Did any of you watch Larry King the other night (April 21st)? He had a panel discussing the treatments for depression. It was very interesting. What made it even more interesting was that famous television personalities participated and discussed the severity of their depression and talked about how they’re still being effected by it and/or what they all did to help it.
The problem with depression is that people (and yes, even those going through it themselves that don’t even know it) just don’t understand it. It was discussed on the show that in the old days that those whom were suffering from this were thought to have been possessed by the devil.
But I’d like to elaborate on this. Depression to our elders is thought of as an excuse to be “lazy”. It’s an excuse to procrastinate. It’s an excuse to generally not have to do the things that everyone else is responsible for doing. If there are any myths about depression, this has got to be T-H-E biggest and most popular myth out there. And for those seeking for help were thought to have been using their help “as a crutch”. Therapy and medication is a crutch. “Oh and religion isn’t”? Gimmie a break!
Our elders say that strength is recognized by keeping yer mouth shut, holding it in, biting your bottom lip, and over-working yourself till you drop. …..”As if there are no side-effects from that.”
Nothing can be more antiquanted and so remote from the truth.
It’s very sad because those suffering from depression have a much harder time going through it if those that surround them (family and friends) deny the severity of this illness, place blame on irrelevancies, and just as worse, think the illness doesn’t exist at all in the first place.
This makes an illness that’s curable, incurable. People can make something that IS hopeful, hopeless. Do any of you ever stop to wonder why there are so many suicides all over the world?
That’s all it’s about. You are not a bad person, or crazy, or weak, or flawed, because you feel suicidal. It doesn’t even mean that you really want to die – it only means that you have more pain than you can cope with right now. If I start piling weights on your shoulders, you will eventually collapse if I add enough weights… no matter how much you want to remain standing. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Of course you would cheer yourself up, if you could.
What part about this do people not get?
Don’t accept it if someone tells you, “that’s not enough to be suicidal about.” There are many kinds of pain that may lead to suicide. Whether or not the pain is bearable may differ from person to person. What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain.
This is yet another well known myth. Dear Lord…… pain cannot be compared from one person’s pain to the next.
Here’s another example from the Larry King show:
TANYA TUCKER, MUSICIAN, AUTHOR “100 WAYS TO BEAT THE BLUES”: From there, I got progressively worse. The more people told me that, you know, wow, you should be so blessed. Don’t you feel blessed? And you have all this — mansion and all these beautiful things. And I said, you know — the more they told me that, the more depressed I got. At one point, I didn’t get out of bed for, I think, three months, and I went down to the bottom of the hill one day and I had to call somebody to get me to come back up – come pick me up because I couldn’t physically walk up the hill.
I wish people would understand that when you try to cheer up depressed people, they only get worse. I’ve been around many-a-depressed people in my day, and this is the case. I’m hoping that this is an eye-opener for some!
When pain exceeds pain-coping resources, suicidal feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources.
You can survive suicidal feelings if you do either of two things: (1) find a way to reduce your pain, or (2) find a way to increase your coping resources. Both are possible.
Credits: Suicide: Read this first
As emphasized on the Larry King Show about Depression, coping resources include family and friends: family being the most important.
SWARTZ: Anti-depressants are absolutely medications that have saved lives. The best way to prevent suicide is to treat depression, and we know that anti-depressants are, in many ways, the most tried and true treatment for depression, but, I agree that medicine alone is not the
treatment of depression. It needs to be combined with psychotherapy, support from your family, learning about what you have, and also being responsible. So, that might mean not using drugs and alcohol, that might mean getting enough sleep and doing other things to reduce stress in your life.
Not to misunderstand the “learning about what you have and being responsible” part. While it’s a nice thing to know you are loved, that doesn’t exactly do the trick. And in order to get to that place, one needs to be understood. Responsibility is only possible after one has gotten to a certain level in their depressed phase. No two people are alike. This should also be digested using “case by case” logic.
TUCKER: And if I can help anyone out, I’m glad to talk about it. But the main thing is that medication, too, is not all the help. It’s very important, I think, that you have a very well-educated doctor that knows what he’s doing. And I know there’s probably a lot that aren’t so educated out there, but you’ve got to find the right doctor and have your family close by.
Well this is only so if your family is supportive. I don’t blame those who aren’t supportive, though. They are in pain too but refuse to do anything about it.
As always, the first step to recovery is realizing that you are hurting.
Another common myth is that people think depression simply means that you are down, slow, sleeping all the time, unmotivated, expressionless, and apathetic. This is so untrue it’s not funny.
SWARTZ: I think that many people when they’re depressed feel an anxiety or a tension. And I think it’s true that it would be rare for someone in the midst of a depression to describe themselves as relaxed. It’s a torturous ordeal for someone to go through.
Depression and Anxiety pretty much go hand in hand.
