Electrical Storm

Today, we have a guest post from my sister, who suffers much like I do from the darkness that is depression and anxiety:

It’s been awhile since my painful feelings and thoughts were this sticky.
The day started out ‘successfully’…my anxiety manageable as I eat breakfast, encourage the kids to put their dishes in the dishwasher, give them permission to play. And I can hear the self-judging thoughts, buzzing around my head like a persistent, unwelcome fly.

‘This house is so dirty.’

‘If I could just get caught up on the laundry, I’d feel better.’

‘My friend _______ didn’t ask me for help- it must mean she doesn’t trust her children in my dirty house. I knew I’d drive her away eventually.’

And a feeling of shame, of inadequacy, of loneliness. So much pain.
It’s an effort to breathe. I consciously take deep breaths, trying to center myself in the present moment, to somehow recapture my sense of self-worth. Past experience has taught me that meaningful action amidst the uncertainties of an unkind brain is lastingly valuable. So I take one more deep breath, noticing the little zing of pain in my chest that accompanies my emotional electrical storm, and start the dishwasher.

Things are easier for a while. The kids play; I love the sound of their laughter. I get dressed for the day (no shower – I’ll do that later, I think). I lay down on the bed and nurse BooBah; I get up to run an errand, snapping at the children for asking to walk there. ‘We don’t have time,’ I bark. What I think is ‘Why do my kids make everything so hard?’ What I feel is not so easy to describe; a wave of nausea and self-loathing at my action, my thought. The dirty pain is a cyclone that obscures the most basic, tender hurt I have trouble finding, even with effort.

We make it through the errand and then back in the car I start to hyperventilate. I can’t handle this – ‘This’ being my children, my life, my thoughts, my feelings. I back the car out of the parking spot, berating the children for their unwillingness to help with chores. I drive back into the spot, put the car in park, breathe deeply. The lightning has expanded – I feel it in my shoulders, my fingers. I back out again and just start driving. I have no plan, except to drive until I’m calm enough to plan. It only takes a few blocks before I decide to take them out to Daddy’s work.

The nursery is busy – it’s a Saturday, after all, and everyone who has been looking and choosing all week is now buying, toting plants out to their car to take home and lower into the earth, hands dirty, soul all clean with touching living things. Or something. I gather my 5 children (I have FIVE CHILDREN!!! What kind of an earth-hating extremist am I?!) and we walk through the lanes of flowers and grasses and fountains. I simultaneously notice my soul lighten a bit to be amongst these undemanding living things, even while my gut tightens with anxiety about my children’s behavior, my worry about the customer’s possible responses to my children’s behavior, my husband’s bosses possible responses to my children’s behavior.

The children are delighted; the big girls have never been here. It is a truly beautiful place. Buddy sees a fountain with a large cement ball on the top and shouts ‘It’s a wrecking ball!’ He’s so excited. He breaks into the Miley Cyrus song, his purse (yes, HIS purse) flapping against his stomach as he dances around. He’s so full of light and life. I curse Miley Cyrus and pop culture and myself. How does my 4-year-old even KNOW that song? Glargh!!!

Later I take the kids to Panda Express (FIVE KIDS by myself!). They are sweet, dancing around the line and smiling at everyone they see. Once the large crush of customers in front of us get their orders we make our selections, in a surprisingly timely fashion. The kids go claim a table while I whip out my Mom’s credit card to pay, grateful that she’s offered us this little break. ‘Can I see your ID?’ I swallow my heart, which has turned to lead. ‘I don’t have it, it’s in the car.’ (Which is true). No one is behind me in line. The cashier kindly says she can wait. I let her know that I’ll go get another card and my ID. I instruct the kids to wait at the table, and get what I need from the car.

As I pay I breathe a little sigh of gratitude that there is still no line. If there are any stares of judgment, they’re at least 20 feet away at a table. Although I suspect that my brain is magnifying this; I know that often the judgment I am seeing in others eyes is merely my own shame reflected back at me.

We eat. The food is amazing – the kids are all enjoying their meals. I chew slowly. I breathe out slowly every time I notice the electrical storm inside starting to buzz again. I brainstorm with the kids – we had planned on buying shoes. I am mortified of the same scenario being repeated after the gauntlet of shoe shopping for littles. We come up with a workable plan. I savor the peaceful moment; point it out to the kids, highlighting how life comes in waves of tough and peaceful. Smarty-pants, Bug says ‘You’re 36 and you’re just figuring that out?’ I give her the fake stink-eye and tell her that I just wanted them to notice it. She says that she hates that life’s that way. I nod my head sympathetically, say ‘I’ve noticed that if you spend too much time freaking out that stuff is hard…’ ‘…you miss the good stuff’ she finishes. Did I mention I have really smart kids?

So much of my perspective on my life, my depression, my parenting, depends on where the scene gets cut. Of course I want to end this on that tiny moment of extreme brightness. I am also willing to be with the electrical storm. I woke from a nap 90 minutes ago, panicked that in my sleep I had given my children permission to ride their bikes to a neighbor’s house around the corner. Lightning bolts were shooting down my spine as I tried to drag my groggy carcass out of bed. Breathe. Breathe, Sarah, breathe. I took BooBah in the stroller to get them. They were having a marvelous time. The storm continued despite their obvious well-being. As I trudged home at tricycle speed I decided I had to share the storm.

Today I lived. All day. On purpose.

The Pit

Welcome to another little lesson on depression.

