Battles from the
Inner War
Joe Stay
Alissa Davis wakes up early today, very early. The darkness seems to be weighing down upon
her like a thick blanket that does not comfort her nor does it keep her
warm. It is smothering. The daily battle of bed versus work commences
in its usual hopeless way.
The year is 2010, and the place is Portland, Oregon.
Alissa doesn’t know which side of the battle will win today,
but she does know this. Whichever side
reigns victorious, she is still losing the war regardless.
If she could have her way, Alissa would remain in bed. She would never leave, not today, not any day. But she has to get up for her job at Target,
where she works every day early in the morning as a stocker.
She dreads having to go today. She always dreads having to go.
Alissa finds that at her job, she gets down on herself over
the very simplest of things. In the
mindless work of moving boxes and organizing products she has plenty of time to
think and to dwell on the unhappiness that is consuming her. She has little to no energy, and has trouble
keeping up with her coworkers. What’s
worse is that the supervisor’s dominant opinion of her was that “she’ll never
do anything right.”
“I was failing, losing my ability to live,” Alissa says now
of those dark days three years ago. “I
was never suicidal. I made that
choice. (But) everything was shutting down. I didn’t feel like anyone could help me.”
Alissa had suspicions that there was something terribly
wrong with her way of thinking, and that it went beyond simply feeling “blue”
or “down.” It wasn’t until she was fired
from Target, however, that she took the matter seriously enough to go see a
doctor about it.
It was then that Alissa, then and now a college student, was
diagnosed with clinical depression.
Being Diagnosed
Being diagnosed with clinical depression, also known as
major depressive disorder, wasn’t a surprise to her or to her family. She had had these feelings for some time, and
they had only been amplified when she was working those early mornings at
Target. As for her family, the women on
her mother’s side were almost all manic depressive.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services,
major depressive disorder is characterized by biological, psychological, as
well as social factors. In spite of her
struggle, Alissa says she is very grateful that she is not at this point haunted
by manic depression, which is a genetic commonality on her mother’s side.
It has been difficult with friends and acquaintances
however, she says. “They think that
somehow I will pass it on to them,” she says.
She adds that because of the erroneous thought that depression gets
passed around as would a cough or pink eye or some other contagious illness,
her clinical depression alienated many friends and acquaintances.
Alissa admits that being around a depressed person can
instigate depressive moods merely by suggestibility, but also laments the
indifference and opposition she has received from some people around her.
Since being diagnosed, she has been regularly taking three
medications to help her fight her battles and win her war: Azomdal, Lexapro, and Anamectal. Unfortunately, as medicine goes, they are not
little magical pills that go in and kill the depression right away. To this day it continues to be an ongoing
battle for her.
“It is very easy to think down on yourself,” Alissa says of
her daily struggle.
She also noted on some of the many ways that her depression
can be triggered. In the quick-paced
academic life she leads at Brigham Young University-Idaho, she is constantly
bombarded with the expected presence of homework, tests, papers, etc. If she does not do as well as she would have
hoped on any of these, if she does something wrong or not the way she intended
to, she will come down on herself. Hard.
Her frustration and depression then outlets; she says that
she will get angry at the people around her for nothing that they personally
have done. She will get extremely
worried about what will happen and the consequences for having done so “poorly”
on her assigned work. She will begin
talking a lot but hardly being conscious of the words that are coming out of
her mouth, or if they even make sense.
Sometimes her depression can come on the way back from a
positive experience. If something
amazing happens to her one day, it is not uncommon for her to sway to the other
extreme the very next day.
“What goes up must come down,” she says. “It’s like a high and a low.”
The people around her have influenced her negatively as
well. She tells of a semester in which
all she could do to keep herself afloat was to lock herself in her room and
bawl her eyes out when her unsupportive roommates were not around, or to simply
disappear for a small period of time to go walking, driving, or simply to be
alone.
“My room had become a prison,” she says.
Fighting the Battle
Alissa notes happily that this semester she finds herself
surrounded by good friends and incredible roommates that not only are
supportive of her, but know what she is going through. Some of them experience the same type of
depression that she does, and all of them at least have had exposure to the
life events characterized by highs and lows.
In fighting her depression, Alissa claims that “the influence of people
around you” is a huge factor.
She also has little things that she does for herself, what
she calls “self-care” projects, that in addition to her medication she uses to
fight the depression.
“I work on positive thinking,” she says, “like happy
thoughts.”
Some of the things she does for herself besides remaining
cognitively optimistic is to eat at regular times and not let her mood convince
her to eat less or more than that, to have a consistent and early bedtime, do
uplifting things before going to bed such as reading her scriptures and
avoiding looking at a screen, and listening to calm music. If she slacks on any of these, she says, she is
likely to have horrifying nightmares, which also plagued her before she was
diagnosed.
Alissa has also participated in counseling, and has had both
good and bad experiences with this treatment.
She despised working with her counselor from family services.
“He told me it was all in my head,” she says.
She emphasizes the importance of having the right counselor,
a counselor tailored to her needs. She
found hers in the weekly counseling she receives at the BYU-I campus.
“Here I have exactly what I need,” she says, asserting that
visiting with an LDS counselor assures a spiritual value added to her
treatment.
She says that her doctor also has good advice, and that some
doctors are better than others. The one
she is seeing now, for example, speaks to her on her level and helps to keep
her uplifted.
Especially, Alissa emphasizes that happy people around her
makes her happy. She notes that even her
roommates who have depression choose to be happy and so help to uplift
her. People who care and people who listen
when she needs to talk have been her salvation, she says.
Winning the War
Though major depressive disorder is a lifelong struggle, Alissa
says she is confident that things will get better. She has come up with many ways to edge the
depression out of the picture as much as possible.
“Never ask that stupid question, ‘Why me?’” she says.
“There’s always gonna be hard times.”
There are other things one shouldn’t do, she says. Outlets that dwell on the poor emotional
state, such as writing dark poetry, watching depressing movies or listening to
sad music, are a sure-fire way to never make one feel better.
“The little pity parties don’t help any,” she says of this.
She further adds that taking little steps and remaining
positively social is a major factor.
“Don’t let people tell you that it’s not real,” she
says. “Don’t keep the people around that
get you down.”
She adds that negative and sarcastic people are a poor
influence on those who suffer from depression.
For her, God has been the greatest source of all. In her life, she says that He has made
Himself manifest as she studies the Atonement of Jesus Christ, searches and
studies the scripture, and keeps meaningful, positive journal entries.
“Never give up,” she says, “and never give in. Don’t stop helping (people.) Every day is a new day, even if it feels like
it’s never going to change. God is on
your side.”
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