Complexity Of Human Pain

Written by Oliver Schofield, Andi Bazaar | March 24, 2023

"I tell this story following a huge breakthrough in my mental health struggles, now I have devoted my life to helping others through their mental health journey. I hope this testimony is able to help your life and those around you."

SOMETIMES I GET ASKED:

• what’s it like living with depression?
• how does it work for you?
• are you sad all the time?
• does medication actually work?

Well, in this article I’ll explain my journey with mental illness and how my everyday life works with depression.

Although it affects me at any point throughout the day, usually my lowest moments are both in the morning and at night. It’s tough having to wake up and start my day, I spend from half an hour to maybe a full one just gathering the strength to stand up.

On the other hand, at night is when all the thoughts start gushing out. Every single negative thought comes forward and I feel absolutely wrecked, no matter what I do it’s almost impossible to block out the noises of my own mind telling me how trash I am.

Not being able to see a single good thing about myself is probably the worst thing about my life, in my eyes I am the most useless piece of garbage there is. I’m an ugly, talentless and worthless human being. Everyone is better than me and eventually everyone will leave me.

Not being in uni and not having any standout talent really hits me, every day I wake up to simply watch Netflix/YouTube or play games. I don’t do anything more with my day and it just makes me feel more useless and I know what you may be thinking, “why don’t you just do something?”

I really wish it could be that easy, it sounds like an excuse but having depression really does drain you to a point where you can’t even do anything no matter how much you want to. Gym, work, school everything becomes 200% harder.

When this happens, I can only put my focus on keeping myself alive staying afloat. It’s kind of like “survival mode,” where you’re just hanging on and trying not to fall off the edge. It’s horrible and it’s not taken seriously because it seems like an excuse.

It’s always “just do it” but people don’t realize that it isn’t that easy. Alongside that, one of the worst things you can say to someone with depression is “you have nothing to be sad about, you have a house, food, etc others have it worse than you."

Never invalidate someone’s feelings, depression isn’t just about being sad about not having money or a house or whatever. It comes from a lot of things whether it’s childhood trauma or mid-life problems, it’s not a game about who was it worse. It’s about helping each other.

In terms of medication, I still don’t know if it works. You know what’s funny? The one side effect that is 100% guaranteed is that for the first few weeks your depression will worsen. trust me, it definitely did. That first month was probably the worst of my life.

It’s important to not stop taking medication, for it needs to be active all the time to have effect. Some people even have to take it until the day they die and that’s one of my biggest fears, never getting good enough and having to be medicated forever.

I like keeping count of how long has passed since the last day I self harmed or even attempted, helps me remind myself to not throw all that hard work to keep myself healthy away. It really depends on the person but most of the time I do self harm it’s because I can’t handle emotional pain at all.

So when it becomes too overwhelming, I switch it to physical-pain which can be controlled and it’s something I can stand. It’s not a good solution in any way/shape/form and I’m always trying to get better. Don’t self harm ever!

But yeah, that’s a little bit about my mental health struggles. To everyone out there who is going through a lot, it always gets better. It’s important to always keep going. ADHD, Depression, Panic Disorder and Anxiety isn’t a great combination of illnesses but we keep going.

I was thinking how to address the topic mental health because it’s so complex and million factors can be important, everyone has different needs and problems there is no blue print for good mental health. So I will describe my personal mental game-changers.

I fortunately didn’t have to live through a lot of traumatic stuff and this journey isn’t to replicate for others but maybe it can give at least one person another look on life and the mind. I consciously excluded “positive thinking” to show other concrete points.

1. MEDITATION

It let me realize that not every thought we have is actually defining us or necessarily important or true, thoughts come and go we have millions of them and we are not our thoughts. We can think what we want without external consequences.

What we do and say defines who we are, so if a strange thought comes up I try to accept it and let it pass. It was there present for a moment but it’s gone in the next second if I let it, I don’t judge myself for unpleasant thoughts. They are part of the mind jungle.

2. ACCEPTING AND REALIZING MY FEELINGS

I had to learn to accept my feelings and question them, what is it that I’m feeling in this moment? Am I really angry or is it just repressed sadness? It’s a good exercise to always think where could this stem from

When you have an emotional reaction that you not necessarily appreciate or like about yourself but the first step is to understand that it’s fine to feel no matter what you are feeling and that only if you embrace your feelings, you can understand yourself a little bit better and work on them.

This can be a very long and difficult process depending of your experiences that you had to go and grow through and for some external help to be accompanied is necessary.

