Depression

Have you ever felt like the weight of the world was keeping you pinned to your bed? We understand that crushing overwhelm and are here to openly discuss the complex nature of depression, sharing personal stories of vulnerability and the struggle of daily tasks that seem impossible. This episode brings to light the often misunderstood triggers of depression and the delicate journey of seeking help. Through candid experiences, we discuss the frustrating search for answers and the physical symptoms that accompany mental health struggles, offering a raw glimpse into lives touched by depression.

Finding hope amid darkness is no easy task, but it is possible. By recognizing and managing signs of recurring depressive episodes, we explore the small yet impactful steps that can lead to healing and growth. By addressing deep-seated issues, we share strategies for releasing emotional burdens and moving toward peace. Faith emerges as a vital source of strength, with inspiration drawn from profound songs and meaningful scripture, reminding us that divine support is a steadfast companion. With resilience and love at the forefront, we offer a message of hope, encouraging listeners that strength can be found even in moments of struggle.

Chapters

• 0:01 Understanding Depression and Seeking Help
• 10:31 Navigating Depression and Healing Process
• 21:12 Finding Strength in Faith

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

You better check yourself before you break yourself. You better check yourself before you break yourself. Footprints in the Sand. One night I had a dream. I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life and for each scene I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord. When the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that many times along my life's pathway, especially at the lowest, saddest moments, there was only one set of footprints. This troubled me and I asked the Lord about it. Lord, you said if I followed you in life, you'd walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the most difficult times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don't understand why when I needed you the most, you would leave. He whispered my precious child, I love you and I will never leave you. During your times of trials and suffering, when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.

Speaker 1: 1:18

What's up you guys? Welcome back to another episode of Check Yourself with Harley, to another episode of Check Yourself with Harley. Today's episode is going to be depression, and I wanted to start off with a question. Have you ever woken up and thought how are you going to get out of bed? And I'm not talking about you're tired from the day before and you just feel like you need some extra sleep or you want to take an extra day off. I'm talking truly physically impossible to get out of the bed. That the next task that you have to complete whether it's brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed and the mere thought of it, is literally unbearable for you. Maybe you decide to skip the shower, skip brushing your teeth, and you just get up and go. You don't care what you wear, you don't even brush your hair or you literally cannot do it. So, although you need to go to work and you might need the money, you pick up the phone call into work and just tell them you won't be there. You feel really weak, you feel hopeless, you feel defeated, because now it's affecting your job, your livelihood. It's affecting your job, your livelihood.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Maybe you find yourself crying uncontrollably and you can't truly pinpoint as to why. You just know that you're hurting and you don't know how to make it go away. You feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and that there's this dark cloud hovering over you, or like you're in this darkness and you're not sure how to get out of it. You start to experience physical pain. Maybe you start having headaches. Your body starts to hurt. You feel exhausted. It almost feels like you just were in a car accident. If you've been in one, you know that your back hurts. It's just very painful the next day. Maybe you stare off into space just thinking about everything, or maybe you think about nothing. You aren't sure what date is what time. Your perception of time is off. Maybe you think you have more time or less time than what you actually do.

Speaker 1: 4:23

With all this pain, you are wanting to get some help and you start looking for ways to make it go away. But everything seems so hard and impossible. What could be triggering this? I would hate this question. Whenever I would go to the doctor and they would ask me what are my triggers or why am I feeling down? I would think to myself if I knew the answer to this question, I wouldn't be sitting here with you trying to get you to help me. I would get so frustrated because I didn't know how to explain why I was so sad. But I really wanted her to fix me and help. But of course that's hard for someone to help you when they don't really know what's going on.

