Let me talk a little about what is sometimes bundled up and called "Depression".
I was labeled as "Depressed" once, by a GP and government allocated Shrink in a Hospital ER after I tried to OD on meds in my teens after they spent 15 minutes talking to me at my bedside. That was in the very early 90's.
I look back now, wiser, more informed, with the world having 3 decades more of research and insight into Mental states, and I have to say that the information they had back then was so totally different to what is around now. And no doubt what they know now will be totally different in 2 years, 10 years, 50 years, or however many years from now. I think it is SO important not to just accept a diagnosis and run with it if it doesn't make sense or goes against your gut instinct.
I am not Depressed. I never thought I was. But something was/is definitely seriously wrong.
I read the medically published symptoms back then and the only one that I matched was 'not wanting to live', the rest were not me. It was confusing. I knew something was drastically wrong, but what? I knew I hated life, but why? I knew I was not normal and my "friends" at the time would agree, they brushed off my suicide attempt as a laughing matter, teased me about it, never really asked me why I did it or what was going on in my head, and the next day just went on to partying. Tammy is a weirdo anyways, nothing she does surprises us. Not that I could have given them an answer if they did, I didn't know either. To me it was just being dumped by a boyfriend, but other girls got dumped and didn't want to die, why did I? I felt so desperate because nothing changed afterwards. I was still alive, my life still was crap, my "friends" still didn't care, and no one in the world (including me) understood me.
I am certainly not functioning at my peak now, and I certainly have a shit-load of work to do to get there (if ever) but I still believe I was not and never was 'depressed' as in the ongoing mental condition as described. I was not lacking seratonin, I was lacking understanding of who I was and why my life was SO FUCKING HARD.
You know when you have worked hard for a while in your job/career and you realise "I need a holiday"? I didn't really want to die, I just wanted to have a holiday from my life. Death to a helpless person feels like the most wonderful holiday away from feeling. But holidays come to an end. Death has no end. You don't think of that at the time. My life was and still is way too much hard work every day and when outside factors come crumbling down (such as a fight with someone, family giving me grief, trouble at work, money problems, sick pets, etc) then that delicate balance of trying desperately to cope with the hard work of normal every day living can get so overwhelming that I just don't want to do it anymore.
As a tender teen I certainly didn't have the strength to cope with additional struggles. The every day struggle of trying to impress and keep "friends" who did not understand me and who (I will be honest now) didn't really like me, a whole school of people who I felt hated me (most who did. Luckily I had big boobs so I was popular with the boys, most of who treated me like a freakshow), struggling with raging hormones making me insane and irational that I had no idea how to deal with, as well as a spectacularly high level of dependency on a boyfriend to stay with me (in the crazy state I was in) to rationalise that I was someone who was desired and I later realised, just for someone to keep me from lonliness, and distract me from my homelife, was such a tightrope act that I look back now and I am amazed I lived to tell the story.
I often look back to try to understand why my school years were so hard, I know it was my fault, and I know I was not normal, but for the life of me I still don't know why. I have asked a few close people who knew me back then and no one can give me much more of an answer other than "because you were different". I honestly didn't know at the time I was different, I just thought I was ugly and unlikeable, so I strived to make myself pretty and I strived to make myself the centre of attention, thinking that was the way to be liked. Afterall, the pretty girls were always the popular ones. So just be pretty, you'll be right. The alternative was to be smart and there was NO way in hell I would be smart, being at the bottom of all my classes.
I still wish someone would tell me why I was "different". In my heart I think people know, they are just trying not to hurt me by telling me. I think back in school I always wanted to know why I was hated, and I never got that answer so it still haunts me today. If I knew, I could change it. Change the look, change the action, change the behaviour, change the words, change the style. I so wanted to change but I didn't know what it was I was supposed to be changing. I still don't really. I know new things now, and I am working on them, but the hard part is that they are more about accepting that what was just is, and I have to move on and be someone who is new to me and goes against what feels natural. Fight with my inner urge. That sucks, but do I want to move on or do I want to keep living life the way I have? Either way is hard work so I may as well try the hard work that is new, maybe it will make things easier.
