Breaking The Cycle

Written by Andi Bazaar | Oct 7, 2022

Depression or anxiety are also signals and alarms that things haven’t been going well for a while. They don’t tend to happen overnight and can take years before they develop.

Let’s talk about depression, it is the most common and perhaps one of the broadest categories in mental health diagnoses and so much can fall within depression.

• what is it?
• what different shapes it takes?
• how can we recover?
• how it affects our quality of life?

A common misconception about depression is that it is a disorder of sadness that is intense, while intense long term sadness can be a factor depression can also come in the shape of emotional numbness despair a loss of motivation and a host of other symptoms.

Therefore, a lot of people don’t think they could have depression because it doesn’t manifest in the “traditional sadness,” way. Depression affects everything in our life. It is not simply an “emotional” state. Our appetite, sleep, motivation, social relationships are impacted.

Generally, when we are depressed we are no longer motivated to engage in our usual activities even the things we used to love the most are no longer enjoyable. We don’t want to even see the people we love or care about because of a lack of energy and fear of being judged.

We may become much more irritable because our tolerance levels for everyday stressors is way down, our studies or work is also impacted because we can’t get ourselves motivated. We don’t want to get out of bed and even when we do we can’t focus.

Our memory function is highly impacted as well because we are constantly focused on our thoughts and emotions, we are not registering the environment around us as much and therefore not forming as many new memories. Our access to old memories is also impacted.

All of these memory, motivation and executive brain functions that are diminished will come back once we start to feel better. It is not going to be permanent, another important point to cover is hopelessness and helplessness. These are very common in depression.

This basically means that we feel there is no way out and nothing that anyone can do that is going to help us, we feel completely trapped and that there is no way. This is an important component in the development of suicidal ideation that can occur alongside depression.

Loneliness is also going to be increased even when we are surrounded by many people, that loneliness has more to do with the fact that we feel no one can understand us that the world is moving forward without us. That can weigh pretty heavily on those struggling with depression.

As you can see from everything mentioned above, depression is not a regular bout of sadness. It is much deeper than that. It is also not something where a quick fix is going to change it, we don’t fall into a clinical depression overnight and it won’t get better overnight because of the low energy, motivation and loneliness experienced by those who suffer from depression.

“it is important to notice these behavioural changes in our loved ones and reach out to break that isolation, depression is just so damn isolating all the time.”

The good news is that there are many ways out from depression, in terms of medications there are just so many of them out there that are safe not addictive and can work well in alleviating symptoms of severe depression. Therapy is also important!

Many forms of therapy can deal with depression from cognitive behavioural therapy, solution focused therapy, narrative therapy, etc. If you are struggling with depression please know that there are solutions and if affordability is an issue meds are the better option.

There may also be low cost therapy options where you are living. Asking friends or researching online for these options can be beneficial in finding something that can work for you, furthermore anxiety or depression are very linked to each other.

Often we will find them both operating together and that can add another layer for the people who are struggling with this even if your family is not supportive or doesn’t “believe” in treatment, try to go to a doctor your family doesn’t know and get some form of treatment.

Breaking that cycle is going to be so important for recovery and whichever way is more feasible or comfortable for you is valid, if you are feeling suicidal look up helplines in your area or even reach out to anyone. Breaking the silence is gonna be so important.

I hope that this part was able to provide some information and solutions when it comes to depression, lots of love to you all and please know that you have value as a person no matter what you are going through.

If you have wondered “why me?” or “what is causing this?” when it comes to your depression or anxiety we are going to talk about this and explore the reasons why depression or anxiety seem to hit at seemingly random moments that leave us wondering what the heck happened.

First of all, it is important to realize that there is a logic behind this. As much as we like to think it may be due to bad luck, there are reasons happening in the background that are leading up to this. The first one is simply that we ran up our resilience tab.

Think of it like a bucket and stressors drops of water, in our everyday life we are constantly pouring those drops of water through various stressors we go through at home, work, with families and relationships. All of these add up and if we don’t drain that bucket, it overfills.

Draining it is usually through processing such as with journaling, expressing ourselves to others, therapy, etc. We tend to hang on to our stressors and not want to bother anyone to the point where we live our limit and can’t deal with any additional stressors.

This is why sometimes we have a breakdown where we cry a lot or give up on things for a smaller kind of stressor, let’s say I missed the bus and I start crying so much even though logically I know there is another one coming soon. It is not missing the bus that was the issue. It was the fact that it was the stressor that overflowed all that bucket.

• Another one is low grade anxiety or depression that was slowly growing. For example, we may have had anxiety attacks once a year or once a month and then slowly they increased. Now we may have them everyday and feel like they are destroying us but that increase was gradual.
• Another way that we may develop anxiety and depression is because of self neglect. We tend to put everything and everyone else above our needs. This means that we never really take time for ourselves or to give that same empathy and help to ourselves that we give to others, it can be because we were so career focused that nothing else mattered. Emotional burnout and depression are deeply linked.
• Another cause may be biological, this is hard to determine because there isn’t a certain gene 🧬 or test that we can do to see if we are biologically predisposed to get depression and anxiety but just because we may have predispositions doesn’t negate the points made above.
• Another cause may be not having space to express ourselves and our emotions. If I am the quiet one in a household of people who take all of that talking and expressing space, it doesn’t leave room for me to express my emotions or feel heard. That can be detrimental.

A very important one is also a lack of boundaries that stretched over a long time, we don’t realize how big of an issue it is because we never grew up with this. We were taught that boundaries mean we don’t fully love other people and put limits to them.

Whenever we say that’s enough and try again with boundaries, we are guilted until we drop them again but letting people trespass our limits constantly means that at one point or another it will be too much and lead to worsening mental health.

All of these are but a few examples of some very important causes of our depression/anxiety. It is rarely just one cause, as our lives are complex and have many variables. Oftentimes, it will be a combination of many factors that led to this.

“remember that depression or anxiety are also signals and alarms that things haven’t been going well for a while, they don’t tend to happen overnight and can take years before they develop and thankfully there are solutions whether it is in the form of therapy and or meds.”

I hope that this article was able to clarify these questions we ask ourselves in our worst moments, so take care of yourselves and hope you are all having a relaxing weekend.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In appaearance “Hugo-licharre Freimann”