Brief Catch-up Re-Depression (TLDR: I’m much better!)
T.W. - Suicidal ideation I stumbled upon this tumblr recently, and boy was it a time capsule! In case there is anyone out there who followed my failure with TMS: I went on to try electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). And it kinda worked. I had 3 months of pretty little depression. It was a wonderful experience and taught me that I was capable of not feeling depressed all of the time. The drawback was, that I only responded to a relatively high dose to both hemispheres of the brain. That increased the likelihood of memory loss, and I truly did lose a lot of memories. I did ECT at the end of 2016 and don’t remember 2016-2014 very well at all. That includes my wedding, and all the books and movies I watched in that period, people who I talked to quite intimately (according to our social media messages at the time) I don’t remember at all. Like, their faces don’t look remotely familiar. I also don’t remember almost any of my students from that time. I was told things might come back, and perhaps a few did, but overall, I still have quite the gap. So that sounds rather dark, but the good news is still ahead- I continued to struggle with suicidal thoughts and motivation. Then my father suggested I look into a new kind of therapy - ACT, (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - sounds culty, I know). I looked into it briefly, thought it sounded like it was based in pretty good psychology + neuroscience, so I looked for a therapist. And it has literally been a life changer. The ACT approach to handling negative thoughts, and challenging negative core beliefs, literally took how I felt about myself and turned it on its head. Rather than arguing with each negative thought (like in CBT and to a lesser extent DBT) ACT has you recognize negative thoughts and emotions without reacting to them. I used to feel like my thoughts were me, and if I had a negative thought about myself, that was some kind of truth about how I felt about myself. Now, if a negative thought pops up, I think “I had thought a negative thought about myself, and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean anything about who I am.” ACT also isn’t overly “just be positive” and actually has you do a lot of work facing and really feeling negative emotions. Leaning into them, and as counterintuitive as that might feel to some people, doing that actually loosens the grip that things like anxiety can have. Anyways, I wanted this to be brief, point is, I’ll probably have a tendency towards depression for the rest of my life, but I’m so much better prepared for it now and I wish that I’d discovered ACT a decade ago.