3. REGRETS

I regret nothing, the only thing I want from my past is to learn from it. We can’t change past acts and we do them because that’s where we’re at in that moment, it’s the best decision we took with our possibilities and limitations of our mind that moment.

Regret and spinning thoughts what could have happened if I did it differently were a major depressive factor for me, to see everything you do as a point of self reflection and an opportunity to learn from was a major shift in my thoughts.

4. WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE

I try not to worry about what will happen the next day or week or month (besides organizing basic needs of course) I worried so much and painted so many scenarios in my head over the years and I realized one thing:

The reality is always different than you thought it would be, the mind mostly cannot think about concrete future scenarios properly because everything is based on past thoughts that are subconsciously manifested.

What helps me is envision only general things like where I see myself, visualize a positive future but not to go through specific scenarios and what could happen if I do something this way or that way. I only vaguely visualize where I see myself for example.

5. CIRCUMSTANCES

I realized that I can’t make my personal mental health dependent of external circumstances (I’m talking about daily ones not very traumatizing experiences), it’s my decision if I start to get nervous and angry when I’m in a traffic jam and I can also decide if I try to see it more relaxed and turn on some music instead. It won’t always work because our subconsciousness is very strong but I’m trying again and again, the same is true for other people in my close surrounding, ut’s easier for me to accept their faults instead of trying to change them to feel happy myself.

Trying to understand why a person reacts the way they do instead of forcing my experiences and thoughts on them, helped me to relax (this excludes abusive behavior etc).

It’s important for me to don’t feel responsible for acts of other people, of course this doesn’t exclude trying to help others on their way if they want to but this e.g. also means to don’t feel envy for a life of someone and their circumstances.

6. JUDGING MYSELF

I try to never judge myself for failing to embrace my principles, values and standards of how I want to treat myself and others. It’s one thing to have values and another if you can always embrace them.

It’s almost impossible to live up to the own standards and that’s okay. If I couldn’t do it, I will try it the next time again and again and again. For me it’s about trying to better myself and to be a better person, to be conscious of my acts and how I treat myself and others.

We are not perfect humans, we can try to climb to be better but if we fall back down, we shouldn’t give up and go the other way again and we should simply try to climb again.

7. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

I try to always take responsibility for the things that happen in my life (again not talking about traumatic experiences). To put guilt on others doesn’t help me to advance, of course a lot of things that are happening are not my fault but it simply doesn’t help to think about the guilt of others. What can I do to change this situation, how can I try to leave it? Finding solutions instead of being bitter and hurt.

8. EXPECTATIONS

I try to don’t expect nothing from nobody, this is the most difficult in close personal relationships for me and the easiest for where my life will go. I enjoy everything good that happens and I see it clearer if I don’t expect specific things to happen.

9. SPIRITUALLY

I always was a very narrow minded person when it comes to this. I didn’t believe in god, fate, energies and all that and thought it’s senseless. Thankfully I had the luck to experience faith in a very open community that showed me the beauty of it.

It’s about experiencing and embracing “random” things happening in your life and believing in a higher connection of everything, I still don’t know in what I believe but I’m sure the energy you give to the world effects the energy you get back to some degree.

Why mental health should be important to you, my journey overcoming depression in this article.

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING: MENTAL DISTRESS DESCRIPTION ⚠️

In March 2015 I visited a psychiatrist for the first time, I was frightened. It had been around 4 months since I started suffering, I remember I woke up one Saturday in November 2014 and felt physically stressed for no particular reason.

My sleep disappeared completely in the first few days of that unusual autumn Saturday morning, every night I felt tired and sleepy but as soon as I went to bed my body would start having multiple nervous tics that were preventing me from falling asleep.

In the mornings I would get up feeling like a shipwreck, I was restless during the day and couldn’t do anything other than sitting isolated in my room staring at the ceiling in profound silence.

I knew my body was not functioning properly but I was afraid to find out what exactly was happening to me, my anxiety was getting severe by the day.

Somehow, I survived the last two months of 2014. Little did I know what was about to happen soon! My first weeks of 2015 were agonizing, I started browsing the Internet hectically and consuming everything Google served me as results for "depression" - medical analyses, personal stories, etc until then I had always connected the state of depression to just having bad mood.

My first months of 2015 were passing by unbearably slow, I was spending most days isolated in my room in complete silence. Every other activity felt unnaturally stressful and unnerving, at some point I began to hear voices in my head suicidal thoughts followed through.

