| Product: |
My Experience of Depression |
| Date: |
03.02.08 (22 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: none
Disadvantages: misunderstood illness
I suffered with depression up until the age of twenty eight, though I never realized it properly. As a child I was extremely anxious, used to get nervous about going to school and be very paranoid but I still don't really know why. I didn't like being around more than about three or people without feeling self conscious and like they all had something against me or were secretly plotting something.
When I reached about fifteen I fell in love with this girl who I went out for a while until she eventually left. I was hurt a lot and to cover the pain I adopted a rather foolish and immature attitude and decided to just have a laugh and have fun. Unfortunately, this caused me to do badly in my exams, I didn't make it to my a levels and all my plans for my future had just fallen apart. I was devastated.
Despite sleeping through most of every day throughout the summer and not particularly wanting to be, my father snapped me out of it and got me a course at college. Unfortunately, the place was packed with drugs and within twelve months I was addicted. Eventually, I got thrown off the college course, my dad kicked me out and I was living on the freezing cold streets and addicted to crack.
I found myself homeless with no friends or family that I could turn to and had nowhere to go and nobody to talk to. Anger, frustration and anxiety were all building up inside me. Not only had I inflicted a bad past upon myself, but unexpected coincidences would make me look like a much worse person that I was to other people. Basically, I had no option but to just get through each day and hoped that something good would happen one day. Either that or take the selfish and cowardice way out by suicide. Since this was what everybody expected of me anyway I decided not to. I bottled everything up inside and and just fought my way painfully through each unbearable day thinking to myself that each day I get through is a day closer to my death. I was stilled addicted to drugs.
Inevitably, I turned to crime and was on a rolling downward spiral heading straight past the bottom. I felt suicidal but just didn't have the guts to commit suicide. I prayed that there would be better times for me in the future or that I would just die naturally somehow.
After starving myself, too afraid to bump into people I had stolen from and freezing through endless nights of walking and sleeping in the rain a friend of my sister took me in. For three months she helped me get through the torturous and agonizing pain of the withdrawal symptons and managed to get me back on my feet, which I am ever thankful for. The pain of withdrawal from crack is something that I would never ever wish upon any living soul.
She continued to help me until I was back into work, had a steady income, a car and a home and we eventually got together as a couple. We then had children together and the day my first child was born was the day that changed the rest of my life. I still suffered with depression however, but I had started reading up on hypnosis, cognitive behaviour therapy, psychological techniques and studied the way that the human mind works. After a year a so of regularly using the techniques my depression had eventually gone completely.
Summary: My constant depression and its causes
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