I am prone to bouts of depression. I've tried counseling and all that stuff. It helped, but it still happens. I've come to believe it's a more than a little biochemical or biological or something like that.
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| Damn it Jim, I'm a mixed sci-fi reference, not a doctor. |
The point is, there are things I do that keep my depression from acting up. I tried some prozac variation once. It calmed my anxiety and prevented me from feeling depressed...and everything else. I think medical science is just wonderful and we have medicine that is straight up saving people's lives better than ever. It was just more than I needed.
What works best for me is working-out. I train in martial arts and it fixes me in way I have a hard time describing. I am by no means a skilled martial artist. I may very well be one of the worst students. I'm okay with that, because being any kind of martial artist makes me a better at everything else. I'm a better psychologist, a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better person. The health benefits are nice too. When I work out, I get depressed less often and stay depressed for a shorter amount of time.
I haven't trained in almost two weeks.
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| There, happy? |
So what's the point of this blog?
"Feel bad for me, I'm sad, boohoo"? No. I need no pity. I'll be fine, this is temporary and more important I know I am stronger than my depression. It's just fighting me right now. I gave it a chance, it took it.
"I need to go to a martial arts class"? Well, yeah, obviously. But, that's not really the point.
The point is:
Everyone, every single damn person on this planet, since the beginning of time and until the end of our species, has and will have some personal burden to deal with. It may be some minor depression, or a learning disorder, or a physical handicap, or poverty, or whatever. But everyone has at least one.
You can give up and blame it for all your woes. You can use it as an excuse for your crappy attitude and bad behavior. Or, you can face it, figure it out, make a plan to overcome it, and then execute the plan.
Yeah, the plan might not work. That happens. It's called a setback. They do not excuse giving up and not making a new plan.
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| Not pictured: lots of setbacks. |
I hear you. Working out helps me too. Still trying to get my thyroid meds level to keep depression at bay too. Totally genetic in our case, I think. (BTW--pictures & videos of my adorable nephew tend to snap me out of spiraling downward. I love your son-day posts.)
ReplyDeleteI think there is a physiological component. I don't think it is entirely that though.
DeleteI'll get back on the kiddo posts this weekend.
I just started working with a PsyD candidate each week at a graduate clinic. Talk therapy works pretty well for me, especially since the ankle sprain a while ago completely derailed my running. Running (and yoga) do a lot of good for me treatment-wise, but there's actual Stuff(tm) to address that endorphins (and other exercise-related benefits) ain't gonna fix. So she gets needed practice with some issues she'll run into a million times in her career, and I get affordable access to care. Everyone wins. :]
ReplyDeleteI feel what you're saying about antidepressants -- they have helped me cope with anxiety and panic at much-needed times in my life, but there's a weird-feeling ambivalence that comes with being on them, especially if it's more than you need to stay stable.
tl;dr - I know that feel, bro.
I may have offered before, but I don't recall. When you're in town I can run a MMPI or a Millan (both computer administered measures) if you or your therapist would like the info. I can also give you a Campbell Interest and Skills Survey (CISS) to help with career decisions. We get requests for them from the counseling dept. all the time.
DeleteI don't know, since I'm super private and will be there for so little time. But I do want to know more about what those are. Since my therapist is a student (and even mentioned when I asked that assessment is an interest) it might be something we do later after crossing some more pressing hurdles.
ReplyDeleteAfter this post of yours (and comments) it made me reflect on how truly fortunate I am that in our family, mental health issues aren't this stigmatized, panic-inducing thing that has to be kept secret at all costs. Feelings are so unmentionable (and unmanageable) for many people. I just feel lucky that we can have this open a discussion about things like depression, anxiety, physiological/situational/emotional factors, medication, assessment, and so on within our family without 'concern' turning into either 'panic' or 'judgement'.
Taking one personality and the CISS might take an hour at most. You read fast so I wager far, far, far, far less.
DeleteIt's what I do. All day. Every day. No need for stigma, everybody has something bugging them.
The MMPI-RF is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Restructured Form. It's a personality test used across the planet. You sit at computer for about 30 minutes and answer a bunch of questions (true-false or likert scale). Then it prints out this summary of numbers on various scales. Easy-peezy but interpretation can be a chore and hard to do.
The Millan is similar but a different set of scales and a vastly better printout that includes a narrative summary that is just...it's just lovely. Easy to read, painfully insightful. From a psych point of view it is immensely useful and includes therapeutic recommendations. Hugely eye-opening for me, I loved taking it for myself.
The CISS is a career assessment (yup, sit at computer, answer simple T/F questions, get printout bang-boom-done). This measure compares your interest to your perceived skill at various jobs and types of jobs. Then it takes all that and compares it to a group of people already happily employed in the job and compares your ratings to those. It's sexy as hell.
My brother, ladies and gentlemen: describing assessments as 'sexy as hell'.
ReplyDelete