Depression

The four-headed fire-breathing dragon of depression that’s sought to devour my Four-Points of Health is one I’ve battled many times. Depression may be a monster you also wrestle with. Living with a life-threatening illness can put strain on your mental and emotional health. Fretting over things like life expectancy, surviving the newest complication, managing pain, and trying to live a relatively normal life, all can weigh on you if you don’t find ways to relieve that stress. Fortunately, there are tools available to help you slay the dragon of depression.

I once asked friends and family, “If depression were a monster that you had to physically do battle with, what weapons would you use against it?” My dad gave the best answer when he said, “I’d throw chocolate ice cream at it.” Nice.

Depression is a mental health disorder that can influence diet, sleep, self-esteem, and your views about life. There are many kinds of depression disorders. If left untreated, they can last for months or years.

Some people think depression is a sign of personal weakness. Other people believe those suffering from depression can will themselves out of it simply by “not thinking about it.” Both are misconceptions. If you suffer from depression, it’s not because you are feeble minded or have some kind of shortcoming. Depression is a real disorder that sometimes requires medical and/or psychological treatment. Some of the symptoms of depression include:

➢    Having constant feelings of sadness
➢    Always feeling irritable or hopeless
➢    Difficulty sleeping
➢    Low energy or feeling fatigued
➢    Feelings of worthlessness
➢    Feeling guilty for no reason
➢    Experiencing a significant change in weight
➢    Difficulty concentrating
➢    A lack of desire to do favorite activities.

If you are experiencing many of these symptoms, and if they are present longer than two weeks, you may be suffering from depression. It would be wise to talk with your doctor about how you’re feeling.

Looking back to when I was a teen and a young adult, I see many periods of my life when I was severely depressed. I now realize how much I allowed pride to stand in the way of getting help. I told myself, “I should be able to control my own thoughts and how I feel.” I thought, “There’s nothing for me to be stressed or depressed about.” As a result, I frequently struggled to keep hope alive. I was often very irritable, angry and sad. I also struggled to control suicidal thoughts on a daily basis.
During those eight years of depression, there were times when I filled my hand with my entire month supply of pain medication and had to think of reasons not to down them all. My religious views and thoughts about how such an action would impact my family, especially my parents, were my saving graces.

Please don’t get the wrong idea of me. During that long stretch of depression, it wasn’t dark clouds and gloomy moods all the time. In fact, I expect most people who knew me had no clue, and would be totally surprised to learn, that I once struggled with suicidal thoughts. The Jon Monk nearly everybody outside the family saw was a jokester, happy, optimistic, and highly positive person; and I generally was. However, during that time in my life, the instant I was alone—whether I was driving by myself in my car or alone in my room—those darker feelings crashed upon me like waves upon the shore.

From ages nineteen to twenty-seven, this is what I experienced. Battling daily suicidal thoughts was something I thought I had to live with. I refused to believe my depression was something I couldn’t control. I also felt as though antidepressants had no place in my life. I was wrong on both accounts.