DEPRESSION WITHOUT ANTI-DEPRESSANTS: SHARP EDGES & VIVID COLOUR.
Art by: Tara Catalano at: www.taracatalano.com
WORDY POST ALERT: SAVE READING FOR LATER IF YOU DON'T HAVE A FEW MINUTES TO CHILL. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
So, I wanted to start off by saying that writing this weekly blog post has been most inspiring and often quite cathartic. I don’t HAVE to do it, nobody is making me do it, but for some reason I CAN’T NOT do it. ALSO, I WANT TO DO IT.
I’ve started and participated in some blog projects in the past, but I’ve never felt quite so determined or quite so uniquely inspired as I do now. So I’m just going to keep on keepin' on with it.
I also wanted to address something else. The other elements of what I do, the initial reason I created the new website was all about the products I make. I will always make them, and I will always want to share them with others. But I think it's important for me to convey that the way I do things and present things is changing and growing. I'm feeling like I need to focus my energy on things besides simply selling my products. I MUST follow that feeling.
And really more to the point, our lives are so much more than about taking care of our outside shell. Yes that's important too, but it’s so very important to take care of what's beneath the skin as well. To nurture that inside beauty and care for that aspect of our being. I desire for us all to feel better in our bodies, our minds, our very souls.
Finally, I feel that focusing on healing the inner stuff reflects directly onto your outside appearance. Please see the lovely Roald Dahl quote below. One of my faves. I think he sums it up beautifully.
Now, about this post in particular. It was written mostly last Thursday and meant to be published then. I had it close to completion, but before I could finish edits etc. I got some devastating news about some special people in my life, and I had to stop then and there.
It had been this glorious day of sunshine and heat, and I was in a pretty good mood. I was writing away like mad, fueled and inspired by the power of the sun itself, and with so much momentum going.
The news I received was so sad, so surreal, and so beyond heartbreaking. The glowing day became a mixture of bland and unbearable. I couldn’t write anything else, I couldn’t edit any photographs. I couldn’t even think straight from that moment forward.
Returning to it this week, I wanted to keep it much the same as it was, but my edits from this current time have certainly shaded it differently; given it a new hue. That's life isn't it though? Glorious sunshine and chilling darkened shade.
Okay onto the original post. If you're still with me, do get your “cuppa” or your glass of something and get cozy.
Today outside Glasgow, it’s a gloriously sunny day and looking out the window I can’t see a cloud in the sky. I feel quite the way I would feel back in California. You get so used to it when you grow up with sunshine every damn day. But here outside Glasgow, when a day like this shows it’s beautiful self, you definitely notice and you definitely appreciate it.
Friends all over Scotland will be sending text messages or posting status updates about how lovely it is. Teen boys across the land will go “taps aff” (tops off) and probably get into some kind of trouble because alcohol will most definitely be brought out today. So much alcohol. So much shenanigans. Actually so funny.
Anywho, for some time now, I’ve been paying close attention to what’s been coming up for me personally as well as in my conversations with others in daily life. I’ve also been sporadically putting feelers out via social media, regarding the range of topics I’m thinking of writing about and I've been watching what comes up in my various newsfeeds.
The topics that keep coming up are most consistently about our internal feelings, and not so much about the shiny veneer of outside beauty. It’s all about reaching that inner contentment and focusing on beauty from the inside out. The Health & Wellness stuff.
So on that note, I wanted to write about something close to my heart. Living with depression and anxiety, and without the aid of any prescribed medication. It might be a somewhat heavy or taboo topic, and possibly rather personal, but it’s what I am feeling the most right now.
So in my twenties I had one of those “A-ha” moments. I noticed that I always felt “off” or sad, or angry, or anxious, and the list goes on. So many layers of extreme emotions. All. The. TIme. Like hormonal teenager only AMPLIFIED.
I felt like something might be quite wrong with me and my brain. After much thought, and talking about it with some friends and family, I decided to consult with my doctor to see if she could help me. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and I opted to start the process of being a medicated mental health guinea pig. It was an emotional roller coaster.
I felt the effects of my first dose of Prozac almost immediately, in a positive way. That was short lived. I ended up trialling a range of medications and doses of each. Always looking for the sweet spot. I never found it, or if I did, it was very fleeting.
I can’t tell you all the names of all the different pills but I can tell you some of them made me feel great for a time, and then not so great. I can also tell you that some of them made me feel like actual sht. So, so sh*tty.
Then at one point I lost my health insurance (back in California), and because I couldn’t afford to get my medication without my insurance co-pay any longer, I had to figure something else.
Trying to come off the medication left me literally curled on my bed like a junkie at one point. I remember that so clearly. I couldn’t make it to work, and I ended up leaving my job that had become like a second home to me, with a full on second family. I left badly and to this day I wish I'd have handled that situation differently.
Basically, one day I just snapped. I couldn’t handle anything in my regular life. It didn’t matter that I was a single Mom who needed to take care of her child. I could only see (and feel) that I could not mentally or physically deal with my life in any capacity.
