Depression: The Great Imposter

When I heard that Robin Williams had died I wanted to write right away, wanted to make a statement. But I decided to wait for the comments of others to see if they could understand what he was going through. On a Fox News web page I ran across  the following information. Doctor Keith Ablow got it right when he wrote the following article click here.

The statements that he makes are, frankly, the best and most accurate description of depression that I have ever read.
I believe that I am going through the last of the most recent bout of the disease. I began to break it's hold on me when I inserted a phrase into the constant streaming negative comments running through my mind: these people around me are not thinking the same negative thoughts that I am thinking. I other words I worked on bringing myself back to reality. Over and over again I applied this to my thinking. Gradually reality would set in and I felt better.
As this was going on so was something else was as well and when I realized it and used it again and again reality again set in. The thing that was going on was that I realized that the time that I was enjoying laughing, feeling content, the depression ebbed. One might say, well of course! But it meant that I could control it. Just that realization set me to thinking. I said it over and over. Finally it started to work. I was fighting an Imposter. The negative thoughts (depression) were(are) the Imposter.
This is not all my own work. God had a lot to do with this pattern. I  see God as all powerful and would lay these negative thoughts on His back and realized that I would feel better. I knew the Bible was Holy and True. If the Bible said to do this, and It does, then He will follow through and take the negatives and turn them positive.
I find that one has to accept something as true and unassailable (unshakeable). To me that is God and His Word. Doubts will rise up, that is why the thought that God would help me had to be unshakeable. I realize that this pattern of thought is working. Yes, there are going to be lapses, but Hang on, strap yourself to the idea and use it time and again. It does work to break the depression. But to get to this place it am on a high level of drugs as well. But just the drugs alone were not enough to bring me to the current level of contentment.

Back in Depression Again

Have you ever noticed that when you are going down into a depression and hurting inside people around you really are tired of hearing about it. I am tired of complaining about it as well. Maybe it is only a perception on my part. But it is still there.
I notice that my thoughts take a certain path as depression moves in. I have memories of past situations that are interpeted as negitive presently (now) but when they happened they were not negitive. I see everything through a type of gauze made of depression. The thoughts have nothing to do with what is going on at present.
Physically I become fatigued past all coffee or engery drink(s). Sleep does not refresh me. When I look at the chores for the day they overwhelm me. They aren't any different than other chores that I had to do without the depression. It just is a huge wall standing between me and my life.
People that do not have to deal with this disease will not understand that you are locked into the situation. Try as you might to move the wall you can not.
For me I have been leaning on Christ more and more. I am reading the Bible on my IPad. It is less intimidating than that huge book called "THE BIBLE". Yet the bible study things like maps, bible dictionaries etc are on the IPad and in the Bible Study App by Olive Tree.
So I am learning small steps at a time. This world and this depression is bigger than me. I need help with it.  More than just medications. Period.

"The Trumpet" on Depression

I was reading an article from the The Philadelphia Trumpet magazine entitled Defeat Depression-Master your Mind published in December 2011 the article written by Dennis Leap, and he works out an outline on how to operate your mind. He does so by quoting the Bible and digging into scripture.
He states that twisted and distorted thinking is the major cause of suffering for people flattened by depression. The twisted thinking is illogical, but it seems so real that you have convinced yourself that your depression will go on forever. This was shown to me in a most dramatic way.
I was suffering from allergies big time, so sensitive that even being outside a small amount of time would send me running inside to clear anything out of my lungs by breathing the filtered air from the air conditioning system. I would do slow breathing through a cloth and in about twenty minutes I would calm down. I would have an air purifier in my bedroom and a dehumidifier in there as well. I could not sleep because of the noise. The air, being drier, stopped the dust mites but being drier gave me trouble as well. These things played on my mind. Did life have to be this way? I was already on a restricted diet because of allergies, now even my work outside in the pollen and dust filled air and house full of dust mites were against me. I had been involved in a car accident in May of 2011, and so the body was in shock as well. I had, in essence, a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental hospital, twice in a six week period for depression and anxiety.
Now I want to illustrate how this mind of mine works and relate that back to the Trumpet article. My allergy symptoms were greatly exaggerated  and multiplied and when the time came to get an allergy shot I let them know about how the allergies were affecting me. The doctor came in and told me that he could handle the allergies, what ever else I had was something else (ie in my mind). I came home and the room that I was in was not as clean as I wanted it to be, and for me a source of some of the allergies. But as my mind grasped what the doctor had told me, the allergies symptoms abated immediately. My mind had made the hell that I was experiencing. I began to relate this experience to the depression and my brain began to unlock, to wake up from the depression. I began to trace my thoughts just as I have been tracing food, and environmental and chemical allergic problems.
The article in the Trumpet quotes David Burns, author of Feeling Good: "Every bad feeling you have is the result of your distorted negative thinking. Illogical, pessimistic attitudes play the central role in the development and continuation of all your symptoms."Dennis Leap in his article states "To recover from depression, people must learn that every depressed feeling has its corresponding distorted or illogical thought. That negative thought came before and created the depressed feeling. If you are depressed, you must isolate, examine and replace all your illogical thinking with thought that is based on true facts. 
This stunned me each time I thought about it. I had been told of this time and again, but until I suffered it blatantly in my experience with the allergies, I did not believe it. Preferring to blame it on outside sources I have wallowed in depression for most of my life. Perhaps I am working toward a real release here.

Walgreens Mistake

The medication foul up was that Walgreens miscounted the tablets and shorted me two weeks of meds. It scared me at the time because if they hadn't owned up to the mistake it would have cost me hundreds of dollars. That's another reason to switch to another method to control this disease of the mind.
This depression causes me to have a short temper. For years I ceaselessly berated myself for not having the patience that one should have for the small things in life. This is a part of how the disease is intertwined with my assessment of my self worth. I have searched the Bible, self help gurus, Buddhism, Wicca, hypnois, meditation(regular and sound vibration induced) Eckencar(a kind of religion), psychoanalysis, The Sedona Method, and am still searching for some kind of path. I am praying now and feel the presence of God. But the question still remains: why me?
So the answer is 'it just is' and to deal with it. Period.

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