Around a third of us experience depression or anxiety, but it's so little talked about that each of us tends to feel like we're the only one. Let's share our stories and dispel that feeling!
Hey, My name is Amy and this is my story, I’m a 15 year old high school freshman, I have been battling depression and self-harm for over two years now and it has gone downhill the last couple of months. In a matter of 6 months I had to be hospitalized two times for suicidal [...]
I realized a while back that my depressive episodes are the same way. There isn’t much I can do about them. I certainly can’t make them go away by wishing, or any of the other bootstrapping methods folks recommend. Even antidepressants don’t handle them entirely. Ultimately, I have to wait them out, like they’re food poisoning of the brain.
Depression is an unwelcome but very charismatic phantom. He shows up uninvited, wanting to lure you away. He promises indulgence. He promises a dark land of nothing, where there’s no need to fight anything anymore. No need to try anymore or feel anymore. You know you want to come with me, he smiles, as he closes in.
This is my account of a severe depressive episode that I went through after I’d graduated from college, and of the my friend who was there to help me.
Wake up
My little one
Stand tall on
Your mountain
And let the wind
Brush through your hair
I’ve always been a half-way rational person. The ideas of depression and panic made sense to me only when someone was in a bad situation. Even then, I thought that they just involved feeling bad like we all do sometimes. On February 24, 1997 I learned that it doesn’t work like that.
I will not be defeated by a bowl of rice.
I am more than this.
I have done this twice before.
I can make it a hat trick.
Depression is painful, but it has brought good about – it’s helped me rediscover my passion for writing and also rejuvenated the creativity buried inside me!
I sat down at the kitchen table to write at 8am. When I next noticed the fading light in the grey winter sky, it was 3pm. The whole day had been lost to a fog of depression. “Getting stuck,” a friend of mine calls it. She had experienced it a lot, when her sister was [...]
The pain and fear of depression and anxiety are hard, but for me, the shame has been the hardest part of all.
I have ideas about the way I want my blog to be. About experience telling my story, but also showing how my story fits into the larger context. About systemic problems and individual solutions. About fairytales and real world heroines.
I don’t.
At the heart of my identity lie struggles I have kept mostly hidden in the online world. I am cutting myself off from myself.
I was reading a book about the Law of Attraction the other day (yeah, I had been rolling my eyes at my idea of the concept, too, before I delved in and realised it’s actually full of useful information) and I came across what Jerry and Esther Hicks call The Emotional Scale. It’s based on the idea that you can’t jump straight from being depressed to being full of joy. You can’t jump straight from being angry to feeling optimistic. You can’t jump from feeling despair to simply feeling worried.
If you follow me on twitter you already know that I’ve been battling off one of the most severe bouts of depression I’ve ever had. Yesterday it started to pass, and for the first time in weeks I cried with relief instead of with hopelessness. Depression can be crippling, and deadly. I’m lucky that it’s a rare thing for me, and that I have a support system to lean on. I’m lucky that I’ve learned that depression lies to you, and that you should never listen to it, in spite of how persuasive it is at the time.
Not THAT one! (well, actually that one too! LOL) My name is Lana, and I’m a social service provider who lives with depression. From the time I was diagnosed almost 20 years ago until today, I’ve tried to avoid the stigma of that label. When I was in graduate school, I wasn’t allowed to work [...]
It’s a good day to write this, and not just because I’m avoiding work. Yesterday I was reading a couple of these stories about depression, and feeling empathetic, but from a distance, because I was not in that state. Last night, a misunderstanding started a spiral that had me dressing at 2 am and going [...]
In my 31st summer, I was learning how to live without drugs to control my anxious, extreme thinking. For three years, the antidepressant Celexa had managed my brain while I learned to take care of myself, to ask for what I wanted and stop trying to please everyone else first. But I had reached the point where it was time to take back the mental reins. And the ride was rough.
I’m an author living happily in Bristol, but it’s taken a long fight with depression, eating disorders and self harm to get to where I am today. I hope my story might help other people making the same journey.
Depression runs in my family. My grandmother experienced depression. Two of my uncles have experienced severe depression. And then there’s me. I’ve been through two episodes of clinical depression, the second while I was in Afghanistan, complicated with post-trauma-related issues. Well, actually, maybe that isn’t so much a “family run” of depression so much as a normal family. If I remember correctly, depressive disorders affect about 15% of the adult population.
Rachel Cole shares what helped her overcome anxiety, and discusses how Western medication can complement Eastern approaches to finding ease in life. Through psychotherapy, meditation, practicing compassion, examining her genetic predisposition, and yes, taking Zoloft, Rachel has been able to live a life that is even keel and peaceful. While each person travels their own path, and one size does not fit all, Rachel offers her experience in the hopes it may help you.
My loves, this is the longest post I’ve ever written – it’s now over 8000 words. It’s taken me many months to write, and two years to live. I wanted to tell my story so it may help other souls who’ve gone through a dark night of the soul. Most of all, I want to say: I love you. I understand. I know. I hear you. I’ve been so touched by the incredible, brave sharings of the souls who have experienced the same thing. Our stories can change the world. This is mine. Love, Goddess Leonie.
It was the longest three hours of my life. I had flown by myself to a treatment center far from home, The Women’s Institute for Incorporation Therapy. The center promised to have answers for women like me, women who were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress and Dissociative Identity Disorders (PTSD and DID) brought on by a [...]
Anxiety is my ‘wake up’ call to life. I’ve been journeying through over 17 years of anxiety busting and it’s been one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. I would never be who I am today without it. It has been painful, confusing, challenging and draining… but it’s also been one of the most transforming journeys I’ve ever taken.
I’ve been trying to write this for weeks. Writing is not something that I find difficult, in fact, since I started trying to write this post I’ve written over 36,000 words of my latest novel. And some blog posts. And a fair few emails. I’m stalling again, even here, on the page. Since I had post-natal depression I’ve written novels, an anthology of short stories, hundreds of blog posts and yet I have never been able to write about my experience of the first three years of my son’s life.
Do I count as “depressed”? When Kate asked me to be part of the In Good Company project, I excitedly agreed, but I couldn’t say yes without giving a paragraph’s worth of disclaimers. “I’ve never been diagnosed with depression.” “I know people whose depression is far worse than mine. I don’t want to offend them by being presumptuous.” “It’s not really that bad for me. I’m not even sure my experience really counts.” What does ‘depression’ even mean?
Trey Pennington committed suicide today. He was a marketing genius and a dad. And when I talked with him, he seemed a sweet, intelligent person. He had the unique skills to carefully relate marketing and social media in a real, easy-to-understand way. More details are becoming known about his suicide. It’s a very difficult situation. [...]
Many years ago, a friend of mine started to suffer from depression. I remember feeling quite angry with her at the time. She was (and is!) bright, creative, talented, well-educated and supported. In fact on her day she’s an incredibly sparkly and wonderful human being, so with all of that being true, why the hell [...]
I feel a little odd writing this post, because I don’t have any kind of editorial line – I’m just sharing my experience. But I firmly believe that sharing our experiences is a hugely powerful thing. In fact I know it, from personal experience. When I was in the deep, dark depression/anxiety hole, it helped me so much when people told me they’d been through the same thing. So, I hope it will help you to hear about my experiences.
Today I want to talk about a topic that is very personal to me. Depression is a real thing, it happens to many people, it does not discriminate, and it can truly slow you down. Overcoming depression can be a slow and difficult process. And because I have been there before, I feel that by writing about it, I may be able to help those out there that are going through it or know someone in that situation.