To schedule me as a guest speaker or to collaborate on a mental health advocacy event (focused on awareness, education +/or community), email: srexroth@hotmail.com.
> Demystify online: #DemystifyingDepression | Fb Page | Ustream | Daily Paper
Stephanie Rexroth, Advocate/Activist
depression-hacker, citizen journalist, life enthusiast
Hi. I'm Stephie, an average 29-year-old living in Pittsburgh, PA... well, except when I'm walking through depression for three or so months at least twice a year.
Depression has robbed me of a lot over the last 13 years -- friends, jobs, opportunities, a career in design, a decent credit score, personal belongings, my independence + at times, a bit of my sanity. I have grieved the loss of those things for many years.
Only recently have I realized the benefit to experiencing depression 13 times (+ counting)... I have a lot of lessons + revelations to share. Therefore, I write this blog to:
- Remind myself of the good times + the all the things I'll inevitably need to relearn when I stumble into the abyss again.
- Encourage others who experience similar mild-moderate distress that they are not crazy + to perhaps view their own anxiety, depression + suicidal thinking in a less intimating light.
- Help those who feel like helpless bystanders to understand what their loved one is experiencing + discover the few small things they can do to provide space for recuperation, processing + healing.
- Inspire all of the above as well as those simply over-stressed to challenge assumptions (their own or those of community, society, culture) + live life uninhibited.
The ultimate goal is to grow beyond focusing solely on mere survival or on struggling to reclaim the ever-evasive baseline of mental health; to live a life well above it to our fullest, most fulfilling potential.
Welcome!
> Find me online: Twitter (preferred) | LinkedIn | Google+ | Flickr | Grooveshark | Goodreads
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Origins
The following is an excerpt from the original blog article (Jan. 15, 2011) via On The Vine Creative, by Stephanie Rexroth: On Metamorphis: discovery of self, career/life passion, vision, village... (in that order)
Demystifying Depression
Breaking the silence to dispel the myths & misconceptions of mental illness
For those who know me personally, this is a subject that is near & dear because of my past 12 years of episodic experiences with anxiety+depression.
While progress has been made to eliminate the prevalent stigma of mental illness from 30 years ago (like: 'you'll be locked up in an asylum, never to be seen or heard from again'), there are still negative, demoralizing messages and perceptions throughout our culture that 'in-between the lines' propagate the myths & misconceptions that a person is damaged, broken, chronically ill.
Semantic meanings of words like anxiety disorder, mental illness and chronic depression, disenfranchise people who experience what I propose is a very common & natural fail-safe/signal system of the body; one that is trying to alert you of a problem. While the end result and physical manifestation of 'depression' looks very similar symptomatically in everyone who experiences it, the causes are exponentially varied -- to the nth degree. Unlike a physical body signals that can examine a problem with tests to 'see' it, ones of the mind & emotions are less tangible; more complex, multifaceted and unique to each individual's experience. Ambiguity makes it easier for people on the outside to misunderstand, assume that the problem is without a solution and hold near mystical beliefs about its causes.
The current cultural messages have people falsely believing that they are helpless to do anything to change their situation; repressing them from ever exploring the causes/sources of the mental & emotional problems and making the necessary changes that will provide relief. Robbed of self-efficacy, people are left with few desirable options to simply numb the pain/distress enough to be able to manage through their everyday lives/responsibilities -- coping through self-medication (drugs, alcohol or... 'fill in the blank here') or through the mental health system which largely prescribes anti-depressants or tranquilizers as a first and only defense.
Personally experiencing relief through learning how to become my own therapist as guided by a professional counselor -- specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) -- I have thus been empowered to make changes in myself that address the true problem (ie: real & sustainable changes). Through a blog (and eventually a book) I want to advocate for others experiencing the same struggles -- to bridge the gap between oppression and empowerment -- by pointing them in the right directions of help & providing hope & encouragement through personal accounts of successful change.
Disclaimer: I am not a counselor or pyschologist -- though, I hope to partner with several to be guest contributors for these articles.
Credentials: My story is that for 12 years (16-28) I experienced no less than 12 episodes of 'major, clinical depression,' which became so regular upon completing college that I was experiencing them cyclically every 4 months for a duration of 4 months at a time.
Through writing as a means of analyzing, I have been able to identify my root causes which are situation-based, specifically in how I process emotions and how I interact with others inter-personally. More specifically how I wasn't doing either well, which are developmental & learned behaviors (ones I have the power to change) -- ones that medication (which I did try for two years, in multiple forms and still experienced upwards of 4 episodes) did nothing to break the cycle; my triggers are not biologically-based.
Note: I will say that I do think medication has its purpose. There are some who may actually suffer from depression as a biological imbalance of neuro-chemicals in which anti-depressants are needed. There are others who are in crisis and medication is an absolutely appropriate short-term, stop gap measure for life-or-death situations to help to restore stability so that introspective CBT work can be completed.
The problem that I see is when medication is proposed as the only solution and when it's an indefinite one, which creates a dependency upon something outside of ourselves to 'fix' or 'save' so that many people never attempt internal change that produces long-term results.
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FAQ
Q: What's with all the 'hitting' + reference to physical violence?
A: I'm a spunky lil chickadee who grew up in the country with boys. Life as a tomboy was preferably much simpler. I'm homesick for it. All problems were quickly resolved with a smack +/or threat of death (ex: "Ooooooh, you're dead now, buddy!"). Since passing the arbitrary age where hitting is no longer socially acceptable, my fave conflict resolution tool is sadly deemed childish at best, barbaric at worst... worthy of prosecution either way. Not knowing how to appropriately express my anger or frustration, I end up turning all of it in on myself as intense self-loathing. You can call me Miss Appropriation, pun intended. Thus, all the references to punchies are my nostalgic reminisces of a simpler, unencumbered time in my life. Thinking upon the good-ol-days + writing about it on this blog warms my heart + brings a smile to my soul. Punch, punch:}
Q: If you were a TV character, who would you be?
A: It took me a really long time to separate TV from reality. In the late 90s I was obsessed with La Femme Nikita. If 'kita had a bad week... I had a bad week (note: Nikita always had a bad week). I'm not reverting back to identifying with any one character in particular. But, if I had to choose (teehee... old habits die hard) I consider myself to be an older, slightly-less-high-strung version of the perfectionist, Annie Edison from Community + a younger, yet-to-be-as-successful version of the enthusiastic bulldozer, Leslie Knope from Parks + Rec. I also share similar qualities with Robin Scherbatsky from How I Met Your Mother (tomboyish, crass + ascared of love) + Temperance Brennan from Bones (intelligent, but socially inept, gullible + painfully naive). The one character that I simply cannot bear to watch is Claire from Modern Family. An example of TV imitating life a little too realistically, she is the exaggerated embodiment of all my inherent neuroses. If left unchecked, welcome to my living nightmare.
Please send your Qs to me at srexroth@hotmail.com
