Deeper Than Down: Depression From The Outside

January 31, 2009 in Deeper Than Down

Depression From The Outside I am not depressed.

Lucky me, right?

Yet depression has become an inalienable presence in my life over the past few months and its impact has been devastating.

In May 2008, I gave birth to my second daughter. She died during labour. There was no reason, no explanation. She was perfect, but she died.

My husband spoke at her funeral. As he struggled to articulate his feeling of loss, my then 20-month-old daughter piped up: Daddy’s crying.

He’s still crying now.

He tried to go to work, but found himself staring into nothingness, or sobbing in the stationary cupboard.

We tried for another baby; when I told him I was pregnant again, he looked at me with dead eyes.

He saw a doctor, who told him to get some exercise. He saw another doctor who prescribed so many different drugs that he rattles like a pill bottle. He’s a mess. I come home from work laden with toddler, groceries and pregnant belly to find him sitting, blank-faced, in the same place I left him. Or shaking, struggling to breathe, panicking on the bathroom floor.

I try so hard to understand, to be compassionate. But honestly, it’s unbearable. He’s unbearable. I bitterly resent him. Intellectually, I know that this is not his fault, that he’s sick; I try to imagine it as a cancer, or a broken leg. I try to remember why I love him, but all of the things I enjoy in him have disappeared. As awful as it sounds, I find him pathetic.

Looking back, I can see the seeds of depression in him: the way he shut down when under pressure; the little lies he told to avoid a moment of unpleasantness. Before now, his problems – our problems – always had solutions. Nothing can fix this one. Our baby died and that’s that. However much I frighten myself by imagining a zombie baby scraping at the door, or a ghost baby floating behind me when I look in the mirror, I have to admit that these things are, on balance, unlikely to happen. She will not come back.

I am glad I’m not him. I’m glad I don’t feel the way he feels. But I wonder, given the choice, would he prefer to be me? To be pregnant, with a toddler and a mortgage and bills to pay, caring for an unrecognisable shadow? I’m not so sure.

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http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/adismalscience/ ADismalScience

I’m going to get massacred for this:

It’s so much harder to be in your position, in my opinion. It’s why all of the internet’s articles about depression and self-suffering alway strike me as a bit self-serving.

Depression – I like to think, anyway – is a communicable disease. Publishing a long, florid account of it to me is akin to standing in the subway with the flu, coughing on everyone you see.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/viruswithshoes/ VirusWithShoes

@ADismalScience: Oh, Dismal – I think I practically disagree with you on everything, probably to the extent that you are the bizarro VirusWithShoes, but I’m still glad you’re around here, my lovely little lightning rod.

x
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/adismalscience/ ADismalScience

VWS:

The feeling is mutual. I really don’t seek controversy, I just seem to disagree with people a lot. The reason we often don’t say what I just said is because the last thing the depressed need is guilt in addition to pain. My thought is that my intention isn’t to exacerbate or minimize anyone’s suffering so much as to explain my reaction to it.

Is there any way to put a filter on my comment so only people who aren’t depressed can read it?
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/viruswithshoes/ VirusWithShoes

@ADS: I think your filter idea would rule out everyone but yourself from reading it. Heh.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/berightback/ berightback

Dismal: I think it’s tough, for different and complementary reasons, on both sides of this issue. And people write this stuff anonymously on the internet precisely to avoid the fact that in their own lives, they feel that they are in a position in which they cannot, as you put it, self-serve adequately. So they try to help themselves elsewhere, through the ‘talking cure,’ which, classically, is a forum in which one can confront their traumas in a safe environment (and sealed, in the sense that therapy is confidential). This process, though, because of the nature of the internet, creates community – so in that sense, it is “contagious” insofar as reading something that resonantes with you makes it seem as if that emotion is being implanted in you, makes a part of you re-experience a trauma, if you will, that you might rather not.

But an account of depression is not actually a contagion; what is happening is that the trauma being worked through evokes a similar kind of trauma in the reader. This is either a moment of community-formation for you or a moment of threat (or rahter: the idea of entering such a community is experienced as a threat to self-sufficiency). Honestly, in my opinion, there is no reason why you are obligated to join an affective community just because it entreats you – I don’t want to imply that it is “bad” of you to reject it. But I am trying to say that there is no immorality on the other side, either, which your coughing metaphor implies.

