Conor Cusack speaks out on the realities of battling depression
It’s seldom that something will hit you hard enough these days to stop you in your tracks. Something that demands your full, devoted attention and leaves your mind transfixed on it long after the initial impact has reached your conscious thought. Like many of you at this stage (I hope) I read a blog post by Conor Cusack this morning, one in which he deals with an extremely difficult subject so expertly and eloquently that I felt compelled to write something, to write this. If you haven’t read Conor’s article yet then you really should, find it here. Such was it’s immediate impact PrimeTime identified the urgency of his message and interviewed him tonight:
Assuming you’ve read it/watched it, Conor tells of his own struggles with depression courageously and candidly. Coming from a hurling background it’s publication is no doubt prompted by the sudden and tragic death of Niall Donoghue last week for which there really aren’t many words. It is written with such honesty that anyone who has experienced a period of depression however mild or severe can instantly relate to it, which is probably why I’m typing away this Tuesday evening.
There still lies a stigma surrounding the subject of depression in this country, indicative of the recent budgetary plans laid out to financially support services to better aid people in matters of mental health and well being. Monetary backing aside this article by Conor, I hope can do more to eradicate the pervasive stigma than any before it (early signs are good on Twitter/FB) and teach people, myself included that it’s not a sign of weakness to feel depression and not something to be shamed or embarrassed by.
My own experience’s in developing what became medically diagnosed and treated depression, I best refer to as a trigger moment – not to say my struggles arose exclusively from this moment but to have been the point at which something underlying in my psyche was given the opportunity to take hold of me, feeding off an encompassing, unshakable despair and manifesting itself into something I could no longer control. I felt nothing but a sense of worthlessness, hopelessness and indifference to the world around me. I lost all motivation to do anything, all willingness to interact with people on any basic level and found myself, like Conor spending hours upon hours on my bed writhing in emotional agony, this internal conflict raging inside my head. I started catastrophizing that every possible situation I found myself in was a negative reflection on my character, my own morality and my sense of worth. It drove me to quit what was a great job to have gotten out of college, potentially setting my career back years. Thankfully my colleagues there gave me such great support at that time when they could clearly see that something wasn’t quite right and treated me as a person going through a difficult time rather than another number in a corporate machine. Looking back on it that is something I cannot thank those individuals enough for and as for friends and family, they saved me. Thoughts of you know what, I will admit had momentarily surfaced from within the darkest pits of my irrational mind however I won’t admit right here and now that I considered it a viable option, particularly a year after the death of a childhood friend in such tragic circumstances.
Conor mentions taking his cocktail of prescribed narcotics as not being ‘the way forward and not what I needed’. In terms of my own experiences I think that he is most certainly right. I dunno maybe the drugs I was given to stabilize my apparent ‘chemical imbalance’ weren’t given enough time to kick in and make me see things through rose tinted glasses but I thought they might as well have been Smarties.
The truth of the matter is that yes, talking to someone can help but you need to allow it to. When you suffer from depression even the simplest cognitive actions can feel like ordeals and the thought of actually conversing with someone can be terrifying. But all it takes (and I don’t stress this as an easy undertaking while in a depressive state) is to create one positively perceived experience to lead to another, another and maybe another. Take these building blocks and use every one you can gather to bolt onto as big a mountain as your mind can conceive and with each one your outlook will brighten that little bit more and your old self will begin to reappear.
Today’s modern day pressures amplified through media bombardment and social media ‘highlight reels’ of peers are creating expectations people put on themselves that almost certainly cannot be attained in the short or medium term. My advice to people who have experienced these feelings of total inadequacy or worthlessness while looking around them is to take a step back, as difficult as it may be and realize it can be ok to feel like this, to feel fallible, to feel vulnerable we’re all human after all. As referenced in Conor’s piece ‘a man is at his strongest when he is willing to be vulnerable’. These feelings cannot own you, cannot define you and you can rise above them once you allow yourself while accepting their existence to try with all your might to move forward nonetheless. Conor’s story is an inspiring and engrossing one, one which I hope everybody gets the chance to read/watch whether they have first, second hand or no experience of or exposure to this illness.
From my own inner traumas of the past year or so I can genuinely say that I have come out the other side of it (barring the odd off day or two) a better and more well rounded person and I am certain that for anyone reading this relating to these feelings that you can too, one positively perceived experience at a time.
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