Mental Health

As the pandemic drags on and we crawl towards the election, mental health is a topic on lot's of people's, well, minds. I subscribe to the mindset that talking about most things is healthy and we need to especially normalize talking about our mental health, so I am going to share what is going on in my head these days.

This year hasn't been great for me, what with the everything, but I can't blame everything on that, I haven't been diagnosed... until recently, but I am pretty sure I have dealt with depression issues since probably my 20s, and anxiety stuff maybe for the past ten years. My depression takes the form of laziness for the most part. I just don't... do things and pretty much just sort of skate on by through life. Those of you who knew me in my early twenties probably noticed. That is a constant with me and something I have learned to pay attention to and manage to an extent, I did start a business after all, now the depression could have been a contributor to it not succeeding, but the point is I can still do stuff now and again and I recognize some of those patterns these days.

This doesn't mean my brain is a happy place, I have had a few, very few, periods of suicidal ideation, it's never gone beyond thoughts, I've never made concrete plans or collected materials, written notes, that sort of thing, but for most of the last couple decades there is the desire to just not be anymore, it's not that I want to be dead, it's not a desire or conscious thought like that, it's like, we all need to breath, and I have a need to not exist. Something on that primal level.

It's al lie of course, when I am honest with myself I do tend to enjoy existing for the most part, thought these last few months have made that harder. But you ignore it, distract with TV, games, friends, that sort of thing, you manage.

I also have anxiety, there may be a better term but basically I hate being in groups of people I don't know, groups of people I know are better but still extremely draining for me. I'm an introvert sure, but this goes beyond introversion, my bi-weekly grocery shopping trip is an exceedingly uncomfortable experience for example. I get hyper aware basically, everyone else doesn't do things they way I feel they should, and are hard to predict, and for some reason this is a HUGE PROBLEM for my brain, I get hyper-vigilant and spend most of my time in groups getting close to hyperventilating, wearing a mask does that no favors either. This has developed later in life than the depression, I first noticed it a while ago when I spent most of PAX(A gaming convention for those who aren't aware) in my hotel room. It was only after I got home from it when I realized that yeah, crowds just aren't doing it for me anymore.

So of course I took a job at the Moda Center, but having a counter in between me and crowds helped a lot so that went okay. Driving does not give me that anxious reaction I just have the normal thoughts that everyone but me is insane when on the road, so Domino's was pretty good for me.

Anyway, going along with all of these is insomnia, I don't know if it's depression, anxiety, or a combination of the two, or neither, that doesn't let me sleep, but I do not sleep well historically, and honestly that has been for as long as I can remember, at sleepovers when I was little I was always the last person awake, and sleeping at home was not tons better. It's like a switch just doesn't flip, I can be tired, sleepy even, and perfectly comfortable with no worries or distractions, and I just don't turn off for the night. When I was a kid it was better, to my recollection I never did all nighters until high school, and those were always on purpose. Obviously being younger I could recover easier from that kind of crap anyway. But the thing about mental health stuff is, like most chronic health things, they don't usually get better if you ignore them, and it's gotten so much worse, coming to a head this summer. I think in the seven or so months we've been in pandemic mode I have probably been awake for the sunrise at least half of them. This October has been extremely bad.

So I finally talked to a doctor.

It's been a few conversations, the first one was an e-visit where I just filled out a form with symptoms, the questions were, as one might imagine, geared towards suicide prevention and the like. This lead to a phone call from a doctor the next day, and we had another conversation that recapped what I put in the form and started talking about goals, we agreed that sleep was a major issue and if we could get a handle on that then we could confront the rest of the stuff a lot better, so I was put on Trazadone the efficacy of which I am dubious about, it's an SSRI but not prescribed for depression a lot these days, but it is prescribed for sleep problems, although I am not sure why since in the research I have done there isn't a ton of studies showing it as helpful for that, but whatever we gave it a shot, and for like 2 days I slept at night like a regular person, but it turns out that was just a coincidence and everything went to hell after that, I spoke to a councilor at a follow-up appointment to set up therapy, and they also referred me back to the medical doctor to talk about meds. So a couple days later, this past Monday in fact, we decided to double the Trazadone dose and then revisit in a week or two if that doesn't do anything. 

It's been three nights and I am sleeping every night, but I can't say it's working yet, two of those nights I was only out for like five hours before waking up, last night was pretty great though, I slept like nine hours straight and feel pretty decent for once. Too early to tell of course, but it's a good day at least and I'll take it.

I am starting therapy next week, and we'll see what comes of that, I don't know that it will be super helpful to be honest since I don't know if they will tell me anything I don't already know, but fuck it, I have insurance that covers it so let's find out.

If I had to self diagnose, I would say I have mild depression and maybe more severe anxiety, my doctor says it's moderate depression and no one has really talked about the anxiety with me yet, hopefully therapy will cover that. I could probably live the rest of my life without treating it, many people live their entire lives with worse, but I guess I finally realized that isn't an excuse not to get treatment. If you have a cold, you can probably survive it by ignoring it, but symptom management makes life better so why not have some tea and cough syrup too? Maybe don't mix them together.

I also have a stress ball, which is fun to squeeze, so things are looking up.