13 Nov 2016

It’s tough trying to convey what’s going on in our own heads, particularly when it seems like the English language has limited our ability to do so. I’m not sure I’d ever considered the difference that lays at the heart of depression and anxiety until a good friend of mine explained it to me recently: “Depression makes you feel trapped by your past actions; anxiety is the fear of repeating them.”

Maybe that distinction will help us to better articulate how we’re feeling?

Depression

Remember when you were six years old and didn’t have the decision-making skills to choose whether to jump on your neighbour’s trampoline or take a dump so you just did both? And then the slightly older girl you had a crush on, who was watching from her bedroom window, started screaming for her dad as you tried frantically to bounce away mid-poop.

Cut to 12 years later: you walk into a café and see a waitress who looks kinda like that same girl and suddenly you’re consumed with guilt, racked with the unshakable feeling that you’ve done something wrong that can never be made right.

That sensation of the past subsuming the present, of a six foot seven spectre throttling any hope out of the future, is depression. Sometimes it’s just a niggling splinter, sometimes it’s an impenetrable blanket over your entire being. I’m not a doctor, I don’t know how or why people feel the way they do and sometimes I can’t come up with third examples of things, but I’d wager everyone, at some point in their lives, has felt the irrational self-loathing and numbing despair that comes with reflecting on our worst tendencies. I’d also imagine that, for a lot of people, those moments are far more significant than ruining a perfectly good trampoline (though replacing it wasn’t cheap).

Anxiety

Ok, so, how about the cold, damp stone that sits in your belly before a job interview? Or the social event where you don’t know anyone that makes pinpricks of sweat emerge on your upper lip, leading to a fumbly first-time sexual encounter that leaves you both impotent and gassy? (I’m aware that I’m over-sharing at this point).

Anxiety is entirely its own beast, an impish nuisance that jumps on your back and tries to pull you to the ground, gnawing at your ear as it insists that, any minute now, you’ll break. You’ll crumble to your knees and be exposed for your true self, a repugnant creature that people will scorn and mock. It’s not hyperbole to say this shit can cripple you mentally and socially, usually because these fears are rooted in your own insecurities.

A person with a phobia of flying is afraid of what might go wrong with the pilot or aircraft; someone with severe anxiety is scared they’ll trip over, land on the pilot and snap his neck. That might seem like an exaggeration but it needs to be stated firmly: these afflictions will make the most outlandish outcome seem plausible and contrive them to be your fault.

If any of this seems shallow or flippant, I’m not meaning to be facetious about the struggles people face with these issues. I don’t have any particular counsel or coping mechanisms to offer to those suffering (the guys at Beyond Blue, on the other hand, do–you can phone them on 1300 22 4636 or chat online).

Ultimately, we need to recognise symptoms of these problems in ourselves and others while being willing to have open minds and discourse about things we might not feel or understand ourselves.

Also, don’t shit on any more trampolines.