Among the numerous aspects of clinical depression, I want to pen down the story of my battle with one aspect of it i.e. my battle with my acute loss of appetite and how I overcame it one step at a time.
After self-managing with depression by my own for months without any professional help, I had to reach out for help, almost screaming for it when it hit me to a point when I had completely lost the mental ability to do the most basic chores like taking a bath or having a meal.
Loss of appetite is one of the major aspects of clinical depression which is sometimes extreme in some people. I had gone days with just drinking just a glass of juice and one or two biscuits, which had consequently made me physically very weak. There were days I barely had the energy to make myself a meal or do my laundry.
One day at my therapy, my therapist asked me what I had to eat at home and made me promise to go home and eat something at least. After my medication and therapy started kicking in, I was slowly getting back my control over my mind. To convince myself to eat enough every day to not fall weak, I used to walk through the aisles of the supermarkets and buy those delicious looking sugary snacks, all the colorful sugary drinks, jellies, chocolates, junk and snacks that I would not otherwise eat as they are not healthy.
At that point of time I did not care about eating healthy, I just wanted to stop starving myself; like they say ‘one step at a time’ in the recovery process.
Maishah Samiha is a Business Graduate from Macquarie University, Australia. She is a freelance writer and she writes on various issues, this is her first piece of writing on mental health issues for a public platform like Pensive Stories.