Depression, the Teenage Years and the You-Suck Monster

Updated July 2023

“I cried, I cried, I cried…”

I write this in the hope that it can help anyone young or old going through the same situation that I found myself in as a teenager and later as an adult.

FACT: No, you are not weird. No, you are not alone. You are beautiful. You are you and that is special. We are who we are and must celebrate our idiosyncrasies–the peculiar things that we do that make us who we are.

Have you thought of how unique humans are? You hear a you favorite singer on the radio. You recognize that voice from among 8 billion other people on earth. We actually idolize pop stars’ uniqueness. They are so unique that you recognize them as soon as their song starts playing.

One of the most important facts that I realized, as I got older, is that most of the other kids in high school were no better off than I was. They were just as confused, scared, and totally overwhelmed as I was. The only difference was that they were much better at acting like everything was fine. Being “cool”. What is normality anyways? An illusion? An act? Years later I found out that the people I had wished I could be like, were actually going through their own hell, some much worse than mine: physical abuse, neglect, alcoholic parents, etc. My life was just chaotic, at best and yet, I wanted to be them. Anybody but me.

I am sure my parents loved my siblings and I. But neither had a normal childhood and thus, didn’t have the tools to be good parents. Neither had the nurturing and care that a child needs to grow up balanced and secure. To feel secure enough that they can do anything and be anybody they want to be.

If you read my other posts, you will find that my family went through some horrific times trying to survive through a dictatorship and were under unthinkable stress for around 10 years. Both of my parents suffered from depression, probably brought on by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My father was manic depressive, while my mother had classic depression and was prone to very frightening rages. Her eyes would get big and scary and everyone in the house was in trouble. I would always hide when I saw it coming on. My husband calls it “woogie eyes”. Our family life was totally dysfunctional, and all I longed for was peace and quiet, and some semblance of security.

Each one of us, in my family, has had to figure out how to find their own inner peace. We all share a common thread: we have all had a hard time with self worth, love and acceptance. We have all struggled in our own way.

My father constantly berated us, called us terrible names, and told us we were useless and would never amount to anything. My mother was a perfectionist. They never had any encouraging words or any support for anything we did. If I had become president, he would have said I didn’t do it right because I didn’t do it his way… while my mother would have taken credit for my achievement saying it happened because I was their daughter. When people treat their children like that, it is almost impossible for their children to find self worth of any kind. I spent my time trying to prove that I was not who they thought I was. In the process, I beat myself up some more, and in turn, became a perfectionist myself, thus perpetuating the problems and passing some of it to my daughter before I recognized the problem. If you do everything perfectly, people don’t notice you as much. So, I worked on every aspect of my life to perfection.

I spent years of my life crying and hating myself. I was anorexic, although I never went to the extremes to kill myself and I had never heard about anyone else doing this. In fact, the first time I knew that there was a name for it was when Karen Carpenter died from it. I weighed 98 pounds at my high school graduation and was 5′ 6″ tall, constantly on a diet and exercised daily. I played tennis, jogged, rode my bicycle, and anything else I could do to assure that I would lose weight. I had braces all through my teen years and was flat chested, all leaving me feeling less than desirable. I constantly looked at myself in the mirror and saw someone ugly and stupid and fat. I was extremely shy and awkward and trembled when spoken to. I was totally disconnected. And, I was an artist, something else that made me different from everyone I knew, but, ultimately, one of the things that saved my life.

