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Early Warning System
Jun. 5th, 2014 05:44 pmIt’s a funny thing about depression. I get better and better about noticing when I have it, and every time I do I feel stupid for not having realised before.
In 2008, I had no idea what was going on, and I lay on the bathroom floor and howled about the general wrongness of everything, but couldn’t tell anybody why I was crying, because I didn’t know.
Some months later, I was telling Tony that we should split up because he shouldn’t have to deal with me, and I knew something was seriously wrong.
At some point in the next couple of years it occurred to me to question my long-standing perception that I had no friends and was a massive social failure. I realised that this was a reflection of my state of mind, not reality.
The time after that, I caught it at ‘nobody likes me’.
This time, I noticed that ‘I am feeling like nobody likes me’ and recognised that this was false, and a warning.
I also realised that this is probably linked to my (depression-induced) reluctance to talk to anybody any more than I have to. If I am not interested in other people, my brain says, why should they be interested in me? And from that it’s a very small step to ‘nobody likes me’. I don’t want to interact much when my small talk engine is out of action, but when people don’t interact with me I become convinced that they hate me.
It is frighteningly easy to believe these things about myself. I get so used to their being in my head that they seep into my self-perception. It took me about three years to get my head around the idea that the people in my last office liked me not just because I was quite good at proofreading and fixing the photocopier, but because I was a person that they liked. (The mindworm informs me that if I post this all these people will cease to like me. It is not true, mindworm.)
The other thing that I have realised is that not everything needs to be present – or, if you like, absent – for me to be depressed. The reason I didn’t pick it up immediately this time round is because I am very excited about various other things and so I’m free of the listless don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself feeling. Now I am getting up at 5.45 am it’s difficult to work out whether the fact that I don’t want to get out of bed is because my brain is broken or because I’m just plain knackered. And in the background the dullness sinks in and everything silently becomes a struggle.
When I catch it, I can start to take it to pieces (this post being a case in point) and reality breaks through the gaps. I’m getting better at catching it. That doesn’t stop me feeling a little bit foolish every time I do. Foolish, and regretful, because, without my noticing, it will have stolen a year, or a month, or a week of my life. Every time the gap gets shorter. That helps.
The sun is out today; that helps, too.
In 2008, I had no idea what was going on, and I lay on the bathroom floor and howled about the general wrongness of everything, but couldn’t tell anybody why I was crying, because I didn’t know.
Some months later, I was telling Tony that we should split up because he shouldn’t have to deal with me, and I knew something was seriously wrong.
At some point in the next couple of years it occurred to me to question my long-standing perception that I had no friends and was a massive social failure. I realised that this was a reflection of my state of mind, not reality.
The time after that, I caught it at ‘nobody likes me’.
This time, I noticed that ‘I am feeling like nobody likes me’ and recognised that this was false, and a warning.
I also realised that this is probably linked to my (depression-induced) reluctance to talk to anybody any more than I have to. If I am not interested in other people, my brain says, why should they be interested in me? And from that it’s a very small step to ‘nobody likes me’. I don’t want to interact much when my small talk engine is out of action, but when people don’t interact with me I become convinced that they hate me.
It is frighteningly easy to believe these things about myself. I get so used to their being in my head that they seep into my self-perception. It took me about three years to get my head around the idea that the people in my last office liked me not just because I was quite good at proofreading and fixing the photocopier, but because I was a person that they liked. (The mindworm informs me that if I post this all these people will cease to like me. It is not true, mindworm.)
The other thing that I have realised is that not everything needs to be present – or, if you like, absent – for me to be depressed. The reason I didn’t pick it up immediately this time round is because I am very excited about various other things and so I’m free of the listless don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself feeling. Now I am getting up at 5.45 am it’s difficult to work out whether the fact that I don’t want to get out of bed is because my brain is broken or because I’m just plain knackered. And in the background the dullness sinks in and everything silently becomes a struggle.
When I catch it, I can start to take it to pieces (this post being a case in point) and reality breaks through the gaps. I’m getting better at catching it. That doesn’t stop me feeling a little bit foolish every time I do. Foolish, and regretful, because, without my noticing, it will have stolen a year, or a month, or a week of my life. Every time the gap gets shorter. That helps.
The sun is out today; that helps, too.
