 Hey, Psych2Gars. Depression. When does it creep into your life? You never know. I first experienced depression in middle school. As a preteen, I naturally wasn't able to tell how my mind was working differently. Probably the most common features in a scenario like that is depression and sadness being somewhat interchangeable terms for you because you haven't learned the difference yet at that age. In fact, it probably wasn't until my 27th birthday when I realized how truly separate the two were when I spent a week unable to leave the house despite being in a pretty great mood. And really, for two-thirds of my life at that point, I'd only experienced depression in terms of extreme sadness or lethargy in response to an event, usually interpersonal. Most of what I've learned about it has come from the past five years. As a preteen, I experienced a great deal of depression or sadness as I would call it then, mainly due to academic, social, and presumably hormonal difficulties. Being a perfect example of your inherent shy kid of the family left me nihilistic. I was often finding ways to try to draw attention to myself. Passively, of course, because of shyness. From drawings and writings to song lyrics, I began to express what I was going through in a number of different ways. For the sake of expression and as a way to prove myself as more capable than the person I negatively perceived myself to be. Somewhere between middle school and early high school, I degraded emotionally to a great extent. I began making threats of self-harm and was even pulled out of public school. When this happened, I also went from 110 pounds to a staggering 160 over the course of about three months due to the medication I was on. Throughout most of 2002, I smiled in exactly zero photos, including a professionally done family portrait. I now recognized this was stated and deliberate, a sort of generalized clapback against the outside world because of how I felt. I would sometimes be needlessly bitter, stubborn, even explosive, and I often spent all evening in my room playing video games or watching TV. Although I never stopped drawing, I did stop experimenting with crafts like collage and writing, etc. The lowest moment was likely after committing a particularly upsetting form of self-harm, which I covered up with a bowling glove. This only attracted attention to it and no time the secret was wide in the open, causing me to double down on attention seeking behavior. There were brushes with depression throughout the decade. A more chronic form of depression arrived in my late 20s as I finally got my bachelor's degree and faced a difficult job market living in Atlanta. A decision was made to apply to grad school. While undergrad was easily one of the happiest periods of my life, grad school was much more complicated and came with persistent bouts of depression and anxiety. I was substantially less social and prone to spending hours laying on the couch, either playing with my phone or doing nothing at all. I would stare at the ceiling or break my head between the pillow and cushions. Most of grad school was backlit by anxiety and depression, bouncing off of each other. However, I became much more proactive in my mental health as a result and eventually settled on a prescription regimen that I still follow today. I then started regular therapy for the first time as an adult, which I've mostly kept up with since then. Following grad school, I moved yet again and spent all of 2019 squeezing as much employability as possible out of my extremely narrow window of interest and commercial work. An intensive outpatient program via Zoom kept me afloat on three therapy sessions a week. And looking back over the past year, I can see my mood as something zigzagging like the chart of a tumultuous, but slow upward trending company on the stock market. Over time, rock bottom becomes a little higher than before and the good days become more like actual good days than simply normal. Much of this time was spent in a suffocating, crowded and dark apartment and taught me an important lesson about considering the mental health impact when looking for apartments on a budget. Over the decades, I've had a number of methods of dealing with depression that weren't particularly healthy. The ones that were healthy, however, often involved distraction or turning to friends. Distraction could mean driving around and listening to music, a rural pastime, for sure, or it could mean something more hobby oriented. The video game collection I mentioned earlier continues on and off to this day and opened up a little time capsule to turn on in moments of stress and escapism. However, if not handled correctly, this hobby becomes detrimental very quickly. Escapism can limit one's ability to make a real change in their life and improve their situation. Art was far and away the healthiest channel for me to process and express things going on in my life and it has always run the gamut. I've experimented in essentially every type of drawing I could get my hands on and in most types of paintings and photography. As a preteen, I would work with clay as well as modifying existing toys to make new things out of them. Pictures, Sid from Toy Story, but less nefarious, even though I had the same t-shirt. More than anything though, simple drawing and writing have been my go-to format. In pursuing animation, I made films about subjects like depression, anxiety, grief, and emotional dependency. I was able to unload the things that weighed on me and make a recognizable, semi-permanent change in my mental state. As I entered my 30s, I started regular therapy and learned a host of other skills and coping mechanisms, many of which I still use today. I try to walk outside as much as I can as walks outside can carry a lot of benefits. Others include journaling, mindfulness, meditation, and self-parenting. All of these have helped me get through several periods of stagnation to the current day. Where I've had a number of breakthroughs as to the causes of my psychological struggles and have been able to work on them directly and make plans for treatment that's not only more effective but potentially more permanent. Depression arrives in many forms and can disguise itself as sadness, lethargy, apathy, and others. I've learned that recognizing depression can be deceptively difficult because when it's at its worst, it has your mind under its control and it gets harder to differentiate the real world from the dystopia that depression will convince you is real. Time helps, as does mindfulness, exercise, and spending time with loved ones, if at all possible. And no matter how long you've dealt with it, you can always let your guard down without noticing. It's important to try the things that work, but the most important part is maintaining some semblance of effort trying to wrestle control from depression's grip so you can steer yourself in the right direction. It may mean complete control, or just pulling the wheel in the right direction every time you get your hands on it. Either way, the most important and often seemingly hardest part is simply trying. That often means physically getting up to do something that will make you feel better, not the thing that will give you a burst of dopamine, like frivolous spending or junk food. It's also very important to keep in mind that this is a process, not a simple cause-and-effect solution. The most important word in this video's title is overcome, as opposed to the past tense, overcame. It can go away, sure, but it will almost certainly take time and it can come back. Dealing with depression is not a singular act, it's a pattern of good habits, the knowledge of what activities will provide you with the greatest improvements in mood and what activities will be a temporary distraction. Your most important decisions when dealing with depression, outside of the medical choices you make, will be the lifestyle you live and the way you treat yourself and others. Has your experience with depression been like this, or different? If you have a perspective you think could help others know when to see a doctor or therapist, please let us know in the comments below.