My Battle with Depression: Getting Help

The circumstances that finally led up to my realizing that I needed to get help was at a time when I also saw that the help was available.


I was nearing what would eventually prove to the end of my second marriage.  I was working a fast food job as a shift manager.  People in my church who specialized in helping others to improve their job and career circumstances had been talking with me and they felt that I needed to go talk to specialists in a state government agency that focused on helping people in my situation.

I made the necessary arrangements, and took a series of tests meant only to measure both where I was at and what my long-term potential was.  The professional that administered these tests and discussed the results with me was a very nice older gentleman with a very good “bed side manner”.

From these tests it was confirmed that I had indeed been suffering from chronic long-term depression.  It was also confirmed that I had a “fear of people” that was deep enough and significant enough so as to have the effect of keeping me from getting and holding on to meaningful long-term employment.

This became the starting point from which I finally felt comfortable telling myself that I just didn’t know how to believe in myself and my potential, not in a prideful way, but in a healthy way.  I didn’t know how to go into a job interview and speak with confidence about my skills and work history.  In my own eyes, my work history had been motivated by a single focus, namely, the desperate need to keep trying to get away from everyone that was I felt still bullying and hurting me.

I was now finally in a position to realize that I needed to learn the same skills others use to deal with negative situations without letting the situation become another excuse to self-criticize.  I was realizing that what I lacked was an important life and career skill.  This was also the beginning of a process lasting several years where I would come to gradually realize deeper and deeper “learned” mental and emotional issues that had been holding me back because they were effecting the decisions I was making on a sub-conscious level.

That is where my “peeling away at the layers” symbolism comes in.  Each time I would come to learn and understand where I needed to make a change in one attitude or area of behavior, my counselor would work with me to help me learn how and why I got started using the unhealthy version.  In doing this I would then work to understand why the newer version or attitude was healthier and how I would go about “reprograming” my mind to replace my old negative sub-conscious habit with the newer healthier habit.

At first this process of learning to reprogram my thinking and reasoning was slow and painful.  After all, I was having to learn and develop a skill so that I could then use that skill to overcome my long-term habit of negative self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.

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In sharing this part of my life, I am not seeking to promote myself as being better than anyone else.  I am simply seeking to use a part of my life to make the point that I am not better than you, I simply exercise my right to not stay stupid.

You have the ability to make the same decision.  You have the ability to decide that you are going to do whatever it takes to learn how to overcome just one more negative self-defeating behavior, and then another one after that.  It’s your life, take charge of it and learn how to live it so that you do not become someone else’s bully or continue to live as if you are their victim.

David W. Kemper, Author
© Copyright 2014 by David William Kemper.  All right reserved
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