“This is like an AA meeting for book depressives, anxiety cases, ADHD, I consider myself the triple threat,” Margaret Stohl (Beautiful Creatures, Icons) joked at the first panel I attended at the first ever YallWest book festival. “In honor of my ADHD AA…
If you have a partner or are close to someone who struggles with depression, you may not always know how to show them you love them. One day they may seem fine, and the next they are sad, distant and may push you away. It is important that you know that as a person who is close to them and trusted by them, you can help your friend or partner have shorter, less severe bouts of depression. Mental illness is as real as physical illness (it is physical actually, read more about that here) and your partner needs you as much as they would need to be cared for if they had the flu.
Your relationship may seem one-sided during these times, but by helping your partner through a very difficult and painful affliction, you are strengthening your relationship and their mental health in the long term.
1. Help them keep clutter at bay.
When a person begins spiraling into depression, they may feel like they are slowing down while the world around them speeds up. The mail may end up in stacks, dishes can pile up in the sink, laundry may go undone as the depressed person begins to feel more and more overwhelmed by their daily routine and unable to keep up. By giving your partner some extra help sorting mail, washing dishes or using paper plates and keeping chaos in check in general, you’ll be giving them (and yourself) the gift of a calm environment. (I’m a fan of the minimalist movement because of this, you can read more about that here.)
2. Fix them a healthy meal.
Your partner may do one of two things when they are in a depressed state. They may eat very little, or they may overeat. In either case, they may find that driving through a fast food restaurant or ordering a pizza online is just easier than fixing a meal. Eating like this, or neglecting to eat will only degrade your partner’s health, causing her to go deeper into her depression. Help your loved one keep her body healthy, and her mind will follow. This is a great article that talks about the “Brain Diet” which can help the symptoms of depression, and this article talks about how our modern diet could contribute to the recent rise in depression. Here is a recipe for a trail mix that is quick to make and has mood-boosting properties.
3.Get them outside.
The benefits of getting outside for a depressed person are huge. And it is possibly the last thing on earth your partner will want to do. Take them to be somewhere in nature. Pack a picnic and lie in the sun, take a leisurely hike or plant a garden. Being barefoot in the dirt, or “earthing” helps ground the body and reverse the effects of living in a world of emf’s, and digging in soil can actually act as an antidepressant, as a strain of bacterium in soil, Mycobacterium vaccae, triggers the release of seratonin, which in turn elevates mood and decreases anxiety. Sunshine increases Vitamin D production which can help alleviate depression. My friend Elizabeth wrote an excellent post about Vitamin D and its link to depression here. For more information about other sources of Vitamin D, this is a great post as well as this.
4. Ask them to help you understand what they’re feeling.
If your partner is able to articulate what they are going through, it will help them and you better understand what you are dealing with, and may give insight into a plan of action for helping your partner. Also, feeling alone is common for a depressed person and anything that combats that feeling will help alleviate the severity and length of the depression.
5. Encourage them to focus on self-care.
Depressed people often stop taking care of themselves. Showering, getting haircuts, going to the doctor or dentist, it’s all just too hard, and they don’t deserve to be well taken care of anyway in their minds. This can snowball quickly into greater feelings of worthlessness since “Now I’m such a mess, no one could ever love me”. Help your loved one by being proactive. Tell them “I’m going to do the dishes, why don’t you go enjoy a bubble bath?” can give them the permission they won’t give themselves to do something normal, healthy and self-loving.
6. Hug them.
Studies show that a sincere hug that lasts longer than 20 seconds can release feel-good chemicals in the brain and elevate the mood of the giver and receiver. Depressed people often don’t want to be touched, but a sincere hug with no expectation of anything further can give your partner a lift.
7. Laugh with them.
Telling a silly joke, watching a comedy or seeing a stand up comedian will encourage your partner to laugh in spite of herself. Laughing releases endorphins and studies show can actually counteract symptoms of depression and anxiety.
8. Reassure them that you can handle their feelings.
Your partner may be feeling worthless, angry and even guilty while they are depressed. They may be afraid that they will end up alone because no one will put up with their episodes forever. Reassure them that you are in the relationship for the long haul and they won’t scare you away because they have an illness.