In March 2015 I visited a psychiatrist for the first time, I was frightened until then I had assumed that all people who talk to shrinks are literally crazy. The psychiatrist calmed me down and explained to me what I had been experiencing for such a long period of time, fast forward to today I’m still seeing the psychiatrist once every year to adjust the antidepressants I've been taking.

Once the pills stabilized my physical condition, I started talking to a psychology professional that has helped me sort confusing thoughts in my head.

HERE’S WHAT I'VE LEARNED SO FAR:

• Overcoming depression is a long and challenging process.
• Seeking sufficient help in times of emerging personal crisis is imperative.
• Consulting the right mental health specialist is one of the first steps to recovery from a severe breakdown.
• Sometimes, you could recover from a mental breakdown by just taking the right pills under the supervision of the right psychiatrist.
• Sometimes, you could accompany the antidepressants treatment with talking to the right therapist at the right time.

Sometimes I hear people talking about mindfulness meditation and they say something like, "I try to meditate but I'm so bad at it. I can never focus at all, I always get distracted."

My dude, my friend... You are supposed to get distracted. If you can stay focused during meditation and not get distracted at all, firstly that's impressive and secondly you are a rare bird.

The whole point of mindfulness isn't to keep a tight leash in your brain, it's to *practice noticing* when it starts to wander and bring it back.

It's like if you're walking a dog, and suddenly your dog gets fixated on something, you do what you can to bring its attention back to the walk and you move on.

The walk isn't a failure if the dog gets distracted now and then, the point of a walk is to go for a walk and with each walk the more practice you get noticing what triggers will make your dog react also the more practice you get learning how to deal with those triggers.

Another way I think of mindfulness meditation is a "noticing game" your brain wants to notice things. Watch how it does it.

• what sights, sounds, smells, senses does it notice?
• what thoughts do you notice?
• what things bring you out of the moment?
• what things bring you back?

This "game" was actually how I would entertain myself as a kid sometimes, when I had to wait around in boring environments. I just kept a list of anything I could notice around me, I had no idea it was a kind of meditation, it just gave me something to do.

If you think you're just supposed to keep your mind blank during mindfulness meditation, you're selling yourself short.

If you notice distractions, that's a good thing because that means you're observing yourself. Observing is literally the name of the game.

DISCLAIMER ON MINDFULNESS HERE:

Mindfulness meditation is not actually good for everyone, if you have PTSD or a lot of unprocessed trauma it could possibly make things worse. Sometimes we dissociate from things for a very good reason until we're ready to fully process them.

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YA'LL AS WELL

• why do people think mindfulness meditation is supposed to be about emptying your mind and being completely focused?
• is it because we all just wish we could get away from our inner chaos, so we idealize the concept of complete control?

This is my last experience for a while, I can't take credit for anything I've done or am doing. I've had months where I felt helpless, hopeless and visionless. I have to give the glory to God, He makes all things work for my good. Notice I didn't see he makes all things good.

I still have plenty of bad things in my life like everyone else, what that phrase means is he takes all the bad stuff and turns it all around for something better in my life. As a result, my life has an overall positive trend line. There are plenty of bad things but more good.

Last year, I had many days where I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. I didn't understand why and couldn't explain it, I didn't want to feel that way but I didn't know how not to. I felt embarassed and didn't know who to talk to, I held it in for so long.

This week is the first time I felt understood because of the amazing people on Division SAAC because of their influence, I felt strong enough to tell my story to them. Now, I'm a completely new person. I have a newfound lease on life, I know where I've been and where I'm going.

My fellow member said it best, sometimes our headlights become dim from all the dirt in life. We can no longer see what's in front of us, so we come to a screeching halt, when we clean the dirt of off each other's headlights we can finally see again amd we can't see everything but we can see enough in front of us to give us the confidence to pick up our pace.

I can anticipate curves as they come now because I have brighter headlights, I have hope again because I can see the light. If only we all were dedicated to shedding our light on one another.

How might this world be different? Once again, I will say we are #StrongerTogether

I didn't promote this story to get atenttion, but feel free to follow me on IG if you want to see more positivity. I also do a lot within the NCAA so you can see some updates about college athletics, I am a student-athlete advocate not an NCAA employee. DM me if you have questions!

I tell this story following a huge breakthrough in my mental health struggles, now I have devoted my life to helping others through their mental health journey. I hope this testimony is able to help your life and those around you.

Feel free to share x #MentalHealthMatters

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Writer/Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Scott Wynné Schofield (Publisher)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Jwan Höffler Conwall (Art Interior Design)
• Hugo-licharre Freimann (Ass Director)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph (Writer)
• In appearance by Emmanuel Piero-luccá Schofield (Model)