My Depression Reality

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I was born depressed. Kids weren't seen as having depression in the 50s and 60s. But I had the "I wish I would die cuz I'm so tired" thought at least since high school. Some of this I've shared before but feel the need to write again now. As an adult, before I knew I had DID, I had tried numerous antidepressants, none of which I could tolerate. Post DID diagnosis I know my total was at least 20 antidepressants that weren't tolerable so I healed as far as grad school and into full-time therapist without antidepressants. I had been taking Klonipin to help me sleep for quite a few years and still am.

Early 2005 I came to realize how down I was when my friends kept asking if I was excited about my trip to Italy in May and realized I really wasn't. I wanted to be. Then in February I woke up one day in tears and couldn't stop crying. Emergency call to my therapist. I had to be able to work. I couldn't let depression stop me from my career. By then Cymbalta was on the market and made to address both depression and PTSD. It worked. The tears stopped the next day. By April I was genuinely happy and felt I no longer had the default "I want to die" message. Life was wonderful.

I'd been on only a very small dosage of Cymbalta that changed my life. And all was well until a year after all the pelvic surgeries and hospitalizations. My depression had increased beyond where I could function. Cymbalta was bumped to where it made a difference...30 mg to 120 mg (max dose). Was feeling better...not crying every day.

When my body issues had impacted so much of my being, I fell even further. Since then it has been a battle to find an adjunct happy pill. I was feeling better on Wellbutrin but developed a tremor from it. Am now working on another and it is just not making a difference.

I know all the coping skills for depression but I get to a "why bother" point and really just wish I'd magically die quietly overnight or magically no longer need a drug induced state of well being. This is long term effects of trauma. Every day of my life.

I had most of 2005 and 2006 as a happy person. Not just "not depressed" but at a level I never imagined because I'd never experienced it before. I want to be that person again for me and for BB. He doesn't deserve a lump for a partner. I have my sense of humor even when I'm depressed which is a sort of coping skill.

Recent efforts to be heard as an advocate in changing strategies to target pedophiles has also begun to feel futile. Do I still have a life if I'm not making a difference in the world? Not sure where that message comes from but it's been around for a long time too.

An expert on helping others with their depression and giving up on my own. There has to be a middle ground. Where's my Soylent Green peaceful death?

Going into the sadness

Sometimes I'm unsure where to post. If I think it will be helpful particularly to healing survivors, I post here. If it's a vent or opinion, it goes to Grace Uncensored. It's not always clearcut, especially where my own healing journey is involved. I decided my experience today might benefit those in the healing process.

I've been very stuck in a deep depression which didn't lift even when I experienced reintegration of three parts who surfaced to give me trauma details of a memory. Because I'm trained in EMDR, I sometimes have done self-EMDR. Mostly, I forget that I can do that. When I had my office, the EMDR buzzers were always there. Now that I am temporarily disabled, the buzzers are home with me. I've been napping each day which also goes with depression. Having been so miserable yesterday and not feeling relieved today, I remembered to grab the EMDR at naptime.

I was a little reluctant because I really didn't want to have to deal with further trauma details on my own. And I hadn't noticed the "pocket of sadness" behind my left lower rib cage that became palpable during my therapy session about two weeks ago. Yet when I began the alternating buzzers and focused on my sadness, I felt a smaller pocket that remained. My thinking process was that all that was sad did not reintegrate. My sense was that one of the two littles had stayed behind believing it was her job to always feel the pain. I was able to provide the reassuring messages that it was very okay for her to not feel the pain any longer and there were other littles waiting for her to join them.

The physical sensation followed the path of the others and moved up around the area of my heart. I remained relaxed and fell asleep. Since my nap, I don't feel as depressed so have provided much needed relief. I have vowed to do that each day until I see my therapist again to better manage the depression.

While most are not able to do EMDR on their own, my point is that usually there is a reason if we are feeling THAT badly. And when we feel THAT badly, it's difficult to think clearly. I thought the parts had healed. After today, I can say that I healed more but am not certain all has healed. It's always good to ask, "What else could this be?" You don't need EMDR to get answers. You can get answers with talk therapy. Realizing that you are experiencing something beyond what is "normal" is always a good target for therapy.