It took me a while to figure out that us kids, whether because of genetics or because of growing up in the chaos, had also inherited some of the traits. At the time, I didn’t know that there was a name for it and that there is a way to get out of it: DEPRESSION! People associate this with adults, not with children or teenagers. They think they are too young to be feeling so much pain. But, you don’t have to be older to feel pain. In fact, I believe that the pain you feel when you are older is based on all the pain and despair you had when you were younger. You are disconnected somehow and spend the rest of your life trying to get back to the connection. Specially, if you, like me, had a family that did not understand it or accepted that there was a problem at all. To do so would have meant that my parents would have had to face things that they could not face, thus leaving us all in a state of suspended animation and no resolve. It wasn’t until my parents separated in the 70’s that my father was diagnosed as manic depressive (bi-polar) and, my mother with regular depression (although I truly believe that she is also bi-polar). I saw my mother go into absolute rages over the stupidest of things. Then later be laughing hysterically about something as silly. My father was more subtle…one morning you would say: “good morning”, and he would reply: “what is so good about it?”, the next day you wouldn’t say “good morning” and he would ask why you weren’t polite.

High school was a nightmare

My parents took us to school every day where I sat all day terrified, counting the hours until I could go home. Once in my room I would cry for hours, beating myself up for being so stupid, and ugly, and why did I say this or that, until I got it out of my system. I cried, I cried, I cried… At that point I would start painting or drawing, diving into that space where I didn’t feel pain.

I was a very intelligent, read a lot and loved philosophy, science, English and history, and yet, I got bad grades because I couldn’t imagine participating in class. I made myself invisible. If the teachers finally saw me and called on me to read out loud, everyone thought I was weird because I couldn’t read since the tears in my eyes wouldn’t let me see the type on the book. Plus I was trembling so hard that sometimes I would drop the book, thus making it into a worse scene. Above and beyond the depression, I believe I suffered from clinical shyness (there was no term for this then – Social anxiety disorder). I questioned and analyzed everything I said or did and then beat myself up about it. I got home from school and started the self-hate nightmare. I thought about a conversation in school and thought about how stupid I was, or what a stupid thing I had answered, or what I should have said, or done, and started crying again. A few times my mother walked in on me while I was crying and asked me why I cried. My answer: I didn’t know. I had no way I could explain my pain with words. And, my mother, who had never felt this way, would have no way of understanding someone who preferred to be invisible.

Art was my escape and my salvation. My passion for art saved me. Without Creativity, I wouldn’t have survived. My passion for art saved me. Music helped too. I taught myself to play the guitar and spent hours playing. I also had “playlists” that I had made on a reel to reel tape player that set the mood for me to paint. I turned on the music and started painting and I would go away. I would come back to earth when someone interrupted me. It wasn’t until years later, when I learned meditation, that I realized the similarity between the space you go to in meditation and the space you go to painting – one and the same: the power source.

Teenagers

It is specially hard for teenagers because they don’t have the freedom to just go out the door if they need to. Or just say: I am not going to school today because I feel threatened there. Given a choice, I would have never gone to school. I would start trembling before we even left the house on the way to school. Teens can’t make decisions for themselves. This is specially difficult. This is also an age of peer, society, parental and cultural pressure demanding that you go to school and make good grades, go home and be a perfect kid, do homework, go to sleep at a reasonable hour, etc. All of this, while you feel awkward, unfit, and disconnected. Not a good combination. You are also in an age where you are separating from the parental units but you haven’t found yourself. So, you don’t go to your parents, but the people around you that you might trust to talk to, have no answers because they are all going through the same things Or worse, you might get the wrong information. This is, ironically, also the time when you are supposed to be thinking about your future and what college you are going to go to, SAT exams, etc. in the middle of this vortex. Totally unfair, if you ask me.

Now you add Social media, cyber bullying, zoom, online classes, and on and on, it is an even worse nightmare for a kid like I was.

I know that there are all these programs out there to reach out to teens and adults suffering with depression. But, unfortunately, while you are in the darkness, it is practically impossible for someone to get through to you. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere even if they could help me. Unfortunately, you have two choices: Survive or not. As long as you are alive there is hope. Healing doesn’t happen overnight. I was one of the lucky ones. I had art. Painting made me go into a space that I couldn’t reach in any other way. A space where I didn’t feel pain, fear or sadness. I would go away into my head and come back hours later. Without creativity I wouldn’t have survived. But, a lot of other kids don’t have way to escape. They might act out, get in trouble, get isolated, etc.

