As most of you know, last week was Mental Health Awareness Week, and it proved to be a busy time for myself. While my last two posts have been more on the serious side of things, I thought it might be a nice change to add some more positivity to my blog and write about some of my own personal triumphs, notably those that occurred in the last 7 days. 

My older brother, Jared, invited me to speak to his classroom over Skype about my own experiences with mental health, and read Second-Hand Stigma to his two classes of grade 9 students. This was my first experience of publicly speaking about myself and my own story, which is certainly something that I plan to do extensively in the future, and to say I was nervous would be a massive understatement. Second-Hand Stigma was read to the class before revealing that I was joining them on Skype, and the way that their expressions changed after my brother explained that it was written only a week prior and by his baby brother was both frightening while also heartwarming. It obviously showed that these strangers who I had never met cared about my condition, but also showed that it was still something that made people very uncomfortable, as was shown by the silence that the students immediately adopted and kept for the rest of my time with them.

After reading my story and explaining myself and where I was at personally in my life with regards to my illness, the students were open to ask me any questions that they wanted to ask. The quality of questions and level of attentiveness were honestly incredibly impressive, and they were far more respectful of guest speakers than I remembered my classes being at that age. They rocked.

I figured I would post a few of the questions and my responses to them in case these were questions that perhaps people had wondered but were scared to ask.

1. Where are you at right now, emotionally? I would say that although I am getting better and learning constantly how to deal with my depression and anxiety I am still not doing extremely well, especially in my more immediate past, but I am surviving. I have found that my mood has been more up and down recently and I have been lacking motivation to do many different things, but the way that I’m feeling right now is fairly normal. I would just equate it to doing “okay”, but not “great”.
2. Do you use volleyball to cope with your depression? Absolutely. Volleyball and           video games have always been my own personal outlet and way to release my stresses that I have built up, and these two things have been the only things that I have had a real passion for my entire life. I could talk about volleyball offenses and different setters for hours on end or upcoming PC or Nintendo titles coming out, depending on what mood I’m in. People have noticed that the amount of games that I find myself playing changes quite heavily depending on how I am doing emotionally, and people have suggested that it may be a problem. I tend to spend more time playing games when I’m feeling depressed, I don’t feel depressed because I start playing more games.
3. Has anyone ever gotten upset with you for telling them about your condition? Only once, and it honestly felt terrible. I hope no one that suffers from mental illness at any point in their life has to experience rejection because of something that they can’t change, because it is probably one of the most frustrating, depressing feelings I’ve ever felt. It isn’t fair to anyone, and shows a certain immaturity and inability to change one’s own way of thinking.
4. How would you describe living with depression and anxiety, in just a few words? For this question I had to cheat, but in a sentence I would describe it as: Known irrationality and the inability to do anything about it. It is intensely frustrating feeling to experience, as I am well aware of how irrational it is to feel the way I feel “when billions of people on earth have it worse than me” (As stupid as that phrase is), yet it is incredibly difficult or impossible to simply change the way I feel. I think most if not all those that suffer from depression or anxiety are self-aware in this way, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

I will be keeping this week’s post relatively short, which will probably make more of my readers happy than otherwise. I love answering questions and am open to any at all.

As a bit of a side note, the Knights Athletics program will be participating in the CMHA’s Ride Don’t Hide bike ride for raising mental health awareness, and I will attach a link at the bottom of this blog where you can donate to the cause and help me raise towards my personal goal.

Let’s talk,

Garrett Suderman

sudermangblog@gmail.com

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=3419489&langPref=en-CA