The Catskill Chronicle

Twice Divorced – By Grayce Goin

Dear Twice Divorced:

Nearly twenty years ago, after ruling out physical causes, I was diagnosed with panic/anxiety disorder, which left untreated, evolved into clinical depression.

After several months of the “fight or flight” adrenaline kicking in for no reason, there wasn’t a perceived danger other than what my brain chemistry was triggering, I learned to accept what was happening and why.

Millions upon millions of people suffer through this condition at varying stages.

My depression comes and goes. These conditions can be treated with medicine and therapy but, unfortunately for some of us, it never goes away.

I can’t even begin to count the number of times over the years when well meaning friends or acquaintances, trying to help, said, “Just don’t think about it.” Depending on who is saying it, if it’s someone who means something in my life, I try to explain that I don’t have any control over the serotonin in my brain or the neurons that are misfiring, just like a diabetic can’t control their body’s insulin situation.

I hate to compare the two. A panic attack, although terrifying, will not kill you and my coping mechanism for warding off an attack is to make a joke out of it and warn the people around me how I’m feeling. This is especially important when I board an airplane where I immediately advise flight attendants, that if at some point during the flight I tell them I’m having a heart attack, don’t believe it.

How do you get through to the well-meaning people in your life that you can’t think away clinical depression, that you need the medicine you take as it allows you to function normally, not to get you high? With the hundreds and hundreds of commercials on TV about depression you’d think the general public would have understood by now that we are not this way by choice; it is out of our control.

Rarely Taking Flight Anymore

Dear Rarely,

A few explanations come to mind for this behavior; first is that some people need to believe they have control over their lives, their actions and their perspectives. They refuse to believe that things they can’t control can be determining factors in their lives. Then there are those who believe that anything they have not experienced – whether themselves or through their close family or friends – cannot exist. A third group is constituted by those who believe that absolutely everything about the body can be controlled by the mind and it is your fault that this happening to you. The difference between this and the first group tends to be an overabundance of tofu and roughage. Every one of these people need to get a grip on reality.

The experiences, emotional detritus, commitments, pain and joy that make up each individual cannot be completely known or understood by one’s self, let alone by another. This is yet another case of people feeling that they have the right to invalidate the “self” of others while wallowing in their own inanity. Blow them off – don’t explain anymore, those who are incapable of understanding your situation should simply accept it as a part of who you are and let it go at that instead of being condescending twits.

So spread your wings, enjoy the view and turn a deaf ear on the burbling bubbleheads.

Be Well.

Letters can be sent to deartwice@yahoo.com or Catskill.Chronicle@yahoo.com. Be sure to put Twice Divorced in the Subject line.

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