9. Challenge their destructive thoughts.
A depressed person’s mind can be a never-ending loop of painful, destructive thoughts. “I’m unlovable, I’m a failure, I’m ugly, I’m stupid”. Challenge these untruths with the truth. “You’re not unlovable, I love you. You aren’t a failure, here are all the things you’ve accomplished.”
10.Remind them why you love them.
Look at pictures of happy times you’ve had together. Tell them your favorite things about them. Reminisce about your relationship and all the positive things that have happened, and remind your partner that you love them and they will get through this.
There seems to be a window of a few hours somewhere between midnight and 3AM each night where the stars align and the medication wears off and I feel somewhat normal. I don’t hurt from the being poked. I don’t feel like I’m going to lose my lunch or like acid is going to eat through my esophagus, like what happened to Frankie in THE HOLE. I’m not dizzy. My head doesn’t hurt too bad. And life is as it should be.
And so what usually happens is, I lie in bed all night and all day, trying to get comfortable but never really getting there because I’m too hot too cold too sore headachy nauseated you name it I am it, and then everything calms for a bit and I hit the ground running, ’cause kitchens don’t clean themselves, yo.
Usually what happens is that in the span of these three or so hours, I manage to get done twelve hours worth of work. I steam the kitchen while watching TV and power-Tweeting. I blog and edit and write all at the same time. So what if I just fed the cats Rice Krispies and poured milk on my Blue Buffalo? THEY’RE BOTH GLUTEN-FREE. IT WILL BE OK.
And then I pass out sometime around four o’clock, exhausted and disheveled, with my jeans around my knees, because that’s as far as I got before I fell asleep.
I talked to my doctor this morning and was like, “DUDE. SERIOUSLY. Last night I took a Lunesta and tried to drive to Atlantis.”
And he just shrugged it off, like, “OH YEAH. THAT HAPPENS.”
That thing where I get halfway to sleep and then wake my mind up because I think I am dying? TOTALLY NORMAL. The part about catching myself not breathing and being unable to move to do anything about it? THE INTENDED RESPONSE. Anxiety, hot flashes, and a migraine? YOU JUST GOT A TEN OUT OF TEN, KIDDO, GOOD JOB.
On the plus side, I’ve hit that space where you’re sick enough to feel sick but not so sick that you’re too sick to care. It isn’t like I’m confined to a bed, unable to check email or snark J.Lo’s Oscar dress on Twitter. There are days I just cannot sit in this house any longer, and so I go out to get groceries or check my post office box or pay bills, and by the time I get there, I’m like, holy shit this was a bad idea And then I have to creep home at 25 miles an hour because the road. won’t. stop. moving.
I guess what I’m saying is, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is warbly. And that’s more than I could say a month ago.
So there’s this thing that happens sometimes when my body chemistry changes and the medications I had been taking no longer work the way they should. I get tired. I get excited. I get antsy. I get lethargic. I get all of these and then some all at the same time, and it’s just a big mess.
In a lot of ways I feel like this is something I need to talk about, because not talking about it has become just one more thing that I have to keep inside, and sometimes there is so much stuff in there it’s a relief just to let something–like this thing–out. And in a lot of ways I feel like this is something that I should never talk about, because it scares people–friends, family, significant others, prospective employers, the FAA. I’ve been fired for being bipolar. I’ve been asked to leave churches and schools because they were uncomfortable with how I might react to things.
Even now, as I type this, I’m wondering if it’s career suicide. If now or in the future an agent or editor will see this and think, “I cannot work with someone who’s unstable, someone who’s crazy.”
Because that’s what I’ve heard all my life: that I’m unstable, that I’m crazy.
When in fact this particular disorder has little to do with being crazy and everything to do with how my brain receives things like melatonin and seratonin and adrenaline and norepinephrine.
You know that feeling you get when you’re nervous or scared or excited? That “fight or flight” feeling that rises in your gut and makes your heart beat a little bit faster?
That’s what I’m talking about.
Because when things go pear-shaped, what happens is I stop sleeping. And the longer I go without sleeping, or without sleeping well, the more my body rebels. I get nervous all the time. Little things become big, insurmountable, life-ending things. My immune system goes to shit and I get physically ill. And I feel like nothing ever stops. Like I’m thinking, moving, doing all the time.
