Giving in to Depression

It truly is a mystery how depression can affect you in your daily life. There are thousands of studies on how depression effects the body; chemically, hormonally, physically and mentally, and of course, there is then the course of treatment required to help cure the depression.

My team of doctors whom were helping me get better, always said that the medicine is only 20% of the cure, the rest is how your thoughts affect your moods and ultimately your behaviours.  Seems simple enough right? However, what do you do when, without you even knowing it, you've given in to it and are stuck in a rut? To everyone else is seems very easy to say;

"You need to have some structure in your day,"

"Plan your activities,"

"Don't sleep in, get up at a decent time and get at it,"

and the infamous Nike saying,

"Just Do It."

I was feeling like I was on a very slippery slope. I had gotten out of the hospital after 2 months, each and every day I was able to do more and more activities, like making it through the grocery store without dropping from exhaustion, cooking small meals, doing laundry etc, all things that I could not do while I was on the "Severe" scale of depression.  But now, all of sudden, I was in rut.  I had no one to be accountable to; I could get up when I wanted to, give in to sleep because it just felt like that was what my body needed, mope around in my pajamas and have my own pity party, cook and clean when I wanted, and ultimately do what I wanted when I wanted. Trying to stick to a scheduled day seemed all too hard; there was a resistance there that I could not put my finger on.  I mean at the end of the day, I wasn't working at a job from 9 to 5 anymore,  BUT from talking with my therapist and doctor, I knew that having an organized structured day would help me stick to schedules, feel a sense of accomplishment, and allow me to regulate myself mentally and physically to be able to return back to work.

So what was the problem? Something was definitely missing. To go from nurses and doctors taking care of you for 2 months in a hospital and having a group therapy session scheduled every single day and then to having a once a week therapy session scheduled with a clinical psychologist whom expected you to find the motivation to get yourself together... well that just wasn't all that easy.  Somewhere along the way to getting better, I had given in to the illness of depression without knowing it and needed help to get back out of it. I needed help with the "structure" that they wanted me to have. Ultimately, I don't think they really understood that depressed people have a hard time finding the strength to help themselves get better. There had to be another way, another mandatory group therapy or something that required me to be somewhere with some form of a consequence to get me transitioned to a structured day. And there laid the next topic of discussion at my next weekly session.

Bitter Sweet Chick blogs at Bitter Sweet Chutney.