The “you suck monster”

My depression had a name. My husband and I call it the “you suck monster“. Sometimes I would wake up with it staring me in the eye. Other times something might trigger it to surface. Either way, I would start a downward spiral of self pity and mental self-flagellation. In my younger years, I would dive right into the abyss and stay for days or months at a time. I was a functioning depressed person. I have always said I am a great actress because I have been acting normal for years. I could go to work and function in my job. Then come home and fall apart again and cry for hours. No one knew because I never let anyone in.

About drugs

Recreational drugs make it much worse and give you additional problems. I never did drugs while I was a teenager, mainly, because I had no access to them. So, that was a good thing. My experimentation did not start until I was around 20. I played around with pot, coke and LSD years ago, although I must say that I don’t have an addictive personality and never did much of any. I loved LSD so I never did it again, but it helped open my consciousness to new possibilities. Coke was a really bad idea and left me nervous and shaking. Most of the people I ever saw on this drug were full of themselves and arrogant assholes. It destroys your sinuses too. It takes years to regenerate them, if ever. Pot relaxes me and is my drug of choice, but it is illegal in the state of Florida, so I stay away from it. It can have an adverse reaction in some people and make them paranoid, so it might not be a good idea for someone who is already unstable. I never cared for alcohol. I may have a glass of beer or wine occasionally but I don’t like the way it makes you feel and have never been able to hold my liquor: two beers and I am flying to the moon.

Anything that you put in your body will affect your brain and mood, and no matter how great you feel, you will have to pay a price. You might feel great while you are high, but, when you come down, you are even more disconnected and are left feeling emptier than before. Meditators believe that people who feel disconnected are, in fact disconnected from the power source. The closer you are to it, the more peaceful you feel. Even Tylenol can keep you from deep meditation. Even food affects your mind and body. Some foods are great, some are very bad. Junkfood no only makes you obese and unhealthy, but also makes you disconnect. The mind gets excited and it weakens your will power. Google Rajasic, Tamasic and Sattvic foods to find out how these foods alter your moods. A vegetarian diet is probably the place to start with dealing with depression. I was lucky because my brother was taking a chemistry class in college and they were testing pre-fab foods like cereals, canned foods, etc. He started telling me all the horrible things that were being added to foods. So, I learned early to eat fresh. That is the key. Prefab food just tastes very bad to me.

Down the rabbit hole

The other drugs, the ones prescribed by “doctors” numb you so you aren’t feeling pain, but you also don’t feel anything else. That is a description of my mother the last 50+ years. Drugs keep you from connecting to the power source: the energy shared by living things. Each drug you take has side effects that affect your body in unusual ways. People, like my mother, end up in an endless cycle of cause and effect. You take a pill for one thing. It causes side effects so you take another pill for the side effects. Now you have two pills causing side effects and you take a third to ease the side effects, and on and on. Before you know it you are in a pharmacy merry go round. And pharmaceutical companies want you to be there. They have you forever. Doctors prescribe them because they get kickbacks from them. They don’t really know what you should be taking, the pharmacist is the one that should be prescribing medicines. So, they should be the ones prescribing in the first place.

UPDATE: My mother is in her 90s. A couple of years ago, we were able to get her off of the pills, finally. It took a few months of her mind fighting and wanting the pills. Every once in a while, her mind still goes to where are my pills and tries to manipulate the people around her to give her the old pills. Her blood pressure went down, her ankles are no longer swollen, she hasn’t had anymore strokes, she sleeps most of the night (with melatonin pills), her appetite is back, and she is a totally normal 90+ year old woman. Most of her ailments are gone.