The experience described above is equally about trauma, and equally about trying to “talk out” the feelings of shame, disgust, etc. – and this resonates with you more than the account from the other side! Which I am not trying to criticize! But I don’t think there’s a big difference between that response and the response of people who find resonance on the other side of the issue, if you see what you mean. Put another way, it doesn’t make sense to me to privilege one kind of account over the other in a moral sense because they produce each other so intimately.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/curly-q-tips-2/ Curly Q Tips

The coughing metaphor? Bill Hicks has been popping up a lot lately…

“People suck, and that’s my contention. I can prove it on a scratch of paper with a pen. Give me a fucking Etch-a-sketch, I’ll do it in three minutes. The proof, the fact, the factorum. I’ll show my work, case closed. I’m tired of this back-slapping “aren’t humanity neat?” bullshit. We’re a virus with shoes, okay? That’s all we are.”

@edropper: Beautifully written and you capture the pain of care-taking well. Unless your needs are met, you will become unable to attend to anyone else and therein lies the fine line a chronic illness and her pain walk. I’ve lived on both sides… the guilt is untenable on each. Anger is welcome and necessary and may save you and those you love.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/adismalscience/ ADismalScience

BRB:

Thank you. Going back, what I said felt wrong. Your argument found the argument behind what was emotionally intuitive. I don’t really like to berate the depressed.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/fictionsinmotion/ Vaquero

Eavesdropper, if I could make you dinner tonight, I so would.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/hadaheart/ If I Only Had A Heart

nicely written piece, saying some things that sometimes need to be said

dealing with a depressed person, it is all too tempting to look at them and say, dude, get a grip

but they can’t, and that is the nature of depression

and that’s what makes it so so so so hard to deal with in someone close
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/lysergic-asset/ Lysergic Asset

Eavesdropper, I wish I could give you a foot massage. I hope that something – anything – comes out of the blue to help your husband, since it sounds like a heart-wrenching situation for both of you to be in. I am truly sorry for your loss, with no ability to fully empathize with its magnitude.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/pinekatz/ Pinekatz

Eavesdropper: I am so sorry for your loss. Nothing could be worse than losing a child. It sounds like your husband is battling a PTSD. I just hope that when your new baby arrives, it will allow him to close that door and open the next one, with love and a new sense of hope. Just stay strong for now. Look to the future. You are blessed. You have friends here to help support you when it gets too rough.

Dismal: I don’t think you are wrong but I don’t think you are right either. Major depression can be a fatal disease. Everyone else that has a fatal disease gets help. The difference is that with this potentially fatal disease, talking about it part of the cure.

Love
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/hydroceph/ Hydroceph

@Eavesdropper: First, I’m so terribly sorry for your losses. Yes, losses. But I also want to thank you for illustrating the other side of this condition. Whether it’s a ‘disease’ or not is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation. My 0.02USD? He needs in-patient treatment. Now. Functioning seems to be measurement used, and he’s not, not even close. Maybe you could look into Pinekatz’s suggestion about PTSD?

But you’re so right that it has an impact on those who love the depressed, too. Thank you for illuminating it. I have to confess that while it’s occurred to me my husband may feel helpless in the face of my depression, may even feel like it’s a third person in our relationship, it had never occurred to me that anger could be in the mix.

@Dismal: Wow. Just wow. I sincerely hope that no one who depends on you ever suffers major depression.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/poisonville/ poisonville

@ Eavesdropper: Thank you for writing this. My heart goes out to you and your family. As for my own (lifelong) depression, it’s helped in recent years to call upon a growing sense of responsibility I have toward people I care about, toward everyone really, to make myself do the right things to stay healthy. Your story really hit home.

@ADS: What with the filter I’m not sure what you wrote, but I was going to say the same as Virus did above in response to your AIG/bank robbery piece: I love to read what you write because three-quarters of the times it absolutely infuriates me, and just about all the time, it makes me think more clearly.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/jerilyn/ jerilyn

It sounds like he is stuck in grief, which is sometimes called complicated grief. If he had other losses that he did not grieve, he will continue to spiral. Once you’re “stuck” there, you spiral down into debilitating depression. Once there, you can’t process through your grief and you get more depressed.

Medication for depression plus a grief counselor or grief group may alleviate.

My thoughts are with you.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/wrapitup/ Wrapitup

@Eavesdropper: It seems like your husband has never gotten to actually grieve, mourn and be angry over some other earlier losses, and it’s all coming out now in a huge grey fog of despair and numbness. Also, I could very well be wrong and this is just an idea: it sounds somehow like he is grieving the loss of your baby girl for the both of you.

