Final result
Severe depression
You have the symptoms of severe depression. The condition seems to cause serious problems in your everyday life, and you should consult your doctor immediately.
Depression is a disease like any other disease, and it can be treated very effectively. Recognizing that you are suffering from depression is the first positive step. If you are depressed, you should arrange to see your doctor to talk about the illness right away. You may also want to raise the issue with your friends and family. You should look for support from these people you until you get well. Anyone can suffer from depression, and the symptoms can vary from person to person. Treatments, including medication and psychotherapy, have a very high success rate.
And I knew it because I work in mental health...which is why I took the goofy test online to begin with. First I should tell you, there's nothing to worry about. I don't do medication, but I am going to find a therapist that takes my new insurance. I knew I needed to go back to therapy, I think I just needed a silly test with red letters to say, "You should probably do that today, Andrea." I'm also not suicidal or homicidal, so immediate risk averted for all you in the field.
I bring depression up because I think it's really important that people know the impact minimizing has on another person's story. My job has been the catalyst of this recent downfall in my personal mental health. I've tried really really hard to maintain my stability in various ways that have worked for me in the past: blasting good music up really high in the car while I'm driving, meditations, mindfulness, words of affirmation, listening to interesting podcasts that help and also ones that are just to distract me from the intensity of my work, both eating well and eating whatever I'm craving, sex (it's true), cleaning and organizing, spending really good quality time with my kids, lavender oil, essential oils in general, I mean I could list a ton of things I've tried to get me back to who I am again. While these things sort of help me maintain a healthy level of overwhelm, my brain has gone into hibernation with regard to making happy juices. It's totally a coping mechanism. It's not something I've done intentionally, but I really believe my body is kicking it up into survival mode--self-preservation. My work is fucking hard, and it's taking a toll.
Rather than come up with solutions of how you can help me find another job (don't worry, I already have an action list of how I'm going to approach this), hear me out on where I am right now. Be with me in my messiness. Be with depressed Andrea, not because you know what to say or do, but because while my emotions are pretty stale right now, or I cry intensely, I still see you reaching out while I come back to my equilibrium. And it takes a little bit of time.
I work with families in crisis, with kids in crisis. I have an intense domestic violence case that we just filed a child abuse report on, a 5 year old child who was hospitalized because he's so out of control, foster care cases, families that might have their kids taken away the next "bad" move they make, it's a lot. One of my skills is maintaining professionalism and a calm attitude while shit is almost literally hitting the fan. But I don't keep that up when clients aren't around. My whole team is hanging on by a half unraveled thread, and as much as we're trying to prop one another up, we're struggling so much in and of ourselves. We work in crisis, and crisis is being absorbed by our very bodies. On Friday we had a team meeting and discussed everything that's been going on with the cases, how difficult they've been, then we talked about how much we're struggling personally. One of my co-workers broke down to her dad on the phone and threw her car keys as far as she could into the street--she just couldn't deal anymore. Another has had extreme insomnia, only sleeping like 3 hours a night for a month. And the other is crying constantly, and then goes to buy something to soothe the pain. These may not be the ways you cope, but they are theirs. I shared with my team that I'm stress eating, and asked if eating a whole bag of gummies is bad if it gets me through and I know why I'm doing it. I had a bunch of clinicians in the room, thought I'd run it by them. I explained that sugar increasingly makes me more and more sick as I've eaten more nutritiously in the past couple of years, and throws off my body so badly. So even while I get clear signs from my stomach to stop, I keep going because I feel like I need it to get through. Sugar is my drug.
Let me assure you that I feel more ridiculous saying that than you feel believing it. Sugar is a part of our daily lives, we celebrate with it, we commune over it, and of course it's legal. For these reasons, I think people sort of laugh off my issue and just call me crunchy. I usually have a tendency to laugh with them, but yesterday the minimizing of my issue, my "crunchiness" pierced me deeply. No one could possibly know the struggle I have with sugar, even though I've written so much about it on FB and this blog, and for someone to treat it as a non-issue leaves me totally defeated. It may not be your issue, but it IS mine. So rather than laugh, or chalk it up to me being a health nut, or whatever, maybe you empathize instead. You don't have to have my issue. I'd much prefer you didn't. But it is an issue for me. And issues when not monitored turn into the symptoms or behaviors of...BINGO, those big red letters up there, serious mental health concerns. So you don't have to think sugar is bad to think that the quantity by which I consume it is telling of something being not quite right. I'm on a journey to find out medically whats up, and I even have a hypothesis of a hormone imbalance that is really screwing me up. But don't just write it off. I'm not a hypochondriac. At the very least, you're missing what the behavior is pointing to. And at the very most, you're telling me my problem isn't important when it very clearly is.
I'm not angry, ha ha, don't think that emotion is in my bank right now :) But I do need to tell you that people should be seen for the intricacies of their lives. For their struggles, their joys, their dreams, accomplishments, their hang ups, their burdens. And none of those things should ever be minimized. In minimizing, you're telling the person you love, "This is not important," "You are not important."
Luckily, I have a lot of head knowledge about mental health. I know that continuing to eat well and trying to sleep will help me get back on track. I know this is a season, although I've heard that from far too many people recently, the word season is starting to be a word I want to roll my eyes at. I know things will get better. But for now, I don't enjoy eating food like I used to (I just use it to cope), I'm not sleeping well, I'm not happy, my reaction time is pretty slow, and my affect is flat for the most part. But I know I'm important, and I will continue to know that I am valued and loved. I hope you know that too no matter how others treat your struggle.
