Depression

I recently broke my wrist and with it some of my spirit. I was definitely depressed, even though it was situational depression, I was blue.

Apart from yoga, nature and music, I use writing as a release for my emotions. I had so much I wanted to write and I was sure others who experience depression would want to hear it. But it was my right wrist that I broke (I am right handed) and typing was such a tediously slow process that it frustrated me even further.

As I couldn’t get the words down as I was experiencing them, I lost a lot of the rawness of what I wanted to share. However I feel it is an important topic so I will do my best to convey my experience.

With the break I lost a huge amount of independence. I couldn’t wash one of my armpits on my own, I couldn’t put my hair up on my own, I couldn’t drive on my own, make the kids school lunches or other meals for that matter along with a host of ‘other’ things I just couldn’t do. I got lost and totally focused on what I couldn’t do, rather than what I still could do, resulting in self diagnosed situational depression.

I was hard on myself because I felt ‘I am yoga teacher’ (ahamkara) I should be able to handle this. I am a fraud “how can I help others when I can’t even keep my own shit together!” When I spoke to friends I could ‘hear’ the flatness in my voice and I could ‘hear’ their unspoken responses, they didn’t want to hang out with this version of me. And that’s ok, we don’t always know the best way to deal with depression, avoidance is probably the safest way for some people. Others outright couldn’t understand how I could be upset at all, even my husband said “you don’t have to mope around so much, it’s only a fracture!” increasing my feelings of uselessness and shame.

I am not writing this to bag on my husband, he meant well and took up all the slack for me, I am writing in the hope of shedding a small light on what so many people suffer from in silence. These social interactions made me want to isolate myself further, to not reach out for help at all. The friends who I knew would be unconditionally there for me in my state, have incredibly busy lives. How could I call them and explain that what I needed was to sit with their unconditional-ness, to not have to pretend to be ok, to not have to be fixed?

I felt a lot of shame about the way I was handling everything and old beliefs about not being ‘good enough’ resurfaced, resulting in a spiral of descent into negative thoughts and emotions that I wasn’t even aware was happening. When I finally caught myself I began to dip into my yoga toolbox, I thought I would replace my mantra meditation with the affirmation “I am enough,” though at some stage during the meditation I realised I was saying “I am nothing!” now this probably kind of works in a ‘Zen’ type of way 🙂 but when I heard myself reciting it I figured it probably wasn’t really healthy for my current state of mind.

Trying to help myself I discovered an article on Vata imbalance. In the article it mentioned a few things that I happened to be doing, wearing black, bursting into tears and reading 3 books at once, it’s funny how you don’t realise you are doing some things until you read about them or they are pointed out to you. And then it occurred to me that my depression was kind of Rajasic AND Tamasic in nature and that quite likely the Rajasic part of my depression was a result of my Vata imbalance. I embraced the suggestion to do LAM japa and this was the beginning of my turning point, coinciding with my cast coming off. Mantra has helped me through other dark times in my life and the grounding-ness of LAM was perfect.

This experience of mine may not seem that significant to you, however at the time I also read an article with the title “This is my boyfriend 2 weeks before hanging himself” it came with a picture of a very happy looking couple and a child. And scarily I could understand how this could happen. Was he experiencing depression along with shame? Shame for the way he was feeling and not knowing what he could do about it? Being a man, were his expectations for himself one of having to have everything together or he would appear weak? I expect he often felt like me while interacting with others, as though he had to be ok for them, which gets really hard.

What I experienced was minuscule compared to what this man was going through and for those who have been suffering from long term depression. I was lucky, my situation changed, my cast came off and things are slowly getting better. Other people are not so lucky, their situation doesn’t change, and they can see no hope.

As yoga therapist we have at hand amazing tools that can help the individual with their depression but it’s not a one size fits all approach and unfortunately education and understanding of mental illness is far from where we would like it to be. It was a huge eye opener for me, that people who I thought would be somewhat understanding, either wanted to ‘fix’ me, avoid me or tell me to get over it. It is also quite common for people to be ok with you for a while, then there is some sort timeline, where you should be ‘better’ by now.

I am guilty of all of the above. I am a rescuer (as a lot of yoga teachers are, I am still working on it). I grew up with a mother who suffered from bi-polar, I now know her extremes to be both Rajasic and Tamasic at their worse, though I was too young to understand. I just wanted her depression to stop. I was embarrassed by her highs but for me they were easier to deal with than her lows, that I just wanted ‘fixed’.

I can really see now how people ‘need’ unconditional social interactions as part of their healing. Roughly 30% of the role of a therapist is just that, building a relationship of trust, acceptance and understanding, without this essential part it’s mostly likely the therapy will fail.

Peace, love and mungbeans from Samantha