Depression, for me, was ‘ extreme sadness’…the sadness you experience when a relationship ends or when someone close to you passes away. Something which dulls with time….which is just a stronger form of being upset.
Two years in hostel and everything changed. Attempted suicides, temporary amnesia, uncontrollable hysterical sobbing, volatile mood swings.
The first time someone I knew got depressed, we tried the ‘usual’ stuff. But no amount of talking and trying to cheer her up would take away the blank look in her eyes. The day she turned to us in the middle of watching a comedy movie and said ‘ do you think life is worth living’, I realised that depression is much much more than being sad. It still gives me goose bumps to think of the empty expression in her eyes.
Why do people get depressed? Why do they lose control of their emotions? I couldn’t understand it. Our typical reaction to depression was ‘ It is a weakness …how can you let your emotions become bigger than your life!.’ Just couldn’t understand it – till the day I experienced it myself.
Depression is like a tornado…it seeps you inside the vortex of negative emotions. Yes, It is extremely difficult to climb out of it – but not impossible.
.I am not qualified to talk about’clinical’ depression, but would like to share my thoughts on the kind of depression that teenagers and early adults go through.
What happens to make a sensible, cheerful person suddenly lose faith in life and everything it happens? Till now, I have come across three reasons:
Pressure
In 1997, when the board exam results were announced, Delhi was stunned with news of students trying to kill themselves because they couldn’t face their parent’s disappointment with their marks. Next year, a ‘dial in’ counselling centre was started. The number of calls from students, ranging from problems with studies, with parental expectations, relationships, were astounding. No one had realised just how difficult and how scared the students’ were of losing face or being considered a ‘failure’
Loneliness:
Homesickness, lack of friends, breaking away from a long relationship, everything points towards feeling a sense of ‘being alone’ not belonging. It can be real difficult to adjust to new environment, with the culture, the attitude being so different from what you are used to.
Insecurity:
“ I have to be with him all the time, what if he starts liking someone else”, “ I don’t want to booze, but I have to drink so that he doesn’t get the feeling that I am not ‘his type’.’ My friend fell in love, and it was her downfall. She forgot the person she was…she lost herself and in the process lost her will to live.
One common thread running through these is the feeling of losing faith in oneself. When you get depressed, you start feeling inferior, begin a self depreciating tirade and in the end there is just a pain – an anger, without passion – without temper. An anger which is self directed, which wants to inflict an ache and which is just simply hurtful.
You start thinking ‘ Am I really not worth it?’, “ Am I really so bad at whatever I do?’.This leads to a “ maybe, I deserved whatever happened” and finally to a feeling of “ I won’t ever do anything worthwhile, I know I am not good”. Lack of belief in yourself leads to a lack of belief in society, in friends and finally in life.
So how do you come out of this pit? Everyone has a different way of approaching it. Someone I knew used to run away whenever anyone even approached her, she was so scared of showing her ‘inabilities’ to people. Another one wanted someone to be with her forever and hence became social – she was scared that she might hurt herself if she was alone. Some people use the freedom they have in hostel as a crutch to forget whatever happened, some lean on their strong circle of friends and others just try to live with it.
-*It is difficult to talk about it with friends….you never feel that they can understand the depth of your emotions…but what friends do in this situation is much more than just listen – they rebuild your faith as a person – as a friend. Just knowing that someone cares for you…someone is there for you makes a lot of difference.
-Do counselling centres really help? Yes, they do! What really makes them work is the anonymity of the procedure – you would rather pour your heart out to some stranger, someone who you don’t know and will never know…someone who is not going to judge you on the basis of what you say….someone whom you don’t have to face later when you are in a better mood. Carrying on with this point, chatting or mailing friends, whether known or unknown, new or old, sometimes helps more than sitting face to face with someone. You are less conscious and more free to be able to really express your feelings. Also, you don’t have the fear of seeing the sympathy or the pity which you imagine are in your friend’s voice when you talk to them. Somehow, typing allows more uninhibited freedom of expression than talking.
-The toughest and the most important way – introspection. Trying to understand what happened to make you feel like this, trying to make yourself get rid of the anger…simply, trying to give yourself confidence is easier said than done. Stop feeling that you are the cause of everything wrong that happens in your life…in fact stop imagining that everything that happens is wrong. A depressed person usually takes every incident in his life as negative – he stops seeing even a shimmer of silver lightning in the cloud…for him, the sky is cloudy. But what one has to understand is that for the clouds to blow away, you have to puff at them. Understanding, patience and caring is needed from your friends…but you have to help yourself. You have to stop thinking that you are a failure.If you haven’t got grades, it doesn’t mean that you are dumb.talk to your parents, obviously they will be upset…after all they want the best for you…but they don’t stop believing in you. If your relationship has ended, it is not a judgement on your role as a lover!
Think like this…
- You are giving so much more importance to moments of pain and anguish in the past rather than moments in the present and future which can bring joy ….you are letting a few things blot out the rest of your life.
-People who matter to you., don’t care about whatever you have done, as long as you are convinced about it and you believe in it…if people care about it, then they shouldn’t matter. By going into depression, you are causing pain to the people who love you.
Depression is a loss of hope…you lose hope in things around you and in yourself…
Remember that you are the person who has brought happiness to a whole lot of people’s lives – Don’t go into a self inflicted isolation, In the end, you are the one who lives your life.nobody else will do it for you. Come out, there is a world wanting to give you happiness.