Depression can be a life sentence, but only if you choose it to be. Tamra Mercieca talks about how she overcame this debilitating illness.

I was clinically diagnosed with depression five years ago. I was devastated to find out that I had become a statistic – one of the one in five people who suffer from a mental illness in Australia. At the time there was still quite a stigma attached to having depression, and I cried all the way home.

Throughout my teens I battled low self-esteem and constantly sought approval from others. The only reason I visited my doctor some ten years later was because the depression had begun to make me physically ill.

I tried everything to pull myself out of that big dark hole. I took up yoga, went to counseling and swallowed down the anti-depressants my doctor prescribed. The problem was the tablets made me put on 15 kilograms – weight I couldn’t move until a year later when I weaned myself off them.

By then I was doing okay, but it was as if I was on a roller coaster I couldn’t get off. I’d be fine for a few months then something insignificant would throw me back into that dungeon of darkness. I kept up plenty of exercise and continued the counseling, and while both helped, they weren’t permanent fixes.

It wasn’t until I met Life Coach Anjie Camens that I began the journey of letting go of my depression. At the time I was suffering severe harassment from a work colleague, the band I had been playing drums in had just fallen apart, and worst of all, my relationship was on the rocks. I had become suicidal.

The day I spoke to Anjie, I began the process of turning my life around. I found a new job with great people, I began a floristry course which gave valuable ‘me time’ to de-stress, and as a result my relationship improved immensely.

I took the proactive road to Chinese Medicine practitioner, Adam Davidson, who treated my depression with acupuncture, cupping and the foulest herbs I’ve ever tasted. The results were amazing.

The first week I was on a high, and then with continuing treatments my emotions balanced out and I started feeling my happy self again. “With depression a lot comes out physically, so if you start relaxing the patient with acupuncture and cupping, they can leave feeling a lot better straight away”, Davidson says.

But four months later I realised I was relying on the acupuncture and if I went without it for a month, I would start to get down again. It was serving me from a physical perspective, but I also needed to reprogram the way I viewed my depression.

As it happened I had to travel to Adelaide for a friend’s wedding and by complete fluke, I stumbled upon Anjie again. We met up for two hours and she told me I was wearing the ‘depression label’. The what? I asked. Then she explained how I was using my doctor’s diagnoses as an excuse to be sad, as a mask to hide behind, and worst of all, as a tool to get attention and create dramas in my life.

At first the concept was hard to digest but when I thought about it, it made sense. I realised that a label doesn’t always help – often it can get in the way of feeling that we can do anything we put our minds to. It can be experienced as a damning rather than a relief.

I could now go on holiday and take my anxiety and depression away with me, along with my hayfever, my partner and my togs. It was easier when we just called how we felt ‘the blues’, ‘being stressed’ or ‘out of sorts’. Winston Churchill used to refer to being with the ‘black dog’.

I found it helpful to ignore what I had believed to be a debilitating label. Then Anjie and I looked at what was happening in my life and how we could fix aspects that were dragging me down.

She told me that the battle of the mind begins at birth and never ends. “It is time you make the choice to win the battle against depression”, she said. “This will be done by you focusing only on the positive and disregarding all negative thoughts, emotions and feelings.”

Anjie then taught me the four steps to stopping a negative thought:

1) Acknowledge the emotion

2) Thank it and release it

3) Replace the negative thought with a positive thought

4) Re-affirm that positive thought.

Clinical Psychologist, Catherine Madigan, agrees that a person can make the choice to challenge their negative thinking. “People can make an effort to look at the good side of life rather than focusing on the negatives, and certainly that’s a choice.”

I discovered that my habits are created by riding on the same merry-go-round each day, by continuing to repeat those negative thoughts and not loving what I see when I look in the mirror – by not trusting that I am an attractive, lovable person with a lot to offer the world.

I learnt that my life long lesson is self love, acceptance and awareness – something that many women need to work on.

Before I left, Anjie set me a task. I was to create one positive new habit each day for seven weeks, and by then my depression would be a thing of the past. I did what she said, and 12 months later I am me. The happy, goal-orientated, fun girl who loves life for what it is and doesn’t let small insignificant dramas phase her the way they once did.

I like to think of choosing to wear the depression label the same way as I choose which jeans label to wear. But don’t get me wrong, sometimes I sense the depression label trying to creep back into my wardrobe – that’s when I know it’s time for a spring clean. I up the exercise, get some acupuncture, and remember that I will only fall back into a miserable depression if I choose to wear the label.

the science behind the label

If we choose to wear the depression label, we end up feeling down. Just as if we wear clothes that are two sizes too big, we might feel fat and unattractive. The label makes a person think more about what society expects of the mentally ill, rather than what the person thinks of themselves.

Eventually the labeled person’s identity crystalises around the label, and the person learns to accept the role of the mentally ill. This is evident in a study done in 1994 in Turkey which found that providing a psychiatric label resulted in a significantly higher perception of mental illness, more expectation of physical burden, and a higher perception of the need for treatment.

For many people, being labeled mentally ill has social consequences. While depression is becoming more socially accepted these days, sufferers still experience rejection and a lack of social support, which can have a negative impact on the course of the illness.

So at the end of the day, getting over depression is about deciding to lose the depression label. Only you can make the choice to be well.