Tips For Staying Sane When Your Brain Is Trying To Kill You

Hello, chums!!  Let’s talk about depression!!

“Wait.  What??  Excuse me, Carrie Brown, but I come here for recipes and tips on living KETO, and to be motivated by your oh-so-positive outlook on life, and your bright, sparkly personality, and your energy and enthusiasm for every last little thing, and to see your pictures of pretty things, and your pictures of weird things that you make look pretty, and because you make me laugh.  I don’t want to talk about depression.  It’s so depressing.”

You’re right.  But let’s talk about depression anyway.  Because depression is important.  Especially if you suffer from it.  Then it’s *really* important.  For those of you who have never experienced depression, I can imagine you’re already about ready to scream at your computer screen, “What does this have to do with food?  Or being KETO?  Or wild travel adventures, or beautiful images, or anything that I normally come here to read about???”

As it happens – a lot.  Going and staying KETO can be hard enough.  Going and staying KETO when your brain is trying to kill you, and when Every. Last. Little. Thing. takes more energy than most people expend in an entire day, is like climbing Mount Everest – alone – and with no food or tent or equipment.  I am certain that just like there are a significant number of readers here who have diabetes, there are also a significant number of readers here who have depression.  Or have had depression, or are going to have depression at some point.  If you are lucky enough to have never had depression show up on your doorstep unannounced, there will be a sunny, excitable, joyous recipe post coming along in a matter of days.  However, if you have any idea what I am talking about, you might find something of use here.  So please stay.

Now when I say depression, I am not talking about the I-am-sad-because-someone-I-loved-died, or the I-am-sad-because-I-lost-my-job-and-I-don’t-know-how-I-am-going-to-pay-the-rent, or the I-am-sad-because-I-made-a-bad-decision-and-now-my-life-will-suck-for-a-while kind of depression.  Or the I-am-overworked-and-underpaid, or my-partner-just-dumped-me, or I-fought-with-my-mother, or I-can’t-get-grip-on-my-diet, or I-lost-my-pet kinds of sad; although I am in no way trivializing these things.  These will absolutely – and understandably so – make anyone sad; and sometimes any number of these sad things can turn into a depression, although often they can be talked out with a friend or a therapist who give you some comfort and a new perspective, and with some time, some self-care – and maybe some chocolate – your world is right way up again.  However sad and painful these things can be when they happen, that’s not the kind of depression I am talking about.

No.  I am talking about the all-singing, all-dancing, my-brain-is-trying-to-kill-me-for-absolutely-no-reason, all-encompassing, my-life-is-glorious-but-I-still-want-to-go-to-sleep-and-not-wake-up kind of depression.  The kind of depression that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  The kind that has you feeling more completely out of control than you ever thought possible; and that you feel powerless to stop.  Your brain has staged a mutiny, and there’s just a tiny corner of your conscience left, desperately trying to scream, “HELP!!!”

The kind of depression that makes you ask, “Is it time for bed, yet?” every 7 minutes.  The kind of depression that compels you to want to eat every tube of Pringles, every plate of pasta, every cupcake, and every other edible thing made of grains, potatoes and / or sugar within a one hundred mile radius, and preferably in the next hour.  The kind of depression that makes you need a nap when you’ve only been up for 3 hours, having been asleep for the previous 12.  The kind of depression that causes a highly organized and extremely effective person to take 6 days to wash the dishes,  two weeks to walk across the street to post a letter, and six weeks to prune the wisteria.  The kind of depression that makes you feel like an Olympic Gold Medalist for mustering up enough energy to go into the garage and get a new bottle of dishwashing liquid.  The kind of depression that is able to convince you that you are worthless, and alone, and unlovable, while people around you in real life are telling you the exact opposite.  The kind of depression that causes emotional anguish, endless pain, and relentlessly tortures your soul.  The kind of depression that turns every single thought that comes into your brain into mush, and then pushes it around your head as garbage.  The kind of depression that rolls on in despite you having a full, and brilliant, and splendidly happy life.  And it does this day after day after day; week after week.

AND ALL FOR NO APPARENT REASON.

Yes.  That kind of depression.

If you’ve never had your brain stage an all-out mutiny, I do not recommend it.  It feels like you stepped on the top of a water slide and lost your footing, and there is nothing you can do to stop yourself from entering the downward, spiralling vortex of rushing water forcing you closer and closer to the pool of water at the bottom – where you will surely drown – and at breakneck speed.  One day you wake up and everything is blackness.  It almost takes an act of God to get you out of bed in the morning, when you usually leap out to greet the world at 4 am, grinning from ear to ear.  Now nothing brings a smile to your face – unless you force it.  Nothing interests you – even those things that you were driven and passionate about up until yesterday.  Everything is hard.  REALLY hard.  Trying to wade in quicksand hard.  Your body feels like it has weights tied all over it that you have to drag around with you.  Your concentration has gone to pot.  Your ability to think has left the building.  You feel numb.  You go through the motions, living on auto-pilot, desperately hoping that no one will notice.  It’s crippling, exhausting, mind-numbing.  When even the simplest of things take the most phenomenal amount of effort.  When you don’t even have enough energy left to prise your eyes open. Do you know what it’s like to have the best life ever and yet spend every waking moment with your brain trying to sabotage your very existence?  It’s simply awful.