In my teens, when I OD'd, I was at breaking point. My life till then was a daily rollercoaster of nearing breaking point and sliding back just a little, but never was it a feeling of not being anywhere near breaking point. I was deperate to end my struggles. The medications for Depression those docs put me on were never were the answer. They merely were a band aid over the symptoms which then pushed the symptoms aside and masked that there were some serious issues in my life that needed to be addressed. I could have easily stayed on the meds forever, living life in a grey cloud, ignoring those issues and never addressing them, but that would have seen me living an alternate life, not my true life. Not the life I wanted to live. An emotionless grey cloud, never really sad, never really happy, going through the motions, not going through the emotions, functioning but not getting anything out of anything.
Instead I chose to wean myself off the meds and start to unleash my true feelings and try and figure out what/where they were coming from and why they were troubling me so much. I had a lot of questions, but absolutely no answers for about another 20 years. What a bloody rollercoaster that was and still is. Always full of emotional adrenaline, constantly packed with negative emotions and feelings, rejection, hatred, that holiday I keep putting off.
Looking for answers when you don't know the right questions to ask is an impossible and exhausting task.
At the time, I thought being obese was the centre of all my troubles. So I had weightloss surgery before weaning myself off Prozac, and then started to come off it about 2 years in after the bulk of the weight had fallen off and I was feeling fabulous and thought my troubles would be gone now because I finally look like those pretty girls at school who were so popular. Looking back now, I was skinny at school as a size 10, so I don't know why my obesity that snowballed after school became the focus of my trouble but I soon learnt it was certainly not the answer. Funny how I had always thought I was fat in shcool, I suppose it was the 80's, the era of the tall ultra thin supermodel, so my curvy physique was in my eyes just plain FAT. Losing my weight did help a little as looking good was a lovely distraction from feeling bad, but then I soon learnt that people STILL hated me. Distracting myself for many more years by having boyfriends was my next 'answer'. The cooler the boyfriend, the more I felt I was portraying to the world that I was also 'loved' and 'desirable'. Finding boys in bands, surely being the partner of someone who was 'popular' would make me 'popular' also? Id be loved. My most desperate and troubled times were always those few short days/weeks/months between boyfriends where I was left on my own with no distractions, where I had to be just me and not someone's partner, where I was left unloved, deserted, hated, and discareded where I was often at my most vulnerable. Here I was often used and abused by liars and fuckwits, adding to my delicate state of feeling. Until someone nice came along and rescued me from being single and distracted me from my own life again. Then they would get sick of my insanity too and dump me, and so on and so on...
So what was bloody wrong????? I didn't want to continue in this cycle forever.
I no longer could blame obesity. I no longer was at school in that disgusting environment of horrible people i was forced to mingle with and "friends" that were counterproductive. I met new people but I was still feeling the exact same way as I felt in school. I discarded the new friends as quickly as I made them, thinking they were the problem. Well it was them making me feel bad, wasn't it? I no longer trusted professional people because they were clearly absolutely NO help to me at all when I needed them most. Let down by family, friends, GPs, Hospital staff, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, partners, strangers... who was left??? lil ol me. That is the only person left to trust. But I hated me too, so it's a hard slog trying to climb out of that box of hatred and mistrust when you have no where to go. You just keep waking up, getting through the day, going to bed, and waking up again, all the time wishing there was a god and he was kind and he would just kill you in your sleep. I need that holiday! I'm Exhausted. Hopefully I would get back from that holiday refreshed and life would be magically fixed. But you don't come back from that holiday and you know it. So you put the holiday off for a little longer, spending your every waking minute thinking how lovely that holiday sounds and how you wish you had the strength and courage to take that holiday. maybe tonight? Tonight I will have the courage to take that holiday. OK, so I'm a bit scared tonight, so I'll go to sleep and take it if I wake up tomorrow. And there is how life unfolds day in day out, years, decades... *sigh* when will it just end?
I think I have finally found its end!
I now have found a couple of brand new pieces of helpful information that are allowing me to slowly peel back the layers and truly understand where it is all coming from. I am not here to talk about the causes in their entirety, there is too much to figure out just yet and I want to get further into my new journey before I start talking openly, and there are important people in my life to protect. But the very start of NEW information was my diagnosis with ADHD. I think this gave me a little bit of hope because if you read up on ADHD you read a lot about people feeling "different", often misdiagnosed as "depressed", having a really difficult school life, struggling in friendships, struggling with weight, and failing to reach academic success (feeling dumb, sometimes called dumb) despite feeling like there is an academic strength there that you just can't manage to ever unlock. You have people tell you you are not stupid but then if you are not stupid why can't you ever remember anything, why are you always time poor, why are you always bottom of your class in studies, why do you not 'get' things, why do you never achieve??? That is what makes stupid people 'stupid' isn't it? Well, that's what everyone tells us. Again, I do not by a long shot tick ALL the boxes of an ADHD diagnosis, but this made a whole lot more sense than "Depression". Depression is supposed to be sadness with no reason, just a lack of the chemical in the brain that creates happiness. I had lots of reasons, what I needed was answers, when I had answers I could work on change, and they were never there. I could be happy when I was happy, it was chemically and physically possible.
