Ghosting & Isolating: How to successfully emerge from a depression pit

On Nov 13th I posted a series of posts to my instagram stories:

I was being a bit melodramatic, but I felt I was not making the right choices. I was sucking at asserting my boundaries. I kept running in toxic circles around thoughts of my past including dead and gone relationships. Most importantly because I wasn't sure of myself, I was really unsure of EVERYone around me. I decided to take a break from social media to try to get a grip on my irrational fears. Some of them being: my friends and family only tolerate me, I am not worthy of love, and I will never ever truly be able to love or trust anyone. These were some heavy hitters. I wasn't suicidal yet, but I could feel it looming.

I continued taking my medication and expressed my lack of trust of myself and others in therapy. I was encouraged to act on my truth, and in that time it meant taking some distance from circumstances that "no longer served me." I was talking a good game. I was finding the courage to walk away. I was scared sh*tless that I was always going to be repeating this pattern of pulling away from my loved ones only to return with apologies and just a little less trust. See, no one loved me.

By the third week, friends started reaching out to see if I was okay. I was determined to not respond in a way that would alarm them. I felt like perhaps this all just looked like I was acting out. Was I in fact just acting out? I didn't respond to texts and ignored dms.

By the sixth week, I had started to return to social media. I archived my entire instagram, and decided to try and redesign. I was taking care of myself by walking when I felt up to it and going vegan. I was determined not to gain weight during my time alone. I pretended I didn't miss anyone, but in reality, I was lonely. I was trying my best to create new habits and patterns to deal with disappointment. I had convinced myself since I was so scared of losing everyone I loved because they'd grow tired of me that I needed to give everyone a much needed break. During this break, I was determined to figure out what was wrong with me, so I could come back worthy and ready for less toxic relationships. It was not working.

I finally reached out to my best friend when I realized she too had decided to go plant-based, and ironically we'd both purchased the same shoes off of Amazon without knowing. I decided to talk to her and be honest about my decision to isolate. To my surprise she was genuinely concerned and not angry at me. I reached out to my other friends within that following week.

I found a thread on instagram talking about what I felt like I was going through:

This post was insightful. I had always blamed depression for the cycle of ghosting that I tend to do when I am not in my best frame of mind, but many of the reasons why I did it were laid out in front of me as anxiety symptoms. I decided to try and give myself a little grace.

I made some good choices during my time of isolation, but I honestly don't feel that what I did and the way I did it was necessary. I am not a burden, though my depression keeps telling me I am. I hope to not isolate in such an extreme way again, but only time will tell. If you didn't get it by now, there's no un-successful way to get out of a damn depression pit.

Binge Eating & Anxiety

Feeling out of control, stuff your face.

Feel excited about something new? Stuff your face.

Tired and or bored? Stuff your face.

Scared about the near future? Stuff. Your. Face.

That's what pattern I used to follow. They call it emotional eating. I blamed my depression and thought that I needed to curb my habits of eating when I was sad. But what about all of the above?

I had no self-control. I thought how come I can't stop eating a pint of Haagen Daz half way through? Why did spoon have to touch carton bottom? When it came down to it, I was suffering from anxiety. I thought anxiety only happened when I was having some sort of attack. A really bad panic attack in 2017 lead me to believe that the only way I was feeling anxious was when my breathing was out of control or my extremities began tingling or going numb. I didn't find the need to address my anxious symptoms in therapy until I finished grad school in June 2020.

Quarantine made me privy to the emotional changes I was seeking in therapy. I was doing the work. And I was seeing results. So when I recognized a big shift from not staring back at my past, I realized I was starting to zoom too far into my future. I was starting to worry about my employment 6 months down the line. I didin't feel like celebrating the huge feat of earning my Master's degree I'd accomplished, mind you during the pandemic. Instead I wanted to curl into a ball and sleep. And when I did finally get up, I was met with the desire to eat. To be productive I would trick myself into earning food after finishing small tasks. 2 months and 8lbs later, I finally confessed to my therapist that I might need help with my anxiety as I felt I was on the brink of a panic attack.

I kept telling her I just wanna control it. I thought I may just need a small prescription short term of what they gave me in the hospital. Lorezapam is a controlled substance that later my psychiatrist let me know were highly addicting and steered me away from. But in that moment, I wanted a safety blanket.

I had stopped turning to food to get life done because I wanted to get healthier. But I just felt even more terrible when I couldn't binge eat. I was super excited because I had stopped myself twice that week alone, yet it didn't feel sustainable. Upon her suggestion, I reached out to my insurance to find a psychiatrist. I made a same day appointment and by that evening I was driving to Walgreens to pick up my prescription.

Lessons I took away from this experience:

1. Anxiety is asking you to listen to your body and be present. It shouldn't be feared and can be regulated with medicine.

2. Binge eating can be related to anxiety more closely than what I thought, as it has been two weeks and I haven't had a desire to binge or have the inability to stop eating when I am full.