One of my friends saw what was going on for me, and she kindly gave me some of her anti-depressants that were of the same family to my latest prescription, and so I took those, weaning myself off of them. At the same time I turned to one of my past favourite herbal medicines, marijuana. The weaning off the pills combined with the greenery helped me for a time. I finished the weaning process, and shortly after I stopped my herbal remedies.
I need to make a side note here: I firmly believe in the powers of marijuana being able to help with so many health issues, both mental and physical. It did most definitely help me. I however tend to get quite hooked on the head change aspect, and it makes me relax so much so that I become the opposite of motivated to get anything done in any way, shape, or form. I personally needed to let it go after it helped me get through the phase of getting off my prescription.
When I moved to Scotland a few years later, some of my old “stuff” came back for me, along with some new stuff. Lots of stuff. I'd prefer to leave that information personal so I'm not going to delve into it.
Moving on, because I now lived in a country that has the NHS, and having access to a local family doctor, and most (if not all) prescribed medication being covered, I decided to seek out medical help. I chose to go back on the anti-depressants at the time.
I started the guinea pig process of trying all the different types of medication, and in varying levels again. Like before, it helped for a time. And then like before, it stopped helping.
With mental health and medication, I don’t think it’s a simple task to put into words, just what exactly makes you know that things are not working any longer. You just get this undercurrent of KNOWING. An instinct. And maybe another one of those “A-Ha” moments. I’m going to try to put some words into form here though.
So for me, anti-depressants are like this foamy layer of protection from any intense feelings and emotions. Without the “foam” there are sharper edges to everything. Some of those sharper edges are good ones, some are the polar opposite of good. I have come to feel that all of these edges are normal and human, and make us who we are. I've also come to accept that if I want the good edges, I do also have to put up with the seriously crap-tastic ones. And that it's okay to let these not so nice edges hang around when they show up. I now choose to see them, feel them, and let them pass. Some days are easier than others.
When I was medicated, I was floating through my life, not able to LAUGH those boisterous belly laughs, or feel utter joy at anything. At the same time, I couldn’t feel any sort of despair or devastation, I could not cry for anyone or anything.
Weirdly, for me, I would be surrounded by all this protective foam, but every so often I would get a volcanic eruption of emotion coming through, so ridiculously intense and horrifying for myself and others around me. It was always eruptions of full on raging anger. Like the foam generally made it so that I’d be able to continuously let go of stuff, or compartmentalize it. Then at some point a Mt. Vesuvius - like eruption of emotion would appear, like a freaking demon rising from the very depths of hell. I'm actually not exaggerating or being dramatic here. The occasional eruptions were hideous. And equally hideous were the terribly obvious moments where I couldn't touch an emotion with a ten foot pole.
I decided to go off the medication in the beginning of 2018, even though it was extremely disconcerting, and I didn’t feel like myself for ages. I got all those sharper edges back on everything, along with the heightened emotions that make me feel like a teenager (and sometimes a ten-year-old).
The brilliant colour has come back to my life as well. Along with the creativity, and the blessed laughter. I love the colour and the creativity, and the laughter. And what I love the most, is that now I feel like MYSELF. Unabashedly ME.
Another side note which I think is important to convey. I do think the anti-depressants were much needed when I sought them out, and they were helpful for a time. They allowed me to retreat into myself when I needed to, and they let me settle into a cushiony cocoon that I required at that point. I do think they have their place.
But as I mentioned before, for me personally I became aware that I lost any sort of heightened emotions, those flashes of colour that really made me - ME. I was so very numb, and it was reflected in everything I did and touched. I wanted that colour back. Even if it came with those sharper edges.
Looking back, the main objectives in my life in the medication laden years, were to eat something tasty whenever I wanted (which because I chose to do this all the time, I didn't even appreciate), and I also wanted to sleep. Mostly I just wanted to throw the blanket over me and sleep. And sleep and sleep and sleep some more. “Namaste in bed.”
Really though. All I wanted was sleeeeep.
So this post has been about depression and anxiety, deciding to accept my form of it, allowing it to have a place in my life, and living with it.
I'd like this to be the first post in a series of posts that discusses ways to combat the low blue periods or facets that come up. Amongst the posts I have planned over the next little while are these topics which I am finding helpful in my own journey:
Art (and Craft) Therapy
Nootropics, Hemp Oil & CBD.
Rest, Sunshine & Hydration
My Exercise “Holy Trio"" / Active Meditation.
Bullet Journaling
I can't make each blog post a forever long experience so I'll stop there for now and discuss these other topics in individual posts in the upcoming weeks and months.
I'd like to close with one more image by an American artist named Tara Catalano. She really inspires me. You can see more of her colourful inspirational work on her website at: www.taracatalano.com
I'm going to include some of her other artwork in one of the upcoming posts about Art & Craft Therapy. She too has used art to get her through some darker spells, and you can see that she now quite clearly paints from a place of such joy. I'm really looking forward to discussing the “alchemy" of Art as a therapy.
Art by: Tara Catalano at www.taracatalano.com
Okay everyone thanks for stopping by, and have a lovely day or night wherever in the world you might be.
Tara xx