On depression #1
So first of all, round of applause for me making it 3 posts before talking about sad stuff. 🎊
I got up from bed to write this because I wanted to get these thoughts out of my head, or at least try to resolve them a bit. I started watching “Bocchi the Rock!”, an anime about a girl with severe social anxiety finding her community, specifically through a band and guitar. There’s a lot that I’m thinking about it, but I guess I’ll just talk about one specific aspect here: the desire to feel sad.
If it isn’t obvious by my incessant badge-toting, I have MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) and anxiety, but thankfully much less nowadays thanks to treatment and years of therapy. However, I haven’t had severe social anxiety like the main character in the show does; I’ve been able to make eye contact with people, and even talk to strangers (wow!) without breaking down, so I’m far ways ahead of the show’s main character. However, watching her go through these struggles leaves me with a remnant pang of a strange thing; I want to be depressed.
I ultimately know that the thoughts I have aren’t rational, and I can justify it many times over on why I feel this way, but my brain keeps going back to the state of WANTING to be depressed. Isn’t that a silly thing to do. Something that causes me so much anguish and despair is something that I push myself towards.
I remember watching some psychotherapy video about it, speaking about how this is what I’m used to, and this is my tried-and-true method of handling issues in life. The same way the child prefers the abusive parent compared to the unknown, my default comfort state is depression. And all of this gets weirder because of how depression is (at least for me).
A while ago I learned of some theory of depression that reframed it for me: for almost everyone, people go through bouts of depression. Whether it’s losing a loved one, losing a job, a breakup, or any of the other valid reasons to be depressed, the neurotypical person will at least know why they are depressed. For a person with chronic depression, it’s like you don’t even know what’s wrong. It’s almost like a fog slowly creeps in and starts to shadow out everything else in life, and you have no clue what or why it’s surrounding you. The theory proposed that depression is your brain going “oh dang this sucks, I don’t think the human can handle this. Better make sure they can’t see the problem!”. Almost like a perfect form of escapism, the brain suppresses the problem, to the point the human has no clue what went wrong. While I’m a big fan of escapism as a concept, this ends up backfiring horribly. Imagine trying to walk to a store, all while in incredible pain without knowing your femur is shattered. That doesn’t sound too healthy does it? At least for me that’s how depressions been.
As a result, a big way I fought my depression was constantly searching for what a potential problem would be. It’s had its pros and cons, as I end up having a hyperactive self-awareness, but as a consequence I ends up a chronic overthinker. Now here’s where this tangent ties back in; when I’m having a low serotonin day, I’m depressed but not due to anything specific. But since I’m so afraid of falling into another depression, my mind violently races to try to find out what the REAL cause is. Yeah I know that the last 10 times it’s been due to the come down, but who knows if this time is different? Better to frantically go over anything and everything to find a potential issue. I end up just running in circles looking at whatever has happened and trying that on as a potential trigger. The worst is when I’ve had a day I’m proud of. Today I pushed myself far out of my comfort zone, did things that terrify me, and I was completely glad about it. But now, I’m faced between either risking falling into a depression, or picking apart every good activity to frame it as the villain. Kind of a cruel predicament if you ask me.
Honestly, these nights are some of the hardest. It’s scary to be left alone with your thoughts with your brain as the enemy. I’m glad I have these conditions, as they have made me stronger and better at things, but it doesn’t make it any nicer to go through these low points. Sometimes I wonder if I would trade my successes and my skills to be a normal person. But this is all I know, so what credibility do I have in any assessment of that anyways.