Hubris: Collapse

After my last blog on how I have fought to cure my depressive illness, the gods would have it that I have had a relapse; it was in fact not so much a relapse as a collapse. Things have been pretty damned awful.

It was triggered by a life event, the details of which I’d rather not go into. It wasn’t unexpected and it wasn’t objectively that bad. But I switched from a state of feeling good and optimistic about everything, to total suicidal despair and extreme anxiety, within a few hours.

Of course being very depressed is incapacitating, and it has really put back the writing. I couldn’t have written this blog from scratch, but fortunately I had some of it ready and am just filling in the gaps. Blogging by numbers. I have written before about how one of the worst aspects of depression, and one that is rarely mentioned, is how it steals our life and our time. I occasionally wish that I was bipolar, when I would have highly creative, fertile periods between the down times. But for me it’s just all time wasted.

I suppose no one is depressed in just the way the textbooks say a person is. We each have our own way  of being mad. I have written about what severe depression feels like to me in the book I am currently writing on the science of depression, No birds sing. (Note to publishers and editors: I am looking for someone to publish this book.)

Imagine feeling sad, but much, much more so, sadder than you’ve ever felt before. Imagine all the lights being turned off in your head. Imagine your mind turning black; black is the colour of depression. All of sudden you’re living in a monochrome world where all feeling and emotion except pain has been turned right down. Imagine a dark ball at the centre of your being that is so cold it hurts. It’s like an icy knife in your soul; it’s worse than any physical pain. You just want to go to bed and cry, to fall asleep, or even die. Die; don’t care if I do. It would be a relief. Death is an end to the misery. In any case, who cares: alive or dead, what’s the difference in the end? I hate myself and my life and I want to die. The idea of doing anything is impossible to contemplate. There’s nothing to look forward to, and nothing gives me pleasure, not even the things that in better mental states I can rely upon to excite me. My despair is utter. Everything is hopeless; I’m never going to get better. I feel a terrible sense of doom and fear, not just that I’m not going to get better, but that the universe is a threatening, mysterious, evil place. And everything is such a bloody fight; everyday life is exhausting. Managing to do the little things can wipe me out after I’ve used up so much energy making myself do them. I feel exhausted all the time. Imagine not being able to concentrate long enough to be able to complete simple tasks, and in any case often forgetting what you were going to do nearly as soon as you form the intention to do it. I make mistakes in the simplest tasks. I have no motivation do to do anything anyway, and no interest in anything. I feel nothing other than total despair. Oh, I do feel amazingly, incredibly guilty about everything, as though I’m lazy, incompetent, and everything wrong with the world is my fault. I deserve to suffer so much. Everything is overwhelming, and I am paralysed. I don’t just have very low self-esteem, I am also full of self-hated. I am the lowest of the low and completely worthless; the world would be a better place without me. If I’m depressed for any period of time self care tends to go a bit out of the window: what is the point of shaving? Can I really be bothered to wash my hair? Who cares if the kitchen sink is filthy? I overeat and overeat convenience food, because that’s all I can be bothered to cook. I sit, finding myself in tears, and I’m not sure why. I feel completely alone; no one can possibly understand how I feel just now, and even it there is a person who can, I couldn’t be bothered to speak to them. And in one final little trick of the mind, time seems to slow down to prolong the agony. Every second is torture. So I try to sleep for as much of the day as possible, and I drink wine and take pills to make sure I can sleep. You feel physically ill as well, with aches and pains exaggerated to distraction. There’s a tickle and lump in your throat. I perpetually tug at my eyebrows, and occasionally pull them out so that they contain strange bald patches. And the ear-worms – those annoying tunes stuck in your head that drive you mad. I also worry that I’m a black hole when I’m depressed, sucking in joy around me, ruining the lives of others – so it’s fortunate that I prefer to suffer in isolation. It is paradoxical that I am lonely and yet want to be alone at the same time, but depression is full of paradoxes.

Most people who aren’t depressed think that being depressed is like being very sad, as though a loved one has just died. A sense of strong sadness and a sense of loss pervade depression, but there is much more besides that to it. Anhedonia is the inability to gain any pleasure from anything; the things that normally give me pleasure, such as reading, watching movies, my garden, and music, give me nothing at all other than a sense of profound boredom. I get up in the morning and I see the day stretching ahead with nothing to look forward to other than being able to go back to sleep again. But what most people don’t seem to understand is the pain of depression: it is mental torture. It is a knife being stuck in your mind and being turned around and around so that you want to scream with the pain – or more realistically just kill yourself so that you can get away from it.

