Reflections Of Depression

Coping

I went to my church and found a free counseling group. The people there have stories similar to mine. We help each other. We talk about how we feel. I'm amazed that so many people feel like me. I thought I was alone. - Jodie, You Are Not Alone

The first thing I try to remind myself is not to look at the big picture. When I'm depressed I tend to worry about the big picture, the issues I can't control. I work myself into a tizzy about my financial future, my health, whether my grown children and grandchildren are in danger, whether my house is going to be broken into, all the chores I haven't done in the house, whether my wife is going to have an accident. I self-abuse with anxiety about things that haven't happened. To counteract this bad habit I say to myself, "Earl, small tasks, small steps, one at a time. You can only manage the immediate. If you waste your energy worrying about the future you'll ignore the immediate, and it's only the present you have any control over.

Then I find small tasks that I can accomplish and - most important - that I like doing. I'll prune my lemon trees. I'll putter around in the garage, maybe even wash the car. I'll carve an animal for my grandson. Once I've accomplished them, I stop and congratulate myself for a job well done. - Earl, You Are Not Alone

You just have to watch yourself, you have to take your medicines, and you have to be more intelligent about yourself. You have to keep moving when you begin to feel like you don't want to move. You have to occupy yourself, get out of the house. You have to learn all those things, go for a swim when you don't want to swim, go for a walk when you don't want to walk...I know all the intellectual things. Have the courage to keep moving. KEEP MOVING, that's what my license plate on one car says. The other plate says COURAGE. Don't stay in bed. Get out. Now that I'm better, if I feel a little unhappy or uneasy or I feel what I call the cold water begin to fill up and my legs turn to icy concrete, I head for the swimming pool, exercise and get the endorphins up, get them going. I exercise for a half hour, twenty minutes, and I feel better. - Rod Steiger, On the Edge of Darkness

Friends and Family

Some of my friends were intolerant of my depression. Every time I was with them I felt guilty. They always said something that made me feel guilty. Perhaps they'd say, "For heaven's sake, cheer up, you're making us feel horrible." Or, "What you have to do is get up and do something." Of course, I was so depressed that I couldn't even think of what I might want to do. I'd feel like a failure because I couldn't do anything. On top of it, I'd feel responsible for my friends' feelings.

Other friends showed concern. They'd talk with me about my feelings and invite me to the movies. Slowly I learned to spend time with friends who supported me. - Craig, You Are Not Alone

I don't know how you explain depression to people like my wife. I can't even approach the subject of anybody's emotional disorder. She can't even fathom why it would happen...My wife has a chemical balance that works twenty-four hours a day, with very few ups and downs, and she has very little sympathy for anyone who has mood swings. Her reaction to the problem is 'You'll be all right tomorrow. Don't even think about it.' It's like Scarlett O'Hara, 'I'll worry about it tomorrow.' Those people are very fortunate. But they don't make good counselors. If you are one of those people, in the company of someone who's depressed, you've got to realize that your happy, cheerful, pat-them-on-the-back, it's-gonna-be-all-right attitude won't work. - Dick Clark, On the Edge of Darkness

Only my really good friends know. And even my daughter I don't show it to. You cannot take a twenty-two-year-old girl and burden her with 'I'm so down, I'm so depressed, I'm so scared, I'm so worried. - Joan Rivers, On the Edge of Darkness

How can you tell anyone how you feel when you're depressed? No one wants to be around someone who's down. Who wants to spend time with someone who's full of fear, anger, and sadness? That's a real downer.

Besides, I don't know anyone who's gone through what I'm going through now. What can I say to a friend? That I want to check out, that I want to go to sleep and never wake up, that I'm so terrified of life that I can't get up in the morning, that I'm becoming a victim of delusions and hysteria? Nobody wants to hear that. People will think I'm some kind of nut case, that I'm a wimp, a weakling.

It's so lonely being depressed. - Clara, You Are Not Alone

Suicide

....the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. - William Styron, Darkness Visible

I was alone upstairs. I opened a drawer and there was a gun. I took the gun and sat down in my dressing room, with the gun in my lap, and I thought, 'It would be so easy. I want to be out of all this pain. I just want to be out of it.' It's not even so much pain, but the aching weariness of the whole thing; I just wanted to be out of it all. Oh, I was so down. I thought, 'I can't fight anymore. I can't go on anymore. I'm so weary, God, what's the point?' But when my dog came in and sat in my lap, I thought, 'Who's going to take care of Spike?' - Joan Rivers, On the Edge of Darkness

My husband didn't take me seriously. I can remember lying in bed at night mumbling, 'I just want to die.' He would tell me I was being melodramatic. He'd say, 'It makes me nervous to hear you talk like that. Besides, you have so much to live for!'

One day all I could think about was dying. I was going to go to the basement and kill myself with drugs, alcohol, and a plastic bag. I was terrified - of myself, of living, of dying. Somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice kept echoing the TV ad of the Samaritans, a suicide prevention group. I called them. They were the first step to getting help for myself.

Now I tell everyone who will listen, 'Never ignore a person - even a small kid - who says he or she wants to die. It could be too late.' - Arlene, You Are Not Alone