Posts tagged with "depression"

I can hear the june bugs approaching

(Thanks to Kasi for this one.)

I recent­ly dis­cov­ered that gui­tar chords are the same as ukulele chords, which opens up the reper­toire of avail­able songs con­sid­er­ably. It’s a shame that most online sheet music is in the form of gui­tar tabs, which don’t trans­late to the ukulele. Still, I have enough songs to prac­tice that I can switch to anoth­er when I get bored with one. I find it inter­est­ing that since the ukulele requires two hands doing dif­fer­ent things, I run into a bot­tle­neck in hand dex­ter­i­ty; I can pluck or strum well enough with my right hand, but I can’t get the chords with my left hand fast enough, or vice ver­sa depend­ing on the song. I have to prac­tice each hand indi­vid­u­al­ly, which is so unlike any oth­er instru­ment I’ve played before.

I have a tele­scope now. My instruc­tor was able to get a great pack­age deal for stu­dents in his astropho­tog­ra­phy course for a 114mm reflec­tor, along with a track­ing motor1 and illu­mi­nat­ed retic­ule2. I put it togeth­er today, and it was real­ly excit­ing to be assem­bling all these pre­ci­sion parts to make my first tele­scope, a moment I dreamed about since I was a kid. Astronomy is much more com­pli­cat­ed than I expect­ed. Much of it is sim­i­lar to pho­tog­ra­phy in terms of the equip­ment used (although the terms and con­trols are dif­fer­ent), but now you also have to know your sub­ject, your ori­en­ta­tion, and your weath­er con­di­tions, not to men­tion being at the right place.

I’m feel­ing bet­ter about things. Maybe it’s the promise of warmer weath­er. I’m wait­ing for the day I can dri­ve my car with the win­dows down and san­dals on. Those are the days of house par­ties, camp­ing, drinks on patios, and first kiss­es. Soon, it will be the time of stargaz­ing, bar­be­cues, and who knows.

A few peo­ple have sug­gest­ed my depres­sion may have been due to a chem­i­cal imbal­ance, which I nev­er ruled out. Even though it was one e‑mail on that Thursday morn­ing that trig­gered all those bad thoughts, I nor­mal­ly would have been able to han­dle it bet­ter. There was­n’t an imme­di­ate impact. Just a grad­ual sag­ging that got worse and worse through­out the day until I was com­plete­ly deject­ed at night. After that, I got a blis­ter on my neck from stand­ing in the show­er for too long with water that was too hot. Now that I think about it, I com­plete­ly under­stand why I felt that way, but it seems kind of sil­ly.

Joe Lencioni also rec­om­mend­ed to me a free pro­gram called Flux — appro­pri­ate­ly head­lined as “Software to make your life bet­ter” — that grad­u­al­ly changes the colour tem­per­a­ture and bright­ness of your mon­i­tors to mim­ic the set­ting sun. It’s also local­ized, so it knows when the sun sets for your area and changes auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I’m pret­ty sure it’s made it eas­i­er for me to fall asleep at night.

I’m in such a strange phase right now. I don’t know where I am. When I look back on this time in my life, I won­der whether I’ll look back with nos­tal­gia, pity, or regret.

  1. To move the tele­scope at the same rota­tion of the earth to pre­vent blur in astropho­tog­ra­phy. [↩]
  2. To keep track of a guide star in cal­i­brat­ing the track­ing motor. [↩]

Understanding Suicide

I gen­er­al­ly don’t talk about sui­cide. I don’t dis­cuss my bat­tle with any­one, aside from close friends, because it makes most peo­ple uneasy. I nev­er used to under­stand that because it did­n’t scare me. Suicide is a choice — a con­scious deci­sion — and a con­scious deci­sion can’t be scary. But more recent­ly, I found myself feel­ing over­whelmed, then afraid I would make a real­ly big mis­take.

That fear has kept me alive. Admittedly, I’m still try­ing to under­stand these thoughts in myself.

There have been a few high pro­file sui­cides in the news late­ly. When mak­ing a state­ment about his son’s death, Walter Koenig said “If you’re one of those peo­ple and you feel you can’t han­dle it any­more, you know, if you can learn any­thing from this, it’s that there’s peo­ple out there who real­ly care.” Then his wife added, “All the peo­ple up here, from the police to his friends, have shown love which he didn’t real­ize was avail­able to him.”

Their words show a very com­mon fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing about the rea­sons some­one has for tak­ing their own life.

You think love can fix us? You think it mat­ters that you care?

The very nature of sui­cide is that a sui­ci­dal per­son does­n’t believe there’s any hope. If we felt like there was some­where to turn, some­one who could help1, that would imply there was hope. And if there was hope, they prob­a­bly would­n’t com­mit sui­cide.