ADHD didn't really exist in the 70's, and the little bit they knew was centred around hyperactivity rather than an alternative brain function that needs quite a different method of teaching than any school can provide in order to learn, and more understanding by the public, and friends and family. The most I knew of it back then was some naughty kids who weren't allowed to drink red cordial at the birthday parties. That wasn't me. So to start fresh learning about this in the 2020's with all the new research that has been done into it, and with all the discussions taking place in internet support groups, and without the stigmas that were around in the old days, it was a whole new world of exploration. I had a whole new set of things to discover and this unravels (and continues to unravel) some complexities that I have lived with for 49 years that had I been diagnosed with in the beginning, would have certainly made for a much easier life. Had doctors, family, friends, teachers, peers, haters, everyone known what I now now back then, boy, things could have been so much easier. Not easy full stop, but easier. There are still a bundle of unanswered questions, I still want to know how I was different in such a way that people wanted to hate me, but having so much more knowledge on what I had found out and the things that I could change were a useful way of hopefully making changes that would make my life going forwad so much better.
Layers and layers and LAYERS. Layers that go back before I was born, before my parents were born. There is so much to peel back. But it is worth it and at least now someone is able to ask me the right questions and I can spend some time figuring out the answers.
The diagnosis of ADHD was the first thing, I mentioned there were a couple of things. The second thing is digging even deeper into who I am. I am the product of genetics, upbringing, environmental influences, taught behaviours and genetic inclinations to act and react a certain way. I totally acknowledge that I am now a full grown adult and I can not blame my troubles on my parents, I am 49 not 9. This is no longer a blame game, it is now a learning journey. I think what I need to focus on is looking at WHAT it is I need to change. Part of looking at what I need to change is also about understanding where it comes from and how it got there in the first place. That second thing is a lovely person, yes, a professional person! One of those ones I have all my adult life said I will never trust because they just take your money and mess with your head a little till you give up on them and walk away feeling worse, more hopeless. The difference being she is now equipped with modern knowlede, new research, and much more understanding of trauma than anyone in past decades ever would have known. As it was, it wasn't that 'shrinks' were terrible people, it was that I did not know enough about myself to know how to answer their questions and give them the right direction to go in. How could they ask me the right questions if I didn't even know that anything was wrong in the first place. If you think things are how they should be, then you will say they are. If you don't know any different then how can you say they are wrong? They also did not know back then what they would know now about the things that were influencing my trouble, because back then it wasn't even a thing. And I had absolutely no idea it existed either, so why would I raise it?
If you have ever in your life had a diagnosis of anything. I would beg you to make sure you are constantly checking in to see if it still aligns with modern information. I was diagnosed with "Depression" all those years ago. I was not depressed as in the clinical condition, I was depressed because there were serious issues in my life needing to be understood, addressed, and changed. Bandaiding my symptoms with Prozac would have seen me live what could have been a slightly easier life, but an unnatural life. It would have definitely been an unsatisfying life. I think all that Prozac does is give those around you some reassurance that you wont kill yourself. It is for them, not you. Staying on it would not have prompted me to keep looking for answers, to keep looking for reasons and solutions. It would have had me rest on my laurels for 3 decades telling people "I have depression" and them treating me as a depressed person who may or may not kill themself one day purely because they lack seratonin, not for any other reason. I do not lack sera-fucking-tonin, i lacked any idea at all that my issues were a big ol' bundle of factors that were already brewing in-utero, continued to shape me as I was growing up, escalated massively as I went through the terrible teens, snowballed as I was thrown out of school bewildered as to what the fuck just happened and tried to 'make something of myself' with no acadmeic promise, no talent, no skills, and nothing to offer anyone. It was no wonder I'm a fucking mess!