When depression moves in, it’s there for the long haul.  And it can be fatal.  If you’ve never had depression, let me explain.  You can get to the point where you think you have literally lost your mind.  You feel totally out of control of your own life.  Your logic is telling you one thing while the rest of your brain is merrily running off in the other direction, causing chaos with your emotions and thinking processes.  And it is crazy-making.  The immense amount of stress that this disconnect causes is enough to make you actually go crazy.  And you can get to the point where you just want life to be done.  Permanently.  I know this.  Intimately.

It’s been 15 years since my brain staged it’s first all-out mutiny.  That year-long adventure involved 5 different anti-depressants (none of which worked and all of which produced horrible side effects), a week asleep in the hospital – courtesy of a large quantity of Xanax, two pairs of handcuffs, 30lb of weight-loss (in 2 weeks), 24*7 panic attacks for 6 weeks, insomnia so bad even double-dose Ambian had zero effect, several trips in police cars, a padded room, more than a couple of pieces of damaged furniture, an inordinate number of medical personnel, a bloody nose, more shrinks than one girl should ever have the pleasure of meeting, and hundreds of hours of endlessly talking about it all.  AND I STILL CAN’T TELL YOU WHY IT HAPPENED.

I remember once going to dinner with friends at their home on the lake.  It was the most beautiful summer evening you can imagine, and they decided it would be lovely to have the appetizers out in the middle of the lake on their boat.  They took me on a tour of the lake first.  It was stunning.  Life doesn’t get much better than that moment.  And yet, the entire time my brain was whispering, “Look!  The water is just there.  One quick hop and you’d be over the side and it would be done.  It would be so easy.  Go on!  Just do it! A quick flip and you’d be outta here.  It would be so blissful sliding down to the bottom of the lake and never feeling anything ever again.  Go on.  Go!”

I remember a time when every single second that my brain was not actively preoccupied with work, it was actively trying to kill me.  Every. Single. Second.  And that is entirely exhausting.  In a matter of days I became completely overwhelmed with the amount of energy required – every hour – just to keep myself alive.  But I still had to go to work and perform like a sea-lion at Sea World.  And I still had to pay the mortgage, and manage life – plus all that goes with that – and keep everything running, and keep everyone else around me happy; all while my brain was loudly plotting my demise.

I’d *much* rather be caught in a blizzard, alone, at 5 am on a black winter’s morning, in a remote part of Northern New Mexico, on top of a 11,500 ft high mountain road buried in 3 feet of snow, with nothing but sheer drops either side, than deal with depression.  I only had to face dying on that mountain for 6 hours before somehow – although don’t ask me how – I managed to drive myself off that thing, and without plummeting 11,000 feet off the side. I’d choose to do that drive every single day over depression.

I like to call this kind of depression diabetes of the brain, because like diabetes, it’s not something you can talk your way out of, forget about, snap out of, or just decide not to have.  It can descend like a tsunami out of nowhere – only without the warning sirens that it is approaching – slamming onto the beach of your life and destroying everything in its path; and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.  Moreover, it makes no sense, and that is wildly frustrating – because it’s hard to fix something you can make no sense of.  It can seem utterly hopeless.  Why even try?  Why even fight it?  It feels like it’s never going to change, and you’re too exhausted to carry on.  But you summon every last ounce and on you plod, heroically dragging one foot in front of the other, just trying to stay alive until it blows over – or you die.

And the world does not help much.  Depression is simply not viewed like any other illness.  It’s not OK to be depressed; and somehow it’s seen as self-indulgent and selfish; something that you choose and then consciously continue.  Hello.

Most people don’t understand it, and they certainly don’t know how to deal with people who have it.  Don’t misunderstand me – this is not a criticism, it’s an observation.  If people were able to view depression like diabetes, it would be life-changing for the sufferer.  Instead, the police treat you as a threat to society, and without a shred of dignity; medical staff often treat you with contempt, and as an inconvenience; friends generally don’t know how on earth to treat you – with the best of intentions and in trying to help they say things that make you feel worse, or they avoid you, or they try to take control of your life for you.  Depression and suicide scare them.  And through it all, no one asks how you feel, or tries to understand what it is like for you.  There is usually very little, if any, compassion.  No one understands how painstaking difficult everything is.  No one pats you on the back just for getting out of bed, which can be the hardest thing in the world when you’re in the depths of depression.  And all of this just makes you feel even worse – if that is even possible.  It’s beyond miserable.  If you’ve been there or are there now – I salute you.  You are the very toughest and bravest of people.  Hang in there.  You are SO worth it, even though I know right now that you just don’t care, and you certainly don’t believe me.  What you believe doesn’t change the truth.

