Sometimes Shit Happens

[megpie71]

Interesting day today. I had my first appointment with the counsellor at the university I'm attending (I went in to see them because the stress of the first week was making me feel as though I was falling to pieces. I probably still am). So of course, with it being the first session and all, there's the discreet questioning to find out whether I've been raped, assaulted, sexually abused, physically abused, whether I've been taking drugs, etc - basically to find out whether there is a REASON for my depression.

In my case, the answer is "actually, no." I've never been raped (I'm in the fortunate five out of six so far); I haven't been physically or sexually assaulted or abused; I've never taken drugs except for the ones prescribed to me (and at least one day out of every seven I don't even manage that). So there isn't a great big shining REASON for my depression I can point to and say "that's why I'm depressed". But try explaining this to the average layperson who doesn't have depression, and they look at me as though I'm even more crazy than I actually am - I can't just be this depressed without a REASON; it goes against all logical thought.

And hey, maybe there was a REASON, sufficiently far back down the family tree. Maybe four or five generations back one of those big ugly traumas did happen, and I'm getting the behavioural echoes passed on down the family tree through generation on generation of emotionally neglectful parenting. But I rather doubt it. My suspicion is that what's actually at the heart of all this is the fundamental neutrality of the universe - or to put it simply, sometimes bad shit happens to good folks.

This whole thing resonated with me a lot more than usual as a result of a post of Lauredhel's I'd read before leaving for the campus this morning, where she was responding to one of those standard "my partner wants to try $SEXUAL_ACT with me and I don't want to do it, what should I say?" responses in an advice column (or at least, that's what the sparking article reads as). In Lauredhel's response she points out that "Not every vanilla sexual preference is due to massive underlying psychological issssssssyews." - and that maybe what's needed isn't so much the compulsory searching for a reason why a person is saying no, and more of a willingness to just accept no as a legitimate answer on its own.

So maybe what's needed is a little less time spent searching for the massive, traumatic REASON for my mental illness, and a bit more time spent on dealing with the reality of its existence.

Comments

[lauredhel]

megpie, this is a good post about what I see as an important issue. Would you be open to me linking to this from FWD?

[megpie71]

*blush* Feel free. I'll be over here feeling flattered *grin*.

[maevele]

this so much. the only therapist I ever got on well with, at our second session I asked her if she wasn't going to try to "get to the root of my problem" like the others had, and she said doubtfully "do you think that would be useful?" and went on to actually help manage my symptoms. of course, I lost the insurance that let me see her. blegh.


here from the FWD link

[megpie71]

I can understand why therapists want to get to the root of the problem, find the stuff which caused it - I spent years working technical support, and one of the things which I learned was that if you didn't fix the root cause of a problem, you got the user calling back in a week or two to say "it's happening again" and they usually weren't happy about it. But for a lot of people, the root causes aren't really something you can do anything about. So it's much more practical to equip people with tools to deal with the problems they're having now and worry about digging out the root causes a lot later down the track.

[lilacsigil]

(here via FWD)

I've been depressed for over a decade now, mostly pretty well controlled with medications, and I'm still learning to differentiate what I call "sad with a reason" and "chemically sad". Sometimes, like the last few days, I just feel bad, and the best thing to do is to stay calm and wait it out. Sometimes, there really is something causing a problem - but it doesn't do any good desperately searching for a REASON when there isn't one.

[megpie71]

Exactly. But this is the tricky thing to explain to the lay-creature without depression - that sometimes the rotten mood happens because you just happen to be in a rotten mood today.

[lauredhel]

Ugh.

I had a neurologist absolutely insist that I must be depressed - because the only appointment I could get for months and months was in the evening on the day I MOVED HOUSE. While really, really sick.

Yeah, I wasn't so good at that time. Unsurprisingly.

[megpie71]

Yeah, funny that.

thank you

[dreamingiris.wordpress.com]

Thanks for posting this—I HATE this. I have major depressive disorder, and I've had it my whole life. I didn't know what it felt like to be happy and at peace until recently, on medication. My whole life people asked "Why?" "What's wrong?" "Why are you crying?" and didn't understand that I didn't understand why myself. It was so frustrating, especially as a child, not understanding myself why I felt that way or that it wasn't normal. Even now people want to know "why". That's why when I feel down I feel like I have to pretend I'm fine, or I lie and tell people I'm tired or my stomach hurts. They need a reason.

Re: thank you

[megpie71]

I think the worst thing about the whole "needing a reason" bit is when you know the person is asking in an effort to help. I've just about got my partner to the point where he'll accept that sometimes my moods have no rational explanation at all, and that sometimes all I want to do is vent the bad mood, rather than have the problem solved. But he still has this big need to "help" somehow, and it makes me feel worse because there isn't anything he can actually do to help me.

Re: thank you

[justira]

(here via FWD)

Yes, this. It's especially frustrating when they're obviously trying to help and understand, and they think that "why" is a good way to get to that understanding. They just don't realize that it's not always "why" that's the best route, sometimes you just have to start at "how" or even "what" and go from there.

I have a similar problem with my partner — he often notices when I'm doing worse and then he always asks "what's wrong?" as in "why are you suddenly doing worse?" It's frustrating, because most of the time I don't have an answer: it just IS. It's a fact, now we deal with it.