Thanks. Right now, I just tell her that they are “old boo-boos”. The explanation will shift as she gets older, but for now, I can get away with that.
Ironic that this post is around this weekend. I spent last night too anxious to sleep, and today pretty much agitated and crying and not wanting to do anything, but doing nothing wasn’t helping…Hopefully it is just a blip on the radar.
Metacom, it really isn’t wise to make assumptions about everyone else based only on your own limited experience. We all have a tendency to do that sometimes, but it generally isn’t very sound. Neither is lying to your child.
My depressive episodes were not usually related to unpleasant situations in my life. My situations looked worse because I was depressed. The one exception I can think of was that my father’s death did serve as a trigger.
One of the less common characteristics that I developed the first time that I had noticeable problems with depression was selective mutism. I just quit talking. I don’t remember why. I was in college at the time. I think maybe it just seemed pointless to say anything.
Each battle I’ve had with bouts of severe depression have been different. And they’ve crept up on me so that I haven’t always recognized them for what they were. I would just get more and more confused and unable to sort out what was happening. I felt overwhelmed and out of control. Aggitated. I would shake and cry and break out in a cold sweat. The anxiety was so bad that I would wake up in the morning with “waves” of aggitation sweeping over me.
Depression was diagnosed about forty-five years ago, but it wasn’t until about seventeen years ago that I found out that I have a sort of low-grade depression all the time. Every two or three years I would have have a bout of severe depression. SSRI medications have worked wonders with me. I also see my shrink every 4-6 weeks for one 20 to 30 minute session. No severe episodes now for the last eleven years.
I also will continue to take medications and I am grateful that such help is available and affordable. There is no more shame in them than there is in an allergy tablet or a vitamin.
We haven’t “failed” when we don’t produce enough estrogen. We haven’t “failed” when we don’t produce enough insulin. And we haven’t “failed” when we don’t produce enough seratonin. We are only human.
Pax
You and I were posting at the same time here.
Right now, I have the luxury of time. My daughter is far too young to hear the real story. The details would hurt and confuse her enormously. Simple is the only way to go at this point.
At some point, though, I am going to have to elaborate more, and I don’t feel OK about lying to her. It’s possbile that I will be alive for another 50 years. That’s a long time to maintain a lie, and to drag my family into collusion. She would likely figure it out or find out the truth at some point, and then that would be yet another issue to deal with.
Also, depression runs in my family. I have an obligation (again, at some point when she is much older) to educate her about a condition that is in her genes and make sure she is prepared to deal with it if (please, no) she suffers from it as well.
The good news is that you don’t have to assume that it’s in her genes. Dealing with depression in families is I think more a matter of breaking the cycle by being honest: both with your kids (in appropriate ways) and most importantly with yourself, and taking appropriate action, for example, limiting contact with granparents, etc., as necessary.
Kids are well up on stuff like people killing themselves, so no point in making up stories that, if they don’t see through at a young age (and I wouldn’t bet against that - their BS-meters are finely tuned from an early age in respect of bull from their parents), they’ll suss out easy enough when they’re a bit older. Lies are not smart with kids, a) cos lying is bad and b) cos it gives you little leverage when you try and tell them not to do it.
In answer to the OP’s question, “already dead” is the predominant feeling that comes to mind.
Once there, in hospital the feeling of the need to complete my stay was given me by the nurses. I had a friend who was head nurse at one time and she gave me little heed, the rest of the staff were efficient but wanted me to get well as soon as possible. IE: free their bed up. That was during a stay for a physical injury.
The psychiatric admittance I went through was esoteric and laid back, making me dream of a perfect world even more that I did. In short it made me lazy.
I think there is a need for better psychiatric care, and I am a professional in the field. There is a need to give sympathy the same as an accident patient receives, care that will make him feel like recovering.
I dunno how ignorant you are or are not, but depression is bad. It can cause fears and unwanted thoughts that run on and on like the aspirations and dreams we have, but they are on the dark side of the moon. They always face far from the earth and are repetitious, to separate them from shizty or manic, it is fair to say that about them. It is easy to fall deeper and deeper into depression until you say, no…I am not going to do this anymore. Whether you and doctors can do that then, cure it, is empirical. Things need to stir you into getting out of it, and things need to stir the psychiatric trade into getting the depressed to function.
I wish I could by copyright protect my BS. It is my actual experience, but if the facts are there they are in freestyle hand and I desire to posess them.