Coming to grips with my depression has been a very long and difficult process. For years I thought that depression was something that everyone suffered from or would eventually experience. I thought that I would “snap out of it” and I passed it off as “the blues.”
When I visited with my first therapist I thought that after 2 weeks I would be “fixed”. Looking back, I see how ridiculous this expectation was, but I still couldn’t recognize depression as an illness; rather I saw it as a personal weakness. It was my own shame and embarrassment that prevented me from allowing myself to get help.
There were many events and circumstances that eventually lead to my acceptance of this illness. Last summer I received a letter from a family member detailing their own battle with depression. At that point in time, I was terrified of anyone finding out that I was having trouble getting out of bed or was having panic attacks. This letter was a real eye opener. Not only did I now know someone who had suffered from depression, they had written an honest account of what they had experienced and had the courage to share this with me. It was one of the first moments that I acknowledged that this truly is an illness, that I’ve suffered from this for as long as I can remember and that it isn’t going to improve or change until I started treating it differently.
I will probably never be able to truly thank the sender of that letter, but my recovery is due in part to their willingness to discuss their own experiences. If we all had that same kind of courage and spoke out about depression, we would be the better for it.