It is uncanny how whatever a survivor begins to talk about in therapy, whether it seems related or not, is exactly what needs to be discussed. I had clients who have had cold hands, or a ringing in the ear, or an itchy nose when asked what was most on their mind. And that symptom was usually an alter needing to be heard or represented an issue that needed attention.

We survivors easily forget...everything. Maybe a fun bulletin board of reminder messages to stare at when we are at wits end? I know...then we forget about the bulletin board until we see it again... It's worth a try though.

Going into the pain

I have no specific advice or lesson for this entry. Just thought I'd share some of what's going on with me to help survivors see how confusing and emotionally raw things stay stuck long after reaching the point of having your life back. "Life" meaning you can function day to day and maybe have a career or have a job or get to know joy and happy and calm.

After releasing the long ongoing memory relating to Halloween and other things, I did not feel a whoosh of relief or change in clarity as often happens after something that huge is processed. In fact, I have been hovering just above a very sad and dark place. I guess thankfully I can't work now so that I can have therapy more frequently during this crap. So of course, at my session today, I went inside and a deep ache was felt just under the left side of my ribcage kind of down and to the left of the heart.

This aching "feels like death". Very sad tormented fragment. There really wasn't a voice to it. I was getting messages in my head about it. The message of this feeling of death was "I have to be dead to live." Well, there's a classic doublebind perp message. My therapist is very good at speaking to what is going on and unraveling the un-logic of the message. She also led me through what I recently blogged about--the dreaded self-nurturing. As she spoke of releasing the grief and sadness, I let out a sob. Possibly some of you can relate to the experience of hearing others inside--patterns of speech, age clues, body sensations, tone of voice. It's odd and interesting to me. Interesting from being a therapist and trying to process both as a client and as someone who might use the knowledge of the moment to help another.

The sob and subsequent crying sounds were that of a preverbal child...a baby. I had recalled that "feeling so tired I wish I would die" sadness since high school. Apparently it's been there since before I could talk. It was about feeling abandoned and unloved and afraid and wanting to just go away. That's how bad it is for all survivors of DID. It was THAT bad. I have words accompanying one of my collages that say something like "A child sees and recognizes long before she has words to express". I recognize this fragment as part of an adult alter who desperately wanted to die several years ago. Living was just too painful for her. I guess she left behind this fragment. The baby is now rescued and I hope will join with the rest of her who has integrated into my inner wisdom so she doesn't have to be "in" the body.

Following the therapy session, my mind tends to keep processing. And I realized there was another very f**ked up childhood story that went with this part of me. Is Brer Rabbit still a story read to children? My wounded adult alter was first called Tar Baby until I learned her name. One of the children's stories is about Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby. I don't remember the plot. The confusion was wrapped around Brer and my pronouncing it Bare. Bares were bunnies or rabbits and bears were bears. That's what I was taught. So hearing the words, I learned bunnies (bares) and bears were the same thing. Interestingly, on Twitter, I use a bunny icon with a background of teddy bears. I just went through a bunch of teddy bear stuff lately too...after I blogged about "the reminder object", which for me was a teddy bear.

This is how the puzzle of past keeps building on itself. I call it "clue talk". Here goes. The message was that the teddy bear went with boys. Back to the male/female split in my system that overshadowed all other confusions. Yesterday I decided I needed a stuffed animal brown bunny. I found the one I wanted online and put in my request. This morning I got the rest of that message. Bunnies go with girls. Bares are girls and bears are boys. Did that just give you a headache? My very sad death part is a bunny. She was rescued today. I will have a representation of her to hug and nurture next week.

I accomplished much of my "self-nurturing" by having littles who related to certain animals. My stuffed animal collection is rather extensive. But I managed to do a lot of healing hugging stuffed animals since I was not so good with internally nurturing of wounded selves. It works and I often taught self-nurturing to others by suggesting they adopt a doll or stuffie (owned, borrowed, or purchased) and designate it as "little me" to become bonded to their inner child. That's how it would work for a singleton.

