How I manage when I get depressed

A few things I've learned for those days I don't want to get out of bed

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

My first serious depression hit when I was 30, after a breakup that had been devastating. I went, over a pretty short period of time, from feeling bad to worse to deeply, deeply dire. It was a kind of sad I’d never been before—leagues deeper, and accompanied by a constant ache in my chest—and I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t eat, or sleep that well, and after work, instead of going out with my co-workers, I’d head straight home, order in food I wouldn’t consume, lie on my sofa in sweats, and wonder how I’d gotten myself into such a hole, and how in the world I’d get myself out again. In the mornings, I struggled to get out of bed, head to the shower, and do it all over again.

On the occasions that I did make social plans—and didn’t cancel them—they were absolute torture; it was a huge effort to engage in snappy chit chat like the people I was out with were doing, and I’d count the minutes until it was time, at last, to go home.

My therapist sent me to a psychopharmacologist, who prescribed Zoloft, and in a matter of weeks, I felt like myself again.

And that was that for several years. My moods were protected and life, though far from perfect, was also perfectly fine. Then, at 39, I plunged way, way deeper into unhappiness than I had ever before. I felt frozen, paralyzed, and where in my earlier depression I had taken refuge and comfort in work, now even that was a struggle. At work (this was during the Lucky years) I’d close my office door between meetings, have my assistant hold my calls, and curl up on the sofa in a fetal position.