@ADismalScience: You frequently seem to be rolling your eyes in irritation at other people at being over-emotional in a self-indulgent childish way and you want them to wake up and see how silly their behavior is. If life were a chick flick, you would be the posh and sarcastic British aunt with a stiff upper lip and the irascible put-downs of the self-centered hysterical supporting character who cries at the drop of a hat.

Oh I see jerilyn said something similar.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/trixiefromtoronto/ Trixie From Toronto

You poor woman. I feel terrible for you. You are in the more horrible and helpless spot, if you ask me.

And if this makes you feel any better, I have been around a lot of mental illness in my life. Mostly untreated mental illness; people who either won’t go and get help or won’t take their meds or they think know better than the shrink. And I no longer have any sympathy. I view them too as pathetic.

So sorry you’re going through this and I hope he manages to come out the other side and there will be something to salvage.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/trixiefromtoronto/ Trixie From Toronto

And I hasten to add, just because that made me sound a bit psychopathic, that I have experienced two major depressions in my life, and so I have been on the other side too. And it required a lot of fucking strength and therapy to pull myself out of them. It is hellish too, but I still feel my children and loved ones suffered more than I did, seeing me in that state.

I hope things get better for you soon.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/llamalash/ Llamalash

Eaves, you mentioned your husband was given several drugs. If he is not receiving these medications from a psychiatrist, please ask him to see one. The chemistry of the brain is extremely complicated. At one time I was a huge proponent of general physicians prescribing anti-depressants, etc. Now I am opposed to that practice. Depression is serious, and it sounds as if he does need in-treatment care. At a minimum, he needs a specialist to determine his treatment. (and if he is already receiving that, my apologies. I know it is hard and frustrating when treatment isn’t a magic remedy)

Also, I hope you have support. If you are taking care of one who has depression, as well as dealing with your own grief, taking care of a toddler, worrying about the bills, AND have one on the way, well, that’s an overwhelming load. If you’re open to therapy, I think it would be very helpful. At the minimum I hope you have a tight circle of friends or family to lean on, that you can be honest with and let it out around.
http://isopod.tumblr.com gecko

I’m so sorry for what you and your family are going through.

An ex of mine was a manic-depressive, and trying to separate the person from the disease was a task I found nearly impossible. It was so hard not to see him as pathetic, instead of sick. As he sank into depression, he leaned on me more and more-and I think in some respects, Dismal’s right, it is the harder spot. I don’t think it’s communicable, but infinitely frustrating.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I empathize in some small way, and I’m sorry, and I hope he finds the path he needs.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/eavesdropper/ Eavesdropper

Thank you all so much for your responses. I’m struggling to think of an adequate reply; there are so many suggestions and I’m a little overwhelmed. It’s clear I need to have a think.

Thanks again.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/bigleggedwoman/ BigLeggedWoman

I have to agree with CurlyQ – and I thank you for writing this. I honor your anger. Your tears are also welcome.

Much love to you and your family.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/eavesdropper/ Eavesdropper

OK, so I’ve thought about it and here goes:

@ Curly Q and BigLeggedWoman – I hadn’t thought about anger as a useful emotion, I guess it could be, but I’m frightened of adding to my husband’s burden. I think Llamalash’s suggestion of some therapy for me is a very good idea. (Llamalash, he is already seeing a pscyh, but my understanding is that his meds will take a while to become effective…)

@Hydroceph – thanks for writing your original piece. I found it incredibly moving. It gave me some insight into what my husband must be going through. I hadn’t thought about in-patient treatment, and I’m not sure my husband knows this is an option. I find the idea a bit frightening.

@ Pinekatz and Jerilyn re: PTSD and/ or being stuck in grief. I’m starting to think that it’s something than that. On the face of it my experience was arguably more traumatic than his, but I seem to have better coping mechanisms than he does. It feels as if his depression isn’t about anything anymore, it just is…

@Wrap it up, I’m not sure what you mean about him potentially grieving for both of us. I am very, very sad about my baby dying. I don’t think he’s feeling double the grief, in lieu of me feeling anything. I wonder if my frustration at my husband’s condition makes me seem cold or unfeeling?

Thanks so much for your empathy and offers of dinner and foot rubs. I’m amazed at your generosity. I am an eavesdropper rather than a contributor as my name suggests, but hopefully I can overcome my internet shyness and comment on something other than my own sad story at some point!
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/bigleggedwoman/ BigLeggedWoman

I would like to say that your post enabled some of us to see this situation clearly. For this I thank you.
http://subjecttochange.tumblr.com/ Meg

I can never find the words I’m looking for, but I just wanted to say thank you. I’m very sorry for you loss. And I imagine it must be very difficult to essentially become a single parent with another baby on the way, while also worrying about your husband. And exceptionally draining. I hope he finds something that works for him and that things get much better for your family.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/hydroceph/ Hydroceph

@Eavesdropper: There is nothing wrong with dropping in, saying something profound, and then lurking until so moved again.

