Does anyone ever truly beat depression? I experience those 'waves' my psychologist told me happens; waves of good and bad. But it never gets easier, it always blindsides me and each time I'm left wondering how much strength is left in me actually. The better you feel the worse it hits you, or the worse it seems anyway.
- ↑http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-anxiety-disorder-among-adults.shtml
- ↑http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/tc/anxiety-home-treatment
- ↑http://www.prevention.com/mind-body/emotional-health/spending-time-outside-relieves-stress
- ↑http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224575
- ↑https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201503/50-strategies-beat-anxiety
- ↑http://www.anxietybc.com/sites/default/files/MuscleRelaxation.pdf
- ↑http://www.fastcompany.com/3035649/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-20-minutes-of-meditation-a-day-helped-me-deal-with-dai
- ↑http://greatist.com/happiness/reduce-anxiety
- ↑www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19462324
- ↑http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,20669377_9,00.html
- ↑http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/condition-1001-Anxiety.aspx
- ↑http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/generalized-anxiety-disorder/expert-answers/herbal-treatment-for-anxiety/faq-20057945
- ↑http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,20646990_2,00.html
- ↑http://mentalhealthsf.org/six-simple-habits-that-defeat-anxiety/
- ↑http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,20669377_15,00.html
- ↑http://greatist.com/happiness/reduce-anxiety
- ↑https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/remarkable-recovery/201109/how-beat-anxiety-naturally
- ↑http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/mental-health-anxiety-disorders#2
- ↑http://psychcentral.com/lib/9-myths-and-facts-about-therapy/
- ↑http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/mental-health-anxiety-disorders#2
- ↑http://bodyandhealth.canada.com/channel_section_details.asp?text_id=6053&channel_id=11&relation_id=101186
- ↑http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/generalized-anxiety-disorder/basics/lifestyle-home-remedies/con-20024562
- ↑http://bodyandhealth.canada.com/channel_section_details.asp?text_id=6053&channel_id=11&relation_id=101186
- ↑http://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need
- ↑http://www.webmd.com/diet/water-for-weight-loss-diet?page=2
- ↑http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/tc/anxiety-home-treatment
- ↑http://mentalhealthsf.org/six-simple-habits-that-defeat-anxiety/
- ↑http://greatist.com/happiness/reduce-anxiety
In December 2016, Heather B Armstrong phoned her mother from her kitchen floor in tears and told her that she wanted to be dead. With her children thousands of miles away spending Christmas with their father, Armstrong’s ex-husband, and having been abandoned by a date, the blogger-turned-author was alone at home when she felt “overcome with a really bad feeling”.
It was not the first time that she had made such a call, but this felt different. “It’s the night that I called her and I said I don’t feel like I can hold on any more,” says Armstrong, 43, whose website Dooce once earned her the title “queen of the mommy bloggers”.
Antidepressants: is there a better way to quit them?
Her mother kept her on the phone for 40 minutes while she rushed to her daughter’s home in Salt Lake City and stayed the night to take care of her. The following morning she forced Armstrong, who had been suffering from severe depression for a year and a half, to book an appointment with her psychiatrist – a call that within months would end up transforming her life.
Just a few months later she was taking part in a pioneering world-first study that would plunge her into a deep sleep that would help relieve her depression within weeks.
Today Armstrong, who has documented her experiences with depression in the new book The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live, credits her mother’s actions with saving her life. “I didn’t overtly want someone to intervene, but I think subconsciously I knew that if I didn’t reach out and have someone do it that this was going to destroy me. And she knew that,” she says matter-of-factly.
Over breakfast at her hotel in New York, where she is joined by her partner, Pete Ashdown, for moral support, she says she can trace her first experiences of depression back to high school, when she remembers a teacher shaking her shoulders and telling her: “You’ve got to let go.” She first started taking antidepressants in college, when she had a breakdown during her sophomore year, and was hospitalised after experiencing suicidal feelings following the birth of her first child.
The most recent started while training for the Boston Marathon. She thought her gruelling training regime was the cause of her sadness, but when the race was over she realised it was something else.
She was so anxious that she couldn’t sleep or stop worrying about simple day-to-day tasks. “It was a state of panic that I lived in for 18 months. Constant state of fire. Fiery panic,” she says. Most of the time Armstrong, who is dressed in a black suit and her earlobes decorated with little gold bull head studs, speaks with remarkable composure and steady eye contact. But now her voice trembles and she looks up to the ceiling as if holding back tears. “Yeah. Which I wanted to end. I thought, if I’m dead then I don’t have to feel this fire any more. I’m not going to be dead, but wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be great?” After a pause, she adds: ”I’m so glad I don’t feel that way any more.”
Unlike previous life experiences (such as postpartum depression, leaving Mormonism and work – which in 2002 got her fired) which she has often written publicly about in real time on Dooce, she was frightened to talk to anyone apart from her mother about it for fear of losing custody of her two daughters, Leta, 15, and Marlo, nine.
It also put her off seeing her psychiatrist until her mother’s intervention left her with no option. When, in February 2017, she finally saw him, he suggested she take part in a pilot study at the University of Utah into the potential antidepressant effect of general anaesthetic Propofol. For the first time in over a year she felt optimistic.
I was just so devoid of caring because all of my energy was consumed by worry