User blog:Cheesehooves/A Personal Update

Hey everyone.

In lieu of our usual progress and canon updates, I'm going to take the time today to go over something of a more personal nature: depression.

Depression is a terrible, awful disease. It makes normal, everyday tasks like getting out of bed or caring for yourself seem too much of an effort. Couple that with social anxieties or just a general aversion to talking about feelings and you've got a recipe for self destruction. Many of us suffer with some form of depression, or know someone who does. Speaking as someone who has dealt with it for seven years now, it's an ongoing battle that has it's lows and highs. The lows seems more common than the highs, but once you get up in a decent outlook on life, it's incredible.

What is Depression?
Depression is many things, to many different people. For myself, depression is numbness. Days are annoying obstacles I need to get past. I wake up in the morning,    I constantly search for something to cling on to, anything just, to get through the day  just so I can go back to sleep that night. Somtimes, I don't sleep. I lay there, staring in the dark, completely exhausted but unable to sleep. Depression isn't sadness or tears, at least for me. It's lack of feeling to enjoy life.

So then... Where does the sadness come in?
In my case, it's anxiety. If you've never had anxiety before, I envy you. Imagine you're walking along, perfectly okay, and suddenly, a huge wall shows up out of no where. It's too high for you to climb, and too wide for you to simply just walk around. You've walked this path every day, never has there been a wall! You feel like you're stuck, you can't see a way around this problem. Now. Imagine it's a wall only you can see. You become super aware of every one around you, your mind races: "They must think I'm so stupid/weak!" You fall deeper and deeper in panic, digging yourself into a hole. That's anxiety, in a nutshell.

When Anxiety is mixed in with depression, your mood can change wildly. One minute, you're a lifeless blob hiding under a blanket, the next, you're a sobbing quiver of jelly on the floor.

So why am I telling you this? There's a lot of common misconceptions about what to do if you or a friend is suffering from this illness. I can't tell you exactly what you should do, since each person is different and this '''is a mental disease. '''You or anyone you know cannot help a friend, unless there's a degree in psychology involved. If it's yourself, you can learn little tricks that help you get through your day. All I can do is share what works with me and what I've noticed helps when I'm talking to someone about it, and hopefully that will help you in a way.

The best thing you can anyone is nothing. In my experiences, if I reached out to a friend it wasn't because I wanted help or advice, I just wanted someone to nod their head and listen as I vented. The absloute worst thing you could ever do is give advice if you're not a trained professional, and even they don't give advice. They merely suggest new ways of looking at a problem and help their patient reach conclusions on their own.

Absolutlely Do Not's, and solutions to them:
 * Don't ask if they're okay. They're not. It's established.  If this person also suffers from anxiety, t hings are feeling like they're falling apart at the seams, and no amount of asking how okay a person is will help them. If you're with the person, quietly ask them if they'd like to go somewhere else quiter and less crowded. Don't make it obvious, the last thing the person wants is attention drawn to them or the feeling that they're being babied. Wait it out. Once the panic is over (and it will end), they may be ready to talk. If they don't want to talk, don't push it.
 * It's so much easier to talk to someone if I didn't have to explain why I feel the way I do. Simply someone telling me that they "get it" makes a world of a difference. I don't feel so alone, and it's easier for me to open up. So, just listen. Just.. be there.
 * Like I mentioned before, when you have anxiety you're super aware of what's going on around you- smells, sounds, people, possibilities for things to go wrong, and it's exhaustng. If someone tells you "no," don't take it personally. We're not saying no to a person, just a potential anxiety attack. Keep offering other things to do, but gently. Don't make a big deal out of it.
 * Anxiety and depression has nothing to do with lack of courage, people have limits to things, we're just hyper aware of what our limits are. In fact, people who have either or both of these illness are the most couargous people I know. Telling someone just to "push through it" or making comments that demoralize them, whether intentional or not, just makes our problems worse. It throws doubt into our minds, and that can be a huge problem for our day to day lives. Just remind us how awesome we are, point out our good qualities, or things we enjoy to do. Distractions are an amazing tool, if used properly.
 * Don't mistake our need to control our enviroment with trying to control you. We're not. Controling what's around us is one of the ways we can ensure we can make it through the day.
 * Don't assume we know how important we are to you. It helps loads if we hear this every so often, it gives the boost we need to make it through a day.

Lastly, a word of advice from myself to those that suffer in silence alongside me:
I have issues getting across how I feel with actual words, especially in the moment. My brain is running at a million miles a minute, and everything gets thrown together. What I've found  that helps me calm down is doing a reptitive task, cleaning and gardening work well. Once I'm calmed down, I sit down and write what I'm trying to say, it helps me organize my thoughts and get the points I want to get across. You're not alone, you have people around you who care. Find someone who you can just talk to, someone who won't try to change you and will just listen. It really, really helps.

<3

Lassie