Rebecca: Your story matters

Think Tank podcast

Title: Rebecca: Your story matters

Speaker: Amy Hopkins, Clinical Writer and Liason

Amy Hopkins: Talking about our mental health should be no different than talking about our physical health. But sometimes we get cautious or concerned to talk about our mental health. The truth is, we all struggle sometimes, physically and mentally. We all need support during those times. When we share our stories, it can bring us together and normalize what we're going through. Our stories matter. Welcome to the Think Tank Podcast.

Hello, everyone. This is Amy Hopkins, your host. Today I'm here with Rebecca Thompson. Rebecca is also a Master's level clinician in social work. We are social work sisters.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah!

Amy Hopkins: I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being here, Rebecca.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah. Thank you for having me and giving me this place to talk.

Amy Hopkins: Well, I can't thank you enough for offering to talk about your personal story, about dealing with depression and what you've done to help manage it. Why don't you just go ahead and tell me a little bit about your story?

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, absolutely. Just to repeat, I'm a therapist so I'm often in the place where I'm hearing other people's stories, so I'm really grateful to be in a place where it's okay to share mine. I have been dealing with depression probably since, I want to say around middle school. I officially got diagnosed in college with a major depressive disorder. Major depressive disorder is a very intense period of severe depression that lasts for two weeks or longer. I've had that a couple of times throughout my life. Right now, I have a depression called persistent depressive disorder, which is I have some depression I carry with me. It's certainly not as intense as it has been in the past, but it's something I have to actively manage.

That's something that I do. I manage. I can talk a little bit more about how I'm managing it and that that's possible. But something I've been living with for quite a while and happy to get to talk about it.

Amy Hopkins: You noticed you felt depressive symptoms when you were in middle school, but you weren't diagnosed until much later.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: Which is pretty common. We know that often times, from symptoms to treatment is a long time, over 10 years. When you were in middle school, did you feel like you could talk about the depression? Do you feel like you could talk about your sadness when you were in middle school?

Rebecca Thompson: I think it was hard to talk about it when I was in middle school because I think it was dismissed because a lot of middle schoolers go through mood swings, and high schoolers go through mood swings. I think especially since I was the first child, my parents didn't really know what was normal. I know that they checked in on me and they were concerned, but I think they weren't quite to the point where they knew I needed treatment yet. We also grew up in a pretty religious household, so I think they emphasized that part as opposed to something like going into therapy. Although my mom did eventually take me into therapy in high school. That did happen eventually. I didn't get a full diagnosis until college. I think they knew I was introverted, struggling, sad quite often, but I think they didn't quite know what to do or what was even normal, or was normal for me.

Amy Hopkins: I think that's pretty common too, don't you?

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: Especially I think with girls and middle school, there's this idea that they're moody, they're bodies are changing, so we normalize that. I'm glad that you eventually got the support that you needed.

Tell me a little bit about when you got the diagnosis. What did that mean for you?

Rebecca Thompson: I had, and I still do sometimes have hesitancy about my diagnosis because of the depression. This is part of why I wanted to do the podcast because when I'm depressed, it feels like depression. Sometimes I feel sad, or sometimes I feel numb. I can go down the diagnostic criteria and say, "Okay, I fit all of these." But in the moment, it can also feel like, "Well, my problem isn't that I'm depressed. My problem is that I'm a terrible person. Or my problem is that I'm not smart enough. Or my problem is that my life isn't worth living. There's nothing that I can do that's worthwhile." That was a struggle that I had with the diagnosis, with getting the diagnosis, with getting help.

I know that's a struggle that a lot of people have, too. Because sometimes it's hard to see as depression. It's also hard to believe that help's available because the problem feels so big and insurmountable, and so existential and personal to you when you're dealing with it. How can someone else help me? If I'm innately an awful person, how is someone else going to help me with that? They're just going to say nice, reassuring things, but I know those aren't true. Why do I bother to go to therapy?

Amy Hopkins: It's funny how mean our brains can be.

Rebecca Thompson: Oh, yeah.

Amy Hopkins: ... in that moment of, "I'm not worth it. Other people have it so much worse than I do. I should be okay. I should be able to pull myself up by my bootstraps."

Rebecca Thompson: Right.

Amy Hopkins: That comparing struggle.

Rebecca Thompson: Nothing has happened to me that I should be depressed. People are homeless, people have cancer, people have all these difficult things going on. I don't deserve to be depressed, or I haven't earned being depressed.

