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After feeling amazing and expansive, stressors have repetitively send me back into a depressive spiral that is nearly impossible to get out of on my own. Without help, all I want to do is self medicate and sleep as much as possible and that creates a feeling of powerlessness over the grip depression has over my life.
I've tried everything, from medications, to ECT to ketamine to RTMS and I'm still struggling. On bad days, I do romance the dark side, battling thoughts about the pain I would inflict on others if I ended my life and the karmic consequences. Somehow I've kept moving forward when every fibre of my being believed that I was treatment resistant and hopeless and that I was somehow one of the people that was terminally unique and couldn't be helped with medications and treatment.
I challenged my assumptions that I destined to suffer indefinitely or take my own life by entering a residential treatment program. I was pretty sceptical, why would this work when I'd had to resort to ECT in the recent past? How could someone as helpless as me be helped through routine and structure and the right medications?
It turns out I am not terminally unique. Finally addressing the key issue, that I wasn't taking a mood-stabilizer, along with being in the right environment has started to slowly shift my seemingly impenetrable depression.
Since I've been here, I've been expected to get up at a decent time and participate in psycho-social education in the morning and recreational groups in afternoon. The evenings have been filled with peer interactions and spending time in the art room. We are situated on an amazing woodland and I've gone for walks almost daily.
I'm not going to lie, behavioural activation with depression can be extremely awkward and painful. Its hard being around people when I'm really shut down and can hardly talk. I still think it's been valuable. There are 30-40 people that I end up crossing paths with daily and that forces my brain to start to fire and rewire slowly.
I've had a few breakthroughs in this depressive episode, I've been able to engage in meaningful conversations a handful of times and had moments of feeling inspired to run my landscape business. I've been able to participate in team sports and create meaningful art.
Its really felt like its been 2 steps forwards and one step backwards as my brain slowly and sustain-fully finds homeostasis. I feel like l'm climbing out of the depression, and while the path is upwards, my brain still dips back to its previous state of depression, but at a lesser intensity.
It takes a-lot of discipline to keep showing up when I'm not feeling great, but if I don't do the work its really hard to improve. That means challenging my thinking when it feels meaningless to keep trying and it would be easier to stay in bed. I've surprised myself dozens of times by finding those moments of fulfillment while doing things in-spite of how awful I've felt. I'm happy to say that the basics can work, it just takes a-lot of time and discipline to get there.
