A Journal of My Messy Mind
Major Depressive Disorder*
1. Feeling sad or depressed all day, every day
Nothing bad ever happened, and many people would say nothing is wrong. I just can’t seem to even fake a smile to cover up the fact that I would rather be sleeping so I don’t feel anything anymore.
The other day I saw a friend from across the quad. I gave a slight wave and what I thought was a convincing smile. Alas, she stopped dead in her tracks and her face fell into a state of worry, “You look so sad.” You’re not wrong, but I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.
2. Diminished interest in everything you previously found enjoyable
I don’t want to do anything. Nothing can make me feel better. Maybe meds? Please give me more meds.
3. My mom asks why I haven’t been eating lately, I respond: “I’m just not hungry.”
I know I should eat, I’m not trying to not eat, but every time I try I feel like I’m forcing food down my throat. You know something is wrong when your body’s basic functions shut down.
4. Desire to sleep all the time; shallow sleep or insomnia, keeping you lying awake praying for sleep to take you away
See #1.
5. Slowing down physically
Don’t throw a ball at me, I have poor reaction times right now. It’ll just hit me in the face. I don’t need that. My mind is already hitting me in the face pretty hard every day. You can’t see the bruising but it’s there, take my word for it.
6. Constant tiredness and fatigue -- any exertion of energy is painful.
One step in front of the other. Just get to the [car, bed, chair], and then I can give up.
7. Feelings of guilt or worthlessness
I find myself apologizing for my feelings more than I should. Ugh I started crying again, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have to see me like this…I’m so sorry
8. Inability to think or concentrate
Sometimes I sit in front of my computer for hours attempting to do homework. I know I need to do finish [insert really important assignment that counts for a lot of my grade], but I cannot make myself care enough to.
9. Suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideation (even hypotheticals of what would happen if you swerved your car into the other lane—that counts)
Don’t freak out, I don’t want to die. But, if I were to get into a car accident, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I’d have an excuse to not do anything for a while. Maybe people would visit me in the hospital and reach out with worry and concern. Then I would feel like people care. People always seem to care more about external, visible pain. But what if no one visited me? I’d just become more depressed. Never mind, abort mission.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
1. Excessive worry about things you cannot control, making it hard to carry out day-to-day activities
I need control. I need to know what other people are thinking and doing. If only I could read minds.
2. Heart racing, beating out of your chest for no reason
My anxiety is such a constant in my life that I often don’t even notice I’m anxious until I notice realize how quickly my heart is beating. I have to take a few minutes to myself. Breathe in, breathe out. Please slow down, this is becoming annoying.
3. Fatigue
One day, I was so anxious and fatigued all day that I physically could not carry my backpack and had to call my mom to come pick me up because I couldn’t drive home.
4. Difficulty sleeping: constantly worrying and planning and thinking
It’s funny. Because I sleep a lot; my anxiety really tires me out (mentally and physically), but sometimes I can lay awake for hours, my mind racing with all the things I need to do or what I wish I’d said to [insert irrelevant passer-byer].
5. Irritability: lashing out at friends and family because you feel like you are drowning in endless “what ifs”
I know you just want to help and it’s not that I don’t want you around, I do. You don’t understand, but please stay.
Panic Disorder
1. Often paired with anxiety disorders
2. Heart pounding out of your chest
3. Hands are clammy and shaking for seemingly no reason
4. “I can’t breathe”
5. Dizziness, lightheaded, faint
6. Feeling dis-attached to oneself
7. Fear of losing control and/or going crazy
Instead of writing short bullet points like I did before I will attempt to describe the indescribable:
“What’s wrong, tell me what’s wrong. I just want to help.” I can’t see his face in front of mine, my tears have blurred my vision. I feel them streaking down my face, quivering at the bottom of my chin before losing their grip and falling. Falling. I’m falling. I feel myself falling. He’s holding me now, his arms wrapped around my body, attempting to calm my violent sobs. I feel my hands shaking as they clutch my face for dear life. Eventually I reach out and clamp my white hand on his bicep. I need to feel someone near me. I need an anchor. My mind is racing. My breath is broken, fragmented, sharp.
Eventually I tire myself out. My breathing slows. I feel like an empty shell. My eyes, irritated and exhausted from the overflow of tears. I am curled in a ball, my face nuzzled in his chest. Every once in a while, my breath catches again, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry.”
****
“Does everyone feel like this all the time?”
John Milton once said, "the mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” In a sense, your mind creates the whole world as you know it. The abstract idea of “the mind” shapes how you view yourself, how you act, your relationships with others, and what you can and cannot do. In a perfect world, your mind is Heaven -- full of peace and comfort; it makes the bad, good. Realistically, your mind is a Hell -- constantly wracked with worry. The good all of a sudden becomes bad and one bad situation just makes it worse (that has been my experience, at least).
I like to think that when I was younger I didn’t have a care in the world. Clad in a dress up gown, three scarves, and a tiara, I ruled the kindergarten kitchen. But in reality, I cried every day. I couldn’t cope when my mom left me, even if it was just for an hour or two. In first grade, I latched onto our assistant teacher and never let go. I don’t remember making any friends; I remember hating every second of being away from home. This was just the beginning of my anxiety.
