Baseline A
Depression is a mental illness that’s difficult to understand. Even sufferers often don’t quite get what’s happening. If you’re family or a friend, your chances are even slimmer.
I’ll try anyway. Imagine the way you are every day—sometimes you’re in a good mood, sometimes you bark at people, but on average, you’re a “together” person. You’re you. That’s your baseline. Let’s call this Baseline A.
If something terrible happens, such as a health scare, you feel terrible. For days, you walk around under a cloud (below Baseline A) until, finally, you get the all-clear. At this point, you return to Baseline A.
Baseline B
But imagine you can’t climb back up. Maybe the health scare became a serious illness or the fear you experienced is impossible to shake. Maybe it’s the death of a loved one, or exam stress, or worry about keeping your job that’s getting you down. Whatever the reason, Baseline A is now a distant memory. This second, much darker feeling is your new baseline. You’ll still have days when you’re well and others where life is harder, but most days are under a cloud. You’ve reached Baseline B — Depression.
I should point out that, in reality, there is no single event that definitively causes depression. I remember one time when I was about sixteen years old. I was at school and we were looking at pictures from when we were twelve. One classmate said, “That was when you were still slim.” He was right. My frame wasn’t thin exactly, but if I was medically overweight at all, it would have been by a few pounds. Yet all the sixteen-year-old me could think was, “Then why did you keep telling me I was fat back then?”
Whether it’s your weight, an overachieving sibling, a pushy parent, or simply an inherent pessimism, depression often develops over a number of years. It can pounce, but typically it sneaks up to you. Having your self-worth undermined for most of your life can be a shortcut to Baseline B.
How do you know you’ve reached Baseline B?
Some of the symptoms you may exhibit if you’re depressed are unreliability (you’ll start canceling on friends), shortness of temper (you feel angry a lot for no reason), extreme mood swings, lethargy… These symptoms can be very subtle and may go unnoticed by friends and family—maybe even by you at first.
Baseline C
If something terrible were to happen in your life now, or the undermining of your self-worth were to continue unabated, the only way for you to go would be further down, into the rabbit hole of suicidal thoughts and other self-damaging behavior. The rabbit hole is a dangerous place, because right now, your life is in danger. You’re hanging off a cliff, and it will take a mighty yank to pull you back up.
If you survive this situation and are lucky, you’ll get back to Baseline B. But for many, a lower Baseline C will be their future. At Baseline C, your life feels like it’s no longer within your control.
At this stage, your symptoms become more severe. One of the major ones is self-sabotage. We’ve all procrastinated, but under depression, procrastination becomes an artform. Whatever we shoulddo, you can bet your sweet behind that we’ll find other things with which to occupy our time, even if these alternatives are in fact unpleasant. If I have a writing deadline coming up, suddenly doing the dishes becomes more important—even though I hate doing dishes and I love writing. Or I simply stay in bed.
But procrastination isn’t the only symptom. You may end up self-medicating with alcohol or drugs, or getting overly invested in new-fangled medicines that promise “natural healing.” You start searching for meaning, and if you fail, further down the rabbit hole you go.
Some of us self-harm. This symptom ranges from mild to serious self-harm. A mild example isovereating—often without realizing. Say, you’re on a diet. Come 10 a.m., you have a cookie. It’s naughty, but a single cookie isn’t going to ruin your diet. In fact, it’s so insignificant, you subsequently block it out. Then comes the second cookie, or a second helping at dinner, or two pieces of cheese. A week later, your weight has gone up, which is weird, because you ‘religiously stuck to your diet.’
A more serious symptom is cutting yourself. The pain of cutting yourself has been described to me as a release. Like having a bruise and poking it, because there’s something good about pain. Did you know that endorphins come out to play when we’re hurt to reduce our perception of pain? In addition, secretion of endorphins leads to feelings of euphoria. Others claim that cutting ultimately comes down to regaining a sense of control.
In fact, the issue of control plays a huge part in self-sabotage. It’s better to control your failures than to feel helpless about the possibility of failing. Sounds paradoxical? Well, not much happens at Baseline C that makes sense to people at Baseline A.
Personal Examples of Self-sabotage
Have you ever thrown an exam and stayed at home to read a book instead? I have. I never got my certificate.
Have you ever promised a friend to bake a cake for their cake sale but watched Netflix instead? I have, and we’re no longer friends.
Have you ever baked cookies for your friend’s party, then thought, “it’s probably overkill” or “they’re not good enough” and thrown them away? I have. In fact, I stayed at home that night.
I like to think I’m a normal person. I’m mostly at a mild Baseline C, but I must always be conscious of potential stressors. Because the next stressor could be my last.
I had a big stress event last year and was ready to kill myself. A confluence of events pulled me from the brink. A few weeks later, I came to understand the depression I’d been suffering under for years (at Baseline B). That is to say, I finally “got it”:
There will be times in my life where my brain will be unable to cope.
Those are the days when my life will be at risk from my own thoughts, and my usual survival instincts will be zero. This is why I’m deliberately avoiding stressors, but it’s something my (few remaining) friends do not understand. To them, “finding a new flat to live in” or “I’ve overspent this month and must dip into my savings” aren’t life-or-death events. To me, they are. So I stay put where I am and watch my money—until I sabotage myself again and go on a spending spree, or until the next time I fail at a task.
Disclaimer
I’m not a doctor or a medical professional. I don’t give advice on this topic (how could I?), but I don’t shy away from giving my opinions based on my experiences either. The sole purpose of this blog post is to give you a glimpse of what’s going on in my head. A tiny glimpse, because there are so many more facets to depression than those mentioned here. There’s the joy of creativity, the way we interact with the world at large, and many, many more.