Not stabbing someone or hearing voices or driving a car full of puppies off a bridge.
Just…jitters.
I feel jittery all the time.
The medications–like Abilify, a mood stabilizer, and Topamax, an anti-convulsant–dull this enough to where it’s not an all-consuming, coming-apart-at-the seams kind of thing. Like tapping a light when it’s buzzing.
But sometimes things change, and tapping the light doesn’t work like it used to. And when that happens, you have to find other ways to get the buzzing to stop.
Recently I read a book in which a teenage girl goes off her meds and feels numb. And I’m not saying that can never happen. I’ve been on enough medications over the years to know that there’s telling what might happen in that situation. You could come up to me and say, “I stopped taking Prozac cold turkey and saw through a blue haze for three weeks after!”
And I’d believe you. Because that’s what happened to me.
But numb? Numb is the least of it. Numb is a blessing compared to what it feels like to titrate off one medication and onto another, only to have that medication not work, and have to titrate off it and onto something else.
The last time I went through the this, the transition took nine months and six medications. I had earaches and vertigo and tinnitus (a ringing in my ears) for the majority of that time. I lost chunks of hair, my skin dried out, I gained a lot of weight, lost a lot of weight. I forgot what it felt like to not have a headache.
I remember going to my doctor and crying for over an hour, not saying anything, just crying, because I would rather go back to what I had been taking and be sad–just sad–than feel like crap all over.
Eventually, though, we did get everything worked out. I started sleeping again. I started feeling normal again. And all the other stuff faded away.
I know this is going to turn out like that. That somewhere down the line I will look back at these past five or so months and say, “I went through that and it was hard but everything turned out OK and I am fine now.”
But being in the moment, feeling raw like this…it is hard. And I’m so tired of being tired. I wish the world would just stop moving sometimes so I could catch my breath.
But it doesn’t. That’s not how it works.
So in the meantime, I have to stop. Not, like, literally, in the death sense or anything, but in the forcing myself to stop and get well, to let some things go (for now) and trust they’ll be waiting on me when I’m strong again.
And these aren’t necessarily writing-related things. Some of these things are people whom I’ve been taking care of, who maybe need to take care of themselves for a while. Some of these things are relationships that have grown toxic or abusive that need to end, period.
Some of these things are dreams that need to remain dreams for the time being.
I’m sorry if I’m letting you down. I’m letting me down, kind of, too. But I know I’m no good to anyone like this, afraid of my own shadow, freaking out over the tiniest things, things that aren’t even worth a second glance, let alone an all-night worrython.
But things will sooner or later go back to normal.
Every now and then the shit hits the fan in such a way that I’m left alone in the PetSmart parking lot, sobbing into a slightly used McDonald’s napkin, wishing the earth would crack open and swallow me up, because somehow everything has gone to shit.
Everything. Shit. All of it.
I say this, and people are like, “OMG WHAT IS WRONG?”
And I don’t know what to tell them. EVERYTHING is wrong. NOTHING is wrong. I am wrong.
There’s this thing that happens when so much of who you are is wrapped up in any one thing. If something goes wrong, if you get get sad or despondent for no apparent reason, they automatically assume the reason why is buried somewhere in that part of you.
Which brings me to Sunday night. PetSmart. Parking lot. Salty McDonald’s napkin. And a friend on my cell telling me to calm down, calm down, there will be other books.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE WILL BE OTHER BOOKS?”
“Just that…Not everyone…Maybe you should focus on other things right now.”
“OH MY GOD YOU THINK MY BOOK SUCKS!”
“What? No. Of course not. But if you’re upset about it–“
“I’M UPSET BECAUSE I RAN OUT OF CAT FOOD AND PETSMART IS CLOSED AND THEY DON’T SELL IT ANYWHERE ELSE AND IT’S RAINING AND MY HAIR IS STUPID AND I GOT THE WRONG CLEMENTINES AT WAAAAALLLLL-MAAAAAAARRRRRRT…”
Truth is, now more than ever I’m grateful for writing and reading, and even my new Kindle, even though it took three hours to convert all my Nook books over to Kindle format. Every day is a struggle to keep my head above water, to keep from melting down or crippling with fear, and every minute I get to check out of this reality and find sanctuary in another truly is a blessing.
