One of the theories of what causes depression, is the lack of coping abilities of the individual who is suffering. That was something I was taught in a philosophy tutorial and it has stuck with me until now. I thought I'd take a detour from my childhood musings and talk about depression and eating disorders, topics which have been endlessly covered to death and yet, I still believe I have something to add to this never-ending discussion.
For me, depression is not something which is curable or managed by the new trends of yoga-practicers, chinese medicine (who bloody knows what that is!), meditation or rubbish practices like acupuncture. Strangely though, to me at least, these are some of the things I have been told can help me. Now it is highly likely that being a very skeptical and cynical person I have dismissed some of these unfairly, I'll admit I have because they're rubbish, let's be honest. These recommendations actually insult me to varying degrees and to understand why, I should probably put my experiences with depression into context.
I think I diagnosed myself around the age of 15, a teenager with hormones raging and angst being my emotion of choice, it made a lot of sense that people would dismiss it as teenage rubbish. However it didn't go away as I got older, it grew with me, until I reached a point where I had to make some change to my life, to do something that I thought would end my torment and make me happy. I rather stupidly began to believe my depression stemmed from my unhappiness with my physical appearance, which made sense at the time, given the fact I was surrounded by thin and gorgeous girls and I had throughout my teenage years always been on the heavier side of the scale. My solution was to diet and that leads us to eating disorders. Very cliche I know.
I did not, as most people believe until this very day, automatically starve myself. Over the next year, from Year 10 until Year 11, I completely overhauled my diet, exercised mornings and evenings and even began to feel better. I was riding a rush of being praised by my father, my mother and by other people at school who noticed and soon I threw myself into the challenge of losing even more weight, setting new goals every time I reached them. The problem with this should be quite clear to you, every time I achieved a goal weight, I would make it lower and lower and lower.
I got to the stage where I was a very healthy 60 kilograms, which is quite a good weight for someone who is 5'6.5. I couldn't stop though and things turned quite bad from this point on. I began to cut out foods, became a Vegan to do this more easily and exercised more and more. I set a goal to exercise 2 hours everyday and eventually my calorie limit plummeted from 1800, to 1500, to 1200 and at my worst, 600 a day. Starting to count my calories was and still is, the biggest regret of my life.
Having an eating disorder, I have told my close friends, is like being an alcoholic. You may give up the alcohol, the action of drinking it, but you will always be an alcoholic, that craving and those psychological tendencies are always there. Eating disorders are also extremely self-obsessed for the obvious reasons. I paid little attention to anyone around me and when I did, I began to twist and manipulate things that were being said, into things that I wanted to hear. When finally one teacher asked me how much I weighed, I replied 52 kilograms almost instantly, because of course I knew, it was always in the forefront of my thoughts. I spent every lesson calculating how many calories I had eaten and how many I planned to eat that day, while trying to ignore the freezing cold which had settled permanently in my bones. People began to start telling me I looked sick, I was unhealthy. Those words did not produce the reaction they wanted, in fact, in my mind 'sick' and 'unhealthy' had become some sort of sign that I was succeeded. Indeed, being told at my year 12 Formal that I looked healthy made me feel disgusted with myself.
I ended up in the hospital twice, not because I was underweight (although that caused problems at only 46 kilograms) but because my depression got the better of me. Perhaps the reason I'm writing this blog, combining these two issues, is because of a rather dull conversation I had with the psychiatrist the emergency room staff made me see there. She told me my circumstances occur in two different ways, in some instance the depression causes the eating disorder, or the reverse, the eating disorder causes the depression. I always knew it was the former for me, I'd lived with that far longer and it was my constant companion during my loneliest hours and still is.
It will have been three years this month, since I was first rushed to an emergency room for the first time in my life, having collapsed in a HSC Trial exam. I was amazed I actually made it into the exam, I was wondering how long the pills would take to kick in. By the time I got to school, having taken a cocktail of valium, anti-depressants and Panadeine Forte (a prescribed cocktail by the way), I was quite convinced I had failed and that nothing was going to happen to me. I was wrong, but not completely. I'm still here. Three years on and I still experience extreme lows quite frequently. I still count calories, obsess about my weight every single day, I've almost made dieting into some sick sort of art form. I am a master at calorie counting.
After all my musings (I did go on a bit didn't I?), there are two main things I just wanted to make clear. Firstly, depression is not a fancy way of saying 'Oh boy I'm rather sad today,' it's something people like myself have to deal with on a daily basis. It is not something you can brush away just by thinking happy thoughts, it's an illness that is unique to every individual and cannot be dismissed. Secondly, people suffering from eating disorders (and they do suffer), are not doing it for the attention, they are not intentionally being self-absorbed or trying to cause others pain. I never wanted to cause anyone around me any sort of pain or guilt for being unable to help me and if I did, I can only apologise for that, I can't change it. Everyone is different (although have you been to Newtown recently?) and I'm sick to death of people giving me advice on how I should help myself or take vitamins and other rubbish. I deal with these illnesses in my own way, which may not be the best way, but there is no right way.
So, do I lack sufficient coping abilities and that is why I have depression? I don't think so, whoever thought that up should meet my family, I have brilliant coping abilities thank you very much.
Do I think I will ever not have depression or an eating disorder? You never know, but I'm going to play it safe and say that I doubt it. Those thoughts will always be there in my head, so perhaps the better question is 'Can I learn to manage them and not let both kill me?' That is a question I would like an answer to, because at the moment, I just don't know.
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