There is also nothing wrong, as others have pointed out, in being angry. While your husband didn’t ask for this, neither did you. Anger directed at your husband will probably not help anyone (he’s not a cheater or drunkard, for example), anger at your situation may help you to clarify your own thinking. I find writing helpful–I’ve written any number of letters and essays that no one should ever see. It is in these that you can direct your anger at your husband, by the way. Just be sure he never sees them.

As for in-patient care, I’ve no idea what it’s like, only that at the most dire times it comes to sound more like time at a very special spa (the kind with doors that lock only from the outside). Based on some of your word choices (supply cupboard), I’m thinking you may not be in the US. I don’t know what the laws are in the Commonwealth, but in some jurisdictions in the US, under certain circumstances (harm to self or others, probably), one spouse may commit the other, even involuntarily. This place is wormy with lawyers–any care weigh in?
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/wrapitup/ Wrapitup

@Eavesdropper: Oh I am so glad you asked. Nope, I don’t at all think you’re cold and unfeeling.

I have observed that when such extreme tragedies occur, one partner copes by picking themselves up and moving on and the other partner goes through an utter devastation. It is as though the collective psyche of the relationship splits in two so that it can survive the pain. And both parts need each other.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chuffedlittlemuffin/ ChuffedLittleMuffin

@Eavesdropper: Thanks for writing this. I’m so sorry that you’re in such a difficult situation and for your loss. On in-patient care, I’ve never been, but I’ve known a good number of people who have, voluntarily, usually after trying to kill themselves or thinking seriously about doing so. Which is to say it’s been a last resort. It sounds pretty awful. They’ve all been in psych wards of major hospitals, so they’ve been grouped in with people with all different kinds of problems and reasons for being there. And yet, somehow, it’s “worked,” insofar as they came out and didn’t try to kill themselves or think about it too much, at least for a long while. I’m pretty sure none of them regret going. But
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/bigleggedwoman/ BigLeggedWoman

Hydroceph: how does being angry with a ‘drunkard’ help? Please walk me through this.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/hydroceph/ Hydroceph

@BigLeggedWoman: All i meant is that if you were married to an alcoholic, there might be something there to be angry at, something to say to your spouse’s face, some moral justification for speaking out.

But Eavesdropper’s husband is deeply depressed or has PTSD or something. He hasn’t done anything that might justify anger expressed directly to him. Anything stronger than, “I really think you need more help than you’re getting” will probably be counter-productive. I probably didn’t express it very well.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/eavesdropper/ Eavesdropper

@Hydroceph and ChuffedLittleMuffin – not that I have given it much thought but in-patient care does strike me as a pretty drastic step. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

@Wrapitup – that’s a very interesting idea, and one I’m not familliar with. It’s certainly the pattern that we have followed. Thanks for clarifying.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/captainfantastic/ CaptainFantastic

Eavesdropper: You have become a caretaker and caretakers experience the ripple-effect of cared-for’s trauma. Talk therapy could be very good for both of you.

Typically, women have an already-built support network (mother, sisters, friends, co-workers, spouse, etc.) that help them deal with trauma more effectively. Men, often times, have only a spouse to rely on. When men don’t want to burden their spouse with their trauma (perhaps because they are experiencing the same trauma) it can be held inside leading to depression, etc.

BRB: Spot-on.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/pikadar/ PikaDar

@Eavesdropper- does sound like PTSD, which is actually quite common with the loss of a child–especially if prone to depression in the first place.

You have all my support in feeling angry/frustrated because you are forced into the “you are such a strong woman” bs when you need a partner. So thank you.

Benzo class, like Klonopin, can do wonders for managing PTSD. Meds and therapy.

@ADismal – Gosh, I’ve missed you, you heartless bastard. I’ve had a few difficult periods with depression, and I’d refuse to bother with anyone while in that state for fear of infecting them. Couldn’t stand being around myself. Terrible I know, but that is the way I felt at the time.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/pikadar/ PikaDar

@PikaDar: Now back admitting and remembering the crushing depression/PTS symptoms that would come and go after a trama in my life also involving the loss of a child. I can almost laugh about my self-centered behavior now that I’ve done the deed of accepting my illness and the reality of life and death. Thing is, I was immobilized for a time.