We know you care, and we appre­ci­ate it when you tell us. We know how lucky we are to have the friends we do. But none of that helps. Suicide does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly result from a lack of exter­nal love. It can come from a lack of inter­nal love, when we hate our­selves, or because our thoughts or prob­lems seem too dif­fi­cult to bear.

Sometimes I get advice about how to fix the issue, almost always from peo­ple who have nev­er been sui­ci­dal. They think it’s a sim­ple prob­lem, and that we can just stop think­ing about it and it’ll go away. Or we just need to find a hob­by to dis­tract us. Or find a pas­sion to give us a rea­son to live. They don’t under­stand that sui­ci­dal thoughts are like a pho­bia — an irra­tional fear. You can’t eas­i­ly fix irra­tional thoughts. They’re irra­tional because they don’t fol­low log­ic. Otherwise, you’d be able to cure some­one’s arachno­pho­bia sim­ply by explain­ing to them, “Spiders are small and most can’t hurt you”. A per­son with arachno­pho­bia knows that fact, and under­stands it per­fect­ly, but put a spi­der next to them and they’ll be filled with uncon­trol­lable anx­i­ety.

Relate that back to sui­ci­dal thoughts: try­ing to ratio­nal­ize things to a sui­ci­dal per­son by say­ing, “You have so much to live for”, is just as inef­fec­tive. Someone may have a reward­ing career, a won­der­ful fam­i­ly, and good health, but none of that per­me­ates the mind when suf­fer­ing from a men­tal issue. The depres­sion is irra­tional, and sui­cide isn’t the easy way out, it becomes the only way out.

From my own per­son­al expe­ri­ence, the worst things you can do when han­dling a sui­ci­dal per­son are:

  • wor­ry­ing or get­ting uncom­fort­able — it puts pres­sure on us and makes us feel worse
  • get­ting angry — it only makes us with­draw more and com­mu­ni­cate less, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one of the few out­lets we have left
  • telling them it would be a self­ish deci­sion — when some­one is ready to kill them­selves, they real­ly don’t care and mak­ing them feel guilty is not the answer

The best things you can do for them are:

  • giv­ing them space — we need to han­dle things on our own terms and at our own pace, not yours, and the last thing we want is to feel like we’re incon­ve­nienc­ing you
  • show­ing that you care, not just telling them — ran­dom flow­ers, text mes­sages, hugs, poems (but back off if you’re told that you’re smoth­er­ing)
  • under­stand­ing that get­ting bet­ter is a long-term process, and not always per­ma­nent — we rely on your patience and under­stand­ing to get through it, and there may be regres­sions
  • nev­er, nev­er, nev­er turn­ing down a chance to talk or hang out if they ask you — noth­ing makes us sink deep­er in our frag­ile states than to feel like we aren’t impor­tant enough (we would­n’t ask if we did­n’t need to)

By no means am I sui­ci­dal right now, but yes­ter­day I con­sid­ered, and came as close to it as I’ve ever been. That was enough to scare me into the real­iza­tion that I need help. Perhaps I’m for­tu­nate enough to say that I under­stand how irra­tional these feel­ings are, and I know that I need to dis­ci­pline, prac­tice, effort, and sys­tem­at­ic obser­va­tion to fix myself.

  1. Which is very dif­fer­ent from some­one who wants to help. [↩]

The Downward Spiral

With Defectiveness, you feel inward­ly flawed and defec­tive. You believe that you would be fun­da­men­tal­ly unlov­able to any­one who got close enough to real­ly know you. Your defec­tive­ness would be exposed.

As a child, you did not feel respect­ed for who you were in your fam­i­ly. Instead, you were crit­i­cized for your “flaws.” You blamed your­self — you felt unwor­thy of love. As an adult, you are afraid of love. You find it dif­fi­cult to believe that peo­ple close to you val­ue you, so you expect rejec­tion.

Depression is some­thing I’ve strug­gled with my whole life. I have so much bag­gage. So many men­tal issues. It makes me won­der, “Who would want to be with me?” I can’t see how any­one would want to deal with it all if they tru­ly knew what goes through my head. The thought of it makes me more depressed, which makes me feel more dam­aged, which makes me more depressed, and every­thing gets worse and worse.

I’m try­ing to break the cycle, but I feel inca­pable of lov­ing myself. It’s so much eas­i­er to love oth­er peo­ple. And when I can’t love myself, I can’t see how any­one else could love me either.

Damaged Goods

I have to write this so I can admit it to myself.

I have to write this because I can’t think of any­thing else nowa­days, except for how hard it is to get out of bed in the morn­ing.

I’ve been read­ing a book my ther­a­pist rec­om­mend­ed to me a long time ago, the one that deals with life­traps. In one of the first chap­ters, it goes through each life­trap by first explain­ing a “core need”, which is some­thing a child should have in order to thrive. It goes through exam­ples on how we should have been raised, and how a healthy mind will grow from that. Then it explains how the life­trap may devel­op if that core need isn’t met, by giv­ing exam­ples of destruc­tive child­hood envi­ron­ments.