Spirituality

Being raised in a logical and scientific environment, I didn’t have much use for religion. I needed tools that I could explain. Blind faith has never worked for me since I am not a follower and I have never belonged anywhere: loner. However, I am very spiritual. I just don’t need a religion to connect to the spirits, power source, mother nature… makes no difference to me. I don’t need an interpreter. I don’t want anything to be lost in translation. Thank you. HOWEVER, if this works for you, by all means, follow your own path. Just make sure you go in with your eyes open and don’t expect instant salvation. There is no magic pill and finding peace doesn’t happen overnight. Don’t make the mistake of replacing one problem for another. I have seen many friends who used to be alcoholics or drug addicts be reborn into Christianity or some crazy cult. Then they have become unbearable bible pushers. That is their new drug.

I chose to go the direction of no pills, seeking peace through self-examination, exercise, Yoga and meditation. I wish I had gotten to the mediation and Yoga part earlier. I started doing Yoga at 19 from a book, but, unfortunately, I was doing it all wrong, doing the asanas for the exercise benefits and not for mental health benefits. (ironically, you get the health benefits as a side effect to the mental benefits.) I dabbled with Yoga classes here and there but nothing serious until I was in my 50s. My sister, Jackie, signed me up to Women’s Health workshop at the Sivananda Yoga Farm in Green Valley, California. This was a pivotal moment in my life and the beginning of my path to peace and happiness. I was there for 11 days doing Yoga and meditating twice a day, eating organic-vegetarian meals, doing karma yoga (an act of kindness you do for someone else without expecting anything in return) and just absorbing an 80-acre nature preserve where deer come up to you and stare. That is when it hit me: I had never felt better! I just needed to know that this peace could be achieved so that I could set a reachable goal. My life before was very different than my life after. This experience accelerated my healing process.

Later, in 2007, I got a meditation teaching certification at the Sivananda Ashram in Paradise Island, Bahamas. This was another very important life-changing experience. The meditation training made me realize the I had suffered with depression for a very long time. It taught me how to identify the triggers for my depression; to realize when the “you suck monster” was starting to creep in, and hen gave me the tools to stop and send it away. I also learned more about Yoga. I learned that depression comes from being disconnected from the power source–the energy that exist within all living organisms. Pure mother nature energy.

The more disconnected you are to the source, the more depressed and lost you feel. Once you start getting closer, you start finding peace. This is key.

Thing you can do:

• Every time you have a negative thought, counteract it with a positive thought. Pretty soon the positive thought starts outweighing the negative.
• Make an oath to yourself to do this.
• Be thankful for the things you have. For your life. For the air you breathe.
• Do selfless acts of kindness for others and yourself. Find a charity.
• Find a reason to get out of bed and out the door every day. Go for a walk. Get a pet that you are responsible for. Plant and care for a garden.

I can only write about what worked for me. But, regardless of your path, be patient. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, courage, determination and love. Lots of love. This worked for me. It may not be the answer for everyone else. Each person has to find their way to connect to the power source. But, unless you focus on your disconnect and figure out a way to reconnect, you will be going around in circles. This is the problem with rehab. People go there to clean up, but come out just as empty and disconnected as when they went in. Only finding a connection will let them succeed in staying sober. I met a lady in the Yoga Farm that has a school for people that have reached the last straw. They are drug addicts so out of control that the judge has given them one more change before they go to jail or are committed. The school has the same routines as the Yoga Farm: Organic vegetarian diets, Yoga, meditation, Ayurvedic healing, etc. It works. They had had such a great success that the last time I heard, they were opening more schools around California.

Buz & Buz

One of my “lucky breaks” was finding, or being found by the two people who gave me unconditional love, loved me for myself and helped me be me— my father in law, Hubert H. Buzbee II (Buz) and my husband Tom Buzbee (Buz). If I had not met them when I did, I am sure I would have ended my life before I got to my 20s. I had contemplated suicide by then. The pain had to stop! I met them in 1971. I didn’t know it then, but I was going to be part of their family for the rest of my life.

