 This week on the anxious truth. We're going to talk about depression because it's a thing We don't talk about enough specifically. We're going to talk about my own personal experience with depression and how I handle it So let's go Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number two zero one I'm recording in March of 2022, but I have no idea when you're going to be watching this If you are new to the podcast, I am Drew lince a lot of creator and host of the anxious truth This is the podcast that covers all things anxiety and anxiety recovery today depression So if you're dealing with things like panic disorder or agoraphobia, this is the place for you I'm happy that you're here if you're a returning listener or viewer on YouTube. Hey YouTube welcome. Glad you're here as always So this week we're going to talk about depression specifically I want to talk to you about my personal experience with depression because people do ask me about it all the time And I kind of want to give you some some idea of how I deal with it when it happens to me Before we do that just a quick reminder, of course that the anxious truth is more than just this podcast episode There's over 200 other episodes. There are three excellent books in anxiety and anxiety recovery There is a morning newsletter, which is a little helpful essay about anxiety and recovery with a corresponding podcast It comes out every weekday morning and just a ton of social media stuff Please avail yourself of all the resources you can find everything on my website at the anxious truth calm And if you are enjoying this work, and I'm helping you in some way And you want to find a way to support it and help keep it add and sponsorship free Which I am hell-bent to do as I go forward you can find ways to support this work at the anxious truth comm slash support Certainly not required, but always appreciate it. Thank you so much for all of that So let's get into the depression topic. I have dealt with clinical depression three times in my life And I'm just going to try and give you my own personal experience today because people asking about it all the time And I've been meaning to talk about it So people often ask well, what's the difference? You know is do you float and accept is it the same the same thing applied to depression? I can tell you unequivocally that the answer is both yes and no and The reason why I say no is because the thing that I really want to get across today And giving you my own experience not only in the past with depression But in the times when it can sometimes creep in on me now even so I'm a little prone to that There's no doubt about that. I'm not going to hide it. I can tell you what I do So in terms of like acceptance, I think there's a there is an element of that for sure But where is with anxiety and panic and that sort of stuff We're always looking to sort of just let it happen so we can pass through it That really isn't the way here now the acceptance that okay, I may have these feelings. I can handle them is true so there is an element of accepting it and not trying to somehow think it away or Hold it off with thoughts or just wish that it doesn't come because that that's pointless in a way At least for me, I know that I have to accept that every once in a while I'm going to just a feel like that in a certain to a certain extent one way or the other and So it does me no good to worry about it it does me no good to wring my hands and and Scan myself all the time from my mood To see if it's happening or not happening. None of that helps me in any way So to me I think there is an acceptance and again, this is my own personal experience with this But I do feel there is an element of acceptance that goes into the way I deal with depression and I think is a healthy way to deal with depression and that I know that I can't fight it Or worry about it because worrying about it and scanning for it. It does no impact. It doesn't matter That being said I will say that for me Getting out of a depressive state now Look the first time that I really experienced true clinical depression Then I wrote about it in my first book an anxiety story which you can download completely free. Sorry notification sounds Which you can download completely free if you go to my website and just click on an anxiety story You could see you could download it for free at Smashwords or as an mp3 free download I wrote about that and the first time I wound up in a deep clinical depression Which is something I would not really wish on anybody to be honest with you. I would take anxiety over depression any day. I Medicated that And I don't regret that and I've talked about that. I wrote about it in the book I did three podcast episodes last year about my Experience with antidepressants. You can go back and listen to those. I'm not going to get into it here I do not in any way regret that decision It helped me there's no dead about that I am not a fan of medications You guys know that but I respect everybody's personal decision and I will also be completely disingenuous if I did not Acknowledge that the use of antidepressants in 1996 when I was severely depressed. It's not beneficial It was beneficial to me, but in the times since then I Will tell you that my way out of depression and even today if I feel it start to creep in on me is Action it's activating. It's it's doing it's challenging So it's definitely not a passive just let it happen and float through a thing It's okay recognize where I am right now and then activate to challenge the assertion that I cannot do anything because for me and for a lot of people depression will rob you of of your feelings of humanity or or competency or Anything it's it's a feeling of Just nothing. It's a horrible inhuman feeling of just nothing. This is for me. I can tell you what it feels like for me So it's not I tell you what it's not it's not sadness. It's not a low mood It's not being blue even for a week at a time. It's not being blue. It's or sad or having low mood The feeling for me of depression is like somebody just flushes your humanness away the color goes away And there's just no feeling. It's an empty feeling. It's a terrible feeling and in that state You just don't feel capable or even interested in anything at all like your your ability to engage with the world just gets flushed I can't describe it. It's these are hard things to put into words but The way out has always been Barring the use of medication which is is fine if you choose medication. I'm behind you on this I don't have a problem with that For me the way out has always been when I think I can't that is when I must it's when I must and must means Sometimes the smallest things and