Dealing With Depression
Depression isn't just feeling a bit down or unhappy for a few days. It is when you feel persistently sad for weeks, even months on end.
There are lots of different symptoms that come with depression. Some of the physical symptoms are feeling tired all the time, sleeping badly, suffering from aches and pains, panic attacks, anxiety symptoms such as feeling sick, palpatations, chest pains, the list is endless.
Some of the emotional symptoms of depression are feeling hopeless, worthless, unable to cope, inferior to others, feeling like a failure, tearful, unable to cry, like others would be better off without you, even suicidal.
Depression is a serious illness and not something that someone can "snap out of" or "pull themselves together." These are the worst things you can say to someone who is suffering. If it was possible to do this, then surely they would.
Depression is often triggered by life changing events. Childbirth is often one of them.
My Depression
Standing over my daughters cot, I remember looking at her and thinking "how can I feel sad when I have something so beautiful in my life?" Unfortunately, depression isn't that simple.What I thought would fix my past had now brought on a new fear. How could I protect my little girl and keep her safe and ensure noone could ever hurt her, like someone had hurt me?
I became obsessed with her safety and could just about cope with her being with close family. Even then I would pace up and down waiting for them to bring her back. I think it made it worse that she was a girl and I knew that I had to somehow learn to control my fears or I would be the one to ruin her life by being so over-protective.
Again, I turned to self harm.
I disgusted myself that I could harm myself with my baby in the next room but she needed me and I had to be able to cope.
As the months went on, my obsession with being a perfect Mother got worse. Inside I felt like the worst Mother in the world. I felt like nothing I did was right or good enough and I couldn't understand why I felt so sad inside. The strange thing was, my baby smiled all the time. She was the happiest baby I could have wished for but this only made me feel even more worthless, like I didn't deserve to have her.
Thoughts of the past started to creep in again, I was self harming more and more and although I had visited my GP, I wasn't totally honest about how I felt because I was so convinced he would send me to hospital and take my baby away from me. This became another massive fear for me.
Depression and anxiety began to take over my life and panic attacks became an every day occurance.
I could go on forever with this section but I will cut it short and cover certain important issues in later posts.
I finally reached a stage where I felt like my daughter would be better off if I wasn't in her life and that someone else could bring her up better than I could. I sat and planned my suicide. I wanted this pain to stop and I wanted to die.
That was the moment I discovered I had a strength inside me that would not let my past win. Nothing was taking me away from my baby and I swore from that day to this, that while I was a Mum, nothing and noone would ever stop me fighting to stay alive.
I spent the next years learning to cope using a mixture of help from family, antidepressants and self harm. My Mum became my rock and on days where my panic attacks were unbearable, she was always there to help me get through them. My Dad had also suffered from depression and I found talking to him so helpful because he understood how I felt and he taught me many skills to deal with my illness.
I started to have more good days and self harming controlled my panic attacks enough to get me through situations that I found difficult. It wasn't the ideal way to cope but it enabled me to work, attend school activities with my daughter, take her to swimming and ballet lessons and give her the childhood she so deserved.
My self harm and past was to remain a secret throughout these years.
No comments:
Post a Comment