Buz was very well read, gave unconditional love to everyone around him, helped many people in the DR, was a great consular officer, and provided the opportunity for me to have an education. All of which made it possible for me to leave the DR at a critical time in my life, get married and move to Philadelphia where I went to one of the best art schools in the US. I believe this change gave me a new perspective in life and some of the tools I needed to make the changes in my life in order to survive. It didn’t happen overnight, but it was the beginning of my soul healing. At least I had broadened my horizons, gotten an education, and learned another culture. I knew there was another way and that I didn’t have to stay in the Dominican Republic forever.

I started to realize I had a problem

My big realization that I had a big problem was in 1987 while I was living in Ana Maria Island, Florida. From the outside everything looked peachy: I had my dream job as the chief designer for the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. My daughter Avaryl lived with me most of the time. I lived two blocks from the beach in a very cute house. We went to the beach every day. It was a great life. And yet, I cried and cried. I had an epiphany during one of my fights with the “You Suck Monster”. After crying for hours I had this thought that something had to change. I had to try to find a way to change things. Things couldn’t stay the way they were. I thought I couldn’t go any lower, but I was wrong – I started my journey but there was a way to go. One of the realizations was that I kept blaming my parents for the way I felt. I had to face the fact that they too were victims of everything that happened, that I was now an adult with a child and that I had to figure this out so I could give her a better life. Just the way I made a decision to never spank her so I would not do what my parents did, I had to figure out how to give her more stability.

It would be a few years before I started to see some real progress. But, I started working on my self. I started to see the patterns. I went out with cute guys that had nothing going for them, therefore, making impossible to have any kind of relationship. I worked and lived in a place that was very far away from everyone I knew and loved, therefore feeling empty and lonely most of the time. I worked in a very high stress job doing the work of two people and paid for one, and allowing them to abuse me on a regular basis perpetuating the high stress levels. I got bored with jobs in about 2 years and it was just about that time that I caught up with myself. I ran away from myself, moved to a new town where I could start over, until I caught up with me again. This was a vicious cycle, until 1995 when I moved back to Mount Dora. I decided I was done moving and wanted to give my daughter some stability, at least until she graduated from High School. We stayed in the same house for 5 years. That was a major achievement. I worked in several jobs and had a few ups and downs.

Hitting rock bottom

1996 was what I considered the worse year of my life.  I lost my oldest brother, started menopause, lost my job, got hives, my daughter dropped out of high school, I found out I had gone from HIV to AIDS, and a client ripped me off of $2000. 00 at Christmas. This is what my sister-in-law calls the “cosmic 2 by 4”.

After that, I knew UP was the only way to go. I went to work as a teacher at Full Sail University for a while. It was a steady job and the schedule allowed me to spend more time with the people around me. It also took me out of my house. We convinced my daughter to go back to school, I got meds for my sickness and menopause and started my climb back out of the abyss. Later I worked in a marketing agency as a Web designer perfecting and learning that craft. This job allowed me to get a steady job as head of a Web design team for a publishing company. I perfected my craft and learned all I could. I later became the art director for Caribbean Travel  & Life magazine, learning all I could about the magazine publishing world. It had its ups and downs but, for the most part, I really enjoyed it and became a pretty good designer.

Re-inventing myself

In 2006 I lost that steady job at the magazine publishing company. I was 55 and found out I was no longer employable. I could not get another job in the industry. I had about 30 interviews and no one was hiring me. I had to reinvent myself.If it had not been for my sister, I would have ended up homeless. I went from making good money to nothing coming in. I declared bankruptcy. And I had to figure it out.

I started freelancing and trying to make a living in any way I could. It was a very stressful time! I had to re-evaluate my career. Who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do when I grew up! I started learning the craft of freelancing. There is a lot to learn, specially, when you have received a steady paycheck for 20+ years. You have to learn to listen to your inner voice. It is seldom wrong. And you have to learn the business. How to protect yourself from bad clients. How to handle yourself in interviews and how to detect the bad apples. Every day has brought me closer to a more peaceful existence. Working very hard to simplify my life, and put everything in perspective. What is important in the scheme of things. If I was in a desert what would be important. If I was in a war, what would be important? The answers are all the same… family. Nothing material is going to make you happy. Just family.

