Viewing Depression as an Experience Empowers You

I realized recently depression is an experience, not just a diagnosis and thinking of depression as an experience empower me. Depression spurs challenging emotions and physical symptoms, and it also changes the way I think about things. Depression influences the way I respond to various stimuli, and the way I arrange my daily schedule and plan vacations. Depression impacts the way I interact with people, and the relationships I choose to maintain. Depression is something I experience, so I’ve been trying to define my depression more by its impact to my life than by the medical diagnosis. I'm empowering myself by viewing depression as an experience.

Depression Is an Experience and a Diagnosis

Vast amounts of medical research explains the causes, symptoms, and treatments involved with depression, but there is more to it than its scientific definition. Basing my own experience on scientific research is unfair to myself, because everyone's experience with depression is different. Every individual in the world has a different brain, so it makes sense that every individual affected by depression has a unique experience. The validity of my depression should not be influenced by how closely my symptoms match up to the symptoms established by the medical community.

For example, the list of symptoms of depression is long because all of those symptoms are correlated with depression, not because a person with depression exhibits all of those symptoms. Exhibiting only three out of five symptoms does not mean that my depression is invalid. Instead, it means that my experience of depression is different than others, who may demonstrate four out of five. The same idea applies to coping mechanisms, which I addressed last week. While there are tons of coping mechanisms that can potentially work for people with depression, successful coping takes many forms.

Analyzing Depression Experience for Empowerment

I’m practicing a process of self-analysis that addresses more personal aspects of my depression. I look at what triggers intense feelings of sadness or loneliness, what rituals I should practice to achieve or maintain emotional balance, what food/drink to avoid, and other things. By utilizing this practice of personal analysis, I am understanding my depression in terms of how it impacts me as an individual, instead of how medicine expects it to impact me. I find analyzing my depression experience empowering.

It is important to understand the science behind depression, but once I reached that understanding, I found that the next step in working with my depression was to start looking at how depression uniquely impacted my own brain. With this new perspective, I find that I am better at handling my fluctuating brain.

Depression Experience Included Using the Diagnosis as an Excuse

In the past, I’ve used my depression as an excuse to avoid taking care of myself. Before I sat down on the couch, knowing that I wouldn't get up, I'd say out loud, "You know what, I have depression. It's fine."

I'd say it when I skipped meals, or avoided reaching out to my support network, or got snippy with my partner. By focusing on the label and its corresponding expectations, I would excuse myself from exercising the self-control that I should use in order to properly manage my depression.

Looking past the depression label to my depression experience empowers me to add a rebuttal to that phrase. I have depression but that does not mean I should be a couch potato, or ignore my basic needs. I have depression but I should not be rude to my partner. I have depression but its symptoms are not predetermined, and I have control over my own experience.

Find Tiffanie on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and on her personal blog.