Depression: the three pillars of my recovery

When I don’t know what to write about, I try to focus on what I know. It is true that by studying, taking courses or going to class, one learns many things. But I think there is no greater learning than experience, you know, practice makes perfect…

One thing is being told, being taught, studying and analyzing it and something diametrically different is to feel it in your own flesh. The experience allows you to empathize in a deeper and more immediate way.

There is also the problem of misuse of terms, misrepresentation, indiscriminate use of them. And, of course, dehumanization, that process by which a certain pathology is restricted to the few symptoms that one can read in a psychology manual.

I’ve already written three paragraphs and I still haven’t managed to name it. When I was offered to be part of this project, I immediately thought that sharing this experience would be the key and most logical thing, the place from which to start. However, the months have passed and I have not yet dealt with this issue.

I remember it blurred and confusing, perhaps because of the bad administration or adjudication of the psychotropic drugs that were prescribed for me at that time. Maybe it’s my own defense or denial system that decided to block part of the process.

However, every day I hear about people suffering from depression and I am exasperated by the poor handling of the situation. My own mismanagement and that of everyone involved as well. I wonder if, in some utopian future, we can handle information on how to treat depression as naturally and organically as someone who talks about a cold.

Because it’s just that, one more disease. And, at the same time, it is so many other things. It is, above all, fear, loneliness and an enveloping anguish.

Many times it originates when we experience inflection points in our life: a breakup or a divorce, the death of a relative or a person who was close to us, choosing a career or ending it, a dismissal, the empty nest, an accident, abuse, etc.

For others, it is not a particular event but a sum of things that is bottled up from within and starts to consume the person from the inside.

This second option entails the added difficulty of how frustrating it is to not know how to explain what is happening to you, or that people around you do not feel compassion to not understand that you are going through a really difficult time even if nothing has specifically happened.

The stigma is very real. As you change country or meet people from other cultures, you see that it differs in intensity depending on where you come from. It may be that in your country going to therapy is super-established and naturalized, as a usual practice of personal growth. But, in others, the concept of going to a psychologist with “being crazy” is still associated today. It is frowned upon, people evade it and hide it.

That is why thousands of depressed people do not get the proper treatment, which only causes the illness to stretch and intensify until making it reach critical situations.
It is difficult to fight for the normalization of something that can lead to death. Naturalizing it should not be minimizing it.

Suffering from depression is something serious but, at the same time, it is much more normal than you think.

It can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender, socio-economic or cultural level.

The word has become commonplace, for everyday use. But how to deal with the situation hasn’t. It is complicated, especially for people who have not experienced a depressive episode, to understand and identify the severity of what is happening.

Because, yes, we all experience sadness, heartbreak and grieving with greater or lesser intensity. And so people don’t think too much of it: “it will pass”, “it is not that serious.”

A person who is depressed not only has to face what is causing the discomfort but often this adds to the misunderstanding of the environment and the mishandling of the situation by family and friends.

That is why it is very important to take into account the symptoms that can signal that we are facing a depressive episode. And, above all, from a place of empathy and compassion, leave the euphemisms on the side and start calling things by their rightful name.