3. While depression keeps you stuck in the past, anxiety keeps you fearful of the future.

4. In the wrong hands, excitement can be turned into fear as a way to control our expectations. This act of trying to protect ourselves in fact creates anxiety that upon being proven correct reinforces the negative self talk brought about by depression. What does this look like: Denise is excited to learn how to skate. She has just conquered her first weight loss goal and is trying out new forms of fitness. As the days come closer to her first lesson, Denise starts to wonder what to expect. She knows its a fact that people often fall when they are trying to learn to roller skate, but she starts to wonder if her knees will be able to handle a nasty tumble? She starts obsessing over it so bad that the night before she nearly cancels her appointment. The day of, she forgets her knee pads at home because in her dread, she procrastinated properly packing and ran late thus rushing out the door without them. When she arrives, she is so scared to fall that her body tenses up and she falls nearly every time. Halfway through she decides to stop. She drives home, cries in bed and tells herself she knew she should have never tried something as silly and difficult as roller skating. She feels depressed because at the end of the day she was right all along. She should have never even tried.

Depression and anxiety work in a terrible cycle that keeps us stuck and fearful of living and having courage to do so. We just have to see through the fear, take back our excitement, and have the faith to know that we have survived 100% of our worst days. This is not easy at all. I take anti-depressants, anxiety medicine and speak to my therapist once a week. I am blessed to be able to qualify for these things. My hope is that seeing a connection between anxiety and depression will help someone else out there who struggles and may not know why or how to regulate it.

Dating with Depression

Anyone can tell you. Love is a battle field. But what happens when the war is raged on your heart and your mind? Dating with chronic depression can be a huge challenge. As some one who was diagnosed with dysthymia, a chronic form of depression, I constantly fight with myself questioning the decisions I make, what I say and what I'm looking for in a partner. This video was so relatable to how I felt in 2018 that I made it a point to share it with those I was seriously dating:

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Things to consider:

1. Sharing your mental health diagnosis in the beginning is optional.

2. Who you start in the dating process is who you are. Sometimes when I would be dating someone for awhile, I'd notice that I was super open and vocal about what I wanted and expected and about my experiences, but as the relationships became less casual, I began to close up. I used to feel like maybe I sent in my representative and wasn't being authentic. But this is just a way my depressed mind was trying to keep me from enjoying the healthy relationship I was trying to build.

3. Trauma bonding is not intimacy. Sharing a difficult or tumultuous experience in common can feel like intimacy. It is the ability to be validated, serves as a reminder that you are strong and have done much to move forward, and sometimes it even feels like you can trust that person more as you both share in an experience that many may not have or understand. But the extent to which this conversation begins and centers around that particular trauma, the less it will prove fruitful for a relationship. Trauma has a way of often stunting a person. It makes them unable to process emotions, thoughts and information. As we may know, it can as often is present in some parts of the body. Having a connection after sharing in such a visceral experience does not make true intimacy if both people are stuck in the narrative around the traumatic experience. Intimacy on the other hand, is a learned and tested trust, a constant negotiation centered around truth speaking and receiving.

More information about the dangers of trauma bonds here: As the article eloquently says, "just because you hurt the same doesn't mean you love the same."

https://humanparts.medium.com/stop-mistaking-shared-trauma-for-compatibility-ae8dd1f4c7b4

4. Plan for your depression. I will saying dating multiple people at once was fun. But the biggest scare was when my depression came popping up. I was high on the hope of future plans and future dates. Literally I was living for the weekend. So if plans changed, or if anything was not as I had hoped, I'd be devastated for at least a week afterward. Social anxiety has made me comfortable with knowing every detail of my day. Yet, dating calls for a bit of spontaneity and trust in yourself to be able to "handle" whatever may come. If you're like me then you know handling disappoint is just a matter of time before depression is knocking at the door. So you have to have a plan. I didn't have one when I was dating and it created these particular issues:

*I felt like shit and was seeking my dates to make me happy *I would get questions about not seeming like myself or being distant

*I would get the questions of if I was into the person or not (indirectly but still)

*I would have no sense of satisfaction in the present moment as I was either too numb or too pressed for a possible future I had no ability or plan to construct.

So what's the plan? A) Create space and distance even when dating is going good. (We all like consistency in our lives, and being someone who isn't always available will make time away from you, to the person you're dating, normal and not alarming).

B) Have resources: a therapist, life coach, support group, online/remote counseling, a weekly check-in with friends or a friend about mental health. Have a person other than yourself who you feel safe to share your depression and feelings with OUTSIDE the person you are dating.

C) All those things you may have said you like to do on your dating profile or in casual conversation, make sure you feel good doing them alone. There will be time where it may be necessary for you to decompress. But when you're depressed, don't worry about doing the things. Have some sort of visual or psychical manifestation of those things to remind you what you are capable of all on your own.

D) Have a designated time day and place to be depressed in. Give yourself time to feel the depths of the depression. If you don't know why you're depressed sit in the discomfort and ask yourself why. HOWEVER, if the only answer seems to be self-harming: over eating, over-drinking, having risky sex, physical harm to yourself or others...that's when it's time to check back to Step B. If you do not have a support system call: 1-800-273-8255

E) After your designated time, it's time to slowly begin doing things for self-care. It may be very, very slow at first. Maybe you change your pants or try your best to fold a blanket. You brush your teeth, and even just maybe you put on a bra (you bad bitch you!) Seriously these small things when I am depressed are huge accomplishments. You are fighting your depression and every time you do the opposite of what the depression wants, you win.

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There's so much that goes into dating at the beginning. These are just a few things I learned from trials and many many many errors. As I gear up to begin dating more seriously during quarantine, these seem to be stuck on my mind. XOXO,

Moody G