Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud – Living With Depression

Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud – Living With Depression.

Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud – Living With Depression

Yay, just what the Internet needs, another blog post about Depression!

I’ve been living with Depression for about 15 years now. Well, I say I’ve been living with it, my family have lived with me during that period so they’ve lived with it too. Despite the constant support, Depression can be the most selfish and lonely place you can go.

I’m currently taking Citalopram, I’ve been on this course for six months now, I have taken it before but came off of it far too soon, as evidenced by my relapse six months ago. I know that Citalopram isn’t favoured by all, a lot of people don’t get on with it. That’s the thing with treating Depression, it isn’t an exact science. We are Willing Guniea Pigs in the maze of the mind. Sometimes we find the way out but most of the time, we meander around aimless.

Medication isn’t the be all and end all, it isn’t a magic happy pill that makes everything alright, it is a suppressant, that’s all. As a friend who has lived with Depression and Anxiety for longer than I have known him said to me, “We can’t stop the clouds from descending, but we can learn to paint them when they do”. That’s where Cognative Behavioural Therapy came in.

CBT gave me the paintbrushes and techniques needed to make the darkness a bit brighter, the clouds were still there but they aren’t as grey as they were, there is even sunlight poking through the gaps. CBT is proactive. Combined with the suppressive medication, I have found, thus far, the best balance to Wellbeing. The trick is to stick with it though, as I found out.

My CBT worked. My mood had improved, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had motivation. Depression is more an absence of joy, I found no joy where I used to find it and, as a result, lack of motivation and lethargy set in. In turn this left me with less motivation thus less joy was found in what I used to enjoy. This led to more lethargy. Rinse and repeat, the circle is complete.

One of my goals was to write again, hence this blog, my laptop was on the blink though and this was just the excuse I needed not to do it properly. I had a notepad and a pen, that’ll do until I get the laptop sorted. Great excuse. Another goal was to play guitar more and go back to recording stuff I’d written. I played a lot of guitar, that helped get motivation back. However the software for recording was all on the laptop, another great excuse not to do it.

After a few weeks, I’d noticed that I had slipped down the mountain a bit, I could see the perilous drop into the abyss in the distance and thought to myself “That’s close enough”, and decided to actually be proactive instead of talking about being proactive.

I do count myself as lucky. Even though it is the most selfish and most lonely place, I have support in every aspect of my life, whether it be at home, at work or even online. Social media is a brilliant resource tool for self help and support, Twitter in particular. The amount of tweets about resources and indeed just knowing that others are going through something similar, but not the same, was a great comfort to me. I know it may feel it sometimes, but you aren’t alone.