My Experience with Major Depression..A Slow Journey Back to the Light
Mar 30 '03
The Bottom Line Major Depression is no joke. If left unchecked, only God knows where I may be today....
Just a few short months ago, I was enjoying life to the best of my ability. I was working with a staff of wonderful and caring individuals who had the best of our clients at heart. We were the chosen few, the loyal, dedicated small army of workers who were helping mentally ill drug and alcohol addicted men and women to become all that they can be. It was our chosen profession to help to guide them, to coach them, and to encourage them to once again become active and participating members of our society.
Our job was to listen to them, to supply them with the resources and tools needed to move on with their lives. Many of these men and women were just like me. I had much in common with them. Many were over the age of forty and had children and families who loved them. Many of them had experienced multiple childhood traumas ranging from sudden deaths of family members, molestation, homelessness, self-abusive behaviors including the wickedness and destruction of drugs and alcohol abuse. Some had considered suicide and many had attempted it on more than one occasion.
Some had seen traumatic events in their lives more times than the average person will ever experience in two lifetimes. Things like witnessing stabbings or shootings or gang rapes. Or seeing their parents or siblings beat or verbally abused by their family members who were supposed to love and care for them.
My heart went out to these clients, because I totally understood. In fact, this may have been the beginning of my deep, deep depression.
My childhood, too, had been full of traumas that no child should ever have to endure. My father's alcoholism and ultimate death from an alcoholic fall has affected every area of my life from my early teen years until my adulthood. My choices of men in relationships were based on a distorted view of my father. On the one hand, I wanted my husband to be just like my father, strong, intelligent, worldly and special. Yet, in reality, my choices were more like the abusive, belittling, disrespectful qualities that my dad possessed.
Coping skills are necessary to deal with trauma. When adequate coping mechanisms are unavailable or minimal at best, the pressures and traumas can loom up and threaten to swallow us whole. This is exactly what became of me.
It is true that I have had depressive episodes all of my life, yet, I had never been hospitalized or treated specifically for it. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatments over the years, certainly. Addiction treatments and supports, absolutely. Codependent behavior therapy groups, yes. These conditions I knew about and was doing something positive to help myself. However, the underlying depression caused by chemical imbalances in the brain was not being addressed.
My life was easily becoming a daily struggle to get up and out to work everyday. The thought of treating my clients haunted me. I felt totally empty and void of anything positive and worthwhile.
I felt that I had absolutely nothing to give myself so therefore I questioned what I had to help my clients with! Without realizing it, I was sinking deeper and deeper into the deepest end of the pool.
Last October, I started having severe emotional episodes during work hours. It seemed like “everyone was picking on me”. In reality, I had become hyper-sensitive to criticism from my boss. I became touchy around my dear coworkers, who I had chosen to be a part of my support system. In my twisted and saddened state of mind, I could do nothing right any more. I would leave work and return home, constantly dwelling on events from the days work. I became totally obsessed with thoughts that plagued me morning, noon and night. Thoughts that said, “You are such a loser!” And worse thoughts that said, “You are losing control.”
Prompted by my superior, I spoke with an employee assistance counselor who agreed that I was suffering unnecessarily and that there was definitely help for me through therapy or even medication to ease the depression. I knew that the need to help myself was great and that the depression was threatening my every day existence. I became paranoid and defensive, melancholy and lost. In fact, I started to feel like I was one of my clients!!
The therapist that I began seeing was amazing. In the first session he was able to dig deep into my past and for the first time in my life I relived the events surrounding my father’s death. You see, back then when the terrifying event occurred, I was the family member who did not fall apart.
http://www.epinions.com/kifm-review-444D-5713D99-3912BE23-prod4 When My Father Died I Thought My Life Was Over
I wrote my dad’s obituary and contacted the Red Cross to get my brothers home from the armed forces. I had to contact friends and family from other states to give the bad news. The reality is that I had never mourned my father’s death! As the horrifying and ghastly feelings were being relived that day in my therapist’s office, I cried and wailed like a wounded animal. Years of pent up sadness, guilt, anguish and pain poured forth from me for nearly an hour. I cried until I could cry no more briny tears.
http://www.epinions.com/kifm-review-4D9E-D020E57-39347FEB-prod1 A Tribute To My Father***
When the session ended, I was emotionally drained like a drunkard. I could not move for nearly fifteen minutes and when I did, I collapsed in the waiting area for another twenty. As the weeks of therapy wore on, I uncovered so much about myself. Not all of it was pretty. You see, I saw a frightened little girl who was living her life to please other people. I had gotten lost, trying desperately to gain the approval from others, so that they would like me. This truth shot through me like a poisoned arrow. I did not want to be this sad and frightened little nobody. I wanted the world to believe that I was so strong, so tough and so together.
My depression grew worse! I could not sleep at night and when I finally did fall off to sleep I was awakened many times throughout the night with antagonizing judgments of myself. I overslept in the mornings and found it difficult to encourage myself to get to work. The ideation of not wanting to go on loomed over me like a black cloud of doom. These were classic symptoms of Major Depression as defined in the DSM IV. The DSM IV is a tool used by psychiatrists to help diagnose mental disorders.
Everything started to make me cry. I cried when there was no sunlight in the morning. I cried if I dropped a spoon on the floor. I cried if I had to drive in the snow. I cried if my son was home sick from school. I cried if I missed my favorite soap opera! I was a crying fool and I did not know how to stop it. That is when I ended up in the psychiatric unit of a hospital an hour from my home. What happened next has been a series of life changing events……..
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Mimi369
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Member: Miriam Jacobs
Location: New York
Reviews written: 419
Trusted by: 489 members
About Me:
My Name is Not Monkey Girl!
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