It's a very good and simple explanation of how it feels Michael, well found.'
I had a milder than many get brush with it about 15 years ago when my life was a deep hole and I toyed with burning the house down just to get out... but it never went past the plotting and fantasizing stage. I was depressed but had good reason to be so perhaps it's different to what many suffer, or not as deep an 'episode' of it.
The description in that clip nails it. You don't feel sad, just empty. Nothing looks right. The world appeared to me like an old sepia photograph, everything real had gone and I was living in the shell of it. Nothing really mattered to me. I wasn't suicidal but if someone had pointed a shotty at me I wouldn't have given a toss if they pulled the trigger or not.
... and that was the key.. for me. The realisation that I didn't care freed me to some extent.
I looked at things differently, I stopped worrying about anything, stopped planning things to get disappointed about, stopped giving a toss what anyone said or did, stopped trying to cover the blues up, and just rode out the few days at a time when the world was shite and thought about how to live through the present a day at a time and to hell with appearances and the old rules.
I didn't fight it, just waited for it to pass. I was already cynical so being depressed wasn't a big change to me anyway really. Long story short, it gradually receeded in frequency and it's gone, but sorry, it didn't take the cynicism with it.
I didn't take anti-depressants as I felt that would be feeding it. It may have been a poor decision but it was how I handled it. I like to be in control, never got drunk and wasn't letting some drug mess with my mind either, I had a vague idea of how it all worked and how to cope with it without the dope. Just went with the flow.
BUT.. that's just me, I only had it 'mild' and any who do feel they're in a hole should at least talk about it to someone who won't say "oh, what have you got to be depressed about, you're better off than some!" ... they may be right, always someone worse off, but they don't 'get' it.
I found a GP who did get it and was a damned good psychologist as a few sentences from him put me on different track of thinking. He left it up to me to decide if I needed to take the dope or not. Good man.
What puzzles me is the confused messages that we get about depression. Some things we read contend that it's a chemical imbalance in the brain over which we have no control. If that is 'true' depression then that's not what I had, even though the symptoms are identical. I had good enough reason to be depressed, I was trapped in a lifestyle I didn't want to be in, it was prison like, so who wouldn't get depressed about that? You'd have to be nuts not to be wouldn't you?
So, does the 'chemical imbalance' cause the mental depression, or does the mental attitude trigger the 'chemical depression reaction'???
Discounting those on the dole with 'professional' depression I wonder how many really have that 'chemical' depression?
Certainly not the farmers who hang themselves in the tractor shed. God knows the way their lives have gone is depressing just to read about, let alone live with. But they still need to talk about it if only to sort it out for themselves why they feel as they do.
When you hear of rich, or young people with a future suffering from it then you do have to wonder if that is the chemical type. it's every bit as real to them. But that's what shrinks are for I guess.
