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Home Features

How I’m trying to find peace with depression

byStaff writers
17 December 2015 - Updated on 1 April 2021
Reading Time: 3 mins read
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Depression is like the weather
Finding peace: I couldn’t bring myself to tell a soul, Mum and Dad tried, my brothers and sisters knew what I was going through but I wouldn’t let them help.

DEPRESSION is like the weather; sometimes you wake up to a beautifully clear day with complete clarity, small clouds drift in and out of sight intermittently slight doubts that soon turn into a seemingly permanent blanket shrouding your thoughts.

Finally they culminate in utterly frightful downpours, where all the wonder in the world turns to grey.

Depression is far from a one mould fits all disease but perhaps through simple analogies, I can shed some light on my three year battle with the weight I can’t quite get off my shoulders.

I enjoyed a relatively sheltered upbringing, good education, plenty of friends, sporting obsessions and a supportive family.

If you told me at 17 there’d be days I couldn’t get out of bed, let alone function in a rational headspace, I would have laughed.

I’ve made mistakes between then and now, but this is still the struggle I can’t comprehend, the sheer scale of my mental transformation in this time is unfathomable to me.

I was in denial when I was first clinically diagnosed shortly after my 21st birthday, I took the drugs and they numbed the pain, but it was simply a band-aid, not a solution.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell a soul, Mum and Dad tried, my brothers and sisters knew what I was going through but I wouldn’t let them help.

I was big brother, I was Mr Laidback, I had to keep my social reputation up, this is what my family and friends continued to see on the outside, it’s all I let them see.

My denial led me to live a bipolar lifestyle, I didn’t wake up and pro-actively tackle my disease, instead by stashing it away I could live weekend to weekend showing my friends the artificial happiness which portrayed the confident, self-assured young man I wanted to be.

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This continued for some time.

I’d have epiphany’s every now and again where I would partially deal with one perceived problem in my life, but by this stage I’d dug a hole so deep the embarrassment of coming clean wasn’t an option, perception trumped reality.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of my spiral was the fact I was completely aware of what I was doing to myself, but the rush of partying with mates, meeting new people was just too strong.

It was the lows after these binges that made me realise I needed to restore some sort of parity to my life.

The regret was palpable, I would micro-analyse every decision I had made, mentally beating myself to a pulp about things that the old me wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at.

I’d been talking to a psychologist this whole time and we’d formed quite a rapport.

It helped, for the first time I began to laugh about what had become of myself, he told me I’d make a great actor saying I even made him believe I was on top of the world sometimes.

It was remedial. I began to open up more talking to someone who was taking me for what I was now and not what I used to be.

This is what I was striving for, to wake up one day and have the ability to launch into my day with my full mental capabilities, no freak outs, no ruts where I became inoperable, to be at peace.   

This reflection was written by a young Catholic man with depression.

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