“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The definition of Depression is as follows:
1. Severe despondency and dejection, accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.
2. A condition of mental disturbance, typically with lack of energy and difficulty in maintaining concentration or interest in life.
I however would describe it as a nasty snake that can creep in and wrap itself around you and it will easily consume you before you even know it is there. This snake as I like to call it has had a major impact on my life for quite some time, now whether or not I want to admit it is a whole different story.
Growing up mental health was not something that was talked about or even I feel accepted in my family. If you were felt different you didn’t talk about it you didn’t go see someone you just dealt with it. Now this may have been only my perceived impression of how it was handled, but then again this is my blog and that is how I felt!
I think that there are many people who have a negative view of depression and that they feel that all I do is sit around my house in a robe eating and crying. I can let you know that is not the case. I get up I go to work everyday and I come home and spend time playing with my family but mentally I do struggle with this. It is a challenge that I fight every day that no one sees, I wish I could let people see it because then I think that it would be understood more but sadly I can’t put a projector on my brain and let you see what is going on in there.
It's funny in many ways how many people will say things negatively about depression without knowing that they are talking to someone who is dealing with the same illness they are talking poorly about. It took me a while and a lot of encouragement from my wonderful wife Censie but I started seeing a therapist and it has helped. Now it's not like walking in having an epiphany and then I am all done but it is an ongoing battle of ups and downs where there are days that I feel great and then days that I feel like total shit. I think that having my surgery has been hard for me mentally even though I feel healthy I am still adjusting to having a bag on my stomach for the rest of my life. So this is something that I will continually look in the face and know that it is a part of me but it is not something that will consume me for the rest of my life. I need to be present for my children and for my family!
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
― Epictetus
― Epictetus
The definition of Anxiety is as follows:
1 A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
2. Desire to do something, typically accompanied by unease.
Now I compared depression to a snake that wraps itself around you where now I will compare Anxiety a little pesky worm inside your brain hopped up on speed making sure that you worry about everything. In my case I worry about pretty much everything at all times. So lets recap I have a snake holding me down and a worm making sure that I worry about every small detail about everything.
If you have known me for any part of my life you could probably easily see me as being a pretty anxious person. I get really bad social anxiety at this point as well. Some of my anxiety stems from IBD. I would always worry about what if eat something that makes me sick, where is the bathroom, are people counting how many times I go to the bathroom, and do people think I am making myself sick? Now I worry about is my bag going to pop off, do people think that I smell, what are people thinking about me?
I also have a strong desire to make everyone like me and I cannot handle thinking that people are mad at me. My coworkers know this now about me and it has become a joke that someone is just going to come up and say they are mad at me because they know I will not be able to let it go. I worry about how people look at me and if they are judging me or if I did something to make them upset. I worry about what people think about how me, how I look how I act. It's like running a sprint all the time in my brain and it can be exhausting at times.
Luckily Censie has stood by me through all of these challenges because my Depression and my Anxiety were exasperated these last three years in dealing with my Ulcerative Colitis.
I am writing this post not to get people to feel sorry for me but to make mental health more normal and show an insight into my world. I constantly hear bad things about people with mental health or that we must be weak if we go to counseling. I would say the opposite. I think that it takes a ton of strength to go to someone and admit that you need help and that you need support. I want to make sure that neither of my children ever feels bad about being down on themselves or being nervous but if it becomes a huge issue in your life then you need to go and seek out support.
