Sorry that tomorrow turned into days!!
Ok, here we go. Deep dive. Get a drink. Bare with me, I’m only a two semester psychiatrist…
My psychiatrists impression of depression is that it’s “ situational” meaning that a situation, an event, happens and while you’re going through that you can become depressed. After that she thinks you bounce back to “ normal”.
That’s ridiculous. Yes, there are people who can go through a period of depression due to a situation, get counseling, or not, don’t need medication or maybe they do for a short time and then that was then this is now. They move on. Obviously that is a reality.
That’s not me or people like me. My brain, on a scan, reacts differently than people who don’t have depression or the people that had it situationally. That’s a fact.
For those of us like that, when our brain was in its formative years, which, according to scientific evidence, ranges from uterus to a whopping 25 years old! Our brain is creating neural pathways. These pathways range from something as basic as learning that you, an infant, are not part of your mother, which comes together at about 12 months of age, to how to recognize emotions in another person’s face to the forming of a phobia. Every thing we do, consciously or not had to be formed by a neural pathway.
Ok, so think of those as roads. The road starts at point A and is due to be completed at point B. Pretty simple. However while building that road a sinkhole forms and the road is for all intents and purposes incomplete. It now just stops at the sinkhole.
Psychiatry.org defines depression as:
A MEDICAL ILLNESS.
Not a MENTAL illness. An injury to our brain. Not the kind that leaves a bruise or shows up like a divot on the surface of your brain but as if a sinkhole you can’t see stopped a neural pathway.
So, what causes that and what does it do?
Trauma.
Now not everyone feels trauma the same way. Someone may have been traumatized long before they were forming memories yet were building neural pathways. Maybe they were left in their crib crying in the dark and couldn’t process the learned behavior of being patient because that pathway is still being built, couldn’t distinguish the actual length of time the waited, another pathway being built, and without knowing, them or the parent, a sinkhole was created. “ do not trust” or “ I’m afraid of the dark” or “I’m needy and can’t be alone well” was then created instead. The pathway veered off course, maybe or stopped all together.
When you’re older you may have no idea why the dark scares you or why you have a difficult time trusting.
This happens to all humans. It makes us who we are and why react the way we do.
Quite possibly another baby just cried until a caregiver came in or fell asleep and it’s neural pathway kept chugging along.
Then there are sinkholes that do more serious damage.
I didn’t know until a few years ago, when my dad helped me to put together these bits and pieces of memories, just how traumatic my early childhood had been.
Besides my bio father beating my mother in front of me “ Do NOT trust people” and leaving me, telling me that if I didn’t call his new wife mom then he wouldn’t see me “ I’m not good enough” “ If you don’t do what someone tells you they might not love you anymore” “I need a mans attention and love” BUT! “ I don’t trust him so I will try my best to shove him away before he walks away” “If my daddy can’t love me. I’m unlovable” and the list goes on…
But my mother slept around, often leaving me alone as a toddler or taking to some filthy motel, locking me and my brother out with a nasty wet dollar bill some man gave me to go to the ice cream truck. I fucking loathe the sound of an ice cream truck to this day. It’s sends some sick frightening feeling through me. She tried to kill herself and I found her laying in a puddle of blood, I was 4 years old and told that her baby in her tummy died. POTHOLE! My dad left me with his stranger relatives while my mother was in the hospital and I thought they’d died. POTHOLE.
So much more, molested by a trusted family friend that I called Uncle, who was a pastor. I was 6 years old. POTHOLE. DO NOT TRUST!! IM DIRTY. I DID SOMETHING WRONG.
More and more. Some of which I’ve written about on my old blog.
Eventually these potholes have created wounds. Broken pathways. Formed new, unhealthy pathways. Changed the way you see the world, adapt to the world, process pain or rejection or cruelty.
And they now form depression, anxiety, panic attacks and you manage to live with those with the help of medications that only work for so long until they don’t and then another and then when a big one hits, a death. A breakup. An accident. Your children tweaking at those broken pathways that have grave emotions attached, you can’t get up.
Yes, that might be situational, but not in the way she sees it. It’s in the way that someone put you in a vehicle, drove on your broken pathway and crashed you into the pothole. Into the dark.
Sent you into the injured part of your brain and no amount of counseling or medication will ever fix those potholes. Maybe they can give you tools to avoid them better, teach you what’s a “normal” reaction, numb the noise from the traffic, but rebuild the roads? No.
However, your brain does have the ability to heal itself if directed in the right manner. It’s physically possible to heal and finish building those pathways.
Ketamine has been proven time and again to be able to do that. It’s now being accepted as a viable treatment for people like me in the medical community. It’s not some hippy retreat thing anymore. Real, actual science and doctors world wide. In fact it’s completely covered in the UK healthcare system as a treatment for PTSD, depression, drug addiction, OCD, anxiety etc…
So has Psilocybin, derived from mushrooms, not the kind in your steak, the kind you trip with.
I’ve seen lots of therapist. Most were shit. I’ve been off and on antidepressants for 31 years. I do not want to put a bandage on the injuries anymore. I do not want the peaks and valleys of depression, thankfully on a peak now, I do not want the chemicals anymore. I do not want to go through me entire life story with a new counselor ever again. That doesn’t heal. It’s like AA, which I loathe as a program, you go, talk about your trauma, wallow in that and leave, over and over. That’s not working!!
I want my pathways rebuilt.
I’ve looked into ketamine treatments and I can have them done in my own home with what is essentially a trip guide but they do talk therapy while your potholes can’t be fallen into. Just feeling out where they are, and doing the work to allow the ketamine to do what it does. Course through your brain, connecting broken pathways. Healing your wounds.
Kind of scary. Letting go. Not being in control. Allowing myself the possibility of feeling “normal” , hearing the grass grow :-)
So, I’m looking to think outside my box and putting my faith in modern medicine combined with ancient medicine to heal my pathways.
I’ll for certain tell you if and when I do it!
Night!!
