Sisyphus with the hand break I.

If you find this post a mess and hard to understand, just take with you the idea that depression and anxiety come into the life of each person in a different way, but what they have in common is: they make our lives harder, more complicated. Living with them is trying to live carrying around a giant boulder like Sisyphus or like being a car trying to go with the hand brake on… or a combination of both. If after reading the post you feel like that, get help, someone to help you removing the hand break or to put the boulder down (in plain language… go find a therapist)

A while ago if you’d asked to describe depression I would have said is extreme sadness, you cry a lot and you want to die. If you’d asked me to describe anxiety I’d say that you can’t stay still and that you always think something terrible is about to happen. In summary a while ago I did not know shit and that is very dangerous.

Actually the list of symptoms for depression and anxiety are fairly long, but I had no idea what they were and I had trouble translating them to materialize them in my life. I was also in denial that none of the symptoms were happening to me. Later I discovered that to identify them it is necessary to carefully study how are we conducting our lives, in the most neutral way list our habits and how are we spending our time.

This is easier said than done, denial is very powerful and some of those habits, at least in my case, felt shameful. I was stuck in denying them or passing them as “this is how I am”. To identify them in my life it helped me a lot to listen to other people’s stories (that is why I’m telling mine)… some other symptoms were sort of even harder to identify. I discovered they had been part of my life only when they were not there anymore.

I often joke that when people meet me they think I’m Rainbow Brite (but with curls)

And with some traits this portrait is not that far from reality. In general keep an optimistic point of view in life, I try to find the silver lining of every situation and of course I try to be happy with whatever I have right now. Long time ago I was told how cool it was to hangout with me cause I was equally happy eating fries next to a public road as well as eating from an all inclusive resort in the beach. ( a completely accurate statement). But this attitude brought me a lot of trouble to get properly diagnosed and get the right help for me. Even today the people around and even doctors when they first meet me they say “you do not look depressed to me”. If other people did no believed I was depressed why would I?... Turns out all of us were really wrong.

When you are dealing with depression, you lose interest in the things that give you pleasure. I got to the point where I did not want to go dancing. After double checking that I was serious about not wanting to do what I love the most in life… people got worried.

It is a big problem to reach that extreme to realize that you are not enjoying pleasure in your life. I had been arriving always, always late to class, even though the first warm up exercises are the ones that help to get into the mind frame of being in dance class, to leave everyday life behind and be present. I wanted to be there early but did not do so.

In general I abandoned physical activities. If I did not go dancing I used to go running, do yoga in the living room with YouTube, or I’d bike to work, all that had ceased to exist for a while. I stopped going hiking on the weekends or taking my dogs for a family trip. I had no idea why I did not want to walk my doggies any more, my dogs became a chore :(

I stopped taking pictures of random stuff I saw, or flowers, bugs, food. I stopped knitting, cross stitching… my uke was the first thing to go to heck… I could not meditate… if I watched tv I was usually doing something else at the same time. Writing? Ja! It would’ve been nice if I’d seen all that progression as signs that I wasn’t doing well.

Instead of fighting for my dance classes I’d make up excuses to not go, and sometimes lacking an excuse, I’d start doing anything in my house and “oooops now is too late, I won’t make it on time, I’ll stay home” 

And that became my modus operandi for everything, I was late EVERYWHERE, I’m not talking about being 15 minutes late because of that annoying habit we costa ricans have. I feel it was physically impossible for me to be early anywhere. 

It was really hard for me to leave my apartment, everything I could think I needed to do in my house, I had to do it right before walking out of the door: I would do laundry, pay bill, go get my mail… and then I was late… and then I was anxious… and I felt worse… and I did not want to out at all… more excuses to not go… until I’d either go out exhausted because of that war that had just happened about an hour or two later that I was supposed to or I would feel so bad I would not go out at all.

If you’d asked me if I was isolating myself I would’ve said no, but later on I realized that was happening. Along with a mix of guilt, shame, pessimism, hopelessness, all that caused me to not want to get out of my house. I did not want to be seen, I did not want to make mistakes. When I was out all I wanted to do was to go back home, it reached the point where I was dancing and all that was in my head was “ I want to go home”... only imagine how I was feeling when I was at work. Buuuuuuut staying home when I wasn’t supposed to also made me anxious and increased the feelings of shame and hopelessness and uselessness, I felt I was wasting all the time… I also felt I had not the strength to do anything else.

So far this story has a few symptoms: 

• Loss of interest in things once pleasurable, including sex 
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and helplessness 
• Feeling most of the time, sad, empty or anxious 
• Avoiding at all cost anxiety provoking situations 
• Isolating, hiding from friends and family. 

But since the post is long I’d tell you the rest in the next one. (to be continued)