Amy Hopkins: Yeah. That idea that it has to be earned. Or I haven't earned my anxiety, I haven't earned my depression. Or, in your case and my case, the idea that because we are therapists, well, we should just figure it out. You should just know what to do. Do the checklist, do the things, and you will be just fine. I think that goes into my next question too, is that we all need help and support.

Rebecca Thompson: Absolutely.

Amy Hopkins: Even therapists. Even people who may not have some big traumatic life event, but they have issues going on in their life. What did you do and what kind of support did you seek out to help you with your symptoms?

Rebecca Thompson: I think the big thing that made me take it seriously was I was in college and I had a suicide attempt. I was hospitalized, so I had to take it seriously. It was literally life or death at that point. Everyone around me was very much encouraging me to take it seriously at that point. That's the first thing that made me start taking it seriously and start regularly doing things. Like taking the medication I was prescribed, going into therapy and taking that more seriously.

I think as my life has evolved, my relationship with it has evolved. I would say there's a lot of things that I do now to manage, including I still take some medication. I don't go to therapy weekly, but I have a therapist that I check in with sometimes, that I can see if things are getting worse. Exercise is a really big part of me feeling better. I have a regular exercise routine. I keep close track of what is meaningful and valuable in my life, and I try to include those things. I think there's a lot that I do and a lot of how I've structured my life to help me not fall into a deep depression again. And to help me live a life that feels important and meaningful to me.

Amy Hopkins: Some of the things that I heard you say about taking care of your mental health, you brought up exercise.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: You brought up using and utilizing support services like therapy. You also talked about utilizing medications.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: What would you say to someone who was struggling with their mental health, with depression, with anxiety, with whatever? What would you tell them as far as why it's important to find what works for you and the importance of finding the right kind of support?

Rebecca Thompson: I think I would first empathize with the fact that it is hard. It feels hard. Sometimes it feels like nothing can help. For a lot of people, getting better can happen slowly. We wish there was one magic wand we could wave and things could be better. Sometimes we do feel like that. It's like, "Oh, if I could only have a different job, have a different relationship, things will get better." The thing is depression is complicated. Sometimes they will. If you're in an abusive relationship and you get out of it, your depression will be better usually. For a lot of people, recovery, it takes time and it is gradually building things into your life that feel good to you. That feel like rest, that feel like accomplishment. Reaching out to people who are experts in depression or experts in even things like medical health.

I know for some people, they don't want to talk to their doctor about depression. Their doctor can screen to see, there are a bunch of health issues that look like depression. It could be, outside of traditional depression, sometimes it's a heart issue that's causing depression. It's an issue with your hormones that's causing depression. It's sleep apnea that causing depression. There's such a complication of what depression can be and what's going on. Getting other people involved to give you support, to give you knowledge to help you decide on what course is going to be the best for you because for a lot of people, there are several things that they do that help.

The good news is ... I hate to say good news because I feel like I'm minimizing it. Any difficulty we deal with can give us wisdom. I don't want to have to deal with depression, I don't want to have had dealt with it, and I think it gives me some empathy for people who are going through difficult times. I think it's given me some knowledge about some of the medical things that can be contributing, some of the social things that can be contributing. Depression can be caused in so many different ways that the good news of that is there's a lot of different potential things that can help people and will help people. There's a lot out there that can be helpful for you. You just have to go out and find the combination that works.

Amy Hopkins: Right. I know when people come to me, I often tell them to see their primary care physician first. Like you said, there are so many factors that can go into what complicates your depression.

Rebecca Thompson: Right.

Amy Hopkins: I there's this idea that physical health and mental health are separate. We know that they're not.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: They're very much intertwined, one effects the other. We're not floating heads walking around and floating bodies walking around. They're connected. I often will tell people to go to their doctor first, get their blood work done, get those things checked.

Rebecca Thompson: Right.

Amy Hopkins: Then you look at the social pieces that you talked about. Do they have the supports in place? Do they have people in their lives that help add meaning and that they can go to? Those are those level one, level two areas that you can look at.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: But the best thing that I feel like you said is there's so many factors that can go into causing depression, but there's so many factors that can go into helping depression. To helping you feel better and less stuck in those dark places, those dark feelings.

Rebecca Thompson: Learning those things can help you build a life that genuinely feels worthwhile to you. People who haven't dealt with depression may have a harder time getting to that place where they really do pay attention to their mental health and they're really where it's top of their priority to build that life of value. Sometimes depression makes you do it in order to prevent it coming back.

Again, not everyone has recurrent depression like I do. Some people just have one period and then they're feeling better. Just to say that exists as well. Even for those of us who have it recurrent, there's plenty that's out there that can help.

