By DR. PIERRE B. BLAND

Change. I am not a big fan of change. It is so insidious. All of a sudden you find yourself in an unfamiliar situation within your usual surroundings. If I was a patient man I would possibly be more tolerant, but I am not.

You wake one morning and you realize life feels strange, different. The world feels like that suit you have owned for years and one day decide to wear. You can still wear it, but the suit just isn’t a comfortable fit anymore; a bit tight here, too short there, and it bunches up in the seat. I awoke one day and deduced similar aspects about my life. It was like my world didn’t fit anymore. I had out grown it or it shrank somehow as it waited for my next use. The change didn’t occur all of a sudden, but gradually as change typically does. All the techniques and thoughts I used to survive and thrive before don’t seem to work as well if at all. My vision and reactions to the world are out of sink.

That is how depression feels, at least as it does to me. All the metaphors and similes never fully work and it is impossible to explain to yourself much less to others. All the trials and tribulations of the world catch up to you seemingly at once and it takes all your energy to get things done and just get through the day. In many ways, it is like a battle with and within yourself. But how does one out think one’s self? The good thing is with help, life doesn’t have to continue and be this way.

Everyone’s path to recover is different. Mine includes a lot of talking, stress reduction, and making it a point of looking outside myself for answers instead of searching exclusively within. Of course prayer and meditation are required components. Interaction with others in non business/work related ways has been especially helpful. Social interaction with others helps you define yourself and your situation in a more reasonable and realistic way. They help you realize the adjectives amazing, incredible, and uncanny apply to you along with many others, but definitely not invincible as one tends to falsely think as depression develops and infiltrates your life. Though it is a slow journey, it does get better. I guess I do have a modicum of patience after all.

We all experience depression to some degree at times. The point is not that you have depression but that you decide to do something about it.

Dr. Bland is a small and exotic animal practitioner in Oakland Park, FL. He can be reached at 954 673-8579.