Speaker 1: 5:29

I would have depression episodes in the past where my ex would literally have to help me off the couch, take me into the bathroom and quite literally give me a shower Like if I was a kid. It's not something that was enjoyable or even felt like, although it was like helpful, but it felt really degrading because I couldn't even take care of myself. I would lay on that couch for days and I would just call into work, just tell them I couldn't be there, I was sick, I would make something up, because how do you tell a job? I just literally mentally cannot do it, because I would just roll out of my bed, crawl onto my desk chair because it was next to my bed, and I would sit there and stare at the screen and I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing. I didn't know where to start. It was like my brain was just a fog and I would feel even more useless and hopeless and I would just cry. It was this desperate feeling inside of me where I just used to wish that I could just be normal and feel normal and not feel so trapped inside of like my own brain.

Speaker 1: 7:25

This year I actually ended up going to the hospital three different times, three different times. I was feeling a lot of like physical pain, like on my back I it was unbearable. I couldn't even lay down or anything. It would just hurt so badly. Um, I started having like um dizziness. I really bad coordination. My memory it was mixing up. People would tell me one thing and I would hear something else, like someone could tell me go right, and I would go left because I would swear that I heard left. And I asked one time did you really say that? And they were like, yeah. So I went to the hospital because I started thinking like the worst was happening to me. I fell down the stairs a couple of times because my knees would just give out like my muscles would just give out. I ended up losing 60 pounds in the course of three months. All I did was cry. I would pray that this would just be over. I would go to sleep and pray that I wouldn't wake up. I just wanted it all to end In the morning when I would wake up. I would be mad that I was up again and that I had to go through the cycle all over again. I just wanted it to be over.

Speaker 1: 9:05

I can't begin to tell you how many jobs I have lost in my life, how many times I have failed classes in school, how many times I have just sat there and just cried and felt so empty and alone and I felt like I was just broken, like there was something wrong with me. Because why feel this way all the time? So that's depression. I know the pain and frustration that this would cause the people around me. For that reason, I tried to keep to myself and I tried to stay away from people. I really made it a point to stay away from my kids whenever I was going through this, because I didn't want to spread my little dark and twisty insides to the people that I loved or to others in general, because it was so terrible and when you've experienced something like that, you wouldn't even wish that on like your worst enemy it's. It's like being dead on the inside while you're still living.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Now that I know what I've been living with and I was diagnosed eight years ago I have learned to identify certain signs of when I am going into a depressive episode. Because of my condition, I usually go from one episode to the next. I don't usually have breaks in between and I'm most functioning, obviously, when I'm manic, but the depression is what hits me the hardest. It literally feels just unbearable. Now, with me having more knowledge and being able to identify when I'm going into a depressive episode, there are certain things that I can do to try to ease the episode or like I guess the best way I can put it is to make it go more smoothly, because I can't take it away altogether. However, that doesn't make it hurt any less. You just learn to go through it better.

Speaker 1: 11:39

So imagine going through life and each time something or someone hurts you, you pick up a little rock, pick up a little rock, depending on how bad it was the size of the rock, and you place that rock in your pocket and you stuff it down and you keep going and you act as if it never even happened. You pretend it doesn't bother you on your age, imagine how many rocks you're carrying with you until you pick up that one small rock and ultimately that is the rock that brings you down to your knees. Surely you think if I fix this last rock, then I can just get back up and keep going and I'll be fine. But you would be wrong, so much has been eating at you from the inside out. This is just the final straw. So how do you know where to even begin to fix it? Is it fixable? At this point, you don't even know what hurts you anymore, or you've become numbed and you don't even know anything anymore. You're unsure of everything.

Speaker 1: 13:07

So how are you going to fight back now? You're going to begin with small changes, changes that you can make immediately, things such as actually making it out of the bed. Now you've made it all out of the bed. Maybe you can sit on the couch, and that is your success for the day. You should be proud of yourself that you've taken this step. You didn't just lay there crying and feeling sorry for yourself, but you took a step in the right direction. Maybe on day two, you make it into the bathroom, you are able to brush your teeth, get in the shower and maybe you get back into your pajamas and maybe you lay back down. But again, that was a successful second day because it's something that you did not do the day before, and this is how you start pushing yourself. This is how you start pushing yourself. This is how you fight.

