I’ve been dealing with depression (and anxiety) for well over 5 years now. I’ve tried so many different medications and treatments with no apparent success. Inevitably, in the course of the treatment, the doctor will ask if I’m starting to feel better to see if it’s worth continuing the treatment, up the dose, or swap to something else. And… I never know what to say. If it’s not going to get dramatically better all of a sudden, I don’t really know how to recognize any incremental progress if it’s happening at all and without being able to do that, I might be passing on treatments that could have helped if I gave it more time.
So if you’ve been in this situation, how did you recognize progress? To the extent that you can put it into words, what did it feel like to slowly get better as you were treated?
It’s a very slow progress. Like you don’t really notice your shoes wear in and then wear them down. It is weird enjoying things that you’d be too jaded to even consider enjoying before. But it takes time to register that you are actually enjoying something, I had not much context for that.
It’s not instantaneous, like its often portrayed in film (Theoden de-aging in LOTR f.i.) You need to re-learn a lot of things, like someone in a severe accident learning to walk again. Only it’s in your brain. First you need to realize you are not in constant stress anymore and threatened by everything in life all at once.
And then you need to slowly learn to relax all those mental muscles that were all balled up in paroxismic spasms for far too long.
And after a long time of trusting this new norm without getting betrayed by life or significant others you gain the mental state in which you discover that you are enyoing simple things. Those at first only slightly penetrate your walled garden as you are too careful to allow deep feelings to sway you (as deep feelings have betrayed you before). But step by step you are amazed by tiny, almost insighnificant things that bring joy to your soul.
Thats’s where I am at. I am both overjoyed at feeling things and so sorry for my former self for being in that locked-in state. But I am grateful for the experience and proud of the fact I persevered and not given in to suicidal thoughts. I am really happy at my current state of being even though every once in a while, like a craving for cigarettes I gave up a couple of years ago, I am drawn into a short burst of ‘appèl du vide (call of the void)’ where I imagine things unraveling again.
It’s not an easy road and I certainly needed the support of others. But the most important currency is trust. Trusting yourself, trusting your friends/significant others. And most likely you will never see as much support as someone in rehabilitation over drunkenly crashing their car into a tree, as the wounds are not visible. But it is worth it at some point you will realize how big of a handicap depression actually is and it’s such a free feeling not to be tied down by it anymore.
Wow, thanks for that. I struggled for decades and also had a difficult time after a breakthrough. I describe it as being released from a long stint in prison, but there is no one to pick you up at the gate. There’s still a long walk ahead of you.
Yeah things are much better now, but my life path is still altered forever, there’s no going back.