Learning to Trust Again

One thing that I've found particularly difficult about being depressed is that I've learnt to not trust my feelings. Since I've felt bad for so long, and been told that everything's fine, I've come to have a deep distrust for my emotions. One way this has manifest itself is by making it very hard for me to know when I'm not well. I can easily recognise obvious signs of physical illness, such as a blocked nose or fever, but I really struggle with symptoms that are potentially psychogenic. Some symptoms that I get quite frequently are insomnia, headache, nausea, loss of appetite and the whole gamut of emotions like anxiety, sadness, contempt and disgust with myself.

When I get these symptoms, it's hard for me to know if I am "genuinely" unwell, or if I just need to "get on with things". I'm often stuck worrying if I should take time off work, see my doctor, my psychologist, and all the other things that I know help me when I'm depressed, or if I should go to work and try to push through it. Most of the time I do the latter, but every now and then I'll call in sick and feel guilty as I'm not convinced that I'm "really" unwell.

This might be the result of a latent belief that mental illness is not "real" illness, and that it's all in my mind. Or I might have been scarred by spending 9 years in a job where the culture was to make everyone feel really guilty for calling in sick. Or it might be because of my childhood where my mother was in turns sceptical of us when we were sick, and strangely easy to convince we were unwell on the basis of vague and minor symptoms.

Probably it's a bit of all of the above.

Anyway, it'd be nice to be able to just trust how I'm feeling, be able to say to myself "I'm not well today" and take time off without feeling guilty for doing so. But then, that's probably on par with saying it'd be nice to not feel depressed.

To be happily unhappy

Welcome to this blog. I was first diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder in October 2007, shortly after getting married. In hind-sight I have been living with depression for a lot longer than that. I attempted suicide at 16, and that was simply the culmination of a long period of desperation.

As part of my recovery I have been reading a lot about depression and other people's experiences of it. There are a lot of people writing about how they have been able to rise above their depression, and about their desire to get better. Unfortunately this hasn't been my experience. Much of my struggle with depression is wrestling with the desire to make myself worse. I don't want to get better, I don't want to improve.

Saying these words tends to put people off-side, with many not wanting to help if you don't want to help yourself. The paradox of depression is that the illness itself prevents us from wanting to improve. Once you want to get better, the rest is fairly easy. A prescription for anti-depressants, a lot of counselling and your life should get better quite quickly. The problem is that many of us don't want to do this. Many of us would rather be sad, hurting and in pain. That's why I'm writing this blog.

I am depressed, but high functioning. I have a job, a wife and a few friends. I am usually able to make myself go to work and social events. I generally maintain a reasonable level of hygiene and I'm able to refrain from self destructive behaviour.

None of this means that I am happy.

For me, the biggest irony of depression is that through counselling and a lot of introspection I have dragged myself up to a high level of functioning. I am not in imminent danger of killing myself. But this has done nothing to make me any happier. Even medication seems to just help me get through the day, not bring joy into my life.

This blog is a place for me to share my ideas, but also to give voice to anyone who is depressed and doesn't want to be happy.