Speaker 1: 14:22

Little by little, you start incorporating things each day and then you put them all together until you're back to a more sustainable state. You might still be hurting on the inside, but you are pushing yourself forward and you're not staying there. No, it won't be easy and a lot of times it will be physically painful and you will feel like you just don't want to keep doing it anymore. But you have to to. You have to push yourself. It's a choice that you have to make in order to move on to a more peaceful, less hurtful place, because I know you don't want to feel like this. Nobody wants to feel like this.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Little by little, you start to progress. You take your little wins. Then the real work is going to begin on what's hurting you. Little by little, you're going to start taking each little rock out and trying to resolve why it hurt you and what hurt you. Trying to resolve what hurt you and why. Is it something that you thought you'd let go of and just simply shoved it down, covered it up with an I don't care band-aid, because we often do that we often pretend we don't care, doesn't bother us, we're good, but deep down it was hurtful. If it had not been hurtful and it wasn't a problem, we wouldn't be here today. I suggest that you start with smaller issues.

Speaker 1: 16:21

I used to get so annoyed whenever I would go to therapy and she would ask me like really surface level questions or like really current things, and I would just think like lady, can we get on to talking about my abandonment issues and my issues with my dad so we can move on and I can be fixed and I can move on with my life? But I was wrong, because that might have been one of my issues, but it wasn't my main issue. That was not the main thing I needed to resolve. By moving backwards and addressing my current issues and where they came from, I was able to trace back to the root, which was the actual issue when it came from, what started it, why it bothers me and those would be my triggers. Those would be the things that would set me back, without me knowing, back to that place, back to being a little girl and hearing negative things, back to hearing negative things about myself from other people, just setting me back to that place, but I didn't know that, I didn't know it was taking me back to that memory, because I wouldn't think of that, I would think about the current issue. So, in working backwards, it made me realize this wasn't about this person at all. It was about something way deeper than that, and that's when I could start to heal, that's when I could start dropping those rocks, could start dropping those rocks and giving myself a break and being able to get the rest that my body and my heart so desperately needed. Although I will never forget the things that have happened to me and have hurt me, I at least have made peace with them at this point. And although reliving some of these memories can and will be painful and I haven't relived all of them at least each time that I do it's the last time that I have to relive it, because after that I've made peace with it and it's done. Time that I have to relive it because after that I've made peace with it and it's done.

Speaker 1: 19:01

I wanted to share the lyrics to a song which I found. I pray that it will bring you some encouragement. I usually do listen to worship music, and that's just for personal reasons, just because of how my brain works. But I found this song the other day. It's called I Am Not Okay, by Jelly Roll, and some of you guys have probably heard this, but it says I am not okay. I am not okay, I'm barely getting by. I'm losing track of days and losing sleep at night. I am not okay, I'm hanging on the rails. So if I say I'm fine, just know I've learned to hide it. Well, I know I can't be the only one who is hanging on for dear life, but God knows I know. When it's all said and done, I'm not okay, but it's all going to be all right. It's not okay, but we are all going to be all right, y'all.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Depression looks different for everybody. This is just my experience with it. But there have been times where I have looked like there was absolutely nothing wrong with me dressed up, makeup, full face, my hair done and I would literally comments to me and it would upset me, but I would have to just put a smile on my face and keep going. But they did not know the hell that I was in inside of my head. They didn't know that I would get home and probably start crying immediately and drink until I fell asleep. The only people that truly have seen that have been the ones that have lived with me.

Speaker 1: 21:12

I am incredibly blessed to have found God and that I now know that he may not cure what I have, but he will walk me through it. Like the song says, it's not okay, but we're all going to be all right. God loves you. I love you forever and so much, and you were built stronger than you know. Good night, and I'll see you next time. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning, or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away Revelations 21.4.