Yeah, like everyone would want to hang at my house while I sat, in the dark, either listening to Beck’s Sea Change and American Football’s first CD over and over or, worse, watching season after season of South Park or Curb Your Enthusiasm. Fun. Not answering phone. Intrusive thoughts. Crying. Panic attacks. I saw myself as a wraith. Sorry AD, not to bum you out and all. My friends and family couldn’t bear to see me like that. I’d wonder why, boo-hoo no one loved me Why no one could understand my pain. Ha! I sickened them, it is true. Another truth: I wallowed in it.

So Eavesdropper, I can’t get your situation out of my mind. I’d go and get some support for yourself as soon as possible because as the Captain mentioned, there is only so much of you that can be such an intensive caretaker without cracking.

New baby may very well not be the fix.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/formerenglishmajor/ FormerEnglishMajor

Eavesdropper:

Congratulations on your pregnancy and healthy child. My heart goes out to you and your family.

I had 2 miscarriages before having my first child. It was a traumatic experience, and while it helps me get close to what you are feeling, I will never be able to fully empathize. My husband chose to not think about my (finally successful) pregnancy until well past 20 weeks, when we had to think about where to live (apt. much too small), names, doctors, etc.

My enormous kudos to you on pulling it together for your 20-month-old (my youngest is now 3). That is a Herculean task.

Women are so much stronger than men, emotionally. We have to be. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury (and it is a luxury, if you are living at subsistence level, you cannot fall apart or you will not survive) of losing it.

I presume your husband is getting help. That is really all that can be done now. I can only advise what helped us:

1. Take it one day at a time. You don’t have to worry about next month, or even next week. Just get through today.

2. Be happy your toddler will have a playmate. It has made an enormous difference in our lives, having the children play together (and when they were infants, knowing that one day they would) rather than always look to Mommy and Daddy for things to do.

3. No matter what, This Too Shall Pass. No matter how bad it is, no matter how much you think you can take no more of it, I promise it will not be like this forever. Either your husband makes it out of his funk and is a partner again, or he does not – and you no longer have the burden of “caring for an unrecognizable shadow”. Either way – there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that is your freedom either from his depression (when it lifts) or from his presence (if it does not).

You have the ability to pay your bills, a healthy toddler, and a new one on the way. However dark it seems now, you have many, many positive things, and again –

This Too Shall Pass.

Please let me know if I can help or if you need someone to talk to.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/formerenglishmajor/ FormerEnglishMajor

And Eaves – I hope this doesn’t sound too other-worldly, but it helped us to think of our no-longer-with-us babies as watching us, and seeing how we were. I felt I couldn’t let them down, that they had tried so hard to be with us, and to give us happiness, that our being sad would only hurt them. I tried to think of them as guardian angels, rather than “dead babies”, as good luck charms floating in the ether. I had to pull it together for them because they were innocent and had tried their best.

I too worked full-time during all this and know that feeling of being the one doing everything while the person whose body didn’t change, whose insides weren’t turned inside out, seemed to be taking it so hard. To this day I still don’t bring it up because I still can’t (and never will) understand.

You can’t control him, but you can control how you respond to him. Can he go stay with his parents/siblings/anything for a while? Someone else needs to take care of him for a bit while you go about your life.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/pufflehuff/ pufflehuff

@ Eavesdropper: I’m glad you gave us your point of view, of living at one remove from depression. I hope time and therapy and meds makes this situation into a momentary blip that you can both put firmly in the past. I hope that happens soon.

@ FormerEnglishMajor: I really liked your comments.
http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/slickanicka/ SlickaNicka

Eavesdropper, I feel so much for you and for what your family is going through. You have survived the unthinkable, and your husband is still grappling with it. I am so sorry for what you have suffered.

You don’t mention this, but are you angry because you have had to hold it together while your husband has fallen apart? I would be. I realize this is sexist, so flame away, but I think a mother suffers more when she loses a baby. The baby has been a part of you and your connection is stronger, more fierce. Sooooo not p.c., I realize, but viscerally you feel this loss in more ways—-physically, hormonally and biologically in addition to the emotional and spiritual losses. I think you have more of a right to lose your mind, but I realize this isn’t a contest.

Eaves, I am amazed at what a rock you are to your family. I hope you have a network of support to help you get through this time and welcome the new life you are carrying. I hope you can take care of yourself, because moms usually come last on the list of needs to be met. I am sending you my best thoughts and hopes.

Wordsmoker