Depressive Episode

This week has been extremely tough for me. I got a half a week long fever which spiraled me into a depressive episode. I learned a lot about myself and resiliency in this time period.

It’s been really hard and all of my friends and loved ones have probably had it with me complaining about not feeling well. Not as many of them know how much it truly affected me mentally. I was sleeping all the time because I needed that rest and I was weak. I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t have the energy. I couldn’t eat because I wasn’t hungry. I was just ..existing. A lot of these actions, or non actions, are also related to depression. Sleeping a lot, either eating too much or too little, no motivation, no energy. I’m guessing that because I was already acting like I was in a depressive episode, the depressive episode came.

So where does my resiliency come into play? The moment I started feeling better physically, I did everything I could to make myself feel better mentally. I spent the day with my best friend, ate some comfort food, and had fun. The depressive episode got worse the day after when I was all alone. Loneliness does a lot to the mind. I’ll do another post on loneliness, but for now, I’ll say that it can make depressive episodes worse. I couldn’t rely on friends to cheer me up that day so I had to do that work myself. I accumulated as many positive emotions I could by doing things I enjoyed doing and that gave me peace of mind. At the end of the day, I did alleviate some of the pain of my depression.

And that’s what matters. I made the pain manageable. It’s something I did for myself. That’s pretty revolutionary for me. I’m used to having people around and using that company to distract and cheer myself up. I didn’t have that and I came through for myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still depressed and it’ll probably last a few more days, but I’m in significantly less mental pain than I was a few days ago.

Takeaways:

You’re more resilient than you think you are.

You can get through this.

Do what works and leave the rest. Do what makes you happy, not what you think will make you feel better because that’s what society thinks. For example, if you hate exercising, then don’t. Maybe watch a movie in the theater instead.

Depressive episodes don’t last forever. It will get better.

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