New Vlog Post!

New vlog post today! This one is a little personal… so we’ll see how it goes!

For those unable to view, here’s the transcript of the vlog!

Well, fellows, the darkness rises and shadows encroach. Rainclouds hover and the weight pulls. In other words, I'm having a nice big case of the sads. The depression gremlin.

Having a mental illness is annoying cuz it's just so invisible. It's like all the toes on one foot just disappearing out of nowhere. One day your foot is perfectly fine. Then you wake up and, oh no, all your toes are gone! Sure, you can still wear socks and shoes, but now you gotta figure out how to walk while missing a bunch of toes. And everyone around you just looks at you funny while you figure out how to live with no toes.

I've had enough therapy that I feel almost divorced from my mind, in a way. It's weird. There's this painful tightness in my chest and this heaviness and hopelessness that makes it hard to really want to do anything. Let alone the never-ending parade of sad thoughts, which I won't bore you with.

But on the other hand, my mind is looking at those feelings and being like, “you felt this way before.” It's also thinking, “your body is feeling this way because your brain is used to being sad.”

I've been through other really hard times. When the first awful things happened, I threw myself into school and work. I went to watch the same movie at the theater like three or four times. It helped suck my mind off the feelings. And honestly, this time it's helped to have my MA degree to focus on. I'm taking a research class now, and when I'm sitting at my desk wanting to do nothing, it does help to have at least a book chapter to read for class. The distraction helps me, and honestly, the grades kind of help, too. Seeing that I did okay on something is an external “woohoo” I have to work really hard to give to myself.

For me, depression is a body trying in a way to process some overwhelming thing that happened. It likes to isolate you so you avoid potentially getting hurt more, especially if the awful things were out of your control. You feel heavy cuz your body has turned on conservation mode and is putting more energy into, well, not walking around. Probably thoughts. Maybe it's trying to figure itself out. I'm no doctor, though.

It's also suggested that the brain ruminates as a way to try and process everything. Rumination can also trap you in a spiral, though.

I don't know if it's got any basis in reality, but I started to imagine my brain like those little Zen garden things. And my thoughts are the lines drawn in the sand by the fork thing you use to make the patterns. Except the sand is hard, more like stone.

The more you think a certain way, the more you drag the fork thing over those same lines, the deeper the fork grooves get. After a while, the familiar patterns become deep grooves. Your thoughts get used to those grooves, so it's easy to go along with them. But when those thought grooves keep you depressed, you have to figure out how to change them.

I did it by trying to carve new thought grooves with the thought fork. It wants to keep thinking in the way it's used to thinking because that's just easier. But the more you follow the new thought grooves, the deeper those ones get, the easier it is to pull the thought fork through them. Eventually, the old thought paths start to weather away and the new ones become easier.

At least for me. Everyone is different.

With depression, I think of my original thought grooves as just “the sads.”

Everything sucks. What's the point? I'm a waste of space. I'm just a number in a system. My humanity is meaningless.

Those thoughts were deep grooves for me. So deep that at first I couldn't hear anything else. I also wasn't used to hearing many kind things.

That was unhealthy too cuz it made me a fawner. Hearing kind words from anyone made me so happy. So I was super easy to manipulate. All you had to do was tell me that I had done a good job and my little golden retriever self would activate and I would do anything to make you say those nice things again. School was great for that. My teacher's praise was like milkshakes and cookies. So, I enjoyed school.

Drawing also got strangers to praise me. It was like getting a treat every time someone saw me sketching in a corner and said, "You draw good." But then school ended. Drawing while at work got me in trouble instead of praise. My job isn't in the arts.

Suddenly, all that need for outside kindness turned into pleasing my bosses by working extra hours. And when I lost my job because the company closed, absolute devastation!

Because I'd relied so much on outside praise, I couldn't really hear it inside my mind. To try and fix that, I started putting on headphones and listening to spiritual folks whispering nice things at me.

I am a strong tree with deep roots. I am worthy. Things are hard, but they change. Not knowing the point is okay. I am okay.

And then I did that for months!

Saying it out loud when I was alone in my car, listening to them before bed, whenever I felt sad or lonely.

Those things could never turn me into an optimist, though. My thoughts aren't that positive, but they are at least not hurtful anymore.

Forming those new thought grooves took months. It's still hard sometimes, even years later, to follow those kindness thought grooves and not rely on other people telling me that it's okay to exist. So if it takes a long time, that's okay. Carving thought grooves takes a long time.

Anyway, I think these new thought patterns are what help me recognize that this heaviness, the easy tears, this inside pain, they're separate from my thoughts. I can look at those feelings more like an observer rather than an experienc-er.

Kind of like the cold virus, there's not really a cure for depression. You just have to deal with it.

Some folks are able to change their medications when they have an episode to help them, but my meds cause my hands to shake, which makes it hard for me to draw or do anything crafty, which only makes my depression worse. So, I try to avoid messing with the medication.

Instead, I'm trying to pack my life with things that bring me joy. I'm trying new crafts like book binding. I got myself a new computer chair. I'm going on more walks with my dog. I'm thinking of fun things to do with friends. I'd love to head off this depression before it gets too bad. So, I'm throwing as much at it as I can.

So, we'll see how it goes. I know that if I fall into a bad depression, I'll not be able to work on anything for a long time. I really hope that I can just recover soon instead of taking like half a year to recover. Maybe I'll be able to come back in a few more weeks. Maybe. We'll have to see. Well, that's all I got.

Thanks folks and stay safe out there.