Why depression is more complicated than cooking rice.
by Jonny Elkes
Let’s start with rice. There are three simple rules to cooking rice properly.
The 3 rules of cooking rice.
1)Use 1 part rice. 2 parts water.
2)Wash the rice.
3)Do not stir the rice while it is cooking.
If only the rest of life was that simple. Unfortunately, mental illness is a little more complicated. It is hard to talk about. It is even harder to describe.
Depression is a state of being that is immensely complex. It is different for each person who experiences it, as with all mental illness, even when people share the same disorder, and it is notoriously difficult to put into words.
I have gone through many episodes of depression over the last 26 years, and I have always found it almost impossible to express what this horrible aspect of mental illness does to the mind.
I am determined however to try, as best I can, to articulate what depression has felt like to me in the past, because there is so much that those who are suffering from depression, or those of us have done so in the past, share, in terms of the unwelcome feelings, thoughts, and perspectives with which depression overwhelms the mind.
When you come down from depression, and for me it has always been after several weeks of experiencing delusional mania, you come down like someone who has jumped out of a plane without a parachute.
You come down to earth with such ferocity that when you hit the ground everything inside breaks. You do not die, but you wish you were dead. I have never experienced pain like it.
I have been fortunate enough not to have experienced a high degree of physical pain during my life, but I have experienced unimaginable mental pain.
It is simply impossible to describe the pain of chronic depression with any precision or accuracy to someone who has never experienced it before because the depths of negativity and mental anguish involved are something that a healthy mind simply cannot understand.
Everybody experiences bad moods, sadness, and feelings of being down from time to time. Having bad days is part of being human.
Depression though is a different animal. It takes feeling low to unimaginable depths. It seeps into the mind imperceptibly and then intensifies until it is impossible for that mind to focus on anything but the emotional agony that each negative thought brings in a relentless procession that can last for hours, days, weeks, or months.
Depression is a bottomless abyss. It feels like it will never end. It is not something out of which you can think your way out. Your thoughts are not your own. Depression controls your thoughts. It warps your perspective. It forces you to think in an unusual way. A way in which you simply do not think when your mind is healthy and balanced.
It can take you down so low that it feels as if someone, or something, is torturing you every second of the day every day.
Try as you might to avoid the poisonous cloud infiltrating and spreading through your troubled and disturbed mind there is an undeniable truth that you must face whether you like it or not. Depression is inescapable and no painkillers exist that can remove the pain.
If depression were a human being, then it would be a genius psychopath knowing exactly how to turn you against yourself. Someone who knows exactly how to make you feel worse than you have ever felt before.
Someone who can make you see yourself in the worst possible light. Someone with the ability to dig up hidden fears and insecurities from your sub conscious and convince you that the deluded fog of negativity through which you are now perceiving the universe and everything in it, yourself included, is reality, even though nothing could be further from the truth.
Depression lies to you. It is so adept at lying to you that, before you know it, you believe in everything that it tells you. The place from which depression sees the world becomes the place from which you see the world. It is a place that you never wanted to go but you are there, and you are not leaving.
When you explain to a psychiatrist that the pain that you are feeling is almost unbearable, he or she usually prescribes medication.
Often, they tell tell you that the medication will not take affect for at least six weeks. When you are in agony six weeks seems like a lifetime. There is no cure for mental illness so, in that way, it seems like it will last a lifetime.
You lose all hope and when you lose all hope you feel despair. Depression is despair. It is the belief that nothing could be worse than it is, that nothing will get better and that everything, and I mean everything, is wrong with you and the world in which you live.
Depression is a place where the sun does not shine. It is a place where anything bad that can happen, will happen. Depression gives you every probable reason to feel bad about yourself.
It does not matter who you are or where you are. It does not matter how much money you have, how good or bad your life has been, who you have in your life, or what the future holds. There is no escape from the darkness of depression. It swallows up every positive thought that you have faster than a black hole swallows starlight.
Everything feels wrong with the world especially you and your place in it. There is nowhere to turn that does not feel utterly horrible. It is as if you see only grayness and taste only blandness.
Depression bombards your mind with one negative thought after another. You feel disgusted and disgusting for no reason. You have no energy or motivation. Everything feels like a massive effort. Even the simplest of tasks, like brushing your teeth, can become too much to do.
All you want is to feel better, but the feelings of despair seem to go on for ever and you are convinced that they will never end. It is not just that you cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel. You believe that there is no light. You are convinced that you will dwell in the darkness forever.
I became suicidal. For months all I wanted to do was kill myself. It was the mental pain. It felt almost unbearable until I got to the point where I could not bear it any longer. I tried to kill myself. It was such a half-hearted attempt that it does not really count as a real suicide attempt. Deep down I knew that life is too precious to throw away.
I had planned my suicide many times. I knew exactly how I would do it but although every bone in my body wanted to kill myself something else inside me wanted to live more than it wanted to die.
It does not matter how many times you go through depression and come out the other side, it will always make you believe that this time you are never coming out.
When I was about six years old, I went with my parents on holiday to Venice, in Italy. We went on a tour. At one point ,we stopped on the Bridge of Sighs, an ornate bridge overlooking one of the canals. The female tour guide told us that the view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment.
It was Lord Byron who gave the bridge the name in the nineteenth century. It comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before the jailers took them down to their cells. That is what depression feels like to me. Going down into darkness forever. Seeing light for the very last time.
Medication can take a while to work and, if it does not, the psychiatrist can try different medications. They may need to experiment a little until they find the right combination for you.
Talking about your mental problems with someone, whether it be a psychologist, therapist, family member, friend, or a stranger in a support group, can help tremendously. Sharing your experiences of mental illness with others, especially those who have had similar experiences themselves, is therapeutic. At least, that has been my experience.
Talking might feel like the last thing you want to do. Depression tends to make you want to isolate yourself, to hide under the covers and sleep,not just because depression makes youfeel tired but because the time that you are sleeping is the only time that youcan get away from the unpleasantness and distorted thinking that depression causes.
That is the sad newsabout depression. The good news is that, even though it seems interminable while you are going through it, the depression does end. At some point it fades away just as quickly and subtly as it came.
That is the most important thing to remember about depression. Itpasses. It goes away. It ends. That is why suicide is never the right course of action because if you just keep going and never give up you will inevitably make it to the other side.
You will make it to a better place in your mind. You will be stronger than you were before. Like a prisoner finally getting out of jail fora crime he or she did not commit,you will be free, and ready to move on to a new chapter in your life.
The secret is to take things step by step, one day at a time, accept your feelings for what they are, and know that you are not alone. You are one of many people around the world suffering from such torment and instability.
Your most important job is to survive and look after yourself as best you can. When you have survived depression,you have overcome one of the greatest challenges that you will ever face. You will have emerged victorious, and as the writer Thomas Paine wrote: “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Winston Churchill suffered from depression. Hefought in real battlesand battles in his own mind.It is not surprising therefore that, when it comes toadversity, he knew a thing or two about how to deal with it. His advice is the best advice: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”