There is a tendency for family and friends (and us too) to think that once we come out of a depression episode, life is fine and we are back to normal.

After all, we look alert, we are happy and chipper, we talk about what needs to be done, and we can get things done. So....all is well, right?

No.

We are out of the depression episode,

but our world has not righted itself yet.

We are not depressed, so that's good. But our lives are NOT in order. In fact they are probably in quite a mess. When I come out of depression, here are some of the things I have to deal with.

1

I'm not entirely sure where my paycheck is. It is probably in an envelope somewhere in the kitchen, or the living room, or near the computer. Or in my handbag, or the stack of paper on a table. Well, it's probably in the house somewhere. I should find it and deposit it in the bank.

2

Not all of my bills have been paid. My electricity bill hasn't been. In fact, I'm not sure where the electricity bill is (see Item 1 above). Same with the cable bill and the telephone bill.

3

Wash the dishes. Put out garbage. These haven't been done in about 2-3 weeks and it's...ugly. You don't want to know what a half drunk cup of coffee/cream looks like after 3 weeks.

I have become very good friends with chlorine bleach.

4

Sweep and mop and dust the house and clean the bathrooms. Lots of dust and dog hair. Takes 2-3 times longer to clean than normal.

5

Is my credit card unpaid or is my bank account overdrawn again? Because I didn't deposit the paycheck that's somewhere in my house. One more thing to check on.

6

Contact work to tell them I'll be out again soon. This is never a pleasant conversation, and they know I have depression episodes. Plan what day I'll return. I always dread that first day back to work, even though my colleagues are nice and it's never so bad as I imagine.

7

List the most important tasks and projects I was involved with. For each of them, try to see which ones can be restarted and which should just be abandoned.

Abandoning projects can make sense because the moment for them has passed, but it is also upsetting and it tears a bit out of myself each time I do it.

8

Get ready to start back on my diet. I can add on somewhere between 2-8 pounds in a depression episode. Losing 2-8 pounds will take me 3 weeks to about 3 months. And I have to do this again!

In a typical year, I usually diet enough to lose about 30-35 pounds. And every year, because of depression episodes, I put it all back on again.

9

Get in touch with my family and friends, one by one. That would be a good thing to do since they haven't heard from me in the last two months. Some might be a bit upset that I have been out of touch.

10

Oh yeah. Do laundry. If I'm going to be meeting people, clean clothes would be nice.

11

Try to repair the relationship with my partner. Marriage / dating relationships take a big hit during a depression episode and I need to spend time on repairing those too.

12

Bathe the dogs. Soon. They need trimming too, but that's less critical.

13

Weed and trim the garden. It's become overgrown. The ants and aphids are out of control again, so I have to spray for them too.

14

Buy laundry soap, house cleaning stuff, shaving cream, etc.. Since I've emptied the house of everything during the depression episode, this is usually a big ticket grocery trip.

15

Reorganise my weekly schedule. At the moment, although I am doing well mentally, I am feeling scattered because it's been quite a while since I've had a regular ordered day.

16

Sort out my task list. I have only 82 incomplete items listed on it.

You get the idea. It just goes on and on.

Every single thing I've listed has to be put in order. And a lot of the tasks are time consuming - it takes a few hours to set back up a weekly schedule. Try fitting that in while trying to straighten out the rest of the undone stuff. Especially if everything takes longer than usual because you have to do things like spend twenty minutes finding the electricity bill.

It takes me at least 2-4 weeks before I feel as if I have a handle on my life again.

So when I come out of a depression episode, I might no longer be depressed, but it's unrealistic to expect me to immediately be back in my normal life carrying on as if the depression episode hadn't happened.

Because I'm trying to get my life back in order, it would be really nice not to place extra demands on me in the first 2-3 weeks after I come out of a depression episode.

So if you are thinking "Oh good, you are feeling better, so now you can...." - yeah, don't do it.

Restarting after each Depression Episode is hard!

You might think that with 22 years experience of having depression episodes, I'd have the system of restarting my life post-depression down pat. Frustratingly, no.

Depression really really unravels everything, so the systems that should help me from becoming depressed, or the systems that should help me to rebuild my life after a depression episode fall apart when I am depressed. Completely.

So, while I generally know what I have to do to get my life back in order, it's not a well oiled machine that I put into action. It's much more a scattered "oh, I still have call my parents" and "dang, I didn't buy all the groceries I needed." A more appropriate image is me running around flustered as I come out of each depression episode.

It really doesn't get better with time.

I Start Over after each Depression Episode

The fact that my daily systems fall apart during depression means that I am forced in each post-depression period to rebuild and set back up the same systems over and over again.

I'm not like a person who develops a habit / way of doing things and then over time builds on that to create new habits etc., so that 5 years into the future there is a well established and comfortable set of ways of doing things.

For me there is no long term continuity and incremental building on the past. My ways of doing things in year 5 will look very similar to the ones I had in year 1.

In a way I am always continuously stuck in doing things in the past ways with no way forward.

Knowing how much stuff that needs to be fixed can be overwhelming

If the depression episode is bad, then when I come out of it, there is an enormous amount of stuff to do to get back my life in order. Sometimes, my realisation of how MUCH stuff I have to do to recover can ITSELF trigger another depression episode.

This sense of being overwhelmed has happened to me already and had extended the length of my depression episode and made things even worse.

If this happens to you, you're not alone.

So as I come out of a depression episode, I'm usually annoyed at having to fix the same things again, for the one zillionth time. And I feel a bit scattered because my schedule isn't settled down yet. And I'm guilty about the things I've failed to do and people I've let down while I was depressed. And I wonder when I'll start back to exercise. But mostly, I'm just happy to not be depressed.

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