say ‘try’ because the system basically does a black and white conversion allowing you to color in the areas that are now white.

If you’re an iPad Pro user the Apple Pencil with it’s improved range of pressure and angle works especially well. There’s no catch-all tool that fixes depression, but if you have the funds I do suggest at least trying out Pigment. It’s a nice alternative if you don’t want to maintain old fashioned color pencils and printed coloring books.

The Foods of Depression

OK this will be a bit of an off the wall post stemming from a few random conversations I saw on reddit/r/depression. For folks who have never experienced clinical depression it might be hard to imagine the severity of motivation loss. Someone raised the question, what foods do you try to cook when you literally don’t even want to crawl out of bed. This got me thinking since cooking is one of the other coping tools I’ve used to try to keep myself active.

So in no particular order here were some of the foods I realized I cooked often when I experienced the most severe episodes of depression.

Pancakes w/fruit — Usually blueberries or bananas. Probably as it’s a comfort food, and easy to make. Go easy on the syrup and other heavy sugars and it’s not terrible to make this while depressed.

Somen/Cold Saimin — Sitting around waiting for something to boil or warm up becomes a chore in itself so I often cooked cold, almost ready to serve dishes. Boil noodles ahead of time, chop your ingredients and lunch/dinner becomes less daunting a task.

Spaghetti — This one is a bit of a mixed bag. The actual process of making it can be involved (semi home made pasta sauce etc) but using a food sealer to create ready to boil servings of pasta and some pre-cooked noodles cuts down on the dinner time waiting and it’s a fun comfort food.

Cucumbers/Carrots/Beets/Lettuce — Always on hand. I’ll be open and admit that when my depression is at its worst I have a really hard time eating veggies and fruits so I’ve always tried to keep vegetables that I can eat raw or throw into a quick salad. Keep one or two good dressings and it gets a little easier to deal with meal time and healthy eating.

Bad things I still wound up eating, things I’d avoid however, heavy sugars, baked goods, things with a lot of sodium. It’s really easy to start drowning yourself in sugary things and canned foods but with my hypertension it’s something I had to really be aware of. A lot of those things gave me headaches or kept me up at night.

Interesting New Medical Approach for Major Depression

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/17/health/ketamine-depression-treatment/index.html

I have to admit this is not a treatment option I would have imagined. My only real knowledge of ketamine is as it relates to helping people suffering from opioid addiction. For what it’s worth I can understand the idea of using it for improve neuroplasticity in patients but I do worry that the sensitivity of users and the impact as relates to opioid resistance is a delicate balance.

Guns and Depression (Serious Topic)

This post is going to be a bit serious and possibly rub folks the wrong way so if this topic bothers you please opt out from reading this particular post. I will state for the record that I am a registered gun owner and have been a hunter. I don’t believe in trophy hunting I’ve only ever hunted game I intended to eat. Mostly that meant wild boar.

Depression and guns are often in the news in the worst possible ways because folks only ever connect the two when someone has committed suicide, or gone on a gun rampage. It’s a very serious topic and I don’t take gun ownership lightly in the least. I was taught about guns at an early age and more importantly I was drilled in gun safety from the get go. I don’t think guns are a status symbol and I was never into the fad of AR15 frames and the modification levels you could get into.

When I hit my major depressive episode stemming from the divorce my close friend who is also a hunter agreed that we would coordinate for my weapons to be housed elsewhere. For me that was simple I didn’t have a large collection and things could be packed up pretty easily. For others with large collections should could be problematic but there are ways of doing it. Things that I genuinely wish people who are facing depression, particularly if there is even a hint of suicidal thoughts, considering a safety-person. They don’t have to store ALL your guns if you have a large collection but consider things like getting rid of your ammo, firing pings, bolts to your weapons so that you can’t become a threat to yourself or others.

It is humbling and a lot to ask of any friend but if you ask me it’s one of the most helpful things you can do while you try to sort out your situation and get help for depression/suicidal thoughts.