Life After Clinical Depression
2018, University of Johannesburg.
Today I woke up with a feeling of nostalgia, my mind going back years, to a time when I was desperate to feel something, anything. I remembered the emptiness and barrenness of life, a life wrung dry by an illness I hadn’t seen coming: clinical depression. I remembered how hard it was to pull myself out of it, how confused I was about what was happening to my human existence. It took me 3 years, some highly controlled meds and a whole lot of therapy to be able to say that I’d fully recovered from it. In the years that followed recovery, to keep it as far away from me as possible, I’ve learned the following coping mechanisms:
Real human connection
Depression feeds off of loneliness. The best way to keep it at arm’s length is to get out of the house, go out and do something productive and connect with people. Real human connection, however, requires that we have a good handle of our emotions. To help me cope, I was introduced to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I did this every week since the diagnosis until my psychologist was confident that I could stand up on my own two feet; at which point it was reduced to monthly visits, next to only when I needed it. At the moment I do it myself. I’ve also just subscribed for a virtual one on Bloom.
A healthy lifestyle
Believe it or not, I work out twice a day without fail. In the morning, it’s a very light exercise, usually a 2.5km walk which I use as a litmus test, if you like, to test my cognition. Do I feel well rested? How attentive am I to the sounds and objects around me? Do I feel clear or foggy? In the evening, a much more serious workout is for better sleep. I also try to keep a healthy diet. For me, a healthy lifestyle also means structure so, having a well-rounded morning and evening routine has made my life a lot easier.
Achievement
No matter how small, achievement has the ability to restore new life back into us. Being able to wake up and make my bed in the morning, to be able to drive manual car through traffic, to publish an article. These all contribute to what I categorize as achievement to me.
Clinical Depression is not an easy illness to run away from. Even at the hint of a prolonged bad habit, it threatens to creep back in. I have to keep checking in with myself to make sure that things are still okay, that I’m handling the stresses that come with my everyday life in a healthy manner.
On the flip side:
Painful as it is, I am grateful to it for having given me a clean slate. I learned during recovery that my social skills were lacking. That I could be a little more polite, that people are unbelievably intelligent and, that our uniqueness is what makes life so beautiful. I am thankful that because of it, I have become someone who stops to smell the roses as part of her everyday life.
January 2016. I couldn’t really recognize myself in the mirror but, thankfully, it was the beginning of recovery.