Hares, bares, bears. Confusing language. Fractured fairytales. Such was the stuff of my life. It took a lot of planning to do this to me, which is why sophisticated levels of organized pedophilia rarely change the formula. I think there a variety of fractured fairytales to choose from as diversion. Who could make this up? I can't think complicated. But what I unravel is this confusing. It's answers coming one at a time over a long period of time. It's been 11 years for me. But I needed all the pieces to make sense to me up to this point before I could possibly understand the meaning of the hurt little bunny. My dedication to healing and integrating was my promise to one of my first littles who went with sad bunny pictures. Her job was to hold my pain. I vowed to integrate so she could know good feelings too.

Every survivor has their own story and own system and own way of unraveling the mystery that was their life. And we all start with a single thread that is given to us the day we "wake up" from the amnesia. I have no idea if this answer is the last big answer I'll get. It was worth these weeks of depression to find that long hidden feeling of death. I would dearly love not to live the rest of my life fighting that deeply sad message of wanting to die.

The constant battle

I found this video on YouTube this morning. It's extremely well done. It is the struggle I would think anyone living with or healing from DID could identify with. I've been at this place many times to include now. For me it tends to rise to a place of literally "wouldn't I be better off just stopping the fight" when I feel overwhelmed. Or when an identity with these messages surfaces and I feel every bit of it. I'm posting it here not only to validate for survivors but to help those just trying to understand DID that this is our reality more often than not. Even as 99% healed and integrated, there are times I still struggle and am too tired to fight.

Handling the anger, rage, and depression

An important lesson I learned in my pre-memory therapy was depression can be anger inside out. I was depressed but didn't feel angry. I didn't realize I didn't know anger except as a really scary explosion. So I tended not to allow it out (which really just made it worse). For me, an explosion was screaming and crying and possibly tossing some object I later regretted. Likely most, if not all, female survivors, fear their anger. We learn it's not okay to fight or be angry. We're supposed to be submissive and obey. Male survivors may be taught to be aggressive but may just as easily be taught to be submissive and compliant. There are so many dynamics of abuse and gender of abuser(s). What happens in the person's conscious life could go either way. The "real" person may be a very gentle and caring soul. Remembering does not change that basic nature.

Safe anger is expressing verbally with "I" statements instead of blaming words. I feel angry because... No destruction of property unless planned as part of the safe anger release. No hurting anyone. Punching pillows is always a good suggestion. I personally needed more than that. Getting a punching bag is great for feeling a good sense of resistance and it wears you out faster. Whatever you choose to do will be right for you. Just make it safe. If you've never done this before and are in therapy, it's a good place to plan what you would like to do. Some anger work can be done in the therapist's office.

It's not uncommon for survivors to be so fearful of working with any alter holding rage. The fear is that rage will take over and somehow the survivor will be lost and/or harm will be done to others. While it may not be true for all, I worked with several survivors who were extremely fearful of their rage/anger parts. When "anger" or "rage" comes out to speak to the therapist, that's an excellent sign of wanting to heal. Typically the anger parts don't like their jobs. At the very least, when anger establishes a dialog with the therapist, the part is usually surprised by the welcome and an invitation to return. I've witnessed some amazing healing scenarios of anger within another's system. Those horrid fears of the host did not come to fruition.

Often anger is lonely and sad because the others fear him or her. Acceptance and being heard go a long way. This can also be facilitated by the therapist. Anger/rage is a response to having been hurt. Anger is a protector. Huge energy goes with that part. If that can be viewed as a ball of healing energy temporarily trapped, maybe anger won't seem so powerful. Anger does need a positive safe outlet though.

It's not unusual for expressing anger to peak and turn into a really good cry. Often there is a fear that if a survivor cries, it won't stop. It may feel like a long time, but that is a huge release of tension and anger and hurt that your body needs. Thank anger after the exercise. You may find littles connected to the big scary anger which helps to embrace that part as well. Possibly this won't happen until each survivor, in healing, makes that depression/anger connection.

For people reading who are not survivors, years of abuse at the hands of one or more abusers cannot help but create overwhelming emotions and a painful healing journey.