Mental Health and Depression

Whenever I think of mental health issues, I think of depression because I’ve suffered from clinical depression my entire life. Throughout my childhood, I suffered feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness. Let me be fair to my family, they tried their best to provide a happy and safe environment and for the most part they succeeded. However, my depression was rooted in not having enough seratonin in my brain and therfore my depression was not situational. I lived with the depression for a few reasons that I share below.

My depression felt like it was “all in my head”

I had been exposed to the culture that tells you that only a weak person blames their feelings on something that doesn’t exist. It was “all in my head”. I saw television shows where it was highly suggested that if a person claimed depression, they were only making excuses for their actions. People all around me would speak of someone having “mental issues” like they had some kind of plague or something. I was afraid to tell people how I felt for fear they would judge me as “weak”.

My depression told me that I was alone.

I can’t express how important this one is. The feeling of being all alone with a problem is quite crippling emotionally. I would hear in my head that little voice say, “No one will understand what you are going through”, so I stayed silent and let my mental state suffer for it.

My depression told me that I was being selfish to tell others about my problems.

When you’re down on in the dumps and feel like the weight of your problems are crushing you. That same little voice tells me that no one talks about their problems unless they want to be selfish. Very early in life I developed this mindset that I can’t think of myself in any circumstance because selfish people are bad. So I learned to hide my feelings and stay quiet because I wanted to be a good person, and good people put everybody else before themselves.

The answer is it IS “all in my head” but not in a negative way.

If your brain is suffering from a deficiency like lack of seratonin, it is sick. That’s just not a bad thing and it doesn’t mean I’m weak. In fact, it takes strength to admit that I didn’t feel happy and something was wrong with me.

The answer is I’m NOT alone.

This is the biggest lie that our inner critics can do is to tell us that no one will ever be able to relate to what you are going through. In fact, there isn’t anything that you can say that won’t have at least one person saying, “I know what you mean. It happens to me too.” When we start sharing more about our mental state, we learn just how UNalone we are.

The answer is that telling people that you need help is a selfless act.

I’m sure you’ve heard that if you’re on a plane that loses air pressure, you put on YOUR mask first before you attempt to help anyone else with their mask. The reason for that is simple, if you try to help someone with their mask while you don’t have any oxygen, we run the risk of being unable to help them because we will have already passed out from lack of oxygen. The same priciple applies if you devote your life to taking care of other people and seeing to their needs, but if you deprive yourself of the proper care, eventually you run out of oxygen and pass out. Therefore, when you seek care for whatever is wrong with you, you’re making yourself well enough to care for the people around you.

Depression comes in many forms, but it affects us in essentially the same way. If you can learn that the reason it is “all in your head” is because you need treatment, if you learn that you are NOT alone, and learn that taking care of yourself allows you to be available to take care of others, you will see that it’s so important that we pay attention to our mental health and depression. If you want to discuss ways that your depression has kept you from seeking the help you need, I would love to hear about it. You can write me at kennmorrison@gmail.com. Or you can find me on facebook & twitter.