Depression and anxiety have been coming and going pretty regularly over the past month or two, and I was trying to imagine what it would be like to explain how it feels to someone who is a lot more emotionally typical. It's kind of difficult but I'll dump some of it and see what happens.
Depression is a wave, dark and muddy, murky, heavy and turbid. It lands, for me, under my sternum and down to about my hips. It feels sometimes sharper and more invasive, like a dagger or a set of rusty knives in the chest. Or broken glass in the heart. Otherwise, it's more of an ache, like two or three bricks in the space where the lungs or stomach would be. The physical feeling also includes a strange mental catch. Like a stopping and starting of the mind, a dullness, or a bitterness in the stream of thoughts.
By analogy, I guess, imagine you've gotten bad news. A terrible situation you've been enduring for a long time has taken a turn for the even worse. The bank account is near empty, the health news is bad, the insurance has run out, the job has been lost, the friendship has been lost, or someone you love, you've just heard, has died. Those are the kinds of ordinary life events that would cause feelings perhaps similar to those of depression. The catch is, none of those things are happening. By most objective measures, most of the time, all is well. The bank has money, the bills are paid, there's food in the fridge, people are all okay. But the great beastly feeling of irreparable loss has landed right at home anyway. And reminding oneself that none of those awful things are happening usually has little or no effect.
There's also self-hatred that comes along with the wave. I act this out by eating poorly, or irregularly, or by not exercising, or by not taking care of my space, or my body. By not taking action. With the teaching job, it is sometimes the only focused action I can take. I have always been able to work, even through the most painful depressions, and I guess that makes me "high functioning." I have known some depressed people who can't work for weeks at a time. I have sometimes worried that might happen to me someday, but so far, nope.
Along with these experiences, there is quite often anxiety. Anxiety is added on top of the depression wave. I think maybe depression causes me anxiety, in part because I scare myself, and when those intrusive thoughts fly through my mind of killing myself, thoughts which significantly increase when the wave hits, it's natural that would cause anxiety. But I think there's more to it than that, I think the anxiety is just part of it.
The anxiety is different feeling from the depression wave, and it is in different parts of the body. For me, there's a shortness of breath or tightness in the chest, a tension in the forehead, and a lot of low level stomach upset. The analogy with life events: maybe that feeling you have when you are waiting for a painful procedure. Maybe you are in the dentist chair waiting for the numbing shot. You see the needle. Your blood pressure goes up and you brace yourself. So the anxiety that goes along with depression is like that. It's like bracing yourself. A sort of constant "uh oh" feeling. Again, as with the depression wave, there's nothing about to happen, however. There's no painful procedure scheduled. There's no threat against which to brace yourself. But you find you are doing it, feeling it, anyway. So it's a weird combination of fight or flight and apathy.
For me, the two definitely feed each other. The depression makes me anxious, the anxiety makes me depressed.
I've been procrastinating getting help, but I'm planning to make it a priority as soon as the winter holidays are over. It's not much of a life, eating (not really enjoying it much), sleeping, and working. That's pretty much what life has been. The long weekend with M in the amazing desert over Thanksgiving was beautiful, but too short, and I was kind of glum and anxious the whole time, for no reason. Depression and anxiety just cast a huge shadow over whatever is happening sometimes, without any regard at all for what is happening. One can tell oneself all one wants that one should be having a good time, that everything is okay, that all is well, etc. It is of little to no avail.
I have been able to get a lot done in spite of depression and anxiety, including finally sending off the third article out of my dissertation last weekend, a fairly successful teaching semester, paying off some debt, taking care of a ton of medical stuff, staying communicative in the relationship with M, and so on. Like I said, "high functioning." It's true though that just getting things done feels huge and nearly impossible, quite often. Dumb little things take on a huge significance and seem impossible. Sometimes it seems like, the more minor the issue, the more impossible it is to take action on. Like the latch on the hatchback of my car, which has been non-functional since July, and which has been haunting me ever since, and which finally got fixed over Thanksgiving. Four months of thinking "you really need to fix that." No action.
Stuckness is definitely part of it. And a portion of the anxious feelings come from the haunting feeling that the stuckness will just last forever. Definitely.
Lighter times sometimes alternate quite unpredictably with the heavier waves. Part of what's baffling and somewhat frustrating about it is I never know quite what kind of day or week I am going to have. When I have made plans in advance, this can be troubling. I have a relatively minor eye procedure scheduled for Monday, and I am now thinking I should just cancel it. It's interesting how this all unfolds so unpredictably. One of the nice things about being on Wellbutrin and in counseling a few years ago was that stuff was a little more regular, a little more even and predictable.