Last time my brain was trying to kill me, in an effort to make sense of it all, I noticed some things that are directly related to 2 of our favorite topics: food and hormones.  And here’s where I hope this post will all start to make sense.

I started to understand, from reading “Potatoes not Prozac”  by Kathleen DesMaisons, that the same brain chemicals altered by antidepressant drugs are also affected by the foods we eat.  I learned that addictive behavior has a lot to do with food, and that sugar was the primary culprit.  Sugar raises your serotonin and beta-endorphin levels, which make you feel better and more energetic, especially if your levels were low to start with. Unfortunately, eating concentrated sugars or refined carbohydrates causes a rebound effect. Your sugar levels drop quickly, you feel worse than before, and you need more sugar to get stable again.  Soon you’re addicted.  You feel alternately fabulous and awful. The sugar swings stress your adrenal glands. You blame yourself for being out of control and unfocused, and for putting on weight, but actually it’s the sugar. It’s a physical problem.  Now I don’t know whether the sugars and starches cause the depression, or whether the depression causes us to crave the sugars and starches; but what I do know is that once the vicious cycle starts it becomes increasingly difficult to break.  Recognizing that faulty biochemistry has a huge role in depression changes everything.  It’s not your fault!

If you’ve been checking out keto for any length of time you’ll know that hormones are what regulate our bodies.  If your hormones are all working properly, your body functions and regulates itself the way it should, and life is good;  but if your hormones are out of whack, everything can go haywire – including your brain.  Fix the hormones and the body will take care of itself.  It’s not your fault!

It makes sense to me that if we can get the food and the hormones sorted out we have a much better chance of a) surviving it, and b) restoring chemical balance.  What if your depression turned out to be all food and / or chemical related, and you could manage it by what you did or did not consume?  There is an overwhelming amount of information available on the links between depression and food and brain chemicals.  That there is a correlation is not in question.

Now, there may be other factors at play in causing depression – genes, environment, traumas, distressing events, illness, injury – but whatever the initial cause may be, the stress causes our bodies to react chemically in an attempt to protect it.  Stress hormones start pumping around your body, and if there are enough of them, or the body cannot deal with them effectively, they can cause an imbalance.  Then your brain no longer functions correctly, and it is now out of your control.  You cannot think or talk your way out of a chemical imbalance.  Just the same way as you cannot think or talk your way out of diabetes.  You need to get the chemicals back to working properly.

This post is not intended to diagnose or treat your depression.  I am simply sharing my story and the strategies I have successfully used to keep mine in check.  These tips are for you to consider trying to see if they have a similar positive result for you.  Many, many of you have asked me to write about emotional eating, and while this is at the very end of that spectrum, I hope that even one of you finds this helpful in some small way.

Here are my tips for staying sane when your brain is trying to kill you:

