Get It Done When You're Depressed (26 page)

Crying is not a sign of weakness, and you can still get things done when you’re crying. True, you’ll probably be embarrassed, but that is okay. You just keep going. If you’re a man, you might feel pressure not to cry; do it in private if you need to.

You can learn to manage, end, and prevent crying spells:

Remember:
Notice when you cry the most. This knowledge is a tool you can use to determine if a project is too much for you or if your depression is getting too serious for you to manage alone.

It’s human nature to want to make the most of your time here on Earth. Living life to the fullest is one of the greatest pleasures you can have. Unfortunately, people with depression can lose marriages, work and school opportunities, dreams, and health to this illness. The resulting sadness and feeling of mourning, especially if the loss is ongoing, can spiral a person further into depression. It’s hard to live life to the fullest if something is holding you back.

With physical illness, it’s easier to accept the fact that your injury affects the time you have to get things done. When you have the flu or are in a car accident, you often get a lot of help and sympathy as you recover. And you’ll probably be pretty compassionate with yourself. But with depression, the lost time can seem so pointless. You wonder,
Where did my day go? Why didn’t I try harder? What am I doing with my life?
It’s easy to forget that lost time is a part of depression for everyone.

Depression takes away parts of your life that you need. It can take your productivity, your ability to connect with others, your ability to exercise like you want to, and myriad other things. On many days, you can use the strategies in this book to get through these problems, but on some days, even they won’t work and you may “lose” a day. Maybe you sit around watching DVDs all day. Maybe you take a sick day from work. Maybe you miss a deadline for something you promised you would do. Some losses are much bigger. Maybe you get fired, or maybe someone you love leaves.

Losses big and small happen to everyone who has depression. The only way to get through them and move on is to accept the reality of what has happened and do all you can to minimize what depression takes away from you in the future.

What have you lost because of depression?

These feelings of loss can be particularly strong if you feel you should be somewhere different because you’re a certain age. If this is the case, it might be time to change your goals to ones you can accomplish.

I love my son more than I can explain. I take care of him myself. I read to him, make his dinner, talk with him, and try to teach him about life. When he was born, I got really depressed. I know it was postpartum depression, and I know I was sick, but I feel so guilty. My mother came and had to take care of him for three months. I didn’t want to breast-feed, and I didn’t feel love for him. She made sure he was well taken care of, and luckily for me, understood that I was sick and did what she could to make sure I bonded with him. When I got on meds, I couldn’t breast-feed him anymore. I was immobilized by depression. I don’t think I loved him as much as I should have. I could have taken him for more walks. Sometimes I would just sit in the rocking chair with him and rock him and cry.

That was four years ago. I still get depressed off and on. I’ve been like this my whole life. There are days when I look at this gorgeous kid and just can’t do what I’m supposed to do. I have to read to him! I have to make him a great, healthy dinner with lots of vegetables! I have to take him to the park. I have to make sure he’s with other kids. On days where all this seems impossible, it’s often too painful to even look at him. He’s so beautiful, and I’m often so sick. Am I wrecking his life?

One day I just stopped all this. I know he knows how much I love him. He knows I have bad days, the days he gets less of my active love but all my mother love. So he eats some macaroni and cheese, and I can only read one book on some nights. He doesn’t seem to mind. Sometimes this lasts for a week and I know it’s a sign I need to go to my doctor; sometimes it’s just one day. He seems fine. The guilt is a lot worse than the actual events. I don’t want to lose a day of my time with him to depression. I lost months of his childhood, and I
won’t
lose more.

Because of my depression, I’m not able to handle the stress of working with other people. I’ve tried it for 20 years and finally accepted that group work is not an option for me. This is such a huge loss, mostly because it keeps me from the daily human contact I really need. I still think,
Maybe I can do it now that I have these strategies. Maybe I can handle the stress a bit better.
But when I do try, I get depressed and easily stressed. It’s not the work itself; it’s the fact that when you work with a group, there’s almost always some kind of personality clash between members of the group. I’ve also had the unfortunate experience of working with negative and manipulative people—more than once!

