MY DEPRESSION STORY
My depression story begins just after i was born because the fundamental reasons as to why i became so depressed later on in my adult life all comes back to my childhood and the beliefs about myself that were formed during that time. I have always lived with an overwhelming feeling of not being good enough and i have attributed the cause of that feeling between two people, my mum and my dad.
When i was about three or four my parents split up, my dad didn't take it so well and started drinking pretty heavily, he missed the court session that awarded my mum full custody over me and my younger brother although the judge said he could see us every two weekends if he wanted, my mum was pretty negative about my dad from that time on, she would always blame us for our dads mistakes and shortcomings and if we ever did something wrong it was always "becuase of our bloody father" or we were going to grow up and be "just like our father" as if it was a bad thing, so we obviously carried a lot of guilt as children when it came to showing affection and love towards him, my dad wasn't perfect and could have tried harder, after a while he stopped calling and stopped coming by, when he would call my mum or step dad would answer and tell him "the boys are busy" or "they dont want to talk to you" which was kind of true, when we did talk to him we felt guilty, we felt bad and in the end we pushed our dad away because we felt that would make living with our mum a lot easier. We pushed our dad away because we were trying to please our mum, the burden of growing up like that if you can relate is quite heavy, it is harmful and as you can see from my example, it is not a very good way to treat your children and although you do not recognise it at the time, you are hurting them.
My dad naturally sort of gave up on us, I can now only imagine how much hurt that, "the boys don't want to talk to you" line would have caused and how upset he must have been, as kids we can't often articulate how we feel or explain why we do certain things, we rely on our parents to guide us and teach us wrong from right and i guess i always felt that talking to my dad was wrong. Another thing i could never understand as a kid was how my mum moved us out of our family home (where my dad still lived) and across the same street, just a few doors up, I was too young to understand that they had broken up, I had to see my home everyday and constantly question my mum as to why we weren't going home, even more traumatic was the fact that the next door neighbour used to babysit us when mum was busy or working.. our dad would be outside mowing the lawn and i would be thinking two things, "why can't we just go home, when i can see it right next door?" and "why can't dad look after us if he's home in the backyard mowing the lawn?". Sometimes we would be in the backyard playing and he would be in the backyard talking to us through a fence, none of this made any sense to me at the time and really confused me.
When my dad stopped calling i just thought we were'nt good enough anymore and that he didn't love us, as a child i didn't have enough insight to understand how he was feeling, children are selfish in that regard, they dont really know empathy yet, not until you get older. So i always felt like my dad had let us down and that was confirmed everytime my mum would speak ill of him. He had other kids and seemed to be really happy which only made us feel worse, like he couldn't have been happy with us (something children of divorce do a lot is blame themselves). Then there was my mum, a single struggling mum (she would always remind us, so we felt guilty and were made to feel bad for that also, the sort of "you ruined my life" vibe) trying to balance work and study and raising two kids under the age of four and let me tell you, I was a handful.
Again, I didn't have enough empathy or understanding as a kid to understand why my mum was always so unhappy, why she blamed us all the time, why she was tired, where she was always going, she was always sick of cooking for us, cleaning up after us and looking after us so much so, I would always yell "why did you have kids then?" whenever we had an argument. I felt like we were always babysat me and my brother. As i got a little older i started playing up on the babysitters and really just causing mayhem so that they either gave up babysitting me, or my mum would have no choice but to stay home and love me, I remember making prank calls to 000 or (911 if you're American). The police would come by and the babysitter would be upset, the police would be asking where my mum was and when she finally did return home there would be a bunch of angry people waiting and she would be really angry with me, I knew what i was doing was wrong but i just wanted my mum around, I guess that's what really damaged me and my mums relationship, I always did these naughty things or annoying things to get her attention but then all i would get was negative attention, I started feeling as though i would never be good enough.