I wake up every morning filled with dread. I have great difficulty in getting going. Often I find that the murk lifts for a few hours around 11. I usually have coffee then, which helps even more, but I get the uplift even if I miss coffee out. I haven’t seen a great deal about this 11 am effect in the literature, but I know from speaking to others that I am not alone in getting some relief then. When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge I was taught about a distinction between reactive and endogenous depression (a distinction that no longer stands up), with endogenous (or psychotic) depression being the worse, and characterised by particularly low mood early on in the day.

And then throughout the day there is panic. There is a persistent low level of anxiety that’s worse before 11 but to some extent there every day. Then there are occasional panic attacks; today I had a panic attack while in a car in a tunnel. I just wanted to escape. I wasn’t driving, it was dark, and I could sense all these other cars and people around me, and I just needed to be out of there. I couldn’t breathe. My heart felt ready to explode, and I was drenched in sweat. When you’re really anxious consciousness seems to shrink to a pin prick; the reduction in awareness feels physical, as though your sense organs have been eviscerated. We now at least understand how depression and anxiety are two sides of the same coin.

There is  a huge literature out there on OCD, but I find while I get very obsessed, I no longer suffer much from compulsion. (I did when a teenager.) I can find very little on thoughts just taking over our minds, other than rumination, the idea of going over and over some thought, such as the meaning of life. I find that I just can’t stop thinking about something. The thought is all consuming but there is nothing I can do to release it. I think I’d rather the O be accompanied by a C so that at least I could discharge it occasionally. Instead the same thought, image, or just idea, goes round and round in my mind.

I seem to be very prone to ear worms – tunes stuck in the head. I think I get these worse immediately before an intense depressive episode, but I don’t know of any research on this speculation. But when a song gets stuck in my head – and I mean stuck! I can hear it with crystal clarity, at loud volume, every intake of breath and strum of guitar – I know I’m in trouble, And there’s a limit to the number of times a chap can hear John Denver sing “Annie’s song” and stay sane.

Author: trevorharley

I am Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Dundee, Scotland. I am the author of several books, including the best selling texts "The psychology of language" (now in its fourth edition) and "Talking the talk: Language, psychology and science". I am currently also writing books on the science of consciousness and on the philosophy of science as applied to psychology (the latter with Richard Wilton), with both due to be published in 2017. Several other books are in the pipeline. My research interests are varied and I have published widely in some of the leading peer-reviewed psychology journals. My interests include language production, how we represent meaning, computer models of the mind, sleep and dreams, consciousness, mental illness, personality and motivation, the effects of brain damage on behaviour, and how the weather influences behaviour. I believe passionately that scientists, particularly those paid from the public purse, have a duty to explain what they do to that public. I also believe that we can reach a wide audience by the use of social media and new ways of explaining what we do. In my spare time I use stand-up comedy to talk about my research; a few years ago I appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe. One of the strangest things about being a comic is that I am often severely depressed (as well as anxious and obsessive). I have been on many types of medication, with varying degrees of success. When depressed I am always struck by how pointless everything seems: nothing seems worthwhile, and those things that I usually enjoy (playing the piano - even if not very well, looking at the natural world, reading, watching movies) no longer entice. My interest in things is a very accurate barometer of how well I am. I have realised that some mental illnesses, particularly severe mood disorders, are in part a loss of purpose and meaning in life. Becoming well involves recovering this purpose. I am also very keen to help remove the stigma that still surrounds mental illness. All of my life I have been puzzled by the question of what is the best way to spend my time. This blog is my search for answer to that question. In it I talk about my life, psychology, mental illness, purpose, living a better life, time management, existential despair, death (making me a death blogger I suppose), being creative, writing, and trying to write when depressed. I try and blog once a week or so; long silences usually mean I'm too depressed to write. For more information about me, see the home page of my website at www.trevorharley.com. I welcome comments on my blog, or if you prefer you can email me at trevor.harley@mac.com. You can follow me on Twitter at @trevharley. View all posts by trevorharley