My brain.
It's hard not to despise my brain when my depression strikes, or even just in thinking about or talking about my depression. Hmmm, maybe I'll change that to "the depression" rather than "my" depression. Maybe that helps, or can help, take away some of that self-shaming. "My" makes it sound like my fault.
Anyway.
I get these depressive thoughts that run me in circles thinking that "I suck", "I'm a failure at [insert anything and everything]", "I don't deserve to live", "I don't deserve to even be treated for depression", etc, etc. This morning I was trying to (and I've certainly tried this before as well) tell myself that "these thoughts are the depression", "they aren't real", etc. And I was capable enough to tell myself this (which is a long way from what I've been in the past, or even most of my crashes), but I couldn't get myself to believe this. I start saying things like "I suck so bad that I can't even stop believing all this even though I know it's the depression".
Nasser and I were discussing this morning how to fight these thoughts, you know, cuz I was in the midst of a crash. He talked about learning to recognize that these thoughts are happening and that these thoughts are originated by the depression, which is basically the foundation of using mindfulness for depression. But then we talked about, after recognizing this, placing these thoughts away. Sorta like all the distraction techniques.
I'm starting to get a good image in my head of where to place these thoughts. Last week I was at my sister's house. And she's really big into gardening and yard work, all of which I have a lot of trouble with. I saw that she has this method of taking care of these Japanese beetles that eat the tops of fruit trees. She keeps a little bucket of soapy water in the backyard and when she finds a beetle she puts it in there. The beetle can't escape because of the soap in the water and it drowns. I saw this method again last night when Nasser and I watched a video of a homemade yellow jacket trap and they used soapy water again to drown the yellow jackets in the end.
So now, I'm using the soapy water image to "trap" and "drown" my depression thoughts. The image helped this morning, but I haven't exactly experimented with it much. I'm not sure that it will work but I guess over the years I'm never sure that anything will work. I just have to keep trying.
The other thing that Nasser reminded me of this morning is that progress doesn't have to be fast. I don't have to become an expert at a particular method in a day. The whole idea that progress can be slow is something I need to work on, something I need to apply to everything I do. I'm getting there with losing weight and trying to get in shape. I've been trying to make bits of progress here and there. I've been trying to recognize that I can do 20min on the stationary bike at home and still feel like I did something worthwhile. And I'm trying to notice things like "hey, I haven't been snacking so much between meals lately". I don't have to lose 20 pounds in a few weeks or something. Even if the progress is slow, it's still progress.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned, and at the moment I don't feel like perusing my latest posts, I'm still getting ECT treatment but it's been every 4 weeks for pretty much the whole summer I think. Once we hit the 4 week stretch, after increasing the interval each time, the ECT psychiatrist gave me the option to stop there and see how it goes, or to do some more treatments at 4 week intervals and see how it goes. And I chose the latter. So now, Nasser and I plan to meet with the doctor on Thursday to discuss the plan moving forward. I think, or assume, that this meeting will determine that it's time to stop, but I also want to have a clear plan moving forward of how we'll check in to be sure I don't need to go back to it. My last treatment, 2 weeks ago, was... awful. Let me clarify. The treatment itself was fine although I seemed to have some more physical pain than usual, but then that physical pain seemed to last longer than it ever had before. And I seemed to have a big emotional crash as well, that didn't recover all too quickly, and maybe it's still a bit of an issue (although it's hard to tell since the boys go back to school on Wednesday and maybe I'm sick of the summer).
I feel mostly ready to be done with ECT. But then there's also this, I guess, crutch feeling to it. I'm scared to stop. I'm scared I'll stop and I'll steadily get worse and worse, but it will be hard to tell and I won't want to admit it, and then I won't want to admit or accept that I really just need another treatment boost or whatever. I'm scared it will be too hard to recognize what I need. It's always been hard to recognize that anyway. (I assume it has been, since my memory isn't all too good.)
But then I'm glad to stop and have more memory improvement. I still find it really difficult to discover things I don't remember, I find it difficult to talk with people that I don't talk with regularly and I have no memory of how much I've talked with them about my treatment or if I'm forgetting times when I did see them over this past year.
I'm glad to stop trying to figure out a bunch of logistics for every time I have a treatment.
I'm glad to stop having to deal with the fasting, the clear liquids only stuff, and the recovery over the couple to several to many days after.
I hope that this will go well. I hope I continue to have improvement in this fight. I hope that I continually find ways that really work and that I'm able to practice them and that I'm able to make some of them second nature. I hope that I can start feeling more confident in things in my life. I hope that I can feel confident enough to start and stick with choir again in a few weeks, like I plan on doing. I hope that I can keep feeling more and more confident as a parent, and really every other role I play in this life. I hope.
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