I wish I could just accept this as part of human nature, but I can’t. It makes me feel desperate and sad just to think about this. Not being able to work with other people is a huge loss for me. Writing is a lonely career for people like me, but it’s less stressful than a management position, for example. So I try to focus on what I
can
do. It’s hard, but I’m in my 40s now, and it’s not realistic to ignore more than 20 years of very plain facts. I work the best I can, and that’s what I have to focus on.

Losses—the loss of a dream, the loss of a childhood, or the loss of productive years—are common with depression, and it’s natural to mourn those losses. But it’s important to face the truth of painful losses—not wallowing in it or becoming obsessively preoccupied, but squarely facing the loss. Facing the grief you feel at such losses is probably best done with the companionship of another person such as a trusted friend or therapist.

The tears and anguish that accompany loss and mourning are signs of how important the loss is; they are a way the mind and body acknowledge the truth that “this mattered deeply to me.” Robert Frost said, “The best way out is through,” and when you can come to terms with the losses depression can cause, you’ve probably done some amount of working through your grief, but hopefully not by getting bogged down with anger and bitterness. It’s much more productive—and honest—to reframe the big losses from, “He shouldn’t just walk out on a 25-year marriage!!!” to something more like, “He did walk out and it hurts so much!”

When enough grieving can take place, things start to seem more settled and that’s when you can turn your attention to the present and a future of new opportunities.

When you focus only on what you’ve lost, it’s difficult to change things so your future looks and is more positive. You don’t have to be super optimistic and happy all the time, but you do have to be forward-thinking in order to counteract the way depression may have robbed you in the past. As with any serious illness, you can experience great loss. But you can also experience great future productivity when you accept the losses of the past.

Here are some other thoughts to consider:

Remember:
Depression creates loss, but acceptance creates hope. Focus on what you can fix, and let the other stuff go forever.

Trying to meet all your obligations when you’re depressed is often impossible. There are so many ways you can feel overwhelmed, especially when it comes to getting things done on time. You might quit and then feel disgusted with yourself not only for quitting, but for not being able to control the situation in the first place.

The depressed brain is a confused brain. Asking yourself to set time limits on your work is a very good idea, but it’s not always possible. It might be that you can’t even focus on the work itself, much less get something done in the time it needs to be completed.

There’s a good chance you have people and organizations in your life that can help you limit or increase the time you spend on a project. Maybe your work gives you deadlines or your children have to be certain places at certain times. Although this might feel like too much pressure, in reality, these outside limits can greatly help your productivity by taking away the worry that you won’t get something done the way it needs to get done.

Is there someone or something in your life that can work as your taskmaster? Maybe it’s an organization or a person. It may be limited hours at a place you want to work, such as a room in a library that’s available for only two hours. It may be working with a friend who will hold you to your schedule. It may be asking someone at work to keep you focused so you can finish a project on time. However you find the limits, the more you can set up, the more you can get done when you’re depressed.

The following are signs you need outside limits; do you recognize any in yourself?

Depression can make you feel that others will say no if you ask for help in setting limits in your life. In reality, many people will gladly help. You just have to ask.

I know that when I’m depressed, I won’t get to work on time if I rely only on an alarm. I have enough trouble staying out of bed in the afternoon; getting out of bed in the morning to go to work is often impossible. I used to be late a lot. That’s not exactly a good practice when I have enough trouble just getting through the workday when I’m depressed.

I’ve solved this problem in three ways. I started to carpool with people who expect a lot from me. I ask both of them to call me when they get up. I bought a really loud, old-fashioned alarm—the kind with the bells on the top that are hit by a little hammer. And I talked with my boss and told him I need to be held accountable when I have a deadline. He’s fine with that. I don’t want to let down any of these people. This is not pressure for me but support.