What Is Depression?

it’s not all in your head.

Or rather, it is mostly in your head, but literally (not just figuratively). For the longest time, I thought that the feeling of hopelessness and apathy was something I couldn't control. It would just creep up on me, even when I was happy and had no reason to be sad at all.* It was infuriating because I couldn't make it go away, and I couldn't come to understand it.

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I felt invaded, violated by something invisible that some would say was 'all in my mind'. Noticing something internal like this when you're 14 years old and are already terrified of how the world around you works is debilitating.

I didn't know how to handle it, so I muddled through the next four years; I cried, learned lessons, went to college, and lost hold of my dancing dreams—

all with the black, smokey shadow of depression swirling through me invisibly. Then I was eighteen, and I was finally diagnosed with clinical depressive disorder. I researched it after my doctor said that it wasn't just me creating the sadness.

Scientific studies show so much more! For instance, did you know:

1. 'Experts believe stress can suppress the production of new neurons (nerve cells) in the brain'.* Neurons are what make the brain work properly, and if you have depression, you probably need something to spur on neurogenesis*.

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Neurotransmitters.

2. In people with depression, the levels of certain brain chemicals might be out of balance, particularly these neurotransmitters*: serotonin (which regulates mood, emotion, and sleep); dopamine (which affects movement, attention, and pleasure); and norepinephrine (which regulates arousal, sleep, attention, and mood)*.

Wow! It feels like college again. In any case, my poor little brain, while feeling much better emotionally, is now exhausted past the point of being science-y any longer. I hope this will help if you have any friends or family who can't quite wrap their own heads around what's going on in your head, or if you're trying to understand yourself.

Love and Hugs and Naps (Boy Am I Pooped),

Joëlle

*1."Understanding Anhedonia: What Happens in the Brain?" Tim Newman/Medical News Today. (2018)

*2."What Causes Depression?" Harvard Medical School. (2009) (2017)

*3."What Is Neurogenesis?" University of Queensland. (2017)

*4."What Are Neurotransmitters?" University of Queensland. (2017)

*5."What Causes Depression? Brain Chemistry and Neurotransmitters..." Alison Palkhivala/University Health News. (2019)

Lost In Translation

DEAR
      Young adults:
                It's hard to stop trying to find validation through others.

               It's hard when you know you have worked every day, every year, and you try and fail over and over again. It's hard to pick yourself up and keep going after every fall. It's hard when you finally get somewhere, only to be ignored by the very people you are trying to impress.

           I'm turning twenty-one in two weeks, and I still have no idea what I am supposed to do with my life. I sing, I write, I draw, I paint, I create. And yet, I have no understood purpose in life; no path to follow. All I know is that I will not be able to move through life unless I continue to create.

             I feel like someone has put me in a helicopter, flown me out to sea, and dropped me in the center of a vast ocean. There is nothing in sight. I do not know what is beneath me. I can't see anything coming toward me. I am struggling to stay above the waves. There is nothing to swim toward, nothing to measure against. I am alone.

           The only thing that I know is there is the sky, but even the sky changes. Sometimes it's filled with light, and sometimes it's dark. Sometimes I see the stars and the moon, and sometimes it's raining, and I cry along with the clouds. The only constant is the rising and setting of the sun, even if it's obscured, because I know it's there.

             What I'm trying to say is, my life is the ocean, and this is how I feel. I am overwhelmed and lost, and the only thing I know for certain is that God, the sun, is somewhere nearby.

           I don't know how to end this post, because I am so tired and sad and emotionally dry right now. I suppose I simply wanted to write out my state of mind.

                It's storming in the sea of my mind right now, and I'm feeling a bit under the weather. Normally, I'd post something positive about how to get out of the storm, but I have to admit that I can't get out of mine right now. I think it's time I admitted that I am just as lost and broken as so many other people, and I simply needed to share my turmoil. Maybe we can help each other.

                 Da duit.

With I Can't Even Right Now (Seriously),

Joélle.