"Depression Lies"
when you have to be at war with your mind...
A reader, Kathryn Vercillo commented on the previous post I wrote about depression with this phrase, “Depression lies.”
I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Much like generalized anxiety disorder lies, PTSD and C-PTSD lie, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders and other personality disorders like BPD lie. They distort the truth and reality, in what we believe and [we think that] we know about ourselves.
It is torment to be at war with your mind.
Over and over again, I read in books on trauma and PTSD, that the reason why our brains do the things they do in fight or flight, storing these memories where we’re struck by horror, is to keep us safe. Those are the reasons why we have a sympathetic nervous system. It has become part of our evolution to try to keep us safe from being eaten by predators, for example. (And remember, our brains can’t distinguish between the physical and the emotional pain, research has found. It’s all the same to our minds.)
So, our minds try to prepare us. And the more I’ve read about trauma, as well, the more I’ve read that more current research on the subject suggests that some mental illnesses, such as major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder, can also be the result of trauma, the lived embodied experiences of trauma.
Our brains are trying to help us, to prepare us for the worst. But we’ve often times already experienced the worst, that our brains and are trying to shield us from, those isolated horrific moments. And now our brains are confused, and they are lying to us.
It’s a fucked up situation.
And I’m brought back to how horrid it is to be at war with your mind. When you can’t trust your thoughts, your self image, your perception of reality.
Our minds are supposed to be protect us and to make us feel good. I recently read a post on social media that says that our brains could make us feel awesome all the time if they wanted to, with the dopamine and serotonin. (Many of us, anyway. Our minds make this to varying to degrees on its own.) But instead, they don’t.
Hah.
Now, I get that we can’t ride the high of those chemicals, indefinitely, but, also—
Our brains and minds and the stories we tell ourselves shape our realities. We don’t have the luxury of turning them off and/or just hopping into another’s perception of reality (What an interesting and, perhaps, a more empathetic and understanding world we would have if that were the case!)
And, so. We’re stuck with the brains we’ve got.
I used to feel so terribly for those with schizophrenia in movies, stories where we saw how they lived with voices of paranoia, and people who were not “really there.” And it is true, that must be an especially disillusioning and terrifying experience, where you can’t trust your own understanding of reality.
But, also—
I don’t think until I read the comment that “Depression lies,” did I adequately weight the ways in which most mental illnesses, to varying degrees, distort your perception of reality and of yourself.
I cannot tell you about many times my anxiety has told me I’m not worthy enough or successful, doing enough, or just in many ways, ‘enough;’; all the times that my depression told me it all wasn’t worth it and led me down the path of suicide ideation; and all the times that my PTSD caused me to jump out of my skin when someone I didn’t see appeared, suddenly, and simply offered a casual “hello.” Just to name a few.
I know the “minds lying to oursleves” is difficult to understand, for those who have never experienced a mental health crisis or mental illness.
But, I think about it this way—
What if suddenly, one day, your body suddenly had no senses, it lost the ability to feel, so, no pain? At surface level, that may seem a dream, but they are lies and you can’t trust it? Now, you couldn’t tell you that your skin was getting severely sunburned? Or that the shower was too hot? Scalding you? Instead, you felt nothing.
It was all a lie. But a damned good lie. Convincing. Alluring. So you burned your flesh. Your body lied to you.
Or, you had a heart attack, but couldn’t feel it, or maybe the ways in which people who have rapidly growing cancers in their body and have no idea, they suddenly feel not only shocked with the news of the malignancy in their body, a life-threatening condition, but they also had no idea. Their body seemed fine. It lied to them. Betrayed them. It’s hard to get your mind around that, to accept it.
It’s a tough situation to not be able to trust your body and/or your mind.
Granted, having a mental illness is not like having a cancer, in that it won’t (always) be life-threatening. (Although sometimes it is—many have lost their battles to depression, my family members included). But—
Perhaps the difference is that once you know you have a physical condition, you can grow to accept it—it doesn’t always lie to you on a daily basis. Although symptoms and treatment side effects spring their ugly effects on you, continuously.
Perhaps it’s like comparing one natural disaster to another. What’s the point? Both are unique and harmful in their own individual ways.
Though I have not had the experience of a major illness of cancer, to speak to those matters. So, I should not speak to what that is like. I can only critically imagine it and listen to the stories that I have heard.
But I digress, and I can say this, speaking from my own experience—the point is that people who wager war with their mind daily are like soldiers, in active combat, and in constant battle.
You have to parse out what thoughts, perceptions, stories about the world, your life, and your self, your relationships, can be trusted, and which ones are lies.
Only through these terrible past experiences are you afforded greater perspective, to know yourself and your mental health tendencies/when you’re less well—
Only then can you ascertain when you are feeding yourself a shit sandwich and when it is the genuine nurturing foods that your body and mind so desperately need to nourish itself.