And for almost every life­trap in the book, I saw my own child­hood in those exam­ples of destruc­tive envi­ron­ments, such as the one about “Self-esteem”:

Self-esteem is the feel­ing that we are worth­while in our per­son­al, social, and work lives. It comes from feel­ing loved and respect­ed as a child in our fam­i­ly, by friends, and at school.

Ideally we would all have had child­hoods that sup­port our self-esteem. We would have felt loved and appre­ci­at­ed by our fam­i­ly, accept­ed by peers, and suc­cess­ful at school. We would have received praise and encour­age­ment with­out exces­sive crit­i­cism or rejec­tion.

But this may not have hap­pened to you. Perhaps you had a par­ent or sib­ling who con­stant­ly crit­i­cized you, so that noth­ing you did was accept­able. You felt unlov­able.

As an adult, you may feel inse­cure about cer­tain aspects of your life.

When I was read­ing that, all I could think of was one spe­cif­ic inci­dent from my child­hood. I was young enough that my mom would bathe me, and she would do it in the en suite bath­room of the mas­ter bed­room. One day, she came to dry me off with a tow­el, and both the bath­room door and the bed­room cur­tains were open. I told her to close the door, because I was self-con­scious about being seen naked by the neigh­bours across the street. I was real­ly upset about it, and instead of walk­ing two feet to close the door, she laughed and said, “You’re no Tom Cruise”, and left it open. From that point, I’ve had this irre­press­ible feel­ing that I’m nev­er attrac­tive enough for some­one to even be inter­est­ed in see­ing me naked.

And that was just one exam­ple. My child­hood was filled with so many such mem­o­ries, each one branch­ing into oth­er life­traps.

I’ve nev­er won­dered why I have self-esteem issues. I fuck­ing hate how self-con­scious I am, because I know the extent of that self-con­scious­ness isn’t nor­mal. I’ve strug­gled with issues like that my entire life, and I can trace every­thing back to my par­ents. It fills me with rage to know that they dam­aged me to the point where I feel so over­whelmed by my flaws that some­times I’d rather be dead.

If I were ever to com­mit sui­cide — and at this point I feel like I can’t rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of this any­more — I’d say that my par­ents would be 55% respon­si­ble1, with my mom shar­ing more of that blame than my dad.

I hope she reads this one day. I hope my entire fam­i­ly reads this. I hope all my cous­in’s moms read this, because they usu­al­ly try to defend her. I want every­one to know that if I die by my own hand one day, I blame my mom more than any­thing else in the world. I want par­ents to know that they have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to their kids because they’re peo­ple too, that they have to treat them prop­er­ly, and that I was an exam­ple of what hap­pens when you don’t.

This is start­ing to sound like a sui­cide note, and it’s scar­ing me. Good thing I’ve always been a ratio­nal per­son, and I still rec­og­nize that sui­cide is an irra­tional deci­sion for me at this moment. Sometimes, I watch sui­cide videos just to shock myself into real­iz­ing how final, irre­versible, and hor­ri­ble that deci­sion is.

I’m at a lot bet­ter than where I was two years ago, before I went to ther­a­py, but I’m still far from being fixed. I can admit that to myself now.

  1. The oth­er 45% being my own inabil­i­ty to deal with these things, but I attribute that to tem­pera­ment, which is inborn and hence not their fault. [↩]

Where Am I Now?

It’s been a par­tic­u­lar­ly try­ing week. I’ve been feel­ing so jad­ed. Broken. Helpless. Undefined.

Both the cause and the con­se­quence is that I’ve been sleep­ing ter­ri­bly late­ly. Next week I’m going to try to have a more self-con­trol and stay on a strict sched­ule. Bring some order into my life.

I tried to make an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist, since I have $300 men­tal health cov­er­age with my work per cal­en­dar year (although this only amounts to two ses­sions). Unfortunately, I need a refer­ral from my fam­i­ly doc­tor to claim the cov­er­age, because refer­rals are only good for one year, and it’s been that long since I saw him.

I think of how judg­men­tal my dad was when I told him I was see­ing a psy­chol­o­gist. But then I real­ize that he’s prob­a­bly the only per­son I feel like I can real­ly talk to right now (my ther­a­pist, not my dad). I wish I could talk to my friends, but my thoughts are either too embar­rass­ing to admit to them, or too com­pli­cat­ed for them to under­stand.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to some qui­et, som­bre stuff late­ly. Trying to acquire a taste for Leonard Cohen’s mid­dle years, when he trad­ed in his gui­tar for horns and vio­lins, even some Depeche Mode. Depeche Fucking Mode. It has­n’t been help­ing.

I just don’t know what to do with myself late­ly. But I’m pret­ty sure I real­ly need to cry right now.