A farewell to Defeating-Depression.ink

Hello Delete-Deck.site!

I am feeling in many respects ready to return to life, to restart. February has been chaotic - I had a truly abysmal experience with a benefits application and it was extremely destructive to balance in my life; admittedly this is fragile. However it has been a hugely useful introspective experience. I lost the plot; left reality to go to a strange space where time didn't have borders and my habits and goals were alien artefacts that only presented confusion. Yet what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The base that I stand on now as a plinth to speak to you feels pleasantly sturdier.

I had a powerful day last Sunday. I woke up feeling anxious; I now am convinced this is because of a form of POTS - Postural Tachycardia. I am only convinced due to the usefulness of it as a maxim. In a nutshell, when you go from lying down for a long period of rest and sleep to a standing position, your heart suddenly has to make some adjustments. Your pulse will go up and your blood pressure will go up or down. The circulatory system is deeply linked with your brain and limbic system - specifically the "fight or flight" response that we are all familiar with. The response to the simple act of standing up has significant crossover with the panic response.

This has been extremely interesting to consider after the months I have been having. For the longest time I have some variation of "Good Sleep" or "Get up/Get out" on my radar as an important goal for my health. I initially spoke to a doctor about this and their advice was to take a new antidepressant that has a side-effect of making you a little drowsy. That was somewhat effective but I do feel that the General Practitioner's toolkit for psychological matters are akin to doing repair to a delicate Ship-in-a-Bottle with a Sledgehammer. I am concerned that my brain is currently dependant on Mirtazipine;  I now notice very little benefit from taking it, yet experience intense side-effects such as paranoia and agoraphobia if I ever miss a dose. I also tried many "sleep hygiene" tips and tricks with poor results and am sceptical of anyone who says they "just work".

One thought that got close to truth was "forcing" a day start by just "getting to the library" being my one resounding goal. This was effective, in that, however horrible my environment when I woke up and regardless of my atrocious mental state, when i did get there I would feel forced to recenter myself. One loop I liked from "Build Your Brain Power" was "Noticing, Thinking, Feeling". You can start external by narrowing down some of the sensory chaos that is a busy environment. Yet you can keep going in the loop by going "Feeling, Noticing, Thinking" and end up at some introspection of your internal processes. Example:

1. "Its so noisy" - "I can't concentrate" - "Blarghlewargle"

2."Those Teenagers are being noisy" - "I think they just got out from school" - "I feel frustrated but happy that they are happy I suppose"

3. "Lots of people come here huh" - "I think the library attracts them since its warm and cosy, lots of people seem to bring their family here" - "I feel worried that I am looking crazy to them"

4. "Hang on, there's like 4-5 other people here, with a book theoretically in front of them like me" - "I am just here to read, that's fine, I am not crazy" - "Oh that's a relaxing thought; was I relaxed?"

5. "There's a deep tightness and anxiety in my chest and stomach" - "Wow I know this one; that's a bit of general anxiety" - "I feel anxious"

6. "My heart rate is quite elevated" - "I should do some breathing exercises, didn't lovely mental health professional recommend some?" - "Oh I feel a bit better, maybe I can achieve something today".

What you may notice about the final point in the example is that it is actually quite nuanced. The anxiety hadn't reached a point of a worry, where the thought was crossing the conscious mind's viewfinder. When people recommend Yoga to improve your mental health; they should understand they are often speaking to "Blarghlewargle". Its "Blarghlewargle" who needs help and unfortunately "Blarghlewargle" is very incompetent. There's 6 steps in my example for him to reach his breathing exercise and he is using a complex multilayered system in his brain to get there. People just close their eyes and ring a gong and leave "Blarghlewargle" to do the rest.

So how does this apply to my current "baseline" and why did the Library trick not work forever? Well when I achieved this sense of connection with my internal processes's I suddenly felt quite motivated to improve "Blarghlewargle"'s prospects. I cleaned my house, made showering more pleasant, put the remote for the TV in a sensible space. Anthony Bourdain spoke about his "Inner person" who for him was a stoner who just wanted to smoke pot and watch cartoons all day. We all have an inner person who is dysfunctional in some way who we are fighting an endless tactical battle against to run our lives correctly. My inner person is quite similar, minus the pot, he just wants to play Magic the Gathering/Rocket League all day and listen to podcasts. It's so easy to hand the reigns over to him and it feels so natural. "Blarghlewargle" feels the anxiety but doesn't have the facultys to process it so what does he do? Well his natural response is to lie down, getting up made him feel awful; beyond that however, his comfort food is to start up a game of Magic the Gathering and just keep on trucking and trucking and trucking. The person who does this never reaches the library. Why could he do it before? I think the answer is that "Blarghlewargle" can use anxiety as a shortcut. You can do a lot of reasonable things in a blind panic; in difficult circumstances, you can panic yourself out of the door before you have really even woken up. So a nicer environment for  "Blarghlewargle" is also a honey trap.

What I did last Sunday, was accept the natural urge to lie down. I had been thinking a lot about POTS and I saw the difference between lying down and standing up in a more medical context. I can do a few repetitions of lying down, standing up, no problem. I built a shortcut in my brain, backed by a long history of experience, to the relaxing part of the "Noticing, Thinking, Feeling" loop. I just did it, at home, while lying down and getting up and getting a coffee. It felt revolutionary.

I think the final word I want to write is this: Stop downplaying how amazing the reader, YOU, are. You are a product of millions of years of evolution with an amazing brain that achieves so much every single day. I am intensely interested in everything that you notice, think and feel every day. It is not mundane. I hope to hear from you soon at Delete-Deck.site.