Perspective is what we are missing when we bitch about things while things around us are peachy. Letting go, detaching from material things, forgiving, learning tolerance are the most important things. Forgiving yourself, loving yourself, and feeling that your are OK is the goal. There is always room for improvement. If you start feeling cocky about your “enlightenment” you have not understood the lesson. The whole point is to look at everything around you and accept it all. Look at them, enjoy them, experience them, and then let them go. Guilt is the same. Don’t own it. It isn’t yours. If you are worried about everyone around you, you are owning their guilt. You can try to help people, but you can’t live their lives for them. It is in our experiences that we learn the lessons. They have to go through their own journey, or not. It isn’t your responsibility. Let them go. You can be supportive, and loving, but, unless someone is ready to change, they won’t.

YOGA

Yoga, not the kind you do at a gym which is done for exercise in Lulu Lemons, but the kind you do at a spiritual or Yoga center, or by a trained Yoga teacher from one of those centers, will help you change your life. Along with meditation, they should be the tools you seek out. Ironically, when you do Yoga, your body will get all the exercise anyway. But you will be getting the spiritual connection as well. Two for the buck. You might feel that it is flaky at first, because, unfortunately, most of these centers seem to attract a lot of flaky people. Don’t worry…they are nice people just seeking the same things as you. They might be doing it in a different way. They are on their own journey. You need to be on yours

TM

In 2018 I finally decided that I had to try Transcendental Meditation (TM) . I found a center in Orlando and went through the training. It was not what I expected. It was much better. It is so easy that there is an elegance to the method. I meditated for a while but then I kind of stopped. Until the pandemic started and we were sequestered. Between the pandemic and the insane government we have had the last four years, the violence, the total disrespect for morality, decency and scruples, it was all too much. I found myself having trouble sleeping. I thought I would give TM a chance again. My sister turned me on to Bob Roth and the David Lynch Foundation. Bob did a free online meditation twice a day. I started doing them. It has made all the difference in my life. I can sleep. I was calm even though the craziness of the elections and the aftermath with the crazies believing the lies and all the unrest. This stuff works. It only takes 20 minutes in the morning and in the evening. I have found that it works better for me if I do it at bed time. This way it is a gateway to sleep.

To finish

It won’t happen overnight, but, work at it. You will get to a place where you start feeling the best you ever have and you will be doing it yourself, with your body, your mind, your spirit, food, and without drugs.

Presently, it is very seldom that I get depressed. And if I start feeling it, I get out of the house! I go for a walk, work on the garden, touch the earth, meditate, do Yoga – anything to focus my mind on something else that is positive, not negative. I don’t dive into the vortex anymore. Whatever you do, change your environment. If you stay in the house you will succumb. DON’T!

Beat the “you suck monster”. Don’t let it win!

If you are lucky enough to be close to a Sivananda Yoga center, great. If not, try to get to one. They are very reasonably priced, and worth every penny. You can stay in tents for very cheap, or in cabins for a little more. You will eat organic, Sattvic meals prepared fresh everyday, do Yoga twice a day, meditate, and participate in the daily lectures and chanting. Or, look for a Yoga teacher in your area that is Sivananda certified. You will get the same teachings. It is not a religion and if you are a religious person, this will help you closer to your God. But do something. Don’t just sit at home feeling sorry for yourself.

The David Lynch Foundation is trying to get meditation to everyone in America: schools, first responders, Vets with PTSD, even hospital custodial staff. Anyone that might be experiencing terrible stress, anxiety and all the pressures of dealing with the pandemic. If you can’t afford to get the training they have scholarships. You can also pay whatever you can afford. If you can’t afford anything, they will pay for it. Do yourself a favor and seek TM.

If you feel the monster creeping up, get out of the house… Go to a movie. Go to a mall. Get out of the house.