Since I have started this blog one of the main purposes was to hopefully lessen the stigma that surrounds mental illness for the main reason is that it is killing people. Depression and I am talking about Major Depressive Disorder hits with such a force that it literally sends you spinning for a long time to come but it is treatable. The problem is there is so much garbage out there regarding depression that a lot of people are basically ashamed that they are ill so they try to keep the battle a very private one and in some cases this leads to suicide.
I have been fighting depression for the majority of my life and for the most part I keep it a quiet one. Year after year I tried to figure out why I was never happy and why the smallest thing would send me to an awful place. I went to college for Social Work and the two main reasons were (1) To help others (2) To help myself. I thought if I could learn all of the counseling techniques, a strong understanding of mental illness and the "secrets" to getting people over that hump I would be able to fix my own situation. It did not work and if anything it made it worse.
I went back to the old pattern of any difficult emotion instead of dealing with it I just would push it way back into my brain with the dumb belief that it would just disappear which obviously did not work. I was recently married, a father to a very young baby and I spent my work week with teens who were dealing with a high volume of problems both behavioral and emotional yet for a long time I put forward a image that I was in control and stable but I was far from it.
During the six months before my eventual break I was having nightmare after nightmare and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control my emotions. I knew I needed help and made an appointment with my family doctor to get a prescription for an anti depressant which I thought would fix the problem. The days before the appointment I was still trying to convince myself that the problem was small and ignoring all of the signs that I was in a battle that had the ability to destroy me.
My family doctor lives in on the outskirts of the city I live in so I had to drive on a highway to get to his office. On the way there my thoughts went from this is a small problem to if I swerved in front of that eighteen wheeler then my problems would be gone. By the time I reached his office I was a complete wreck. This doctor who has known me for a long time realized that even though I was trying to put across a small problem the situation was much larger. The doctor pulled me off of work, prescribed an anti depressant (Celexa) and referred me to a mental health doctor. It has been three years since this appointment.
I have been fighting depression for the majority of my life and for the most part I keep it a quiet one. Year after year I tried to figure out why I was never happy and why the smallest thing would send me to an awful place. I went to college for Social Work and the two main reasons were (1) To help others (2) To help myself. I thought if I could learn all of the counseling techniques, a strong understanding of mental illness and the "secrets" to getting people over that hump I would be able to fix my own situation. It did not work and if anything it made it worse.
I went back to the old pattern of any difficult emotion instead of dealing with it I just would push it way back into my brain with the dumb belief that it would just disappear which obviously did not work. I was recently married, a father to a very young baby and I spent my work week with teens who were dealing with a high volume of problems both behavioral and emotional yet for a long time I put forward a image that I was in control and stable but I was far from it.
During the six months before my eventual break I was having nightmare after nightmare and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control my emotions. I knew I needed help and made an appointment with my family doctor to get a prescription for an anti depressant which I thought would fix the problem. The days before the appointment I was still trying to convince myself that the problem was small and ignoring all of the signs that I was in a battle that had the ability to destroy me.
My family doctor lives in on the outskirts of the city I live in so I had to drive on a highway to get to his office. On the way there my thoughts went from this is a small problem to if I swerved in front of that eighteen wheeler then my problems would be gone. By the time I reached his office I was a complete wreck. This doctor who has known me for a long time realized that even though I was trying to put across a small problem the situation was much larger. The doctor pulled me off of work, prescribed an anti depressant (Celexa) and referred me to a mental health doctor. It has been three years since this appointment.