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Having depression is still the elephant in the room.

And how can this be in this day and age?

People acknowledge it, but somehow people don’t want to touch it. Things like “It’s not my business” or “they need to sort it out themselves” are often said, and maybe we are guilty of it ourselves.

Correct: people do need to sort it out themselves, but we have a responsibility to give a sh*t about people.

It’s what makes us human.

For years I struggled with depression, the stigma, the waking up and seeing nothing but fog every day. The feeling is suffocating; it’s like dying a slow, painful death and yet when people look at you they see nothing wrong. It can feel as though you’re walking around with a hole in your chest. We still function and we can still seem to get through the day-to-day, but coming home at night the exhaustion of just being alive seems to be too much.

Whatever the cause of our depression, everything is magnified. That lonely feeling, the hours ticking by with what seems no one to speak to.

Wishing away the days like we’re counting down to something.

I remember having to “act” a lot of the time, maybe laugh at a joke, immerse myself in some team-building as it was the right thing to do, just going through the motions. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty I did enjoy, but all the experiences were somewhat dampened by the dread and misery pulsating through my body.

For me, depression was losing my way, or losing a part of who I was and changing my identity in a way I couldn’t seem to control. We constantly experience so much pressure in our lives starting from an early age and always being told to move forward, just to be better than yesterday. And then there’s the pressure and expectations we put on ourselves.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Challenging yourself can be a great thing, but everyone copes with pressure in a certain way. From family, love, career, health or money, the pressure doesn’t stop as we continue to live our busy lives. It’s how we deal with that pressure that begins to affect every pillar of our being and if the pressure is released in the wrong way or our negative thoughts begin to focus on things that don’t matter in our lives, instead of focusing on the things that do.

I don’t know the science on what causes depression, but I know that negative thoughts and words were a huge part in my own illness.

When we start to lose our identity and focus on the negative, before we even realise, the black dog has come knocking at the door, and for some reason that dog doesn’t ever seem to leave us alone. At the height of my depression I don’t think I even knew who I was. The anxiety, the pain of the past and the present haunted me every second of the day. For the first time in my life, I solely relied on others to keep me going and save my life.

Unfortunately with every great friend you have, we also lose many who we thought were good friends but just don’t seem to understand us. I never expected that some people would just put me in the too hard basket. I’ll never forget the day someone who I thought was a friend turned around said ‘You’re just too negative to be around’ and I never heard from her again. It hurt because it felt like I was supposed to just snap out of it—and, trust me, I had tried.

The thing about depression that no one talks about is you are constantly trying to portray yourself as different as how we are actually feeling inside. Some days we are really good at it; other days it comes out through our words and our actions and we don’t even realise the act is up. There were friends who did the hard yards, some from afar, some who checked in on me every day and put up with the tears, the episodes that seem to come from nowhere. Those friends I owe my life to. I’m crying as I write this as none of them would have any idea how much it meant to me to have someone who didn’t walk away and believed I was strong enough to overcome it. Those are the people who will forever stay in my heart.

As I write this, it’s been at least five or six years battling with depression, that I have and confidently can say – found peace. My world feels normal again and when I wake up, or in those quietest times alone, I can honestly say I feel happy and content. The tears don’t flow as often, and the sadness from my eyes has drifted away. I can now sleep without aide by way of medication for the first time in 6 years. My peace hasn’t come easy. In my journey for my own happiness I’ve had to change a hell of a lot, starting from my negative thoughts, constantly learning to stop the story machine in my brain, creating a worst case scenario when there wasn’t even a possibility of one happening. I’ve made other huge life changing decisions like moving across the country and starting afresh.

Unbelievable sacrifices have been made, following the dreams that I always had, living the lifestyle and creating the life I actually wanted, rather than living the life that seemed to be expected of me. I found strength in the people that did love me, and rid my life of the ones who didn’t. We tend to hold on to toxic people in our lives for what seems no reason at all once they are gone. I’ve been through violent and manipulative relationships, but maybe for others it’s an unhealthy affair with drugs or alcohol or a job we hate that seems to amplify our illness.

We often live in a place called denial, but deep down we know what’s not helping us. Depression isn’t just a feeling of unhappiness—it’s a legitimate illness which we should seek professional help for. I tried antidepressants, I tried counselling…but I had this overwhelming feeling that those things couldn’t fix me, only I could fix me.

We all need to find what works for us and maybe it’s a combination of things that contribute to begin to help us.

No matter how big our challenges in front of us are, we do have the strength to control one thing each day. Do not doubt that. Get out of bed, put two feet on the ground and say “today is going to be a good day.”

You can only live one day at a time, not look to next week or next month, learn to survive each day as they come. Nurture yourself, read a book, get a massage, walk along the water, things for me that I enjoyed but always seemed to push to the side when I was busy. Leave work on time. Take the time to live a life. And my favourite quote that seems to shift my whole thinking is that life was never meant to be easy, and as soon as we accept that, life will become a lot easier.

I still remind this of myself daily.

We still need to perceive ourselves and others with depression differently. I’ve seen headlines in the for example where Hayden Panettierie is admitted to a clinic due to post-natal depression. I wonder how and why this even makes news headlines as clickbait?

The subtext of the stories published is pity. I can’t stand that. Don’t pity her.

I’m all for encouraging awareness and talking about it is a huge part of breaking the stigma but, this is someone’s life; she doesn’t want to be congratulated. She has just made the biggest step by putting up her hand and saying she needs help. She wants help from the people she cares about most and not created into an entertainment news headline. That only makes you feel like you’ve failed and that it’s splashed across social media in a trivial way. I’ve always had so many people say how brave I am to share my story on social media, I’m not brave, my social media is a journal of my life and this is a part of my life, why shouldn’t I talk about it? But when will we learn to stop pitying those with depression and practice acceptance?

Beyond Blue claims that in Australia, 45% of Australians will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime. Don’t pity these people. Rather, let’s work on how we can stop putting so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect.

As the song goes, the darkest hour is just before the dawn. We may fall, rise up and fall again. We simply cannot control everything, but every day we get through, every improvement we show ourselves we can control our brain and we can conquer negative thoughts and actions. It doesn’t matter the combination of things we try or use to help us get better, or if we’re still going through it, the day we realise the clouds have passed and we find enjoyment in something that seems to ridiculously small and find yourself content is a day for us to celebrate.

I personally experienced this moment the other day, when I found enjoyment in something so silly, that I didn’t have to act happy. That for me was the first time in as long as I can remember the black dog had left my house.

That feeling, that moment, is when life becomes beautiful again.

Relephant: 

My Loving Conversation with Depression.

7 Dharma Tools for Depression: How the Buddha Helped Me Get Out of my Pajamas & Back Into Life.

Author: Krystal Sanders

Editors: Caroline Beaton / Renée Picard

Image: Helga Weber at Flickr