Amy Hopkins: Rebecca, I love that you are so open about your story. You're open about your struggles. You're open about your suicide attempt. You are open to telling your story, which is a huge thing for me because the more we talk about our stories, the less stigmatized mental health issues become, and then people will seek the help that they need.

Rebecca Thompson: Exactly.

Amy Hopkins: I really appreciate that you're here and that you're doing that.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah. Again, I really appreciate being on. It's strange because I was telling to my friends and I told them I was going to be doing a podcast on depression. As I was thinking about it, I started to have my own weird imposter syndrome about doing it regarding depression. Partially it is with what we talked about before. I know I have friends who deal with more depression than I do, that's more active and more impairing. Sometimes it's really hard to validate your own experience because it's not the worst case experience.

Yeah. I'll tell myself things like, "I can't legitimately be depressed because I don't have trauma in the past, I don't have a big thing that I'm depressed about." A lot of times my depression comes out and it's not regarding something specific like a relationship, or grief. I just feel bad. Sometimes that doesn't feel legitimate.

Even with all my years, all my years of dealing with depression symptoms, I take medication, I have diagnoses in my health record. I've been hospitalized, I've had a suicide attempt. I've had all the symptoms of depression. And still for me, sometimes it's hard to legitimize that myself, or it's hard to own it myself because there's a part of me that still says, "This is happening because you're not strong enough." Or, "This is happening because you're a bad person. This is happening because you're not a smart enough therapist to think your way out of the depression." It doesn't work like that and I know it doesn't work like that, but that part still sits with me, and that little bit of imposter syndrome still exists.

I know how to deal with it way better than I used to. A lot of that is due to having a good therapist and doing some good work on myself. But it's so common for people with depression to have almost imposter syndrome about it, or feel like I have it, but also I don't have it, or that's not the real problem. I think that can be common for several mental illnesses. It's hard to own it and it's hard to speak on it because I feel worried that I'm not covering everyone's experience. I worry that I'm not the best spokesperson.

Amy Hopkins: Honestly, we're all the best spokespersons because when we talk about our own experiences, they're not going to be the same as everybody else's because we have different backgrounds. We have different upbringings. We have all of these different things that play a part. But there might be one part of your story that resonates with somebody else.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: And hopefully that connection lets people know that they deserve to seek help, they deserve to get help, they deserve to feel better.

Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.

Amy Hopkins: It's so important that we talk about these things, just like we would anything else. I say this a lot, but if somebody has diabetes or they have high cholesterol, it's not a whisper in the corner. You talk about it. It's, "I've got to watch my intake. I've got to watch my triglycerides." There's nothing held back about being on medication or going and seeing a physician, or anything like that. It is just normal. That's what we need to have when it comes to our mental health as well.

Rebecca Thompson: Exactly. I know with mental health in general, but especially with depression, shame is part of it. Shame is a symptom sometimes of depression. Feeling "inappropriate shame or guilt." That part will sometimes interfere with people getting help. Like, "I feel ashamed that I'm going through this. Then again, I don't deserve to get help." Sometimes it just helps to know that shame is part of it.

I know with depression also, it affects your memories and how you feel about the future. When a depressed person imagines doing an activity, a lot of times their dopamine is working differently than a regular person. When I imagine doing something, it feels like on a very biological level like it's not going to help or it's not going to work. That also prevents people from talking to their doctor, getting help. It's very hard even neurologically to do.

I want to give everyone out there who thinks this might be what they're dealing with, or if you're feeling like you're dealing with any other kind of mental health stuff, please go out and get help. It doesn't even have to be at the level of the diagnosis. Even if I didn't end up with a depression diagnosis, if I had gotten therapy when I was younger, that would have been really helpful even if it didn't cure my depression. We all have our struggles and it's important to take care of your mental health, too.

Amy Hopkins: When we hear a story that resonates with something we're going through in our own lives, we feel less alone. When that story shares what the person did to feel better, to get the support they needed, we may learn ways to get the help we need ourselves. If you are struggling with your mental health, feeling depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, there's help available to you. Talk to your doctor, see a mental health professional, reach out to your employee assistance program and see what services are available. Just find what works for you because your story matters. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time on the Think Tank Podcast.

Disclaimer: The Think Tank Podcast is brought to you by Resources for Living and developed by The Think Tank Podcast team. It features Amy Hopkins, Brig Dunsmore, Angela Bell, Leslie Zachariah, Emily Lockamy and Narciso Bowman. If you need support managing life's issues, know there's help available. Check with your human resources to learn more about benefits that can support your mental wellbeing. And remember, if you are in a mental health crisis, please call or text 988 to connect with the crisis lifeline.