I went to my 10 year highscool reunion thinking "well, at least I have just had my weight loss surgery, that will show them im pretty!" I didn't show them anything. I went to my 20 year highschool reunion thinking "well, at least I just got married, that will show them I am loved". I didn't show them anything. I went to my 30 year highschool reunion thinking "well, at least I am running a charity, that will show them I'm a success!" I didn't show them anything. I hope that when it comes time to the 40 year reunion, I am really not even interested in going. Let the past be the past. Who cares what a pack of strangers think. Or maybe go, just to see a few lovely people that dwell among them, and that's all, not to prove anything. Why do I need to prove anything to anyone? I am so tired of continuously feeling the need to prove myself to people in this world who, to put it bluntly, don't even know I exist. Ex boyfriends. Ex friends. Ex coworkers. Ex peers. Ex Ex Ex. I need to disconnect from that exhausting and pointless task and these pointless and exhausting people. I sepnd way too much time wondering how people who used to know me would see me now. In actual fact, if they wanted to see me now they were be here now, wouldn't they! So if they don't care why do I so much? Borderline crazy obsession.
I need to focus on here and now. Who is in my life now? Why are they here? What is it they see in me that makes them feel like I am worth communicating with or being around? Is it how I see it and they are just here because they like my husband and have to (he is, in all senses of the word, adorable), is it because of networks in the music community, is it because of networks in the animal welfare community, is it because they are family and simply have to, is it because they just havent had time to ditch me yet? Even if it is, there are some really lovely, genuinely beautiful, trustworthy people around me. I need to work on figuring out what it is that I can do to make sure I am the best person possible that deserves their loyalty and forms long term friendships from today forward. I need to understand the destructive thought patterns, behaviours, actions, and reactions that make friendships and associations so hard for me and learn how to undo them and create ones that make me a good person, someone who functions in a society. I just want to be normal. Well now I am closer than ever. Still way further than the average person, but closer than Tammy has ever been.
The new things I am being made aware of now are a huge revelation, quite confronting. I am a trauma survivor. I have not had a major trauma, one that you would recognise and totally understand would shake my world such as a car crash, a natural/environmental catastrophe, an assault, or a major event like 9-11, I have gone through a series of minor undetectable traumas that have built up, built up, BUILT UP, and over the years added layers upon layers, upon LAYERS to me that have me acting like someone who has gone through a major trauma but without the recognition and counselling. Those layers were already building up before my parents were born, before their parents were born. Some of those layers I might never figure out, but some I can, I now need to unpeel and understand it piece by piece by piece. The main thing is I now know they are there, and that has never before been a thing. That is totally new. It was there before I was born, it was added to as I grew, and it just kept on being added to until now when I realised what was happening. Now I am going to reverse the trend, with the help of my new professional advisor.
Part of me understanding who I am is understanding who the past generations are and what made them who they are. Nature and nurture. What was genetic, what was taught, and what was self taught, all of which could be passed on. It is hard to do when some are already gone. I think an important message there is that hopefully someone reading will have more awareness than me at an earlier age and will still have time to ask questions. Otherwise it is a jigsaw puzzle of faded memories, assumptions, and guesswork.
So here I go, on yet another journey in life. This tiring, complex, hard work thing they call life. But this time I am actually feeling a little more positive. I have hope. I have not had that before. Hope is seriously a lot to have when you have had 49 years of nothing. I now understant that there is a lot of work to do, but I want to do it. Things have been so much hard work already but that work has been counterproductive. Lets try some work that is productive. Who knows what the future holds?
I knew all along depression was not the diagnosis, i knew it was just a symptom, a result of something else. I knew treating "depression" was not the solution, that unless I kept digging to find the true cause, the "depressive" thoughts would never go away.
I do know that at the moment I don't need that holiday. And that's something.
:)
Below are some really insightful snippets from The Holistic Psychologist that I have found particularly relevant to finding answers and then solutions. If you would like to check that site out, go to: https://www.facebook.com/the.holistic.psychologist
Note: I am by no means a trained psychologist, what I have journalled above is relevant only to my own experiences. Please do not self diagnose or make any assumptions for yourself, this can have the potential to cause more harm than good. I just hope to inspire people who might have given up on help a long time ago to maybe trust in it again as there is definitely a load more information, understanding, and research now than there ever was before. And do not rest on past diagnosis, as new research always comes to light and resting on old diagnosis could be preventing much needed change and a happier future. Seek new opinions, new information, and keep on keeping on if life is not yet where it should/could be.