ALLEN: Dietary-wise, I avoid caffeine. Caffeine was a huge trigger for the anxiety that was coupled with my depression. Anything that brought me up was going to drop me right back down again.
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE DEPRESSED
While everyone experiences depression in quite a similar way, it DOES differ depending on the person.
CHAD ALLEN, ACTOR, BECAME DEPRESSED, HAS HAD SUICIDAL THOUGHTS: You know, I never made what would classically be defined as a suicide attempt. My sister — I have a twin sister — she made several very real suicide attempts. However, I am familiar with what it feels like to feel suicidal, to want to die, to not be able to wake up in the morning and feel like I can’t lift up my head, I can’t get out of the house today. What am I going to do?
Many people don’t understand this, but when you can’t move, you simply cannot move. Period. This is a very common symptom.
Imagine what Homosexuals go through. Something that not too many people care about or empathize with.
ALLEN: You know, I first started — since probably 12, 14 years old. I also started drinking alcohol and using drugs right about the same time. So for me, that was my first — my first sort of coping mechanism I used. And when I finally got sober when I was 24 years old, I finally felt what it was I was hiding from. First, it was anxiety, which is kind of the evil twin sister of depression, and then those feelings of absolute just despair and sorrow, you know, I can’t get out of here today, what am I going to do?
KING: You were in the closet, right?
ALLEN: Yeah.
KING: Did being gay, do you think, had anything to do with it?
ALLEN: Absolutely, we started a campaign…
KING: Absolutely yes?
ALLEN: Absolutely, had a lot to do with it. We started a campaign called the talk-about-it campaign, to address the issue of depression in the gay community. The gay community has an almost 18 percent, if not higher, instances of depression than the community at large. You
know, people are always asking me, why is that? And I say, you know, I hosted the Tulsa, Oklahoma pride festival last year. I get in my car and I’m all set to go down the street — Tulsa, Oklahoma is famous for its Christian protesters — and one man was holding up a sign; the sign said “how come the community that calls itself gay has the highest suicide rate?” With almost no understanding of the irony that maybe it had something to do with him standing there holding that sign, you know.The fact is, there’s a lot of things that we’ve had to deal with, and coming out and being who I am, that’s part of it. But it’s been a tough battle.
Accepting WHO you are and WHAT you’re all about and allowing yourself to be YOU and accepting that, is a huge step in the battle.
Before we go to calls, Chad, you recently lost a close friend, right?
ALLEN: I did, yeah.
KING: He died suddenly of a heart attack at age 31.
ALLEN: Correct. Yeah.
KING: How did that affect what you already have?
ALLEN: Well, you know, it was a horrible event, you know. And the fact of the matter is, I know now that when stuff comes up for me that is going to create an emotional response, what I have to first focus on is not running away from my feelings. And that took me a lot of years to learn, that, A, it’s OK for Chad to be sad. And this is what it feels like. And it sounds odd, but for me being sad was not OK, and I think a lot of times, the world that we live in, we’re taught being sad, being angry, these so-called negative emotions, they’re not OK. So, I started going, you know what, I’m going to take good care of you today, Chad. You’re going to be sad for a while, and that’s all right. Whatever it looks like, I’m going to take good care of you, and I’m not going to leave your side, I’m not going to run away from you. It helps.
Well, there you go. If this is not sad in itself, I don’t know what is. Society dictates that we’re not supposed to show our feelings. Could this be a cause of depression? Absolutely. When you’re taught not to feel happy when you are, to feel sad when you are, to feel angry when you are, to cry when you feel like crying, to laugh when you feel like laughing, — we die inside.
Here’s an example of an extreme case. Oh it happens all the time. Not all of us die from it, though.
That bottled up anger has to go somewhere, right. But what happens when we don’t have an outlet?
- Parents kill their children
- Children kill their parents
- Some depressed children go on killing sprees and gun down 10 people
- Some become alcoholics
- Some become addicted to drugs
- Some become addicted to sex
- Some become addicted to food
- Some starve themselves
You see this type doesn’t look depressed as much, do they? No, because they take care of their problems with addictive habits and violence. This is why they can function in society.
But what about those that don’t engage in these type of act-outs?
Yes, you got it (hopefully). All the anger is internalized. This causes depression, my friend. But those depressed are taunted by society as weak, lazy, irresponsible, and even more unloved by those they expect and need it from the most..
Likewise, it is helpful to understand that anger is contextual and social, Tavris adds. When anger fails to fill a constructive framework, however, it can morph into undesirable expressions of the emotion, anger experts say. Anger externalized can turn into violence and aggression; anger internatlized can cause depression, health problems, and communication difficulties, they note.
Anyway, depression is more than little kids whining that they don’t want to do housework. It much more than that.
Society, keep up the good work. Maybe with a little more of your help, we can create even more monstrous murderers and criminals.
