Mental Health Tips: Making Friends With Depression

Written by Charles Minguez | How It All Started

A Bit of Background

Before relaunching my blog, I played around with some names and tested them out. (Yes, I had another blog with mental health tips. You can see the posts, which have been syndicated over at The Good Men Project). Some folks got it, and others were a bit confused. So, I wanted to explain the meaning of the name to eliminate any confusion.

Two things appeared. First, in the form of a question, "Why would I want to make friends with my depression or mental illness?" Second, it was compared to Wim Hof the Iceman (A serious compliment!). I would say that it's somewhere in between.

Before we jump into the meaning of the name, I have to say a few things about my lived experience.

At thirteen, I was diagnosed with major depression. Schizoaffective disorder at seventeen. Before the age of eighteen, I had been hospitalized three separate times. I have done half-day treatment options too.

Doctors prescribed Prozac, Wellbutrin, Lithium, and Risperdal. I was on many of these medications well into my twenties.

At various points in my life, I've seen therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. My treatment included overcoming my addiction to alcohol and street drugs.

When I was in high school, I did a scared straight program. In eleventh grade, I dropped out of high school. I squatted with friends. Honestly, I'm lucky that I'm not dead.

Act Two: Enough is Enough

In my twenties, I said to myself, "I just can't take this anymore!" After drinking a bottle of Wild Turkey, I broke down. I realized I had some tough decisions to make.

I got my GED. Later graduated with a master's degree in new media journalism. I'm married with four beautiful children. I can hold down a job. For this, I'm incredibly grateful! Many are not so lucky.

At this point, I've lived most of my life with mental illness. More of my life includes mental illness than not - which is wild to say.

But, I'm not a therapist, nor am I a psychiatrist. So you'll never hear me say to get on or go off meds, and nothing I say should be taken as medical advice. Your mental health plan and medications should be discussed with your doctors and therapist.

The goal of this podcast and related content is to share my experience of almost thirty years of living with mental illness and share techniques that have helped me during the healing journey. The mental health tips I share should be considered supplemental to your mental health treatment plan.

How Did You Make Friends With Your Mental Illness?

I can answer that question in two parts. One, the name came to me from my spiritual practice of Buddhism. Two, I've lived with it for my entire life. Right, so what does this mean?

For example, there are Buddhist meditations where you imagine the nature of your mind like a clear blue sky. Emotions, feelings, and other states of mind are like storm clouds. These storm clouds can roll into the clear blue sky, but they never destroy the sky's nature.

I see my mental illness as those storm clouds. The fundamental nature of my mind, believe it or not, is calm. Sometimes storms brew, they get loud, and sometimes the storms are scary. However, the storms eventually go away. Until they come back.

This is where living most of my life with mental illness comes into play because, in my case, the storms always come back. At my age, I understand the storms come and go and will continue to come and go until the end of this life. It does me no good to deny it.

Instead of trying to push away my mental illness or sing a silly song wishing the rain would go away, I can simply accept the fact that it's there. Even better, instead of looking at my mental illness as an enemy, I can embrace it like it was a friend.

Making Friends With Depression doesn't mean that living with mental illness is easy because it's not. It doesn't mean that we causally write off our mental illness. Making Friends With Depression means getting honest with ourselves and our circumstances. It's only from this space that we can then begin taking steps to heal.

Again, I'm not a therapist and will never tell you what to do or not do. Also, I'm not guaranteeing that your mental illness will be healed. What I share are simply suggestions. Try them out, or don't. As I suggest, you can tweak them to fit your needs or use them entirely. Or maybe none of this is for you, and that's ok too. Either way, I think that there's something for everyone here.

So, what sort of things will I be sharing? I'll share what I've learned over the past thirty years about diet, meditation, finances, time management, etc., and how these areas impact mental health. Think of them as mental health tips! I'll be sending out a weekly newsletter along with launching a podcast!