that includes literally just swinging my feet out of bed and putting my feet on the floor and just walking around the house that day getting dressed in something other than what I slept in and brushing my teeth and washing my face and combing my hair and Maybe if I could get through the shower, I'll do it. I'll feed myself I'll maybe go and sit in the sun for five minutes None of those things I want to do none of them hold any interest for me None of them bring me any sort of feeling or joy. I remember these days so clearly I will remember them to the end of my days, but I had to do them anyway So for me the path out of out of depression in the times that it has happened to me Barring the use of medication was that It was taking one tiny step at a time and activating and activating and activating and in the end I would people say so fake it. Yeah in some instances. I would say I had to fake it. I had to fake it. I Don't you know sometimes these are hard things to talk about but I don't mind talking about it It's totally fine, but I can remember You know just sitting in a beach chair in the winter in my yard in the sun because I knew I had to sit in The sun. I knew it was part of it. The sun doesn't cure depression Exercise doesn't cure depression. It's a cumulative effect of doing all of these things to start to experience that that sense of the longing or attachment or Worth again. Oh look, I can do this. I can feed myself. I can't take it over myself It pulls me out of it That is what got me out of two episodes of clinical depression that I wouldn't wish on anybody Little bits at a time, but I'll never forget sitting in a beach chair in the winter on a particularly warm day And warm in New York might be 45 degrees Fahrenheit. It was not a warm day, but the sun was warm and it was out And I remember thinking this is insane. I was sitting like an old man in the sun and For those of you who know me or anybody who knows me in real life would think like really but yeah Yeah, that's what I had to do so You know, how did I have to deal with depression and the times that it happened to me? I had to activate I had to move and I know how crushing it can be I do not want to minimize it for anybody who is experiencing that or ever has experienced it It is it is crushing it robs you of your sense of humanity and and worth and all of those things and Nothing it just nothing seems like anything for me. Nothing seems like anything people sometimes ask me Well, did you were you negative? Do you feel like you were worthless? I didn't feel like I was anything So I know that many people will say well There's a constant narrative in my head about how I am not worthy and I screw everything up and nothing can ever get better I understand those are may be different experiences than I had everybody's gonna experience it in their own way I can only tell you the way I experienced it the way I tend to get out of it And I did get out of it twice And the way that I approach it now talk a little bit about, you know, when I start to feel that creeping in now Because I I do feel it creep in sometimes on me Not that often in the last couple years it has not really been around But I will tell you that if you've listened to the podcast for any more than about three years You've heard me in episodes where I could feel that depression happening And what I had to do I never got to the point where I was those other three times in my life Thankfully it did not progress to that point, but I will tell you what I did when I did start to feel that happening now It's really important for me to to talk about for a minute or two What it doesn't feel like so I may be sad at times. I may be upset. I may be down I may just be in the dumps. I may feel unmotivated lazy exhausted tired I may feel all of those things at any given time that happens to all human beings I can tell you that never in my life in the times that I either went all the way down the road to full Major depressive state extended depressive state or the times when I could feel it coming on and I was able to sort of steer myself out of that None of those times was I felt really sad and it turned into depression For me I could speak for me and I think I could speak for many people from whom I've learned and interacted That never happened so I know many of you watching many in the community surrounding the podcast who are dealing with anxiety problems One of the fixations we sometimes develop is well Then what if I get depressed because I hear that depression comes with anxiety not all the time It can but it not all the time somebody asked me today my Facebook group was my depression the result of my anxiety And I honestly can't answer that Because I've I've I've dealt with depressive moods and depressive states and mild and mild forms You know Since my recovery. I'm not an anxious person anymore. I don't have an anxiety disorder I have it for many many years and yet I can still kind of go down that depression route a little bit so We get fixated some people get really fixated on but what if I get anxious and you begin to scan for signs of that and We confuse being sad with being depressed or that being sad or not feeling joy For some reason like I wasn't feeling the way I think I'm supposed to feel so now I start to think oh maybe this means I'm becoming depressed No in my experience and again, I'm just sharing my experience with you in this episode I have never dealt with a depressive state that started with oh I feel sad and it somehow turned into depression. I They are not related being sad and being depressed are not the same thing Depression like I said is more like feeling nothing than feeling sadness I would I would have paid to feel sad in the days that I was depressed So it's important for me to say that I never have been in a situation where I just felt blue or down or low or sad And and that turned into or developed into depression that doesn't that doesn't seem to weigh be the way that works That's not the mechanism behind it. I do not claim to be an expert on depression I only claim to be somebody who has lived through it multiple times and has had the benefit of Interacting with many many people who have who have dealt with it and listen to those stories and try I'm trying to relay them And that's it, but maybe this helps you. I don't know now the times in the recent past and in the recent past I would say in the last 10 years since my recovery from an anxiety disorder There have been times when I could feel it begin to creep in and those times have varied things have been going great Things have been going not so great. I've been really happy. I've been down It doesn't matter. It just starts to happen and I don't