The most common mental health disorders are Depressive Mood Disorder, aka Depression, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. These two often go hand in hand, separated only by a thin line. I’m constantly walking the tightrope, sometimes wobbling and leaning towards anxiety, sometimes falling more towards depression, and hopefully, never slipping and falling into the abyss.
****
11 PM, somewhere over the Atlantic en route to Rome:
My short, shattered breaths struggle to get past the knot in my throat. Tears stream down my face. I try to stay as quiet as possible as to not disturb other passengers or alarm my mom sitting next to me. But I’m screaming inside for help. My mind is racing through irrational fear after irrational fear.
“My friends are going to forget about me.” “I’ll never make it back home.” “The plane is going to crash.” “I’m never going to feel happy and secure ever again.”
Finally, I tap my mom on the shoulder. My eyes are swollen. My face covered in red splotches. I can barely talk; “I think I’m having a panic attack.” My entire body is shaking. I sound weak and pathetic.
Scientifically speaking, anxiety and depression are linked in part to low levels of serotonin** in the brain. Serotonin is the key to our sensation of happiness. It is our body’s best warrior against several mental disorders, anxiety and depression included. Without out it, the mind is conquered by the villains.
This is where drugs come into play. Obviously, when abused, drugs can create your own personal Hell riddled with hallucinations and cravings until your body is whittled down to skin and bones, no one left inside. But, in my experience, drugs have created my own personal Heaven within my hellish mind. My drug puts me at ease and makes my day a little easier. I overthink less and eat more. And when things get really bad (*cue the panic attack*), my drug pulls me out of the dark hole before I spiral all the way down (think Alice falling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland type of way down).
There is a stigma around admitting you have a mental illness/mental health disorder or that you take mediation for it. Once someone learns you have one (or a few), they look at you differently. It may not be intentional, but people will treat you differently. They don’t want to “set you off.” People try and help -- they really do. But it’s hard to help when you can’t even put into words exactly what you are feeling, why it’s happening or what you need to make it better.
For a lot of people (the people who don’t have a mental disorder or experience it through someone close to them), it is “too much.” The worst thing someone can say is: “It’s all in your head. Just approach the situation differently and it’ll make you feel better.” Yeah, no shit it’s all in my head. There’s something wrong in my mind, I can’t help it. It doesn’t work like that.
My former best friend once told me I was the “most self-destructive person” she knew and if only I could “learn how to take care of [myself],” I’d be “much easier to be friends with.” She was done, she couldn’t “deal with [my] shit anymore.”
The following is an excerpt is from Hyperbole and a Half, describing depression in a way that I couldn’t describe better myself:
“The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief. I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn’t have to feel them anymore.”
“But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there’s a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don’t feel very different.”
People often ask me why I sleep so much or why I like to sleep so much. For my birthday this year, my mom needlepointed me a small tapestry that proclaims me the “nap queen.” It is comical how constantly tired I am given how much I sleep. When interviewing me to see if I was eligible for stronger medication my psychiatrist asked, “Are you easily fatigued and find that you are sleeping more than the average person.” Obviously, I said yes. She then explained to me that it’s common for people dealing with anxiety and/or depression to experience constant tiredness***.
Anxiety keeps your body on high alert, leading your body to crash and experience extreme fatigue. My body often tenses up when I’m feeling really anxious, and then after I’ve exerted as much energy as I can into being anxious, I crash.
With depression, constant tiredness is linked to my lack of energy I have and my desire to do absolutely nothing, leading me to sleep to escape my problems. But sometimes sleep betrays me. Sometimes I lay awake, my mind buzzing, constantly thinking of what I should’ve said to so-and-so or what I’m going to do tomorrow to make sure I’m happier. I often can’t fall into a deep sleep. I’ve started having nightmares/stress dreams (I call these nightmares stress dreams because they come when I am feeling especially anxious). I wake up sweating, heart pounding, scared to fall back asleep. Last night, I dreamt that I was stabbed repeatedly and forced to stab someone else. I ran away, bloody, trying to tell my attackers that the reason for their attack was all a misunderstanding. These nightmares make sleep, the one thing that takes me away from my problems and gives me peace, betray me.
Pema Chodron said,
“The mind is the source of all suffering, and it is also the source of all happiness”
It is beautiful and ugly, but at the end of the day it is your mind and you cannot change it. I have had to learn to accept myself and everything that’s messy in my mind.
Everyone has their struggle, and this is mine.
* Courtesy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition
the Holy Grail of mental illness identifiers
definitions paraphrased by yours truly
** A chemical and neurotransmitter that regulates mood and social behavior, appetite and digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire and function. (thank you medicalnewstoday.com)
*** https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/symptoms/tiredness
Author’s Note:
After I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder with a side of panic attacks (yay,) I became really invested in reducing the stigma around mental illness. I hate when people treat me differently because they know I suffer from anxiety and sadness. Even worse, I hate it when people don’t believe that mental illness or anxiety and depression are real things. They are real and they are scary. People who deal with these and other disorders need help and love, not judgment, denial and insensitive comments.
Watch what you say and always be kind. You never know how it will change someone’s day.
By Arden Schraff
Duke Student, mental health activist and resident goddess making Insta casual.
Content from Holley Valdez