• Consider supplementing with a large dose of vitamin B3 in the form of sustained release niacin every day.  This has helped me more than anything else in my fight against depression, and I continue to take this supplement every day.  Most doctors do not have any working knowledge of this therapy and may dissuade you from doing this.  WATCH THIS VIDEO.  And then read the info on the same page.  Also read here, and here, and here, and then decide for yourself whether you should give it a try.  Since vitamin B3 is water-soluble, any excess is flushed from your body on a daily basis.  If you decide you want to try this, please follow the instructions on the page with the video, as dosage varies for each person.  They outline a method for finding the right dose for you.
• STOP DRINKING ALL DIET SODA IMMEDIATELY, and do not consume anything that contains aspartame (also marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, AminoSweet, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure).  If you want to know why, type “aspartame poisoning” into a browser and see what you get.  Or click here.  Aspartame messes with your brain in a big way.  If you are addicted to diet soda, giving it up may be extremely difficult, and in the midst of depression seem impossible.  Depression can make cravings completely unbearable.  Do whatever you can to get rid of all aspartame in your diet.  It is not helping you, and may well be exacerbating your depression.  It may even be the cause.
• DO NOT EAT SUGAR of any kind.  Even if you have been eating a KETO diet for while, you may find it extremely difficult to not eat sugar when you’re in the grips of depression.  Depression makes my sugar and starch cravings go into a compulsive overdrive that I find almost impossible to ignore.  I am not sure if it’s my brain desperately trying to get itself in balance, or if it’s another tactic it’s using to try to kill me.  Whatever the reason, sugar does not help – and long-term it makes things worse.
• Eat as few carbs as you can get by with and still keep your brain “happy”.  Of course, “happy” is a relative term here.  See last point about sugar.  If you are compelled to eat starch (pasta, bread, cakes, etc) eat mashed cauliflower instead.  At least you’ll get the emotional comfort of feeling like you’re eating potato, without all that comes with it.
• Do not drink alcohol.  It messes with your brain and you don’t need anything else messin’ with it right now.
• Resist the cravings.  Give it your all.  The cravings may be so strong that you feel like you’re on the brink of losing your mind – so try to remember in the moment that caving to the cravings will likely prolong your agony.  Having said that, if the choice is between a bottle full of painkillers and a candy bar, eat the candy bar.  If you can find an alternative that tides you over without eating either, so much the better.  Mash some cauliflower, or eat some strawberries.
• Remember that eating to keep yourself alive (if your depression has reached suicidal proportions) is more important than eating for fat-loss right now.  Do not beat yourself up if you eat something to comfort your brain.  Heaven knows your brain needs some comfort.  However, eating KETO is one of your biggest supporters to beating the depression, so do whatever you can to keep sugar and starch intake as low as possible.  Read this and this for some strategies to help make it easier.  I realize this involves a lot of “doing”, and that “doing” can be staggeringly hard when your brain is trying to kill you.  Do what you can.  Every little step helps.
• Eat regularly.  This is super important, even though it may be super hard to do.  Depression can switch off hunger signals, and cause you to lose interest in foods the way you have lost interest in everything else.  Going without food will affect your brain functioning, and not in a good way.  Force yourself to eat at regular intervals – do whatever you can make work – be that 3 big meals a day or 16 tiny meals a day.  Just keep good food going into your body on a regular basis.
• Make protein and healthy fats the focus of your food intake at every meal or snack.  Don’t worry about balanced meals until your depression has passed.  If you can make a balanced (protein / healthy fat / non-starchy veggies) meal happen – great!  If not, eat protein and fat.  This should help with the cravings for sugar and starches as well, and goodness knows depression is easier even if you can just get rid of the cravings.
• Enlist some help.  Find a couple of people who you trust and who are not freaked out by depression or suicide.  People who will just support you without trying to control you.  People who will just come over and sit with you without pressuring you to have to do anything.  People who don’t need to know all the gory details to be there for you.  People who trust that you are asking for help for good reason and don’t need any more of an explanation.  People who will go to the store and buy you some instant protein (cooked meats, non-fat Greek yogurt and cottage cheese, hard-boiled eggs, jerky, etc) to fill your ‘fridge with, when leaving the house is more than you can do right now.  Someone who will run the vacuum around and wash some dishes when you can’t, so that you don’t become {even more} overwhelmed by your environment becoming chaotic.
• Cross everyone who says, “Snap out of it!” off your Holiday Card list.  Permanently.  If you could snap out of it and end the nightmare you would, and being told to do that when you are in crisis with something you cannot control, is insulting and obnoxious.  AND IT DOESN’T HELP.  At all.
• Do not feel failed if you end up eating some carb-laden foods.  Survival first, then fat-loss.  Feeling failed and beating yourself up will not help you.  Progress, not perfection.
• Do your eccentric exercises if you can possibly summon up the energy and enthusiasm.  Do one set if that’s all you can do, and give yourself a huge cheer afterwards.
• Find a great therapist if you don’t already have one.  Find a psychiatrist if you need medication.  A diabetic needs medication to function properly – so might you.  It’s no different.
• Take naps when you need one.  Get a good night’s sleep every night.  Lack of sleep can make you crazy.
• Do not feel guilty for saying no to others while you take care of yourself.  You can get back to helping everyone else when you’re well.  Anyone who cannot accept this is not your friend.
• Be kind and gentle with yourself.  Do things that normally make you happy, as often as you can.  Take some time off work if you can.  Do not pressure yourself when you don’t have the capacity to do what you normally do.  Congratulate yourself for every little thing you are able to do.  Keep your brain occupied.  Get out of the house.  Read a book.  Watch a movie.  Lie in the grass in the sunshine with a favorite person or pet.  Go for a walk.  Sit and listen to uplifting music.  Don’t beat yourself up when you’re doing your best for right now, even though that may be a long way from your best under normal circumstances.
• Hang out with people who love you, people who are positive and uplifting, and people who don’t demand anything from you.  Keep away from people who are negative, accusatory, unsupportive, or demand you do things you simply don’t have the capacity for right now.
• Remember depression is not your fault.  It’s an illness like diabetes.  Whatever caused it, there is now an imbalance that you cannot control.  Give yourself a {huge} break.  Cheer every morning that you woke up alive – again.
• Hang in there.  You’re worth it.  You can do this!

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