I’d drop the kids off at school and get back home a little after 8AM. There were no events or appointments on the calendar for the day. I had nearly six and half hours until I had to pick the kids up from school.
I would sit down on the couch and do nothing.
I couldn’t even convince myself to watch TV, because it didn’t bring me any joy. I couldn’t read, couldn’t write, could play guitar, or even clean.
At a certain point, I’d lie down on the couch and close my eyes. I wouldn’t really sleep. Lying down with my eyes closed just felt less bad than sitting up with my eyes open.
Nothing mattered, not even things I wanted to do. There was no point to any of it.
There was only one thing that seemed impervious to my depression: being with our kids. Even as stuck as I was, I knew, as I always have and always will, that taking care of our kids is meaningful. But when they weren’t around, I was stuck.
Time for Serious Science
I’d been on various anti-depressants for a while, but none seemed to be doing the trick.
I was, with my wife’s blessing, a stay-at-home dad. A regular day job had provided structure and purpose, but were now gone. But it also brought a whole host of problems, which is why I’d stopped working to begin with. It also, I realized, served as a distraction from my problems.
My wife and I talked about ketamine therapy TMS, or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. In terms of nature vs nurture, it seemsed like ketamine therapy addressed the nurture and TMS the nature.
I’d been in talk therapy for years working through the nurture part of it, and I suppose the medications I’d been on were for the nature part of it. It was hard to tell which treatment would be better for me.
The big difference? TMS for depression is covered by insurance.
So that’s what I did.
As I write this, I’ve been through 30 sessions of TMS. I’ve gone through all the stages they told me I’d go through: “Is this working?” “It feels like it’s working, but maybe it’s something else?” “Wow, it’s definitely working!”
I’m absolutely floored that people feel like this normally.
TMS is Amazing
One of the most amazing things about this has been the fact that I don’t wonder what the point of my actions is anymore. I thought maybe I would still think that something had no value, but then I’d be able to convince myself otherwise. Nope, it never even comes up now. I don’t even question it.
TMS has an 80% remission rate, but I can always go back when if I need it. I still have 6 sessions left, which is amazing to me. The idea that I haven’t reached my end goal yet is crazy.
None of this is to say that I don’t still have negative emotions sometimes. But they don’t last. They don’t upend my day. And most of the time they don’t come out of nowhere, blindsiding me.
I’m also still the same person I’ve always been. It’s just that now every little thing doesn’t seem so hard.
It’s almost impossible to fully describe what’s happened to me. Unless you’ve ever had debilitating depression, there’s no way you can really imagine it. You can try and there are certainly similarities between being depressed and having depression.
There’s a level of helplessness that comes with depression that is completely unknowable for those who don’t have it.
But, at least right now, I don’t feel helpless anymore, and that is unbelievable.
The Sound of Music
I did not anticipate TMS changing the way I hear music.
Like a lot of people, music can put me in a place and time removed from my present. It’s both amazing and painful.
In high school, I was big into grunge. I couldn’t help it. The timing was perfect. It was music by angsty white guys and I was an angsty white guy.
Years later, when grunge was no longer the staple of my musical diet, I realized something: I couldn’t even listen to any of those bands without feeling a little dark and depressed. Grunge was so great at amplifying a feeling of self-loathing, which I had in excess. Even decades removed, I still felt bad when I listened to it.
But the other day I put some grunge on (I honestly don’t know why) and…I just enjoyed it. It didn’t make me sad. It didn’t make me feel like I was a miserable piece of trash.
That’s not to say that I still didn’t feel some sadness during certain songs, but it wasn’t a present feeling, it was past.
Now I’m hearing the songs in a new way, catching aspects of it that I never noticed before.
Which I guess is a pretty good metaphor for how TMS has affected my entire life.
KyleGarret.com 