know why and in the past couple years It really hasn't happened and I'm thankful for that, but I can tell you what I do First of all, the feeling is one of again like the color starts to get washed out of the world suddenly everything is pointless It's not oh, I feel oh man. I'm really not motivated today. I must be depressed. It's not that at all It's everything begins to lose its meaning Everything in the world has some sort of meaning as Ridiculous a fence post outside my window here that I record has some sort of meaning to it But then it doesn't and that's what I know. That's when I know that that it's happening I don't know based on my my my happiness level. I don't know that it is not a predictor of it for me and When I do start to feel it creep in because I know what it feels like now I do a lot of silly things that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily Understand and for me a lot of it is physical, you know, I've always been really physical I you know, I've been a gym guy I've been into competitive lifting and all this stuff and I just I go to that I go to that now It hasn't happened in a couple years and we all get a little bit older my shoulders run fire all the time I beat the hell out of my joints in the gym for 15 years So, you know some of that stuff I may have to build new coping actually cool new coping skills after a while I don't know but for me and you'd have to adapt this to your own experience in your own life. I Will run more. I will lift more. I will try to set another personal record in you know with an overhead press I will move I will challenge myself to do difficult things I will bury myself into really difficult projects in my work now my work looks different now that it did two years ago So I would did a lot of very technical work. I would take on these big challenges and build new things and That mattered that mattered so and the people close to me in my life would know What was going on with me because I would I would say well, I have to now I have to do this now I have to do this and I would put more weight on the bar consistently and I would do more cardio and I would push myself and challenge myself all the time Mentally and physically and that made the difference. So when I would feel the meaning and the colors start to flush out of the world I Can activate that way and challenge myself and push myself and engage more and and that would make the difference for me now You know, I can't say certainly that that would work for me forever If I started to feel that tomorrow and I tried that again, would it work? I don't know that But that's the way I did it. So I have dealt with depression in my life at varying degrees With the same exact Strategy which is to activate and challenge Sometimes that challenge looks like just being able to brush my teeth and eat a banana that day Sometimes that challenge is Getting on a bike for two hours and pedaling as hard as I can or lifting something heavier than I've ever lifted before or Building a brand new like WordPress hosting platform that didn't exist before like these are all real world examples from my life You see how varied that is but in the end it was always an activation and a challenging thing So that is the way that I have discovered that I have to deal with depression Again, the the biggest takeaways are yes I have used medication for depression and it worked. It got me out of my depressive state I do not deny that if you choose to be to turn to medication because you're in a major depressive state I would a hundred percent support you. I don't have any judgment on anybody's use of medication ever But I've also done it without medication and it was about activating even in the smallest Possible way and I get it some days just putting your feet on the floor seems impossible But you got to do it you got to do those little things and then when I feel it coming on now Which has nothing to do with being sad or down or being in a low mood? It has to do with it. It's just different. It's just so hard to put into words It has nothing to do with sadness Nothing to do. I've been periods of my life where I'm terribly happy and everything's going great and I could feel it start to setting in I just I feel it and it's not because I was afraid to be depressed. I wasn't scanning for it. It just happens I don't know why I'll probably never know And maybe you'll never happen to me again But when I do that and then I have to start to go into that challenge mode activate more more more when really what I Want to do is withdraw and isolate and stop talking to people and just lay on the sofa That's what I want to do when I start to feel that way But I can't do that because I'm not going back there again now again. Maybe one day that won't work for me I don't know I'll keep you posted, but that is how I have dealt with depression That's how I deal with it now in my present life when it starts to creep in Maybe this has relevance to you Maybe it doesn't but I get asked about it all the time and I'm more than happy to share that experience if I ever do Experience again, I will share it with you guys and I have a problem with that if it helps and that's the story That's the story of how I have dealt with depression and how I do deal with depression I know how difficult it is. I know I've been there and I would not wish it on anybody I'm not kidding when I say that I would take the anxiety over the depression any day of the week if I had the choice So there you go if you guys have questions about this I am more than happy to answer them in the Facebook group or on Instagram or on the YouTube comments whatever it happens to be I'm happy to help out any way I can with this again. Keep in mind. This isn't therapy I am not your depression therapist and I don't claim to be an expert on the subject of depression But I can pass along what I I know to be true from other people and what I know to be true from me So hopefully this has helped anyway, um If you're listening to the podcast on itunes or Spotify where you can rate and review leave a five-star review write a Review, you know leave a five-star rating and write a review if you if you get a chance If you're watching on YouTube by all means like and subscribe leave a comment I'm happy to interact with you guys. Hopefully this has been helpful. Not the happiest topic I know it's a little tough for me to talk about But I appreciate you coming by and listening and I will be back again next week I don't know what I'm gonna talk about, but I'll be here and You know the deal. This is the way keep going and this is after go by Ben Drake Don't forget. Go find him at ben drake music comm and tell him I said hello See you guys