Today, we shall discuss the pit, and how much it SUCKS! The Pit is pretty easy to figure out; it's that point when we're at an absolute low. I (and others) call it the pit, because that's what it feels like: It feels like you've fallen into this pit, ans you're lying at the bottom, broken, shattered.

I was in the pit tonight.

In fact, I've been in the pit most of my time home. It's a deep dark place, and it's awful, horrible, excruciating.

The worst part about the pit, and depression in general, is that a lot of the time you have things that have worked in the past, tools to get out. However, you can't be bothered to do anything about it. It's like you're at the bottom of the pit looking up at, and all your tools are standing there, waiting to throw you a rope ladder, but you have to ask.

And you just do not care.

Yeah, the pit sucks.


And on the subject of not caring, let's get real for a minute.

Depression has a wonderful ability to take away your capacity to care about anything. That's why people with severe depression have trouble doing things, or leaving the house, or even leaving their bed. What's the point? Life sucks, nothing good is going to happen anyway, and I can totally watch Netflix in my bed (and make a blanket/pillow fort!)

I was at that point a lot lately. In fact (prepare yourselves, it's about to get fun!) there were points in my week where, while I wasn't actively plotting my own demise, I was very much okay with the thought of dying.

Let me repeat, I'm not seeking my own death, but... even a little bit right now, I wouldn't be too upset if I were to die. 

I wouldn't be too upset...


And let me tell you, it's an awful way to live.

Worse yet, I don't feel like I can really talk to anyone about it. don't get me wrong, I know there are many of you who have told me I can reach out. But, it's hard. It's about trust, and it's not that I don't trust people, it's that admitting your weakness, especially when that includes admitting that the thought of death borders on pleasant.

Not fun.

So, you may wonder, why say it here? Why announce it to everyone when you won't tell it to anyone? Valid question, made up skeptic in my head.

There are a few reasons.

1: It's way easier to post something like this on the internet than telling someone you really care about, face to face, that you are going through this.

2: I really, really dislike sharing my burdens with the people I love, due to the excessive fear that I could be bringing them down with me. I don't know about you, but I don't like causing loved ones pain. Hence why I hesitate to share. Especially since I can't talk to the one person I want to...

But that is another story for anther time! I think that's all I have for today. I'll let you know the next time I have a near breakdown, and what I learn from that!!!

Being Depressed Is Just,,, The Worst. (AKA Lessons in Negative Automatic Thoughts)

Just a spoiler alert here: This post is about to get real real. Don't want to here how I feel? Stop reading now. Honestly, I don't know if anyone will ever actually read this, well, if I'll let them.

First off, I want to preface this with the fact that not only does depression cause you to believe things that are false, and irrational, but that I know most (if not all) of these things are false!

So, that being said, here is how I feel:

I feel alone. Horribly,  painfully, crushingly (real word? probz not) alone.

I feel unloved. I feel unworthy of love (sometimes).

And I feel like it will be this way forever. (Unrequited love and depression? Bonus ticket on the suck train to feel-like-hellville.)

I feel like I can't talk to anyone, because the thought of burdening people with my problems is terrible. Being depressed, being so horribly sad a majority of the time makes me feel weak. And no one likes feeling weak. Admitting your weakness? Forget about it.

I feel like no one cares about me. I feel like people were too busy to care while I was gone, and their too busy to care now. I feel like anytime someone I care about contacts me, it's because I contact them first. I feel like I'm always the one to initiate, therefore no one is thinking of/ cares about me. I fell like the person I care about most in this world couldn't care less (way, way false.)

Depression is a damn lonely existence. At least, it creates that illusion. It makes it hard to get close to people, and destroys your self esteem and self worth (things mentioned in my returned home blog)

Now lets go over a bit of why these thoughts happen.

You notice that every statement I made above says I feel, not a one says I am, or it will, or any other iteration of that kind of certainty. So when a well meaning friend says "That's not true!" They are right, and we know they're right...but it doesn't matter! (Nor does it really help, unfortunately.)

So, the question remains, what the hell is going on here? Let's jump into something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. It's a method of therapy for depression and anxiety that focus on putting the lie to the thoughts that theoretically create these feelings, called Negative Automatic Thoughts.

So, most of the above statements are examples of a twist in thinking referred to as Emotional Reasoning. So, I feel alone, therefore I am alone. I feel worthless, therefore I must be worthless. I feel unloved, so I must be unloved.

Somewhere between our thoughts and feelings, something gets lost in translation, the part of us that knows these thoughts are lies. So we believe them, and we dismiss the people saying they aren't (another distortion called discounting the positive.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that depression is something that can be cured with positive thinking (well... I suppose in rare cases...) but it is interesting to note the effect our thoughts have on our moods.

Fun Fact of the day: no one actually knows what causes depression, it's all theoretical (like the theory of evolution, or the big bang theory.) Every single drug on the market for depression is a shot in the dark. They all basically say, "We're not sure what actually causes depression, but this is what we think it might be, and so we made a drug to fix the problem we think exists." There honestly could be different types of depression affecting different parts of the brain anatomy, or chemical reactions, or whatever. The current method of treatment is throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. That's why MAOI's work better for some people, SSRI's work better for others, and some people aren't affected in the least by anti-depressants.

It seems that I've gotten off my train of thought, and seem to just be rambling at this point, so I guess I'll end it here. But, hey, I feel way better, so that's good! I guess y'all will get to see this after all.

Oh, and feel free to message me, or leave comments with your thoughts, or whatever. Depression is talked about so little by the people who actually have it, that it's gained a stigma.

To hell with that. Let's talk about it.

Ask me anything.

-Taylor