By Mark Pritchard
Depression manifests itself in a physical way to the extent that it can, on occasion, become debilitating.
Unfortunately, it is one of those invisible illnesses like vertigo, chronic fatigue or even simply a bad back.
My recent depression was caused simply by a very unpleasant turn of events in my life; things that happened completely beyond my control. I don’t generally suffer with depression, it’s not a general mental condition that I have. For me it needs a trigger.
After a massive double trauma in my personal life that began in December 2017, I found myself hurled into an abyss that was always going to take a long time to climb out from. It was a foregone conclusion. “Baby steps,” I was told. “Just one tiny step at a time is all you can do, but you’ll get there.” I understood the concept, but the reality was too much to bear.
The vicious circle
Without going into any depth regarding the events that led to my depression, I’d like to write about the vicious circle that leads to a dark, downward spiral. I’m doing this for two reasons. Firstly, to help those who have experienced it to realise that they are not alone in this and that it is common. Secondly, to help to educate (I mean that respectfully) those who don’t understand it and therefore can’t work out exactly why their partner, for example, is behaving the way they do. It’s about motivation (or lack of) and how difficult it can be to pick yourself up to carry out, what seems to be from the outside, simple tasks.
I remember having to make a phone call. It was a very simple phone call, but also a very important one. Mentally exhausted through severe depression, I tried telling myself to do it. Something stopped me. A wall – an invisible wall. No one could see it, but it was there and I could sense it bearing down upon me. I tried to make myself pick up the phone. I couldn’t. I can’t fully explain why, but I couldn’t. But I knew what was going on. I’d experienced this before many years ago after a trauma and I was aware that it was going to be a struggle. This struggle would not be resolved until the phone call was made. I told my myself this. It made no difference. Eventually, as the hours went by and the window of time available to make the call before its recipient had gone home had passed, I told myself, “You’ll have to do it tomorrow now. There is no longer anything you can do.” By the time tomorrow came, my failure to make that call had made me even more depressed, resulting in the wall becoming bigger and harder to climb. It felt like it was never going to be done. It took me about two weeks to make that phone call.
Unsurpassable mountains
Imagine having ten important tasks to do in one day, yet you are struggling to do just one. The wall transforms into an overwhelmingly daunting and unsurpassable mountain. The downward spiral continues; the darkness increases its suffocating grip. You simply cannot cope.
A judgmental, finger-pointing person would become exasperated and tell you to get a grip or pull yourself together. It doesn’t work like that. They can’t understand why, but that isn’t the point. We are dealing with how it is rather than how we would like it to be. It is an awful place to be, and every little stab and twist from the outside world just serves to reinforce the barriers and hurdles. On the inside, apart from having to face up to these tasks, I was also having to come to terms with devastating losses in my life. It is impossible for anyone to actually feel what you are going through, but being unable to feel or understand something does not negate its existence.
Congratulating yourself
I was talking to a neighbour about this – someone I didn’t know especially well at the time. She seemed to me to be a very dynamic and proactive person, and one who I didn’t think would fully appreciate my predicament. As a complete surprise, she told me that she gets this all the time. “If you have ten tasks to do and you know you won’t be able to face them all, just focus on one,” she told me. “Then,” she said, “if you manage to do that, instead of beating yourself up for failing to do the other nine, congratulate yourself for doing that one thing. You don’t have to do anything else that day if you don’t want to, but you will at least have achieved one thing instead of nothing.” When you are in such a deep state of depression, you have to accept the losses and make the most of what you can actually do.
The latter approach helped me. The former did not. If you know someone who is dealing with depression, the “get a grip” approach is not helpful and is most likely to compound the issue.
Two years of tiny baby steps
It took me a whole two years of tiny baby steps, one at a time, day by day, to get to the end of the journey (if indeed these journeys ever end completely). I want people to understand that, if they experience this kind of debilitating lack of ability to function, it is a completely normal part of the process. I also want people to know that, even if they don’t understand the effects that depression can have on people, telling them to man-up, get a grip or pull yourself together will actually worsen the problem and create bigger obstacles for the sufferer. We are all in this life together. We are all victims of our own minds, bodies and circumstances. Some people are better at dealing with things than others. Some people are better at understanding than others. However, it’s never too late to learn.
This is why it’s SO important to be able to talk about it with people so that you understand that what you are going through is common, and is a normal human reaction to trauma.
Please feel free to visit my website www.markdpitchard.com, where you’ll find details of my book I’M NEVER ILL (A journey through brain surgery and beyond…) which tells the story of how our amazing NHS saved my life after a brain haemorrhage in 2009.
