With MS, my mental health had to get worse before it got better

After today, I have only one more session of therapy for my current bout with depression. I don’t mean to imply that I’m getting chased out the door, or that more therapy won’t be recommended in the future, just that I’ve come to the end of my current program. I have no doubts that I’ll be depressed again, but these sessions have given me some good tools to combat those feelings, and my therapist and I feel that I’ve made good progress.

When I made up my mind to seek therapy for my mental health, I was immediately rewarded with positive feelings. I rode that wave through the first two sessions or so and then experienced what I thought was a setback. As I became more self-aware, I began to feel as though a cloud had moved out of the way, and I was saddened to see all that I had missed while in the depths of depression.

It turns out that this is perfectly normal. As I healed from depression, I had to get worse before I was able to get better.

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Although there were certainly other contributing factors, I think I can comfortably say that multiple sclerosis (MS) has been the primary driving force behind my depression. I imagine that many others with both depression and a chronic disease could say the same thing.

I still hold out hope for a cure, but for now, I’m not getting better — not physically anyway. I can get better mentally, so I’ve chosen to make an attempt. But the beginning of this process would’ve been easier if I’d realized that I might get worse first.

As I’ve noted before, immediately after my diagnosis with MS, I was relieved to have an answer about what I was experiencing, and that the answer was nonfatal. It was about a year later when the seriousness and severity of the disease dawned on me (not for the last time) and I had my first brush with depression. I tried to make peace with my illness as quickly as I could, but when I took stock of time lost and damage to relationships, my mental health worsened, and that wasn’t as easy to recover from.

MS is not a happy disease, but my life often is. For me, the key to being more happy than sad is knowing that there will be plenty of sad times and that occasional sadness is part of being happier. Looking back and realizing that I missed out on my own life and the lives of others because I was waiting until I felt better saddens me every time. Managing my depression has been a painful, yet important step toward repairing the damage and being more content despite MS — and that makes me happy.

I’d normally say that if I could go back in time and tell myself anything, it would be to not waste what time I have. Now, I think I’d add in this little lesson: It’s not healthy to dwell on the past because it can’t be changed. Learning from it and maybe even passing on a lesson probably doesn’t count as dwelling on it. If it were possible, I think I’d tell my past self not to be caught off guard by depression. I’d also make sure that I understood that sometimes getting worse is an important part of getting better.

Maybe my past with MS can’t be changed, but my future can.

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