I would never be good enough for my mum or my dad "I always thought to myself", my dad because he gave up on us and my mum because she was always away doing other things, who actally cared about me? I asked myself constantly "if i was good enough, wouldn't my mum stay home?" and "if i was good enough wouldn't my dad keep calling?" I was never going to be good enough as i was, so i had to cause trouble and become what my mum called an "attention seeker" because i figured atleast if i got some bad attention it was still attention right? I hate those feelings, I still have them today, I still feel "not good enough" but, I have learned to accept them and live with them, I know where they come from and understand that a negative thought is just a thought and i am able to tell myself that i am good enough, it has taken me many years and a lot of pian, suffering, patience, learning and practice to get to this point.
This whole feeling "not good enough" has also been a blessing for me in life because it has always forced me to over achieve and because of that, I am who i am now, I can't have one degree, I can't have just one business, I can't have just one million dollars, one car or house and im always pushing myself harder and harder, but it never stops hurting.
I got a real big break when i was 15, and i was able to play drums for a touring band and ended up on the other side of Australia playing shows when all my friends were still at school, I felt "good enough" temporarily, girls wanted to have sex with me, guys wanted to tell me how good i was, how great the show was, people asked me for my autograph and life on the road was just so much fun BUT..
There is a flip side to that coin and this is something a lot of touring bands, performers and artists experience.. It's coming back down from the high and stepping off the ride...
It's coming home.
Coming home from something like that is almost unexplainable, the depression kicks in something fierce, it is perhaps one of the most difficult times in your life and you question yourself as to why this feels so terrible and tell yourself it's only a break before you can get out on the next trip, but no matter what you tell yourself, you can't quite help but feel sad, missing and afraid. Fear that you never get back out there, that things won't last, your band will break up, shows cancelled or your label drops you, a sense of missing what you had and wanting to go back re-playing the whole trip over and over in your mind and total darkness, the sadness, accepting that things have temporarily come to an end. When you work 9-5, 5 or 6 days a week, you look forward to having a break, some time away to maybe an island or some tropical resort somewhere, sightseeing in Europe and having a "holiday" but when your life is a "holiday" and you have to take a break from that it does'nt feel very good at all, it feels like everything you have ever known has been taken away from you in an instant and you just feel a sudden loss.
When i finally wrapped up touring and i had exhauseted all of my opportunities i really did hit rock bottom, depression hit me harder than ever, I turned to drugs and alcohol, I slept all day every day, I would runaway and dissapear from friends and family for days, I attempted suicide and i became totally reckless and self sabotaging, I didn't see any value in living my life so i flushed it down the toilet and tried as hard as i could to have it end by all means if i couldn't achieve that goal with my own hands. I had no respect for anyone, no respect for the law and no respect for myself, I didn't get a job or do anything productive i just bummed around and if an opportunity came up that was great but if it didn't well... I wasn't exactly out there looking for or making anything of myself.
I did a lot of soul searching, eventually stopped feeling sorry for myself, rebuilt a relationship with my dad and improved on the one i had with my mum, I saw counsellors and psychologists and even took medication. The most important lesson i did learn at that time was that i was not my environment. Who i was and my identity was not a product of my environment anymore, I was who i was, and i would always have that, just because things didn't work out for me or that things were not going so well for me at the time was not really my fault, I learned then that i couldn't sit around waiting for my environment to change, I had to change it myself, that is pretty damn hard to accept when you are depressed, crippled with the fear, self doubt and anxiety that comes with that but you have got to make some small steps, getting out of bed may be the first one, seeking help or medication the next.. Medication doesn't fix things by the way, its like a temporary crutch or a band aid, you still must heal those wounds but medication can level out the chemicals in your head and make things a little bit easier for you.
I was lucky enough to have found a really good psychologist in my time of need, someone who really understood me and helped me more than i could have ever thought possible, but it does take some looking around, not every psychologist or counsellor is going to be a good fit or feel right, and you have to hang in there and understand that, everyone of us are different and in need of different things and you can find them only when you look. I spent years reading hundreds of self help books, counselling and therapy books, I read hundreds of biographies too, because i always found it interesting learning about how those people went from A to B, from rags to riches, fame & fortune, and it was all helping me find my own way, unconciously i was taking all of that information into myself and i was really improving my own ability to believe in changes, I started studying psychlogy and working towards a future in mental health, helping others and now that's exactly what i do, I share my experiences, combine it with my knowledge and help people.